Spiritual guidance of mankind

From Anthroposophy

Man - the human being, is the tenth spiritual hierarchy under development in the seven main planetary stages of evolution in the current solar system evolution. On the current planetary stage of evolution called Earth, Man receives his fourth bodily principle of I-consciousness (or human 'I') and receives free will or freedom (Schema FMC00.130). Through his I-consciousness Man becomes an active contributor and creator of the future, see Meaning of Free Man creator (and Seeds for future worlds).

Man is set free of the divine guidance, is disconnected from the interconnected chain of spiritual hierarchies that make up his being and the cosmos (see Cosmic fractal), in as much that Man is offered free will to choose between good and evil. This means the human soul is the battlefield for forces that want to lift the human being up to a spiritual future, and those that want to pull it down into future evil races and what is called the Eighth sphere.

All along this process, support is provided for humanity as a whole by the 'spiritual guidance of mankind', and this for all the various stages of development, and the different segments or cohorts of the overall population at various stages of maturity. The process can be compared to how children are raised in gradual stages to maturity and independence.

The human being, Free Man Creator, is placed in a force-field with opposing influences, with the choice to either:

  • .. serve spiritual and humanitarian goals, work one's virtues and develop moral ideals, selfless love and be part of a unified humanity - which is the goal of the current solar system evolution. This way or path is represented by the Christ and the Christ Impulse (Schema FMC00.481). The developmental path is guided with oversight by what we call here the 'spiritual guidance of mankind', represented by the White Lodge and the guides and teachers of mankind, see also topic pages Three classes of Buddhas and Bodhisattva.
  • .. serve materialistic and egotistic goals, selfishness which has as its ultimate polarity of evil in black magic. This path, influenced by what are called Ahrimanic and Asuric spiritual beings, is represented by what is called a Black Lodge.

Aspects

  • difficulties in convey knowledge from adept teachers to humanity
    • "Those who incarnated as adepts within the Atlantean race were under a much higher (impersonal) intuition, which gradually migrated into the being, and only later did the spiritual emerge from the personal. The adepts of the fourth Atlantean race - were still God-inspired seers. ... This is also one reason why, at the beginning of the theosophical movement, the adepts were difficult to understand; why they themselves felt how they could make themselves so difficult to understand. It was because the adepts, who belonged to the earliest population, had an even more spiritual life that had not yet descended into mere comprehension. Western man wants to understand. Therefore, if you read in the 'Secret Doctrine', you will find the passage where the Master says: "You, with your occidental judgment, find it difficult to understand!" (1904-01-19-GA090A on Human aura)
  • The highest adepts often only work into peoples' fates twice in two hundred years .. their strength is saved for special occasions, as humanity is not mature enough for the highest truths and would not be able to receive them, but this would have a harmful effect (1907-09-15-GA266)
  • certain incarnations are of Individualities specially chosen because humanity needs them in a certain cultural age, so they are a means through which certain influences flow in - examples are given of Bismarck and Martin Luther (from memory, lecture source to be confirmed/added)

Teachers of humanity

Fifth and sixth rounders
  • .. fifth and sixth rounders are terms used by Helena Blavatsky in theosophical teachings. She gave examples of Plato and Confucius as fifth rounders, and Buddha and Sankaracharya as sixth rounders. See Lecture references below, especially the section by Gottfried de Purucker which is most complete. In early lectures, when Rudolf Steiner was part of the theosophical movement, he also used these terms and explained them.
  • artistic or artificial fifth rounders such as Plato already attained in the physical body of the fourth CoL, what the other human beings can only be in the astral body of the fifth CoL. Such advanced, highly developed people will not intervene in the first stages of development, but only later, when development has progressed to a certain point, they have to wait until they can intervene. (1904-01-19-GA090A)
  • artificial fifth rounders have a developed astral body so they are at home in the knowledge of the astral life/world; artificial six-rounder have complete clarity about the spirit world. However limits and discrepancies always remain due to limitations of the physical body in its current earthly environment. (1904-12-26-GA090A)
    • Fifth and six rounders can act as teachers and guides for humanity, others are geniuses who act as reformers and intervene in practical life (example of Cromwell is given)
    • For each there is a gradient .. some fifth-rounders can reach far beyond the present development, but are still at the beginning and not at the highest level of fifth-roundership ... "if they are in the middle, they can give profound teachings as Goethe; others have already reached the pinnacle and are ripe for the sixth round, such as Heraclitus or Plato".

Ways and processes

Inspiration
  • In the 1924 Karmic Relationships lectures, Rudolf Steiner makes various mentions of adepts or higher spiritual beings inspiring other incarnated individuals:
  • Furthermore Rudolf Steiner also mentioned the following works were inspired directly by masters of the White Lodge:
    • 'The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz' (with anonymous authorship and Johann Valentin Andreae as the scribe)
    • 'Isis Unveiled' (1877) by Helena Blavatsky, inspired by Master Rosenkreutz
    • 'Light on the path' (1885) by Mabel Collins, inspired by Master Hilarion
Putting a body at disposal of a higher spiritual entity
  • due to limitations of the physical body in its earthly environment, sometimes the body has to be slowly prepared by an initiate so a higher being can take possession of this body in later life (1904-12-26-GA090A)
    • Such a process occurred in the third epoch when the chela Sig made his body available to an artificial seven-rounder (see below. Note this lecture states third epoch, not fourth or fifth tbc)
    • This was also the case when the chela Jesus of Nazareth, in his thirtieth year, placed his body at the disposal of the Christ principle
    • only in the sixth epoch will humanity be ready for a seven-rounder who passed through all the stages of humanity to fill the human body with the Christ principle expressed in it. [editor: see link with the Father and the first human Manu]
  • with 'higher spiritual entity' is meant a higher Individuality (re adepts or Bodhisattvas from the White Lodge), or spiritual being (such as the Christ)
  • see also Schema FMC00.430
  • Jesus - Christ
  • Franz Bardon
    • an adept (no further information is known about this Individuality) entered into the body of a fourteen year old boy Franz Bardon in 1924; he dictated three books on initiation that are the most advanced guides for spiritual development
Sig - Wotan
  • relation between: Sig (or Sige or Sieg) <-> Wotan (or Odin)
  • Sieg was founder of Druidic initiation, the leader and thirteenth of a fellowship of twelve great Initiates, see also: Druidic and Trotten mysteries#Overall - general
  • Odin or Wotan was a higher spiritual Individuality who already lived in the Atlantean epoch as a great adept.
  • he "was the chela who placed his body at the disposal of the higher spiritual entity Odin". His Individuality renounced his body and placed it at the disposal of a higher Individuality, the transformed Sieg was named Odin .. here "something happened like what happened later in Palestine" and "this is one of the highest mysteries, it also happens with Christ descending into Jesus at the Baptism" (1904-10-21-GA092 and 1905-03-22-GA90B both on Wotan Impulse, and the other 1905-GA090B lecture on German mythology).

Segmentation

  • this topic covers differentiation as part of evolution, and the management of development by segmentation of an overall population in cohorts, groups, castes, along criteria such as for example spiritual maturity or karma. Examples are:
  • law for evolution and development of mankind: 'development is only possible through differentiation'; and organizing for this, accordingly: "certain groups of people must be separated in order that a particular quality of human nature can be developed. (1912-05-29-GA155)
Atlantean epoch
Current Postatlantean epoch
  • the castes in India and Egypt
  • the castes are an expression of the whole plan of development of the fifth epoch. The first four cultural ages show an outward expression in time of the gradual training to independence of humanity in seven cultural ages. In the first all guidance on essential matters is entirely in the hands of the priests, the second is led by the priest-kings, during the third the rulership is able to pass over to worldly kings (who however still follow the guidance of the priests or priest-kings), and only during the fourth we find purely worldly kings no longer associated with priestly power. (1904-10-28-GA092, see First ancient Indian cultural age#Castes as segmentation).
  • the caste system is a precursor of this later moral gradation whereby categories of karma will be indicated in this way and ethical human categories will be graded in accordance with the stages of karma, seven degrees of morality (1905-10-26-GA093A, see Moral ideals#1905-10-26-GA093A)

Various

  • 'Kumaras', in Hinduism: four rishis (sages) who roam the universe as children (named Sanaka, Sanandana, Sanatana, and Sanatkumara) as four brothers who always travelled together without any desire but with the purpose of teaching. Also described as first mind-born sons of the creator-god Brahma, they play a significant role in Hindu spiritual traditions associated with the worship of Vishnu and Krishna.

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.607: provides an overview of how the law of evolution applies to the development and spiritual guidance of mankind, with a focus on the evolution between the previous Atlantean epoch towards the next Sixth epoch. As development is only possible through differentiation, different segments at various stages of karmic development or spiritual maturity must be separated in order to develop further. Examples of this separation were the different Mysteries and Oracles in the Atlantean epoch, and the castes in India and other areas incl. Egypt. In the future, moral castes will develop based on spiritual maturity as part of the separation of mankind into good and evil segments or sub-races (190X-XX-XX-GA097, 1908-06-21-GA104, 1910-GA013)

The Current Postatlantean epoch is a gradual training to independence for humanity. This is depicted below with a transfer of the guidance of mankind by leaders not part of humanity, that developed on other planets (see also Three Classes of Buddhas) .. to - in the Sixth epoch - the leadership of mankind by the most advanced humans who developed on Eart . The schema shows the gradual evolution of these trends across the cultural ages, and how the sixth cultural age will seed the sixth epoch with the appearance of these moral castes and the fact that the Masters of the White Lodge will become publicly known as leaders of humanity.

Notes for Schema commentary page:

  • regarding boxes on the lower left:
    • examples of priests and priest-kings: Zarathustra in the Ancient Persian cultural age, the Egyptian Pharaohs
    • further coverage of these stages in 1919-10-27-GA193 (and 1919-10-19-GA191) - see Contemporary worldview war#1919-10-27-GA193
      • first: Egyptian Pharaohs, Babylonian rulers, Asiatic rulers .. were initiates
      • then : "the priest-type emerged as ruler and was really the ruler right up to the Reformation and the Renaissance"
      • since that time: the economist has been in command, rulers are merely the handymen,of the economists.
        • has become an impersonal ahrimanic force/entity as in the 19th century due to evolution of banking
  • regarding castes in India
    • the castes in India should not be related to the first Ancient Indian cultural age .. they appeared later and lasted at least until the fourth cultural age
    • the lecture references given for the castes in India couples karma-based segmentation to the number of incarnations, hence the term 'spiritual maturity'
  • the Southern stream of development consisted of the four most advanced segments or castes from the Atlantean epoch
  • 1912-05-29-GA155 describes the Two streams of development as an excellent illustration of the two arms of the spiral of development, the need for two concurrent streams of development whereby a second one first stays behind, in order to be able to fructify and merge and grow further beyond the development of the first.
  • for the development of moral castes, see also Moral idea'"`UNIQ--nowiki-00000000-QINU`"'ls and Schema FMC00.188 and variants (on Christ Module 7 - Cosmic dimension) that depicts how 'a new center is created' through this.
  • compare this Schema also with
  • physiognomy will become more important again in the next cultural ages and Sixth epoch, as a reflection of the soul and spiritual maturity: the outer physiognomy will directly mirror one's karma (1904-11-11-GA093) .. the physical body will become a 'stamp' of one's morality (1915-10-31-GA254, 1915-11-07-GA254) and "in the sixth epoch men will show good and evil on their faces" (1908-06-25-GA104)
provides an overview of how the law of evolution applies to the development and spiritual guidance of mankind, with a focus on the evolution between the previous Atlantean epoch towards the next Sixth epoch. As development is only possible through differentiation, different segments at various stages of karmic development or spiritual maturity must be separated in order to develop further. Examples of this separation were the different Mysteries and Oracles in the Atlantean epoch, and the castes in India and other areas incl. Egypt. In the future, moral castes will develop based on spiritual maturity as part of the separation of mankind into good and evil segments or sub-races (190X-XX-XX-GA097, 1908-06-21-GA104, 1910-GA013) The Current Postatlantean epoch is a gradual training to independence for humanity. This is depicted below with a transfer of the guidance of mankind by leaders not part of humanity, that developed on other planets (see also Three Classes of Buddhas) .. to - in the Sixth epoch - the leadership of mankind by the most advanced humans who developed on Eart . The schema shows the gradual evolution of these trends across the cultural ages, and how the sixth cultural age will seed the sixth epoch with the appearance of these moral castes and the fact that the Masters of the White Lodge will become publicly known as leaders of humanity. Notes for Schema commentary page: *regarding boxes on the lower left: **examples of priests and priest-kings: Zarathustra in the Ancient Persian cultural age, the Egyptian Pharaohs **further coverage of these stages in 1919-10-27-GA193 (and 1919-10-19-GA191) - see Contemporary worldview war#1919-10-27-GA193 ***first: Egyptian Pharaohs, Babylonian rulers, Asiatic rulers .. were initiates ***then : "the priest-type emerged as ruler and was really the ruler right up to the Reformation and the Renaissance" ***since that time: the economist has been in command, rulers are merely the handymen,of the economists. ****has become an impersonal ahrimanic force/entity as in the 19th century due to evolution of banking *regarding castes in India **the castes in India should not be related to the first Ancient Indian cultural age .. they appeared later and lasted at least until the fourth cultural age **the lecture references given for the castes in India couples karma-based segmentation to the number of incarnations, hence the term 'spiritual maturity' *the Southern stream of development consisted of the four most advanced segments or castes from the Atlantean epoch *1912-05-29-GA155 describes the Two streams of development as an excellent illustration of the two arms of the spiral of development, the need for two concurrent streams of development whereby a second one first stays behind, in order to be able to fructify and merge and grow further beyond the development of the first. *for the development of moral castes, see also Moral idea'"`UNIQ--nowiki-00000000-QINU`"'ls and Schema FMC00.188 and variants (on Christ Module 7 - Cosmic dimension) that depicts how 'a new center is created' through this. *compare this Schema also with **Schema FMC00.594 and the process of Individuation as central to the development of mankind in the Earth planetary stage of evolution; see narrative Unification#Individuation and differentiation **Schema FMC00.591 showing a more high-level view on why the period between the third and sixth epochs is thé crucial phase for the development of mankind, whereby Schema FMC00.052 zooms in to state the fifth and sixth cultural ages are the decisive ones, and Schema FMC00.422A on how only one third reaches the goal at the end of the fifth epoch *physiognomy will become more important again in the next cultural ages and Sixth epoch, as a reflection of the soul and spiritual maturity: the outer physiognomy will directly mirror one's karma (1904-11-11-GA093) .. the physical body will become a 'stamp' of one's morality (1915-10-31-GA254, 1915-11-07-GA254) and "in the sixth epoch men will show good and evil on their faces" (1908-06-25-GA104)

Schema FMC00.608: is an infographic illustrating what is called the white brotherhood consisting of the white lodge of twelve masters; each with direct assistants and helpers. This is to be considered when contemplating important Individualities and known teachers of mankind, for example - for the 20th century - Rudolf Steiner, Beinsa Douno, Franz Bardon, Daskalos, but also Krishnamurti, Sri M, and others. The Masters themselves are often or mostly not publicly known, but they work through others and their missions are carried into the world by their assistant 'wise men' and helpers.

See also: Spiritual guidance of mankind

is an infographic illustrating what is called the white brotherhood consisting of the white lodge of twelve masters; each with direct assistants and helpers. This is to be considered when contemplating important Individualities and known teachers of mankind, for example - for the 20th century - Rudolf Steiner, Beinsa Douno, Franz Bardon, Daskalos, but also Krishnamurti, Sri M, and others. The Masters themselves are often or mostly not publicly known, but they work through others and their missions are carried into the world by their assistant 'wise men' and helpers. See also: Spiritual guidance of mankind

Schema FMC00.609: shows four 20th century western teachers of humanity, from left to right: Rudolf Steiner, Beinsa Douno, Franz Bardon, Daskalos.

shows four 20th century western teachers of humanity, from left to right: Rudolf Steiner, Beinsa Douno, Franz Bardon, Daskalos.

Schema FMC00.554: depicts, on the lower left, an illustration of 1905-06-27-GA091 titled 'the evolutionary laws of inner karma'. It shows how our Earthly life and impressions influence the human being over multiple incarnations. When Man is able to actively work upon and use his intellectual soul, it has meaning for the third-following incarnation, and so on.

This picture also 'explains' the importance of meditation and initiation, as the most valuable work carrying across into future incarnations.

On the right, underneath the time bar of epochs and cultural ages, are some statements illustrating this for our current fifth cultural age.

Below right is an addition (by the author), connecting to various statements by Rudolf Steiner about the fact that the fifth and sixth cultural ages are the decisive ones, and also about the spiritualization or ascent of humanity in the Sixth epoch (see Schema FMC00.505) and the Father impulse).

See also Schema FMC00.607 for the link with how the spiritual guidance of mankind used the principle below to managing the development of castes of souls with segments of the population at different levels of spiritual maturity.

depicts, on the lower left, an illustration of 1905-06-27-GA091 titled 'the evolutionary laws of inner karma'. It shows how our Earthly life and impressions influence the human being over multiple incarnations. When Man is able to actively work upon and use his intellectual soul, it has meaning for the third-following incarnation, and so on. This picture also 'explains' the importance of meditation and initiation, as the most valuable work carrying across into future incarnations. On the right, underneath the time bar of epochs and cultural ages, are some statements illustrating this for our current fifth cultural age. Below right is an addition (by the author), connecting to various statements by Rudolf Steiner about the fact that the fifth and sixth cultural ages are the decisive ones, and also about the spiritualization or ascent of humanity in the Sixth epoch (see Schema FMC00.505) and the Father impulse). See also Schema FMC00.607 for the link with how the spiritual guidance of mankind used the principle below to managing the development of castes of souls with segments of the population at different levels of spiritual maturity.

Schema FMC00.047A is an extended reference table that integrates various perspectives, and provides cross-references to more detailed Schemas for these aspects.

On the right, the spiritual guidance by mankind through the beings of the Third Hierarchy.

FMC00.047A.jpg

Lecture coverage and references

Overview coverage

  • the best introduction to the broader topic is 1911-06-GA015 has as its basis the three lectures of 6,7 and 8 June 1911 and was published as GA015 with the title 'spiritual guidance of mankind'. Because they are a basis, all three lectures are included below.

Reference extracts

fifth and sixth rounders

Blavatsky - Secret doctrine

1/ summary from theosophy.world, rephrased from The Secret Doctrine, chapter on 'Planetary Chains, Globes, Rounds, and Root Races' and The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett (again 'Chains, Globes, Rounds, Root Races, and Races'), both by Helena Blavatsky

The majority of humanity, whatever their anthropological race may be, is said to be presently in the Fifth Root Race, although there are still remnants of the Fourth Root Race around and there are some people who are Sixth Root Race types, in advance of average humanity. It is stated that there are also some people — Plato and Confucius are specifically named — who are Fifth Rounders, i.e., have developed their consciousness far in advance of that of the average person. The Buddha is said to be a Sixth Rounder. In each Round, one of the Principles in the constitution of human beings is developed.

2/ from theosophy.wiki then more literal extracts:

In The Mahatma Letters there is mention to some "fifth-rounders" having been incarnated on Earth now, during our current fourth round or CoL:

Plato and Confucius were fifth round men and our Lord a sixth round man (the mystery of his avatar is spoken of in my forthcoming letter) and not even Gautama Buddha’s son was anything but a fourth round man.

This apparent contradiction was explained by Mme. Blavatsky as follows:

Every “Round” brings about a new development and even an entire change in the mental, psychic, spiritual and physical constitution of man, all these principles evoluting on an ever ascending scale. Thence it follows that those persons who, like Confucius and Plato, belonged psychically, mentally and spiritually to the higher planes of evolution, were in our Fourth Round as the average man will be in the Fifth Round, whose mankind is destined to find itself, on this scale of Evolution, immensely higher than is our present humanity.

In one of his letters, Master K.H. seems to imply that some humans may have actually gone through the different Globes faster getting ahead of humanity for one Round.

1904-01-19-GA090A

edited machine translation, SWCC.

[Spiritual maturity]

I would now like to return to the aura of advanced people, for example Plato in ancient Greece. The development that Plato achieved will only be reached by the average people of the present race in the next round; that is why people like Plato are called 'artificial fifth-rounders'. However, they also differ significantly from other people. When the present human beings will have reached the fifth round, their bodies will no longer be physical bodies as they are now, but astral bodies, so that the difference is still there.

Plato was already in the physical body of the fourth round what the other human beings can only be in the astral body of the fifth round!

So Plato was in the physical body of the fourth round what other people will be in the astral body of the fifth round. This causes a significant difference in the progress of development. As a result, when Plato's earthly development is complete, he will be in a completely different state from the others. In the fifth round he will perhaps be a Buddha and in the sixth he will be much higher. Let's go back again and look at Plato. During the fourth round, he has already achieved with the physical brain what the average person will be able to achieve with the astral brain in the fifth round. This will enable him to work back in a corresponding way in the next round; he has thus acquired an ability that others do not yet have: namely, the ability to work back on the physical brain!

It is just as if an engineer were suddenly transferred to a wild tribe of people; he will be able to transform all things there to a much greater extent with his artistic abilities and knowledge; he will be able to be a teacher of this wild tribe of people. While one who grows out of the wild tribe can only take the development a small step further, one who enters the tribe with a great development will be able to take the tribe much further. A highly developed person will naturally not intervene in the first stages of development, but only later, when development has progressed to a certain point. That is the task of advanced people! They will move on to the next stage of development, but wait until they can intervene!

[Presumably from the question answer]

By repercussions, I meant that he has acquired abilities that others do not have. The others are bound to the physical brain, and then bound again to a single brain. In the sixth round he will act on the astral brain, in the seventh round on the mental brain, so that he can act back on the earlier brains, that he can guide them from outside.

The effectiveness of the Pitri is therefore to be understood as something similar, in the sense that the former can participate in the construction of the new world body. Those who have completed their development in the normal way, who have become real human beings, will be able to participate in this construction from the outside.

How far have we come at the end of the seventh round?

[editor, in this case what is described is that humanity will then become L2 the second logos to work on L3 third logos world dust, see Schema FMC00.067A and Schema FMC00.067B on Creation by the three Logoi. This situation is similar as the Pitris from Old Moon working in the first half of the Earth stage of evolution. The current humans that will become such Pitris will do the same on Future Jupiter.]

So far that we can rebuild from the outside everything that the spirit has built up from the inside. So when we find new world dust, we will immediately build a body that will correspond to our level of development. We will build the 'people' of future stages of development!

But those who have lagged behind, who have not come so far, will have to build up the lowest forms; accordingly, they will be the ones who, as it were, build up the walls in the new world system from below, and the developed ones will intervene where there is work for them to do.

The I in us can never be lost; it only transforms. At present it thinks, and that is the highest ability it possesses today. We will animate the next beings again, but not with manasic Is, but with higher ones

1904-12-26-GA090A

edited machine translation

During the Lemurian race, Manas was, as it were, placed in the seething mass of Kama and there tried to gain existence, in order to develop later in the Atlantean race as memory; this continuous thread of Manas attaches itself in the fifth race to intellectual combination; Manas is now working within itself.

During the sixth epoch, which will replace our Aryan or Postatlantean epoch the working-in of Manas will continue to proceed. The chakras, the mental organs, and the human I will develop during the following round.

How does such a development take place? What happens during an initiation?

No body can develop beyond its environment; the physical body is dependent on physical powers; Man, as a physical being, cannot develop beyond himself. But he can develop his astral body so that he becomes at home in the knowledge of what we call the astral life. He will get to know the origins of evil that lie there. In this way, he has become an artificial fifth rounder.

But a certain discrepancy must occur in him, because in a normal further development his physical body would also have become different. He must either renounce what now constitutes life, or there will be a certain discord.

During the fifth round, they can then act as teachers and guides for the fifth round of humanity, just as they already do for the fourth round of humanity. Such fifth-rounders can reach far beyond the present development; but if they are still at the beginning and not at the highest level of fifth-roundership, they will seem like dreamers to others.

These are the geniuses who, when they intervene in practical life, act as reformers. Cromwell could be cited as an example. If they are in the middle, they can give us such profound teachings as Goethe; or if they have reached the pinnacle and are already ripe for the sixth round, such as Heraclitus or Plato. Humanity can only progress if such artificial five-rounders take on a human form.

The artificial six-rounder consists of gaining complete clarity about the mental world. A complete insight into the interrelationships, the creative forces of the world, is provided by a leader like Buddha. All that remains for him to do is to complete his mental body; he is completely free in the astral and physical. A six-rounder like this can almost reach the point of attaining human godlikeness. However, this is not possible with the current average body. Such a body must be slowly prepared through chelaship so that the God of our Earth can take possession of this body in later life.

  • Such a process occurred in the third epoch when the chela Sig made his body available to an artificial seven-rounder.
  • This was even more the case when the chela Jesus of Nazareth, in his thirtieth year, placed his body at the disposal of the Christ principle, the God-Man.
  • It is only in the sixth epoch that humanity will be ready for a seven-rounder who has passed through all the stages of humanity to fill the human body with the Christ principle expressed in it.
Gottfried de Purucker on 'Fifth and Sixth Rounders'

book: 'Fountain-source of occultism : a modern presentation of the ancient universal wisdom based on The secret doctrine by H.P. Blavatsky'

by Gottfried de Purucker (1874-1942), and derived from twelve booklets of instruction to private students.

source:

Every "Round" brings about a new development and even an entire change in the mental, psychic, spiritual and physical constitution of man, all these principles evoluting on an ever ascending scale. Thence it follows that those persons who, like Confucius and Plato, belonged psychically, mentally and spiritually to the higher planes of evolution, were in our Fourth Round as the average man will be in the Fifth Round, whose mankind is destined to find itself, on this scale of Evolution, immensely higher than is our present humanity. Similarly Gautama Buddha -- wisdom incarnate -- was still higher and greater than all the men we have mentioned, who are called Fifth Rounders, while Buddha and Sankaracharya are termed Sixth Rounders, allegorically. Thence again the concealed wisdom of the remark, pronounced at the time "evasive" -- that "a few drops of rain do not make the Monsoon, though they presage it." -- I, 162

Ever since the existence of the Brotherhood of adepts and masters came to the attention of the Western world, particularly after the publication of some of their letters in the 1880s, students have been puzzled by some of their references to fifth and sixth rounders.

  • A fifth rounder is one who has already attained the state of consciousness which the average member of the human race will attain during the fifth round on this Earth.
  • A sixth rounder is one who has reached the state of consciousness which the average human being will attain during the sixth round.

The human life-wave, with its many grades of evolutional unfolding manifesting in the various types of humanity, is not alone and single, but in reality is but one of the ten families of life-waves that are making the rounds of our earth planetary chain. For instance, there are hosts upon hosts of entities preceding us in evolutionary progression, the forerunners, and there are likewise hosts upon hosts following in our wake, the trailers.

On our planetary chain there are other families of entities, not only presently on earth but on the other six globes, so that we humans, the beasts, the vegetables, the minerals, and the elementals, are not the only hosts on this chain as it now is.

When all the seven or ten hierarchies finally reach globe G during the first round, they gather on that globe all together, it being the last globe of the manifest seven; and here they all finish the first round simultaneously before the interplanetary nirvana begins.

Starting with the second round, all the lines of evolution or activity now having been laid, and nothing having to be instituted from the ground up, the progress of the life-waves is relatively faster for those which are the most evolved. The effect of this is that some smaller hosts of monads, and individuals too, run through their evolutionary course much more rapidly, and thus precede the general body of the seven evolving hierarchies. This is why we have fifth rounders now among us, although we as a human host are in our fourth round.

  • When our life-wave shall have moved on to globe E the sishtas of the human kingdom will be the highest or next to the highest representatives of their life-wave. They will be really fifth rounders, with a very few sixth rounders appearing among them at long intervals of time. This means that they are not called upon to make, then and there, what is for our human life-wave its fifth round because they have already made it, through their character and quality as forerunners: they have outrun the bulk of their life-wave.
  • Exactly the same observations apply to the sixth rounders, who are the buddhas. These sixth rounders -- those whose spirituality is so high, and whose innate capacity acquired through long aeons of experience is so great that they go ahead even of the fifth rounders -- are very, very few in number. Gautama the Buddha is said to have been the only fully developed sixth rounder in recorded history.

Now how is this inner evolution achieved? Obviously, in every collection or group of entities, there are some who are behind; then the intermediate majority, and finally some who are ahead. These last are the elder souls, those who have strived the hardest and conquered most of self, for true self-knowledge comes from intelligent self-control in every thought and act. When death occurs, these forerunners follow the same course that all excarnate entities do, only they do so self-consciously. They perform an individual round of their own through the planetary chain, first by ascending along the luminous arc until they reach the highest globe; then after a relatively long nirvanic rest they descend through the globes of the descending arc until they again reach globe D or our earth; and because they have thus made a round ahead of the life-wave, they are fifth rounders when they return to our globe.

They progress through experiences gained on the different planes of the other globes and by having in each of those globes various imbodiments; and these experiences are built into the fabric of the soul as character. It is a continuous and natural inner growth, which is none other than an ever-greater manifestation of the monad, the inner god. In other words, on these other globes these peregrinating monads undergo self-conscious experiences, instead of being, as is usual with reincarnating egos, enwrapped for the entire period between earth lives in a long devachan. From this it should be clear that the evolutional development of the fifth and sixth rounders is not achieved solely by training, initiation or self-study during incarnations on this globe D. However indispensable all these methods are, it would be utterly impossible to become a genuine fifth or sixth rounder in these ways alone.

  • A sixth rounder is one who, in advance of the human life-wave, has evoked into operation the buddhi or sixth principle within him, because it is in the sixth round that buddhi will receive its evolution; while
  • the fifth rounder is one who has awakened into more or less full expression the fifth principle within himself, the manas.
  • We humans, being in the middle of the fourth round, are still in process of evolving our fourth principle, kama.

The sixth rounders are so few that we may state definitely that a true sixth rounder is always a buddha, or one equivalent to a buddha. The whole being of the man is filled with the glory of the god within him.

However, there are many fifth rounders among us even today, but they are not by any means all on the same level of fifth-round unfoldment: there are the advanced ones, those less advanced, and those who have just become fifth rounders. If these peregrinating souls are so far advanced that they can find the spiritual, intellectual and psychical strength within themselves, they continue without interruption the process of self-conscious imbodiments on the other globes for one round more, and thus when they reach earth again they do so as sixth rounders.

It may be of interest to quote the following passage from one of K.H.'s letters written in answer to a question of A. P. Sinnett's as to whether a fifth-round man, if he "devoted himself to occultism and became an adept, would . . . escape further earthly incarnations?"

No; if we except Buddha -- a sixth round being, as he had run so successfully the race in his previous incarnations as to outrun even his predecessors. But then such a man is to be found in a billion of human creatures. He differed from other men as much in his physical appearance as in spirituality and knowledge. Yet even he escaped further reincarnations but on this earth; and, when the last of the sixth round men of the third ring is gone out of this Earth, the Great Teacher will have to get reincarnated on the next planet.

Only, and since He sacrificed Nirvanic bliss and Rest for the salvation of his fellow creatures He will be re-born in the highest -- the seventh ring of the upper planet.

Till then He will overshadow every decimillennium (let us rather say and add "has overshadowed already" a chosen individual who generally overturned the destinies of nations. See Vol. I, pp. 34 and 35 last and first para. on the pages). -- p. 117

As far as known the human race has not as yet produced a seventh rounder, a forerunner ahead by three rounds of the general life-wave. The majority of the mahatmas are either very far advanced fifth rounders, or hovering on the line of passing into sixth roundership; their chelas are fifth rounders less advanced.

The forerunning monads -- in addition to passing in more or less self-conscious reimbodiment after death through the other globes of our planetary chain, and thus attaining fifth roundership -- were already, when leaving the Old Moon chain, evolutionally more advanced than the majority of their fellows. During the course of their rounds on our present Earth chain, and beginning even during the third round, these forerunning reimbodying egos began to feel so strongly the working within them of spiritual and intellectual qualities and faculties, that they left, as it were, the vast flock of the egos in the human life-wave, and took imbodiment on the different globes of the chain in advance of the mass of egos. This precedence in evolutionary status is then kept even when the bulk of the human life-wave in its turn reaches its fourth round, so that these forerunners may actually be by that time in their fifth round, and in a few cases even in their sixth round.

Writing on this subject in 1882, K.H. made the following explanation:

The scheme with its septenary details would be incomprehensible to Man had he not the power as the higher Adepts have proved of prematurely developing his 6th and 7th senses -- those which will be the natural endowment of all in the corresponding rounds. Our Lord Buddha -- a 6th r. man -- would not have appeared in our epoch, great as were his accumulated merits in previous rebirths but for a mystery.

. . . And now

  • as Man when completing his seventh ring upon A has but begun his first on Z
  • and as A dies when he leaves it for B, etc.,
  • and as he must also remain in the inter-cyclic sphere after Z, as he has between every two planets, until the impulse again thrills the chain,

clearly no one can be more than one round ahead of his kind.

And Buddha only forms an exception by virtue of the mystery.

We have fifth round men among us because we are in the latter half of our septenary Earth ring. In the first half this could not have happened. The countless myriads of our fourth round humanity who have outrun us and completed their seven rings on Z, have had time to pass their inter-cyclic period begin their new round and work on to globe D (ours).

But how can there be men of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 7th rounds?

We represent the first three and the sixth can only come at rare intervals and prematurely like Buddhas (only under prepared conditions) and that the last-named the seventh are not yet evolved! -- pp. 96-7

Speaking generally, the "mystery" means that these rarest few, destined to become sixth rounders even in the fourth round, are aided and individually guided by certain dhyani-chohanic beings who not only foster these forerunning egos, and protect them, but do so even when those egos undergo the various initiations through which they must pass. This mystery imbodies the further fact that these forerunners are helped to make full and self-conscious imbodiment on each one of the globes of our planetary chain, thus enabling them to gather the experiences that the bulk of the fourth rounders can attain only when the main life-wave reaches these different globes.

Note: possibly related to the last paragraph above Rudolf Steiner mentioned that the Buddha went through development on Venus before descending to Earth again in the Lemurian epoch (1912-06-12-GA137), see Individuality of Buddha

General

1904-10-28-GA092

see: First ancient Indian cultural age#1904-10-28-GA092

1907-09-15-GA266

Esoteric Lessons I - Number 18 in Stuttgart

The highest adepts often only work into peoples' fates twice in two hundred years. Their strength is saved for special occasions.

For men aren't yet mature enough for certain things. It would only have a harmful effect if one wanted to give them out. Even you, my brothers and sisters, couldn't receive some of the highest truths. If I would tell you such a truth this room would be empty in a few minutes.

Even people who have reached a certain stage in esoteric training can't stand certain truths. And yet these are the very highest truths, and your training will eventually enable to you to receive them. But one who receives them too soon loses all support in life.

1910-03-15-GA266

full extract on: Human etheric body#1910-03-15-GA266

The I develops from age 21-28.

The 'Masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings' [re White Lodge] adapted theosophical teachings to present conditions so that they mainly work on the I and are grasped by the I.

This wasn't the case before. Then an occult teacher had to work on both the astral body and the I. This wouldn't be possible today for men have much more individualistic tendencies. If a teacher wanted to intervene in the astral body and he tried to direct the passions, drives and desires he would thereby immediately produce an I through theosophical teachings to ennoble his older but lower body.

1911-06-06-GA015

A Man reflecting on his own nature soon becomes conscious that there is within him a second and more powerful self than the one bounded by his thoughts, his feelings, and the fully-conscious impulses of his will. He becomes aware that he is subject to that second self, as to a higher power. It is true that at first he will feel it to be a lower entity as compared with the one limited by his intelligent and fully-conscious soul, with its inclinations towards the Good and True. And at first he will strive to overcome that lower entity.

But closer self-examination may reveal something else about this second self. If we often, in the course of our lives, make a kind of survey of our acts and experiences, we make a singular discovery about ourselves. And the older we are, the more significant do we think that discovery. If we ask ourselves what we did or said at a particular period of our lives, it turns out that we have done very many things which are only really understood in later years. Seven or eight, or perhaps twenty years ago, we did certain things, and we know quite well that only now, long afterwards, is our intellect ripe enough to understand what we did or said at that earlier period.

Many people do not make such discoveries about themselves, because they do not look for them. But it is extremely profitable frequently to hold such communion with one's own soul. For directly a man becomes aware that he has done things in former years which he is only now beginning to understand, that formerly his intellect was not ripe enough to understand them, — at that moment, something like the following feeling arises in the soul: The man feels himself protected by a good power, which rules in the depths of his own being; he begins to have more and more confidence in the fact that really, in the highest sense of the word, he is not alone in the world, and that everything which he understands, and is consciously able to do, is after all but a small part of what he has really accomplished in the world.

If this observation is often made, it is possible to carry out in practical life something which is very easy to see theoretically. It is easy to see that we should not make much progress in life if we had to accomplish everything we have to do, in full consciousness, with our intelligence taking note of every circumstance affecting us. In order to see this theoretically, we have only to reflect as follows: In what period of his life does a human being perform those acts which are really most important as regards his own existence? When does he act most wisely for himself? He does this from about the time of his birth up to that period to which his memory goes back when in later life he survey his earthly existence. If he recalls what he did three, four or five years ago, and then goes farther and farther back, he comes at last to a certain point in childhood, beyond which memory cannot go. What lies beyond it may be told by parents or others, but a man's own recollection only extends to a certain point in the past. That point is the moment at which the individual felt himself to be an ego. In the lives of people whose memory is limited to the normal, there must always be such a point. But previous to it, the human soul has worked in the wisest possible manner on the individual, and never afterwards, when the human being has gained consciousness, can he accomplish such vast and magnificent work on himself as he does when impelled by subconscious motives during the first years of childhood.

For we know that at birth man carries into the physical world what he has brought with him as the result of his former earthly lives. When he is born, his physical brain, for instance, is but a very imperfect instrument. The soul has to work a finer organization into that instrument, in order to make it the agent of everything that the soul is capable of performing. In point of fact, the human soul, before it is fully conscious, works upon the brain so as to make it an instrument for exercising all the abilities, aptitudes and qualities, which appertain to the soul as the result of its former earthly lives. This work on a man's own body is directed from points of view which are wiser than anything he can subsequently do for himself when in possession of full consciousness.

Moreover, man during this period not only elaborates his brain plastically, but has to learn three most important things for his earthly existence. The first is the equilibrium of his own in space. The man of the present day entirely overlooks the meaning of this statement which touches upon one of the most essential differences between man and animals. An animal is destined from the outset to develop its equilibrium in space in a certain way; one animal is destined to be a climber, another, a swimmer. An animal is organized from the beginning in such a way as to be able to bear itself rightly in space, and this is the case with all animals up to and including the mammals most resembling man. If zoologists would ponder this fact, they would lay less emphasis on the number of bones and. muscles similar in men and animals, for this is of much less account than the fact that the human being is not endowed at birth with the complete equipment for his conditions of equilibrium. He has first to form them out of the sum total of his being. It is significant that man should have to work upon himself in order to make out of a being unable to walk at all, one that can walk erect. It is man himself who gives himself his vertical position, his equilibrium in space. He brings himself into relation with the force of gravitation. It will obviously be easy for anyone taking a superficial view of the matter to question this statement, with apparently good reason. It may be said that the human being is just as much organized for his erect walk as, for instance, a climbing animal is for climbing. But more accurate observation will show that it is the peculiarity of the animal's organization that causes its position in space. In man it is the soul which brings itself into relation with space and controls the organization.

The second thing which the human being teaches himself is speech. This is by means of the entity which proceeds from one incarnation to another as the same being. Through speech he comes into relation with his fellowmen. This relation makes him the vehicle of that spiritual life which interpenetrates the physical world primarily through man. Emphasis has often been laid, with good reason, on the fact that a human being removed, before he could speak, to a desert island, and kept apart from his fellows, would not learn to talk. On the other hand, what we receive by inheritance, what is implanted in us for use in later years and is subject to the principles of heredity, does not depend on a man's dwelling with his fellows. For instance, his inherited conditions oblige him to change his teeth in the seventh year. If it were possible for him to grow up on a desert island, he would still change his teeth. But he only learns to talk when his soul's inner being, which is carried on from one life to another, is stimulated. The germ, however, for the development of the larynx must be formed during the period in which the human being has not yet acquired his ego-consciousness. Before the time to which his memory goes back, he must plant the germ for developing his larynx, in order that this may become the organ of speech.

And then there is a third thing, the life within the world of thought. It is not so well known that the human being acquires this of himself, from that part of his inner nature which be carries on from one incarnation to another. The elaboration of the brain is undertaken because the brain is the instrument of thought. At the beginning of life, this organ is still plastic, because the individual has to form it for himself as an instrument of thought, in accordance with the intention of the entity which proceeds from one incarnation to another. The brain immediately after birth is, as it was bound to be, in consonance with the forces inherited from parents and other ancestors. But the individual has to express in his thought what he is as an individual being in conformity with his former earthly lives. Therefore he must re-model the inherited peculiarities of his brain, after birth, when he has become physically independent of his parents and other ancestors.

We thus see that man accomplishes momentous things during the first years of his life. He is working on himself in the spirit of the highest wisdom. In point of fact, if it were a question of his own cleverness, he would not be able to accomplish what he must accomplish without that cleverness during the first period of his life. Why is all this accomplished in those depths of the soul which lie outside consciousness? This happens because the human soul and entire being are, during the first years of earthly life, in much closer connection with the spiritual worlds of the higher hierarchies than they are later. A clairvoyant who has gone through sufficient spiritual development to be able to witness actual spiritual events, sees something exceedingly significant at the moment when the ego acquires consciousness, i.e., at the earliest point to which the memory of later years goes back. Whereas what we call the child's aura hovers around it during its earliest years like a wonderful human and superhuman power and, being really the higher part of the child, is continued on into the spiritual world, at the moment to which memory goes back, this aura sinks more into the inner being of the child. A human being is able to feel himself a continuous ego as far back as that point of time, because that which was previously in close connection with the higher worlds, then passed into his ego. Henceforward the consciousness is at every point brought into connection with the external world. This is not the case with a very young child, to whom things appear only as a surrounding world -of dreams.

Man works on himself by means of a wisdom which is not within him. That wisdom is mightier and more comprehensive than any conscious wisdom of later years. The higher wisdom becomes obscured in the human soul which, in exchange, receives consciousness.

The higher wisdom works out of the spiritual world deep into the bodily part of man, so that man is able by its means to form his brain out of spirit. It is rightly said that even the wisest may learn from a child, for in the child is working the wisdom which does not pass later into consciousness. Through that wisdom man has something like telephonic connection with the spiritual beings in whose world he lives between death and rebirth. From that world there is something still streaming into the aura of the child, which is, as an individual being, immediately under the guidance of the entire spiritual world to which it belongs. Spiritual forces from that world continue to flow into the child. They cease so to flow at the point of time to which memory goes back. It is these forces which enable the child to bring itself into a definite relation to gravitation. They form the larynx, and so mold the brain that it becomes a living instrument for the expression of thought, feeling, and will.

What is present in childhood to a supreme degree, so that the individual is then working out of a self which is still in direct connection with higher worlds, continues to some extent even in later years, although the conditions change in the manner indicated above. If at a later stage of life we feel that we did something years before which we are only now able to understand, it is just because we previously let ourselves be guided by higher wisdom, and only after the lapse of years have we attained to an understanding of the reasons for our conduct.

From all this we can feel that, immediately after birth, we had not escaped so very far from the world in which we were before entering upon physical existence, and that we can never really escape from it wholly. Our share in higher spirituality enters our physical life and accompanies us throughout. We often feel that what is within us is not only a higher self which is gradually being evolved, but is something higher which is there already, and is the motive cause of our so often developing beyond ourselves.

All ideals and artistic creations which man is able to produce, as well as all the natural healing forces in his own body, by means of which he is continually able to adjust the injuries that befall him in life — all these powers do not proceed from ordinary intellect, but from those deeper forces which in our earliest years are at work on our equilibrium in space, on the formation of our larynx, and on the brain. For these same forces are still at work in man in later years. When sickness attacks us, it is often said that external forces cannot help us, but that our organism must develop the healing powers latent within it; by this is meant that there is a profoundly wise activity present in us. Moreover, it is from this same source that proceed the best forces whereby knowledge of the spiritual world, true clairvoyance; is attained.

The question now suggests itself: why do the higher forces which have been described work upon human nature only during early childhood? One-half of the answer may be easily given as follows: If those higher forces went on working in the same way, man would be always a child. He would not attain the full ego-consciousness. From within his own being must proceed the motive power which previously worked on him from without. But there is a more important reason which explains still more clearly the mysteries of human life, and that is the following:

It is possible to learn through occult science, that the human body, as it exists at its present stage of evolution, must be regarded as having arrived at its present form under different conditions. It is known to the occultist that this evolution was effected by means of the working of various forces on the sum-total of man's being; certain forces worked on the physical body, others on the etheric, others on the astral body. Human nature has arrived at its present form through the action of those beings whom we call the Luciferic and Ahrimanic. By their means it has, in a certain way, become more imperfect than it need have been if only those forces had been active within it which proceed from the spiritual rulers of the cosmos who desire to evolve man along straight lines. The causes of sorrow, disease, and even of death are to be sought in the fact that, besides the beings who are evolving man in a straight line forwards, there are also the Luciferic and Ahrimanic spirits, who are continually crossing the line of straightforward progressive development.

Man brings with him at birth something which he cannot improve upon later in life. This is so, because the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces have little influence over man during early childhood; they are virtually operative only in what man makes out of himself by his conscious life. If he were to retain in full force beyond early childhood that more perfect part of his being, he would be unable to endure its influence, because his whole being is weakened by the opposing forces of Lucifer and Ahriman. Man's organism in the physical world is so constituted that it is only as a soft and pliable child that he can endure within him those direct forces of the spiritual world. He would be shattered, if during his later life there were still directly working in him those forces which underlie the faculty of equilibrium in space, and the formation of the larynx and the brain. Those forces are so tremendous that, if they were to continue working, our organism would pine away under the influence of their holiness. Man must only have recourse to such forces for the purpose of developing the power to make conscious connection with the supersensible world.

But out of this there arises a thought which is of great significance, if rightly understood. It is expressed in the New Testament in the words, ‘Except ye become as little children, ye cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.’ What then becomes manifest as man's highest ideal, if what has just been said be rightly received? Surely this — the drawing ever nearer and nearer to what we may call a conscious relation to the forces which work in man unknown to him during early childhood, 0niy it must be borne in mind that man would collapse under the power of those forces, if they were at once to operate in his conscious life. For this reason, careful preparation is necessary for the attainment of those faculties which induce the perception of supersensible worlds. The object of such preparation is to qualify man to bear what he is unable to bear in ordinary life.

[Reincarnation]

The passing of the individual through successive incarnations is of importance for the collective evolution of the human race. The latter has advanced through successive lives in the past, and is still advancing, and parallel with it the earth too is moving forwards in its evolution. The time will come when the earth will have reached the end of its career. Then the earthly planet will fall away as a physical entity from the sum-total of human souls, just as the human body falls away from the spirit at death, when, in order to continue living, the soul enters the spiritual realm which is adapted to it between death and re-birth. When once this is realized, it must appear as man's highest ideal to have progressed far enough at earthly death, to be able to reap all possible benefits which may be obtained from earthly life.

Now those forces which prevent man from being able to endure the powers working upon him during early childhood come out of the substance of the earth. When these have fallen away from a human being, the latter, if he has attained the aim of his life, must have advanced far enough to be able actually to give himself up, with his whole being, to the powers which at present are only active in man during childhood. Thus the object of evolution through successive earthly lives is gradually to make the whole individual, including therefore the conscious part, into an expression of the powers which are ruling in him under the influence of the spiritual world — though he does not know it — during the first years of his life. The thought which takes possession of the soul after such reflections as these, must fill it with humility, but also with a due consciousness of the dignity of man. The thought is this man is not alone; there is something living within him which is constantly affording him proof that he can rise above himself to something which is already growing beyond him, and which will go on growing from one life to another. This thought can assume more and more definite form; and in that case it affords something supremely soothing and elevating, at the same time filling the soul with corresponding humility and modesty. What is it that man has within him in this way? Surely a higher, divine human being, by whom he is able to feel himself interpenetrated, saying to himself, ‘He is my guide within me.’

From such a point of view, it is not long before we arrive at the thought that by all the means in our power we should strive to be in harmony with that within our being which is wiser than conscious intelligence. And we shall be referred on from the directly conscious self to an enlarged self, in the presence of whom all false pride and presumption will be extinguished and subdued. This feeling develops into another which opens the way to accurate understanding of the nature of present human imperfection; and the consciousness of this leads to the knowledge that man may become perfect, if once the larger spirituality ruling within him is allowed to bear the same relation to his consciousness which it bore to the unconscious life of the soul in early childhood.

If it often happens that memory does not extend as far back as the fourth year of a child's life, it may nevertheless be said that the influence of the higher spirit-sphere, in the above sense, lasts through the first three years. At the end of that span of time a child becomes capable of linking its impressions of the outer world to the ideas of its ego. It is true that this coherent ego- conception can only be reckoned as existing as far back as memory extends. Yet we must say that virtually memory extends to the beginning of the fourth year, only it is too weak at the beginning of distinct ego-consciousness to be perceptible. It may be granted that those higher powers which dispose of a human being in the early years of childhood can be operative for three years; therefore man, during the present middle period of the earth, is so organized that he can receive these forces for only three years.

Supposing a man now stood before us, and that some cosmic powers could cause his ordinary ego to be removed. For this purpose we must assume that it would be possible to remove from the physical, etheric, and astral bodies the ordinary ego which has passed through successive incarnations with the human being. And now suppose that into the three bodies could be introduced an ego which works in connection with spiritual worlds, what would happen to a person thus treated? At the end of three years his body would necessarily be shattered, Something would occur, through cosmic karma, which would prevent the spirit-being which would be in connection with higher worlds, from living more than three years in that body. 1 Only at the end of all his earthly lives will man have that within him which will enable him to live more than three years with that spirit-being. But then, it is true, man will be able to say to himself, ‘Not I, but that Higher One within me, who was always there, is now working in me.’ Till that time comes, he is not able to say this. The most he can say is that he feels that higher being, but has not yet progressed far enough with his real, actual human ego, to be able to bring that higher being to full life within him.

Supposing then that, at some time in the middle Earth-period, a human organism were to come into the world, and later in life be freed from his I by the action of certain cosmic powers, receiving in exchange the I which usually only works in man during the first three years of life, and which would be in connection with the spiritual worlds in which man exists between death and rebirth: how long would such a person be able to live in an earthly body?

About three years. For at the end of that time, something would arise through cosmic karma, which would destroy that human organism.

What is here supposed is, indeed, a historical fact. The human organism which stood in the river Jordan at John's baptism when the ego of Jesus of Nazareth left the three bodies, contained, after the baptism, in complete conscious development, that higher Self of humanity which usually works with cosmic wisdom on a child without its knowledge. At the same time, the necessity arose that this Self which was in connection with the higher spirit-world could only live for three years in the appropriate human organism. Events had then to take place which brought the earthly life of that being to a close, The outer events in the life of Christ Jesus are to be interpreted as absolutely conditioned by the inner causes just set forth, and present themselves as the outward expression of those causes.

We are now able to see the deeper connection existing between that which is man's guide in life, which streams in upon his childhood like the dawn and is always working below the surface of consciousness as the best part of him, and that which once upon a time entered the whole of human evolution and was able to dwell for three years in a human frame.

What then is manifested in that ‘higher’ I, which is connected with the spiritual hierarchies, and which in due time entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth, this entrance being symbolically represented by the sign of the spirit descending in the form of a dove, and by the words; ‘this is my well-beloved Son, to-day have I begotten him’ (for so stood the words originally)? If we fix our eyes upon this picture, we are contemplating the highest human ideal. For it means that the history of Jesus of Nazareth is a statement of this fact; the Christ can be discerned in every human being. And even if there were no Gospels and no tradition to tell us that once a Christ lived on earth, we should yet learn through knowledge of human nature that the Christ is living in man.

The recognition of the forces working in human nature during childhood is the recognition of the Christ in man. The question now arises, does this recognition lead to the further perception of the fact that this Christ once really dwelt on earth in a human body? Without bringing forward any documents, this question may be answered in the affirmative. For genuine clairvoyant knowledge of self leads the man of the present day to see that powers are to be discovered in the human soul which emanate from the Christ. These powers are at work during the first three years of childhood without any action being taken by the human being. In later life they may be called into action, if the Christ be sought within the soul by inner meditation. Man was not always able, as he is now, to find the Christ within himself. There were times when no inner meditation could lead him to the Christ. This again we learn from clairvoyant perception. In the interval between that past time when man could not find the Christ in himself, and the present time when he can find him, there took place Christ's earthly life. And that life itself is the source of man's power to find the Christ in himself in the manner that has been pointed out. Thus to clairvoyant perception the earthly life of Christ is proved without any historical records.

It is just as if the Christ had said; ‘I will be such an ideal for you human beings that, when it is raised to a spiritual level, you will be shown that which is fulfilled in each human body.’ In his early childhood man learns from the spirit how to walk; he is shown by the spirit his way through earthly life. From the spirit he learns to speak, to form truth; in other words, be develops the essence of truth out of sound during the first three years of his life. And the life too, which man lives on earth as an ego-being, obtains its vital organ through what is formed in the first three years of childhood. Thus man learns to walk, to find ‘the way’; he learns to present ‘truth’ through his physical organism; and he learns to bring ‘life’ from the spirit into expression in his body. No more significant interpretation seems possible of the words ‘Except ye become as little children ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ And momentous is that saying in which the ego-being of the Christ comes into expression thus, ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.’ Just as, unknown to a child, the higher spirit-forces are fashioning its organism to become the bodily expression of the way, the truth, and the life, so the spirit of man, through being interpenetrated with the Christ, gradually becomes the conscious vehicle of the way, the truth, and the life. He is thereby making himself, in the course of his earthly development, into that force which bears sway within him as a child, when he is not consciously its vehicle.

This saying about the way, the truth, and the life, is capable of opening the doors of eternity. It sounds to man out of the depths of his soul, if his self-knowledge is true and real.

Such reflections as these open up, in a double sense, the vision of the spiritual guidance of the individual and of collective humanity. As human beings we are able, through self-knowledge, to find the Christ within us as the guide Whom, since His life on earth, we can always reach, because He is always in man. Furthermore, if we apply to the historical records what we have apprehended without them, we discover their real nature. They express something which is revealed of itself in the depths of the soul. They are therefore to be accounted as guiding humanity in the same direction as the soul itself is proceeding.

If we thus understand the suggestion of eternity in the words, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life,’ we cannot feel ourselves justified in asking, ‘Why does a person who has passed through many incarnations always re-enter life as a child?’ For it becomes evident that this apparent imperfection is an ever-recurring reminder of the Highest that is in man. And we cannot be reminded often enough — at any rate each time we enter earthly life is not too often to remind us — of the vast importance of man's connection with that Being Who underlies all earthly existence, untouched by its imperfections.

It is not well to make many definitions or summaries in spiritual science or theosophy, or indeed in occultism generally. It is better to give a description, and to try and call forth a feeling of what really exists. On this account we have attempted to induce a feeling of what distinguishes the first three years of human life, and of the way in which this is related to the light that streams from the cross on Golgotha. The meaning of this feeling is that an impulse is passing through human evolution, and that through this impulse the Pauline saying, ‘Not I — but the Christ in me,’ will become a fact. We have only to know what man is in reality, in order to be able to proceed from such knowledge to insight into the nature of the Christ. When once, however, we have arrived at the Christ-idea, through true observation of humanity, we know that we discover the Christ in the best way if we first look for Him in ourselves; and if we then return to the Bible records we value them rightly for the first time. And no one prizes the Bible more, or more consciously, than one who has found the Christ in this way. It is possible to imagine a being, let us say, an inhabitant of Mars, descending to earth, without ever having heard of the Christ and His work. Much that has taken place on earth would be incomprehensible to the Martian; much that interests people nowadays would not interest him. But it would interest him to discover the central impulse of earthly evolution, the Christ-idea as it is expressed in human nature itself.

[Gospels]

Having grasped this, a man is able for the first time rightly to understand the Bible, for he finds expressed there in a marvelous way what he has previously observed in himself, and he says: It is unnecessary to have been brought up with any special reverence for the Gospels; by means of what I have learned through spiritual science, they need only be presented to me, a fully-conscious human being, to stand revealed before me in all their greatness.

Indeed, if it is not too much to say that in the course of time people who have learned through spiritual science rightly to appreciate the contents of the Gospels, will value them as guides of the human race more justly than hitherto. It is only through knowledge of human nature itself that humanity will learn to see what is latent in those profound records. It will then be said: If there is to be found in the Gospels that which forms an integral part of human nature, it must have come from the people who wrote these documents on earth, Therefore what genuine reflection brings home to us about our own lives — the more so the older we grow — must hold especially good with regard to those writers. We ourselves have done many things which we only understand years afterwards, and in the writers of the Gospels may be seen people who wrote out of the higher self which works in man during childhood, so that the Gospels are writings emanating from the wisdom which molds human nature. Man is a manifestation of spirit through his body, and the Gospels are such a manifestation in writing.

On this assumption the idea of inspiration regains its true and loftier meaning. Just as higher forces are at work on the brain during the first three years of childhood, so there were higher forces from spiritual worlds impressed on the souls of the Evangelists, under the influence of which they wrote the Gospels. The spiritual guidance of humanity is expressed in such a fact as this. For the human race must surely be guided, if within it people are writing records under the influence of those same powers that are at work on the molding of man in profound wisdom. And just as the individual says or does things which he only understands at a later period of life, so collective humanity has produced in the Evangelists means of revelation which can only be understood by degrees. The farther humanity progresses, the greater will be the understanding of these records. The human being can feel spiritual guidance within himself; and collective humanity can feel it in those of its members who work as did the writers of the Gospels.

The idea thus gained of the guidance of humanity may be extended in many directions. Let us suppose that a man finds disciples — a few people who follow him. Such a one will soon become aware, through genuine self-knowledge, that the very fact of his finding disciples gives him the feeling that what he has to say does not originate with himself. The case is rather this — that spiritual powers in higher worlds wish to communicate with the disciples, and find in the teacher the fitting instrument for their manifestation.

The thought will suggest itself to such a man: when I was a child I worked on myself by the aid of forces proceeding from the spiritual world, and what I am now able to give, of my best, must also proceed from higher worlds; I may not look upon it as belonging to my ordinary consciousness. Such a man may in fact say: something demonic, something like a ‘daimon’ — using the word in the sense of a good spiritual power — is working out of a spiritual world through me on my disciples.

[Socrates and Paul]

Socrates felt something of this kind. Plato tells us that he spoke of his ‘daimon’ as of the one who led and guided him. Many attempts have been made to explain this ‘daimon’ of Socrates, but it can only be explained by supposing that Socrates was able to feel something like that which results from the above reflections. Then we are able to understand that throughout the three or four centuries during which the Socratic principle was active in Greece, a state of feeling permeated the Greek world, which prepared the way for another great event. The feeling that man, as he now is, is not the whole of what comes through from higher worlds — this feeling went on working. The best of those in whom it was present were those who afterwards best understood the words, ‘Not I, but the Christ in me.’ For they could say to themselves: Socrates used to speak of a being working as a ‘daimon’ from higher worlds; the Christ-ideal makes clear what Socrates meant. Socrates could not as yet speak of Christ, because in his time no one was able to find the Christ-nature within himself.

Here again we feel something of the spiritual guidance of man, for nothing can be established in the world without preparation. Why was it that Paul found his best disciples in Greece? Because the ground had been prepared there by the teaching of Socrates and the state of feeling that has been described. That is to say, what happens in human evolution may be traced back to events which operated previously, and made people ripe for what was afterwards to be brought to bear upon them. Do we not feel here how far the guiding impulse passing through human evolution extends and how at the right moment it places people where they will best be used to further that evolution? In such facts is manifested the guidance of mankind.

1911-06-07-GA015

[Egypt]

If we turn our attention to what was said to the Greeks by the teachers and leaders of ancient Egypt about the direction and guidance of the spiritual life of their country, we may trace a remarkable parallel between that which is manifested in the individual life of man, and that which governs human evolution as a whole. It is related that when a Greek once asked an Egyptian, who had guided and led his nation from ancient times onwards, he answered, ‘In the times of yore, the gods ruled and taught us, and only afterwards men came to be our leaders.’ The Egyptians named Menes to the Greeks as their first leader on the physical plane to be recognized as a human leader. That is to say, the directors of the Egyptian people alleged that in earlier times the gods themselves — as Greek records confirm — guided and led the Egyptian nation. Such an assertion, coming down to us from ancient times, must, however, be rightly understood.

What did the Egyptians mean when they said, ‘Our kings and great teachers were gods?’

The man who thus answered the question of the Greek meant that if any one had gone back into the ancient times of the Egyptian nation, and had asked those people who felt something within them like a higher consciousness, or wisdom from higher worlds: ‘Who are really your teachers?’ they would have answered: ‘If I wanted to tell you about my real teacher, I should not point to such and such a person and say, ‘That is my teacher,’ but I should first have to put myself into a clairvoyant state (it is known from spiritual science that this was comparatively easier in ancient times than it is now), and then I would find my real inspirer and teacher, who comes to me only when the eyes of my spirit are opened.’ For in ancient Egypt beings who were not incarnated in a physical human body came down amongst men. In those remote ages, it was the gods who still ruled and taught the Egyptians, and by “gods” they understood beings who had preceded man in evolution.

[angels]

According to spiritual science, the earth passed through an earlier planetary condition, called the Moon-state, before it became Earth. During this condition man was not yet human in the present sense of the word. On the old Moon were present beings not possessed of the present human forms and differently constituted, who nevertheless were then at the evolutionary stage which man has now attained on earth. We may therefore say, that on the ancient Moon-planet which has perished, and out of which the Earth afterwards originated, there lived beings who were man's predecessors. In Christian esoteric language they are called angel-beings (Angeloi). The beings immediately above them, Archangels (Archangeloi), were human at a still earlier period. The angels, or angeloi in Christian esotericism, Dhyanic beings in eastern mysticism, were ‘men’ during the Moon-period. Now these beings, during the present Earth-period, are a stage farther advanced than man — those of them, that is to say, who completed their evolution on the Moon. Only at the end of the Earth's evolution will man have arrived at the stage which those beings had reached at the end of the Moon-period.

When the Earth-state of our planet began and man appeared on earth, these beings were not able to appear in an external human form, for the human body of flesh and blood is essentially a product of earth, and is only adapted to the beings who are now human. The beings who are a stage farther advanced than man could not be incarnated in human bodies. They were only able to take part in the government of the earth by illuminating and inspiring those people in primeval times who had attained the stage of clairvoyance. Indirectly, then, through such clairvoyant persons the angels intervened to guide the destinies of earth.

Thus the ancient Egyptians still remembered a time when the leading personalities of the nation were clearly conscious of their connection with what are called gods, angels, or dhyanic beings. Now what sort of beings were these, who were not incarnated in a human form of flesh and blood, but who influenced mankind in the way we have described? They were man's predecessors, advanced beyond the human stage.

There is in these days much misuse of a word which may in this connection be applied in its true meaning, the word “Superman.” If we really wish to speak of “Supermen,” it is these beings who may rightly be so called. Human during the Moon-period, the planetary stage preceding our Earth, they had now outgrown humanity. They were only able to appear in an etheric body to clairvoyants. It was thus that they came down to earth from spiritual worlds and ruled here even as late as post-Atlantean times.

These beings had, and still have, the remarkable quality of not being obliged to think; in fact, we might even say that they cannot think at all as man does.

How then does man think?

More or less in this way. He starts from a certain point and says, “I understand this or that,” and from that point he then tries to understand various other things. If this were not the method of human thought, school-life would not be such a difficult period for many. We cannot learn mathematics in a day, because we have to begin at a certain point and go slowly forwards. This takes a long time. We cannot survey a whole world of thought at a glance, for human thought runs its course in time. A system of thought does not enter the mind in a flash. We have to make an effort and have to exert ourselves, in order to find the sequence of thought. The beings described above are without this human peculiarity. A far-reaching train of thought comes into their minds with the same rapidity with which an animal makes up its mind that it will snatch at something which its instinct tells it is eatable. Instinct and reflective consciousness are in no wise distinct in these beings; they are one and the same. Just as animals have instinct at their stage of evolution, in their kingdom, so these dhyanic beings or angels have direct spiritual thought and conceptions. By virtue of this instinctive inner life of conception they are of an essentially different nature from human beings.

Now we can easily understand why it is impossible for these beings to use a brain or physical body like ours. They have to use an etheric body, because the human body and brain only allow of thoughts in time, whereas these beings do not develop their thoughts in time, but feel the wisdom that is approaching them blaze forth, as it were, spontaneously within them. It is impossible for them to think erroneously in the sense in which man does. The process of their thought is a direct inspiration. Hence the personalities who were able to come into contact with these super-human or angelic beings were conscious that they were in the presence of unerring wisdom, Therefore, even as late as ancient Egyptian times, when the man who was the human teacher or king was in the presence of his spiritual guide, he felt thus the command which he is giving, the truth which he is enunciating, is literally right and cannot be wrong. This was also felt by those to whom the truths were passed on.

The clairvoyant guides of the human race were able to speak in such a manner that in their words people believed they were receiving exactly what came down from the spiritual world. In short, there was a direct current down from the higher spirit-hierarchies which were directing humanity. Thus what works on the individual in early childhood may be seen working on humanity at large in the form of the next world of spirit-hierarchies which hovers over human evolution as a whole. This is the next kingdom of the angels or super-human beings, standing a step higher than man, and extending directly into spiritual spheres. They bring down to earth from those spheres what is worked into human civilization. In the child, it is on the formation of the body that the higher wisdom leaves its impress; in human evolution of past ages, it was civilization that was so matured.

Thus the Egyptians, who described themselves as being in connection with divinity, felt that the soul of humanity was open to the action of spirit hierarchies. Just as the soul of a child opens its aura to the hierarchies up to the time mentioned in the preceding pages, so, through its work, did the whole of humanity open its world to the hierarchies with which it was connected.

[ancient India]

This connection was most important in those teachers whom we call the holy teachers of India, the great teachers of the first post-Atlantean or Indian civilization, which unfolded itself in southern Asia. When the Atlantean catastrophe was over, and the physiognomy of the earth had changed, so that the new conformation of Asia, Europe, and Africa had evolved in the Eastern hemisphere, the civilization led by the ancient great teachers of India began. This was before the time we have mentioned as reported in ancient records. The man of today is apt to get quite a wrong idea about these teachers. If, for example, one of the great Indian teachers were to be confronted with an educated man of the present day, the latter would gaze upon him with astonishment, and perhaps say, “Is that a great teacher? I should never have thought it.” The words “clever” or “learned” in the sense of modern culture could not be applied to the holy teachers of ancient India. They had nothing clever to say. They were simple, homely people, who would have answered even questions of everyday life in the simplest fashion possible. And there were many periods during which scarcely anything could be elicited from them but what would seem, to an educated man of today, insignificant. On the other hand, there were certain times when these holy teachers were revealed as something more than simple, homely men.

these times they were obliged to be together to the number of seven, because what each individual was able to feel had to combine harmoniously with the feelings of the other six teachers, as though in a consonance of seven sounds. For it was then possible for each one to see something according to his particular gift and degree of development. Assuming that we know how to decipher the real occult records, we find that from the harmony of the separate parts which each individual was able to see, there arose the primeval wisdom which comes down to us from ancient times. These records are not the revelations of the Vedas, however much we may admire them. What the Indian holy teachers taught is of much earlier date than the composition of the Vedas, and it is only a feeble echo of their wisdom which lies before us in those mighty works. But when each of these men was in the presence of a super-human predecessor of humanity, was gazing clairvoyantly into higher worlds, and listening clairaudiently to what was being taught through that predecessor, it was as though the sun shone from their eyes. What they were then able to say worked with overpowering force on their environment, so that all who heard them knew that it was not human life or wisdom that was speaking, but that gods, super-human beings, were influencing human civilization.

The ancient civilizations had their rise in this sounding to mankind of the knowledge of the gods. Only by degrees in post-Atlantean times was the door closed into the divine spiritual world which in the Atlantean period had still been wide open for the human soul. And in the various countries and nations it was felt that man was thrown ever more and more on his own resources. What is revealed in the case of a child appears in humanity in a different way. The divine spiritual world is first diffused into the unconscious soul of a child, and the soul works upon the formation of the body. Then comes the moment at which the child learns to feel itself an ‘ego’ and this is the moment to which its memory goes back in later life. This is what makes it possible to say that the wisest of men may still learn something from the soul of a child. From this point, however, the individual is left to himself. The I-consciousness comes into being, and everything combines to make it possible for him to remember his experiences.

So, too, in the life of nations there came a time when they began to feel themselves shut off from the divine inspiration of their early forefathers. Just as the child becomes gradually shut off from the aura that floats about its head in its earliest years, so in the life of nations did the divine ancestors withdraw themselves more and more, and mankind was left to its own research and to its own knowledge. When history speaks in this manner, the fact of the guidance of humanity is realized Menes was the Egyptian name of him who inaugurated the first human civilization, and it is at the same time hinted that man thereby became liable to error, for thenceforward he was left to look for guidance to the instrument of his brain. That man was liable to fall into error is symbolically indicated by the fixing of the date of the construction of the labyrinth at the time when humanity was abandoned by the gods; for the labyrinth is an image of the convolutions of the brain as the instrument of man's own thoughts — windings in which the thinker is able to lose himself. The Orientals called man, as a thinking being, Manas, and Manu stands for the first great thinker. The Greeks called the first organizer of the human principle of thought Minos, and with him is associated the myth of the labyrinth, because it was felt that, since his time, mankind had gradually passed from the direct guidance of the gods to a guidance in which the 'I' feels the influence of the higher spirit-world in a different way.

[Luciferic beings]

Besides those predecessors of man, the true supermen, who had completed their humanity on the Moon and had become angels, there are, however, other beings who did not perfect their evolution on the Moon .The beings called dhyanic in Oriental mysticism and angelic in Christian esotericism, consummated their evolution on the ancient Moon, and when man began his earthly career were already a stage higher than he was. But there were other beings who had not finished their evolution on the ancient Moon, any more than the higher categories of Luciferic beings had finished theirs. When the Earth-state of our planet began, man as we have described him was not the only being there. He felt also the inspiration of divinely-spiritual beings; otherwise, like a child, he would have been unable to progress. Accordingly, besides these childlike human beings, and acting through them, there must have been also present on the earth beings who had completed their evolution on the Moon. But between these and man there were yet other beings who had not finished their evolution on the Moon — beings of a higher order than man, because, even as early as the ancient Moon-period, they might have become angels or dhyanic beings. At that time, however, they had not come to full maturity. They were angels in a backward state, yet they far outdistanced man as regards everything which man called his own. Generally speaking, they are beings occupying the lowest grade in the ranks of Luciferic spirits. They hold a middle position between men and angels, and with them begins the kingdom of Luciferic spirits.

Now it is extremely easy to get an erroneous idea of these spirits. We might ask why did the divine spirits, the regents of good, allow them to fall short, and thereby admit the Luciferic principle into humanity?

And it might further be objected on this ground, that surely the good gods turned everything to good. This question is obvious. And another misunderstanding which might arise, is expressed in the idea that these are “evil” spirits. Both ideas are merely misunderstandings; for these spirits are by no means purely “evil,” although the origin of evil in human nature is due to them. Since they stand midway between man and superman, they are, in a sense, more perfect than men. In all the qualities which human beings have to acquire for themselves, these spirits have attained a high standard, and they only differ from man's predecessors described above in being able to incarnate in human bodies whilst man is being evolved on Earth. This is because they did not consummate their humanity on the Moon.

The dhyanic or angelic beings proper, who are the great inspirers of humanity, and to whom the Egyptian referred as being still their teachers, did not appear in human bodies. They could only manifest themselves through human beings.

On the other hand, the beings in a mid-position between men and angels were still able, in very early times to incarnate in human bodies. Hence amongst the human race inhabiting the earth in the Lemurian and Atlantean periods, we find people whose innermost soul-nature was that of an angel in a backward state. Not only ordinary people were going about the earth, who through their successive incarnations were to arrive at the ideal of humanity, but beings who only outwardly appeared like them. These had to bear a human body, for the outward form of a human being in the flesh is dependent on earthly conditions. Especially in more ancient times did it happen that beings belonging to the lowest category of Luciferic individualities were present amongst men. And so at the same time that the angel-beings were working on human civilization through man, Lucifer-beings were also incarnated and founding human civilizations in various places. And when in the old folk legends it is related that in some place there lived a great man who was the founder of a civilization we are not to understand that such a Lucifer-being was necessarily the vehicle of evil but rather that human civilization was to receive countless blessings from him.

[Language in Atlantean epoch]

Now it is known through occult science that in ancient times, particularly in the Atlantean epoch, there existed a kind of primitive human language, a manner of speech, which was the same all over the Earth, because “speech” in those days came much more out of the depths of the soul than it does now. This may be gathered from the following:

  • In Atlantean times, people felt all outward impressions in such a way that if the soul wished to express anything outward by a sound, it was constrained to use a consonant. What existed in space pressed for imitation in a consonant. The blowing of the wind, the murmur of the waves, the shelter given by a house were felt and imitated by man in consonants.
  • On the other hand, the sorrow or joy which was felt inwardly, or was observed as feeling in another being, was imitated in a vowel. From this we can see that the soul became one, in speech, with outer events or beings.

[example]

The following instance is taken from the Akashic Records:

A man drew near a hut, which was arched in the ancient fashion and gave shelter and protection to a family. He noticed this, and expressed the protective arch by a consonant; and by a vowel he expressed the fact, which he was able to feel, that within the hut the embodied souls were comfortable. Thence arose the thought “shelter”; “there is a shelter for me — shelter for human bodies.” The thought was then poured forth in consonants and vowels, which could not be otherwise than they were, because they were a direct impression of experience and had but one meaning. This was the same all over the earth. It is no dream that there was once an original human root-language. And, in a certain sense, the initiates of all nations are still able to feel that language. Indeed there are in all languages certain similar sounds which are the remains of that universal language.

This speech was prompted in human souls by the inspiration of the super-human beings, man's true predecessors, who had perfected their evolution on the Moon. From this it may be seen that if that evolution alone had taken place, the entire human race would practically have remained one great unity, and there would have been uniformity of speech and thought all over the earth. Individuality and diversity could not have been developed, nor at the same time could human freedom.

[different languages]

In order that man might become individual, cleavages had to take place in humanity, and the difference of language in different parts of the world is due to the work of those teachers in whom a Luciferic spirit was incarnated. According as a particular angel-being, who had fallen short in his evolution, was incarnated in a particular race, was he able to instruct its people in a particular language. Thus the ability to speak a separate language is, in all races, traceable to the illuminating presence of these great beings who were angels in a backward state and who stood far above the people of their immediate environment. For instance, the beings described as the original heroes of the Greeks and other nations, and who worked in a human form, were those in whom an angel who had fallen short was incarnated. Therefore these beings must by no means be characterized as entirely “evil.” On the contrary, they brought to man that which predestined him to be a free human being all over the globe, and they differentiated what otherwise would have constituted a uniform whole everywhere on earth. This is not only true of languages but of many other departments of life. Individualization, differentiation, freedom, we may say, come from the beings who fell short in their Moon-evolution. It is true that it was the purpose of the wise rulership of the cosmos to bring all beings in planetary evolution to their goal, but if this had been done in a direct way particular ends would not have been attained. Certain beings were therefore arrested in their development because they were to have a special mission in the progress of humanity. Since the beings who had fulfilled their mission on the Moon would only have been able to educate a uniform human race, beings who had fallen short on the Moon were set against them, and it thereby became possible for these backward ones to turn into good what appeared as a defect.

This opens up the question, why do evil, wickedness, imperfection, and disease exist in the world?

This problem should be looked at from the point of view from which we have just considered the imperfect angel-beings. Everything which at any time exhibits imperfection or backwardness will be turned into good in the course of evolution. It is obvious that this affords no justification for bad actions on man's part.

Why does a wise Providence allow certain beings to lag behind and not reach their goal?

There will be good reason for it at the time following the formation of such a purpose. For it was when nations were not yet able to guide and govern themselves that the teachers of particular periods and individuals arose. And all the different race-teachers, Cadmus, Cheops, Pelops, Theseus, etc, are, in one aspect, angel-beings in the depths of their souls. From this it appears that in this respect also, humanity is really subject to direction and guidance.

Now at every stage of evolution there are beings who lag behind and do not attain the possible goal.

Let us look once more at the ancient Egyptian civilization which ran its course thousands of years ago in the Nile valley.

  • Super-human teachers manifested themselves to the Egyptians, who said that these teachers guided mankind like gods.
  • At the same time, however, other beings were also at work, who had only half or partially attained the angelic stage.

Now we must fully understand that the souls of people of the present day had attained a definite stage in the Egyptian period. But it is not only man who gains by letting himself be guided; the beings directing him attain thereby something which furthers their evolution. For instance, an angel is something more after he has guided humanity for a while, than he was before that guidance began. His guiding work helps him to progress, and this is true not only of one who has completed his evolution as an angel, but also of one who has lagged behind.

All beings are able continually to advance; everything is in a state of perpetual development; but at every stage beings are left behind. Thus, in accordance with what has just been said, there can be distinguished in the ancient Egyptian civilization

  • the divine leaders or angels,
  • the semi-divine leaders who did not quite attain the angelic stage,
  • and the men.

But certain beings in the ranks of the angels again lag behind; they do not bring all their powers into expression when guiding humanity, but remain behind as angels during the ancient Egyptian stage of civilization. Similarly some of the incomplete angels lag behind. Thus while men below were progressing, certain of the beings above, the dhyanic spirits or angels, fell behind in their evolution. When the Egypto-Chaldæic civilization came to an end, and the Graeco-Roman period began, certain guiding spirits from the former period, who had fallen behind in their evolution, were present. But they could not use their powers, for other angels or half-angelic beings had replaced them, and that meant that their own evolution was at a standstill.

Hence there comes under our notice a category of beings who might have used their powers during the Egyptian period, but did not at that time use them fully. In the ensuing Graeco-Roman period they were not able to use them, because they were replaced by other guiding spirits, and all the conditions of that time made their intervention impossible. But just as the beings who had not reached the angelic stage on the old Moon were, during the Earth-period, once more allotted the task of interposing actively in human evolution, so also the beings who, as guiding spirits in the Egypto-Chaldæic civilization, had stopped short in their development, had lagged behind, later received the mission of intervening again in civilization. We shall be able to watch a later period of civilization in which beings sent to be guides are certainly there to direct the normal progress of evolution, but in which, at the same time, other beings are intervening who were left behind at an earlier stage, and more particularly those who fell behind during the ancient Egyptian period. The civilization to which we are referring is our own. We live at a time when, side by side with the normal directors of humanity, others are interposing who were left behind in the ancient Egyptian and Chaldæic period.

Now we have to look upon the evolution of events and beings in such a way that occurrences in the physical world must be considered only as effects or manifestations, the true causes of which are to be sought in the spiritual world.

  • On the one hand our civilization is in the main marked by an upward movement towards spirituality, and this tendency of certain people towards spirituality is the manifestation of the spiritual directors of our contemporary humanity, who have attained their own normal stage of development. In everything which tends to lead man up to the great spiritual wisdom-truths transmitted to us by theosophy, these normal guides of our evolution are manifested.
  • But the beings out-distanced during the Egypto-Chaldæic civilization are also affecting the tendencies of our age. They are manifest in much that is being thought and done at the present and will again be manifest in the near future. They are revealed in everything which gives a materialistic stamp to our civilization, and may often be seen even in aspirations after spiritual things.

In our age we are virtually experiencing a revival of Egyptian civilization. The beings who are to be looked upon as the invisible directors of that which takes place in the physical world fall accordingly into two classes.

  • The first includes those spiritual individualities who have passed through their own normal course of development up to the present time. They were able to interpose in the guidance of our civilization, whilst the directors of the preceding Graeco-Roman period were gradually finishing their task of guiding civilization during the first thousand years of Christianity
  • The second class, who work simultaneously with the first class of beings, are spiritual individualities who did not complete their evolution during the Egypto-Chaldæic civilization. They were obliged to remain inactive during the ensuing Graeco-Roman period, but are now able to resume their activity because our present age has points of resemblance to the Egypto-Chaldæic period. It thus comes about that many things arise in contemporary humanity which look like a revival of ancient Egyptian forces, but there is also much which is like a materialistic resuscitation of forces which then worked spiritually.

[Kepler as example]

To illustrate this, we may point to an example of the way in which ancient Egyptian knowledge has been revived in our days.

Let us think of Kepler. He was quite possessed by the feeling of the harmony of the cosmos, and this idea was expressed in his important mathematical laws of the mechanism of the heavens, the so-called laws of Kepler. These are outwardly very dry and abstruse, but in Kepler they were the outcome of an understanding of the harmony of the universe. We may read in Kepler's writings that in order to discover what he did, he was obliged to go to the sacred Egyptian mysteries, purloin their temple-vessels, and by this means bring knowledge into the world, the importance of which to humanity would only be known in later times.

This utterance of Kepler's is by no means an empty phrase, but contains a dim consciousness of a revival of what he had learned in the Egyptian period, during a former incarnation. We may certainly entertain the idea that Kepler assimilated the ancient Egyptian wisdom during one of his previous lives, and that it reappears in his soul in a new form, adapted to a later age. That a materialistic impulse should enter our civilization through the Egyptian spirit is quite intelligible, for Egyptian spirituality had a strong materialistic tendency, which found expression, for instance, in embalming the physical bodies of the dead. This meant that the Egyptian attached value to the preservation of the physical body. This has come down to us from the Egyptian period in a different form, but in one corresponding to our time. The same forces which had not then run their course, affect our age, but in a different way. The temper of mind which embalmed dead bodies gave rise to that which idolizes the merely material. The Egyptian embalmed dead bodies and thereby preserved what he accounted valuable. He thought that the development of the soul after death was connected with the preservation of the physical material body. The modern anatomist dissects what he sees, and thinks that in this way he understands the laws of the human organism.

Thus in our modern science are living the forces of the ancient Egyptian and Chaldean world.

At that time progressive forces, they now lag behind, and must be recognized for what they are if a correct estimate is to be formed of the character of the present time. These forces will injure a man of the present day if he does not know their real significance. If he knows their effect and thereby brings himself into the right relation to them, he will take no harm from them, but will turn them to good account. They must be used, for without them we should not have the present great achievements in technology and industry. They are forces belonging to Luciferic beings of the lowest stage, and the danger lies in the fact that if they are not recognized aright, the materialistic impulses of the present time are thought to be the only possible ones, and the other forces, which lead up to the spiritual world, are not taken into consideration.

For this reason any clear diagnosis is certain to discern two currents of thought in the present age.

Now if a wise Providence had not allowed certain beings in the Egypto-Chaldean age to fall short in their evolution, our contemporary civilization would have been wanting in necessary weight. In that case only those forces would be operative which would bring man into the spiritual world by main force. People would be only too ready to yield themselves up to those forces, and would become dreamers. The only life they would wish to know about would be one which is being spiritualized as fast as possible, and their standard of action would be a view of life showing a certain degree of contempt for what is physical and material. But the present epoch of civilization can only fulfill its mission if the forces of the material world are brought to the fullest perfection, and if thus by degrees their sphere too is won for spirituality. Just as the fairest things may become corrupters and tempters of mankind if pursued in a one-sided way, so if this one-sidedness took root, there would be great danger that all kinds of good efforts would come into manifestation as fanaticism, True though it is that humanity is helped forward by its noble impulses, it is also true that wild and fanatical advocacy of the noblest impulses may bring about the worst of results as far as true evolution is concerned. Only when people strive after the highest modestly and sensibly, not out of wild fanaticism, can anything beneficial to the progress of humanity take place. In order that the work done on earth at the present day may have the necessary weight, and that material beings of the physical plane may be understood, the wisdom which directs the government of the world left those forces behind which would normally have completed their evolution during the Egyptian period; and it is these which are now directing man's attention to physical life.

It is obvious from the foregoing that evolution takes place under the influence both of normally progressive beings and of those who lag behind. Clairvoyant vision is able to trace the co-operation of both classes of beings in the super-sensible world, and hence is able to comprehend the spiritual events of which the physical facts surrounding humanity are the manifestations.

We observe that, in order to understand cosmic events, it is not enough to have spiritual eyes and ears opened to the spiritual world by some kind of exercise. This only means that we see what is there, that we are cognizant of spiritual beings and know that they are entities of the soul-world or spirit-sphere. But it is also necessary to recognize what kinds of beings they are. We may meet some being of the soul or spirit world, but we do not necessarily know whether it is progressing in its evolution, or whether it belongs to the category of powers that have lagged behind; whether therefore it is pushing evolution onwards, or hindering it. Those people who acquire clairvoyant faculties and do not at the same time gain complete understanding of the conditions of human evolution which we have described may know absolutely nothing of the nature of the beings whom they meet. Mere clairvoyance must be supplemented by clear judgment of what is seen in the supersensible world. There is urgent necessity for this especially in our own time, but it had not always to be so much considered. If we go back to very ancient civilizations, we find different conditions. If in the most ancient Egyptian times a person was clairvoyant, and was confronted with a being from the supersensible world, the latter had, as it were, written on his forehead who he was. The clairvoyant could not mistake him. Now, however, the possibility of misunderstanding is very great. Whereas humanity in early times still stood very near the kingdom of the spiritual hierarchies and could see what beings it was meeting, it is now very easy to be mistaken. The only protection against being severely injured is the effort to gain ideas and conceptions like those indicated above.

A person who is able to look into the spiritual world is called esoterically a “clairvoyant,” but merely to be clairvoyant is not enough, for such a man might be able to see well enough although unable to discriminate. He who has acquired the faculty of distinguishing the various beings and events of higher worlds, is called an “Initiate,” Initiation brings with it the possibility of distinguishing between different kinds of beings. It is possible to be clairvoyant in the higher worlds without being an initiate. In ancient times distinguishing between spirits was not specially important, for when the ancient occult schools had brought a pupil so far as clairvoyance, there was no great danger of error. Now, however, this danger exists to a high degree. Therefore in all esoteric training, care should be taken that initiation should be acquired in addition to clairvoyance. In proportion to the extent of his clairvoyance must a man become capable of distinguishing between the various kinds of supersensible beings and events.

[1250]

In modern times the powers guiding humanity are faced by the special task of bringing about a balance between the two principles of clairvoyance and initiation. Leaders of spiritual training had necessarily to pay attention to this at the beginning of the modern era. Therefore the esoteric spiritual movement which is adapted to present conditions, always makes a point of maintaining the right proportion between clairvoyance and initiation. This became necessary at the time when mankind was passing through a crisis with regard to its higher knowledge. That time was the thirteenth century. About the year 1250 was the point of time when mankind felt itself most shut out from the spiritual world. A clairvoyant looking back upon that period sees the following: The most eminent minds of that time who were striving after some kind of higher knowledge could only say to themselves: “What our reason, our intellect, our spiritual knowledge are able to find out is limited to the physical world around us. With all our human endeavor and power of perception, we cannot reach a spiritual world. We only know of it by accepting the information concerning it which our forefathers bequeathed us.” This was the time when direct view of the higher worlds was obscured. That this can be said of the era in which scholasticism flourished, is not without significance.

About the year 1250 was the time when men were compelled to fix a boundary between what they were able to apprehend for themselves, and what they had to believe from the impression made upon them by the traditions which had been handed down. What they could find out for themselves then became limited to the physical world of sense. Afterwards, however, came the time when there was more and more possibility of again winning a view of the spiritual world. But the new clairvoyance was of a different kind from the old, which virtually became extinct just about the year 1250. In the new form of clairvoyance, western esotericism was obliged strictly to uphold the principle that initiation must be the guide of spiritual sight and hearing. This was the special task assigned to an esoteric current which then entered the stream of European civilization. As the year 1250 drew near there arose a new kind of guidance into the super sensible worlds.

This guidance was prepared by the spirits then standing behind outer historical events, who centuries before had provided for the kind of esoteric training which would be rendered necessary by the conditions prevailing in 1250. If the term “modern esotericism” be not misused, it may be applied to the spiritual work of those very highly evolved personalities. External history knows nothing of them, but what they did is apparent in every form of civilization which has developed since the thirteenth century.

The importance of the year 1250 for the spiritual evolution of humanity is specially apparent if we look at the result of clairvoyant research given in the following fact: Even those individualities who had attained high stages of spiritual development in previous incarnations, and who were re-incarnated about 1250, were compelled for a while to undergo a complete clouding over of their direct view of the spiritual world. Quite enlightened individuals were as though cut off from the spiritual world, and their only knowledge of it was through their remembrance of earlier incarnations. Thus we see how necessary it was that from that time onwards a new element should be brought into the spiritual guidance of humanity. This element was true modern esotericism. By its means it is for the first time possible rightly to understand how that which we call the “Christ-impulse” may intervene to guide in all eventualities, not alone the individual, but the whole of mankind.

Between the accomplishment of the Mystery of Golgotha and the beginnings of modern esotericism, lies the first period of the working of the Christ-principle in human souls. During that period, people received Christ to a certain degree unconsciously as far as their higher spirit-forces were concerned, and this caused them afterwards, when they were obliged to receive them consciously, to make all kinds of mistakes, and to lose themselves in a maze instead of understanding Christ. In primitive Christian times we may trace the adoption of the Christ-principle by the lower soul- forces. Then came a new period, in which mankind of today is still living. Indeed, in a certain respect, people are only now beginning to understand the Christ-principle with the higher faculties of their souls. In the further course of this work it will be shown that the decline of supersensible knowledge down to the thirteenth century, and on the other hand its slow revival since that time, coincide with the interposition of the Christ-impulse in human evolution.

We may therefore take modern esotericism to mean the raising of the Christ-impulse to be the motive power in the guidance of souls desiring to work their way to a knowledge of higher worlds, in accordance with the evolutionary conditions of modern times.

1911-06-08-GA015

In accordance with what has been said in the preceding chapters, the spiritual guidance of the course of human evolution may be sought for amongst those beings who went through their stage of humanity during the previous embodiment of the Earth-planet, during the ancient Moon period. This guidance stood contrasted with another which checked, and yet in a certain sense furthered it, and which was carried out by those beings who had not completed their own evolution during the Moon-period. Reference is made in both these cases to those guiding beings immediately above man; to those who lead humanity forward, and to those who provoke resistance, thereby strengthening and confirming the forces arising through the progressive beings, by bestowing on them balance and individuality. In Christian Esotericism, these two classes of superhuman beings are called Angels (Angeloi). Above these beings in ascending order, stand those of the higher hierarchies, the Archangels, the Archai, and so forth, who likewise take part in the guidance of humanity.

Within the ranks of these different beings there are all possible gradations in regard to perfection. At the beginning of the present Earth-evolution, some in the category of the Angels stand high, while others are less developed. The former have progressed far beyond the minimum of their Moon-development. Between these and those who had just reached this minimum when the Moon-evolution had come to an end, and the Earth-evolution had begun, are all possible gradations. Conformably with this gradation of rank, the beings in question entered during the Earth-period upon the leadership of human evolution. Thus the evolution of the Egyptian civilization was effected under the guidance of beings who had become more perfected on the Moon than those who were the leaders of the Graeco-Roman period, and these again were more perfect than those who have the leadership at the present time. In the Egyptian as also in the Greek Period, those who later on assumed the direction, were meanwhile developing, and making themselves ready to guide the civilization of later periods.

Since the time of the great Atlantean catastrophe, seven consecutive epochs of civilization have to be differentiated; the first is the ancient Indian cultural age, and it is followed by the ancient Persian. The third is the Egypto-Chaldæic, the fourth is the Graeco-Roman, and the fifth is our own, which, since about the twelfth century, has been gradually developing and in which we are still living. And since the separate ages overlap, we see already in our times those early events preparing which will lead over into the sixth post-Atlantean age. And a seventh age will succeed the sixth in due course.

On closer observation we find the following evidence with regard to the guidance of mankind.

  • It was during the third Egypto-Chaldean cultural age, that the angels (also called lower dhyanic beings in Oriental mysticism) were to some extent independent leaders of humanity. They were not so during the ancient Persian civilization. For then they were subject to a higher direction in a much greater degree than in the Egyptian times, and had to regulate everything in conformity with the impulses of the hierarchies immediately above them. In this way everything was under the immediate guidance of the angels, who themselves submitted to the rulership of the archangels.
  • And in the Indian age when post-Atlantean life had reached such a height in spiritual matters as has never been attained since — a natural height under the direction of great human teachers — the archangels themselves were subject in a similar sense to the guidance of the archai. Thus if we trace the evolution of humanity from the Indian epoch through the ancient Persian and Egypto-Chaldæic civilizations, we may say that certain beings of the higher hierarchies withdrew ever more and more from the direct guidance of humanity.
  • In the fourth post-Atlantean age, the Greco-Roman, Man bad become quite independent. The guiding superhuman beings were certainly intervening to develop humanity, but only in such a way that the reins were tightened as little as possible, and also that the spiritual leaders themselves might profit as much through the deeds of men as men profited through them. Hence arose that peculiar and quite “human” civilization in the Greco-Roman time in which man was made to rely entirely on himself. For all the distinctive characteristics of art and political life in Greek and Roman times are traceable to the fact that man had to live out his own life in his own way.

So, when we look back to the most ancient times of civilization, we find evolution guided by beings who, in earlier planetary conditions, had accomplished their development as far as the human stage. But the fourth post-Atlantean period of civilization was intended as a time when man should be put to the test as much as possible. Consequently the whole spiritual guidance of humanity had to be reorganized.

  • We are now living in the fifth post-Atlantean cultural age. The leading beings of this period belong to the same hierarchy as that which ruled the ancient Egyptians and Chaldeans. In fact those beings who then took the lead, have again begun to be active in our times. As has been stated certain of these beings remained behind during the Egypto-Chaldæic civilization, and are to be found manifest in the materialistic feelings and perceptions of our own period.

Now the progress made by the two classes of angels or lower dhyanic beings — the class which leads mankind forward and that which obstructs — consisted in their being able to be leaders among the Egyptians and Chaldæans. They achieved this by means of those qualities which they had acquired in primordial times, and which they had further developed by their work as leaders. The progressive angels are intervening to guide the fifth post-Atlantean civilization by means of capacities which they themselves had won during the third or Egypto-Chaldæic civilization. Through the progress they make they are acquiring for themselves quite special capabilities, for they are qualifying themselves to receive the influx of forces emanating from the most important Being in the whole evolution of the Earth.The power of the Christ is working in them; for that power works not only on the physical world through Jesus of Nazareth, but also in the spiritual worlds upon the super-human beings. The Christ exists not only for the earth but also for these beings. The beings who guided the old Egypto-Chaldæic civilization were not under the direction of the Christ. It is only since that period that they have placed themselves under His guidance. Their progress consists in their following Him in the higher worlds, so that they may guide our fifth post-Atlantean period of civilization in accordance with His influence. Those beings who operate as obstructive powers remain behind because they failed to put themselves under the leadership of the Christ. Thus they continue to work independently of Him. More and more in human evolution will become evident a materialistic movement under the guidance of these backward Egypto-Chaldæic spirits. This movement will have a materialistic character and the greater part of contemporary science is under its influence. There are, for example, people today who say that our earth in its final essence consists of atoms. Who instills this thought into men's minds? It is the super-human angel beings who had remained behind during the Egypto-Chaldæic period. But, side by side with this movement, there is another making itself felt, the one which has as its goal the eventual finding of the Christ-principle by man in all that he does.

Now what will those beings teach who attained their goal in the old Egypto-Chaldæic sphere of civilization, and who then learned to know the Christ?

They will be able to instill into man other thoughts than those that assert that there are only material atoms; they will be able to teach that, even to the minutest particle of the world, the substance is permeated with the Spirit of the Christ. And, strange as it may seem, there will be in the future chemists and physicists who will not teach chemistry and physics as they are now taught under the influence of the backward Egypto-Chaldæic spirits; but who will teach that ‘matter is built up in the way in which the Christ gradually ordained it,’ The Christ will be found working even in the very laws of chemistry and physics. It is a spiritual chemistry and spiritual physics that will come in the future. Today such a statement may appear to many people as fanciful or worse. But often the sense of the future seems folly to the past. The factors which enter into the evolution of human civilization are there for the careful observer. But be will know quite well the objections which may, with apparent justice, be urged against such alleged folly from the modern scientific or philosophic point of view.

From such hypotheses we are able to understand the advantage the guiding super-human beings have over man. Humanity learned to know Christ in the fourth cultural age of the post-Atlantean epoch, the Greco-Roman age, for it was in the course of this civilization that the Christ-event found its place in evolution, and it was then that man learned to know the Christ.

The guiding super-human beings, however, learned to know Him during the Egypto-Chaldean times, and worked themselves up to Him. Then during the Greco-Roman civilization they had to leave man to his own fate in order that, later on, they might re-enter the sphere of human evolution. And if nowadays anthroposophy is cultivated, this constitutes recognition of the fact that the super-human beings who formerly guided humanity are now continuing their task as leaders in such a way as to be themselves under the direct guidance of the Christ. Thus it is with other beings also.

  • In the ancient Persian age, the leadership of humanity was apportioned to the archangels. They put themselves under the direction of the Christ earlier than did the beings in the rank next below them. Of Zarathustra it can be said that pointing to the sun, he spoke to his followers and his people in some such words as these: “In the sun there lives the great Spirit Ahura Mazdao, who will one day come down to the earth.” For the beings out of the region of the archangels who guided Zarathustra, pointed to the great sun-leader who had not at that time come down upon the earth but had only begun his journey thither in order, later on, to enter directly into the earth evolution. And the guiding beings who directed the great teachers of the Indians, also pointed out to these the Christ of the future; for it is a mistake to think that these teachers had no foreknowledge of the Christ. They said that He was “beyond their sphere” and that they “could not attain” unto Him.
  • As now in our fifth cultural age, it is the angels who bring down the Christ into our spiritual evolution,
  • so the sixth cultural age will be directed by beings belonging to the ranks of the archangels who guided the ancient Persian civilization.
  • And the archai who guided humanity during the ancient Indian age will have to guide humanity in the seventh cultural age.

In the Graeco-Roman period the Christ descended from the heights of the spirit-world and revealed Himself in the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. He then came down as far as the physical world. It will be possible to find Him in the world immediately above ours when humanity shall have become sufficiently ripe. It will not be possible in the future to find Him in the physical world, but only in the world immediately above, for human beings will not always remain the same. Having become more mature, they will then find the Christ in the spiritual world, as Paul found Him in his experience before Damascus, which event prophetically foreshadowed the future means of finding the Christ.

  • And since in our times the same great teachers who have already guided mankind through the Egyptian civilization are working, so also in the twentieth century it will be these same teachers who will lead men out to behold the Christ as Paul beheld Him. They will show mankind how the Christ not only works upon the earth, but how He spiritualizes the whole solar system.
  • And those who will be the reincarnated holy teachers of India in the seventh cultural age will proclaim the spirit who was foreshadowed by the undivided Brahma. To such teaching, however, the right content and meaning can only be given through the Christ, as the great, the immense spirit, of whom these teachers formerly said he hovered above their sphere. Thus will humanity be led upwards from stage to stage into the spiritual world.

To speak in this way about the Christ — how He is the leader of the higher hierarchies also in the successive worlds, is to teach the science which, under the sign of the Rose Cross, has endured in our civilization since the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. If from this aspect we observe more closely the Being Who lived in Palestine, and Who consummated the Mystery of Golgotha, we shall find the following: up to the present time many ideas concerning the Christ have found expression. There was for instance the idea of certain Christian Gnostics in the first centuries who said that the Christ Who lived in Palestine was not present in any physical body of flesh at all; that He had only an apparent body — an etheric body which had become physically visible; so that His death on the Cross had been no real death but only an apparent one. Then we find diverse disputes among those who professed Christianity, as for example, the well-known controversy between the Arians and Athanasians, and the most varied explanations concerning what the Christ really was. Indeed, right up to our own times people express and have expressed the most different ideas concerning the Christ.

Now spiritual science must recognize in Christ not merely an earthly but also a cosmic Being. In a certain sense man is, taken as a whole, a cosmic being. He lives a twofold life — one in a physical body from birth to death, another in the spiritual worlds between death and a new birth. When he is incarnated in a physical body, he is living in dependence on the earth, because the physical body is restricted by the forces and conditions of existence belonging to the earth. The human being, however, does not only take the substances and forces of the earth into himself, but is joined to the whole of the earth's organism. When he has passed through the gate of death, he no longer belongs to the forces of the earth; but it would be incorrect to imagine that he belongs to no forces at all, for he is then connected with the forces of the solar system and the more distant star-systems. In this way, between death and a new birth, he lives in the domain of the cosmic, just as in the period between birth and death he lived in the domain of the earthly. From death to a new birth he belongs to the cosmos, as on the earth he belongs to the elements — Air, Water, and Earth. Accordingly, while he is passing through a life between death and a new birth, he comes into the region of cosmic influences. For the planets send forth not merely the physical forces of what astronomy teaches, such as gravitation and others, but also spiritual forces. With these spiritual powers of the cosmos man is connected, each person in a special manner according to his own individuality. If he is born in Europe, he lives in a different relation to warmth conditions, and so forth, than if he had been born, let us say, in Australia. Similarly, during his life between death and a new birth, one person may stand more closely related to the spiritual powers of Mars, another to those of Jupiter, others again to those of the whole planetary system in general, and so on. It is also these forces which bring man back again to the earth. Thus before he is born he is living in connection with the collective whole of stellar space.

According to the way in which a man stands individually related to the cosmic system, so are the forces directed which lead him to this or that set of parents and to this or that locality. The impetus, the inclination to incarnate here or there, in this or that family, in this or that people, at this or that time, depends on how the person was organically connected with the cosmos before birth. In former times, in that territory where the German tongue was spoken, a specially apt expression was used to indicate a person's entrance into the world through birth. When a person was born, people said that in such and such a place he had “become young” (junggeworden). Therein lies an unconscious reference to the fact that man in the time between death and a new birth continues at first to be subject to the powers which had made him old in a previous incarnation, but that before birth there come iii their place such forces as again make him “young.” Thus Goethe in “Faust” still uses the expression “to become young in Nebelland.” — Nebelland being the old name for mediæval Germany.

The truth underlying the casting of a horoscope is that those who know these things can read the forces which determine a person's physical existence. A certain horoscope is allotted to a person because, within it, those forces find expression which have led him into being. If for example in the horoscope Mars stands over Aries (the Ram), this signifies that certain of the Aries forces are not allowed to pass through Mars, and are weakened. Thus is a man put into his place within physical existence, and it is in accordance with his horoscope that he guides himself before entering upon earthly existence. This subject, which in our times seems so much a thing of chance, should not be touched upon without our attention being called to the fact that nearly everything practised in this connection today is simply dilettantism. It is pure superstition, and for the external world the true science of these matters has been for the most part completely lost. Consequently, the principles expressed here are not to be judged according to that which nowadays frequently leads a questionable existence under the name Astrology.

Now it is the active forces of the stellar world that impel a man into physical incarnation; and when clairvoyant consciousness observes a person, it can perceive in his organization how this has resulted from the cooperation of cosmic forces. We may now attempt to illustrate this hypothetically, but in a form corresponding entirely with clairvoyant observation. If a person's physical brain were extracted and its construction clairvoyantly examined, so that it might be seen how certain parts are situated in certain places and how they send out appendages, it would be found that each individual's brain is different from that of every other. No two people have brains alike. Let us imagine further that such a brain could be photographed in its complete structure so that one would have a kind of half sphere in which every detail was visible. In a series of such pictures each would be different according to the brains of the different individuals. And if one were to photograph a person's brain at the moment of birth and then photograph also the heavens lying exactly over the person's birthplace, this latter picture would be of exactly the same appearance as that of the human brain. As certain centers were arranged in the latter, so would the stars be in the photograph of the heavens. Man has within himself a picture of the heavens, and every man has a different one, according to whether he was born in this place or that, and at this or that time. This is one indication that man is born from out of the whole cosmos.

When we keep this clearly in view we can rise to the idea of how the macrocosm manifests itself in each separate individual, and then, starting from this point, we can attain a conception of how it showed itself in the Christ. But if we were to imagine the Christ after the Baptism of John as though the macrocosm had then been living in Him in the same way as in other people, we should be mistaken.

Let us first consider Jesus of Nazareth. His conditions of existence were quite exceptional. At the beginning of our era two boys were born and named Jesus. The one came through the Nathan line of the house of David, [Luke III, 23–38.] the other through the Solomon line of the same house. [Matthew 1, 1–17. See also Appendix.] These two children were not born quite at the same time, but nearly so. In the Jesus descended from Solomon, described in the Gospel of St. Matthew, there was incarnated the same individuality who had formerly lived on the earth as Zarathustra, so that in this Child Jesus there appears the re-incarnated Zarathustra or Zoroaster. The individuality of Zarathustra grew up in this Child until, as St. Matthew says, His twelfth year. In that year, Zarathustra left the body of this Child and passed over into that of the other Child Jesus Whom the Gospel of St. Luke describes. In consequence of this the latter Child became suddenly quite different. The parents were astonished when they found Him in Jerusalem in the temple after the spirit of Zarathustra had entered into Him. This is intimated when it is said that the Child, after having been lost and found again in the temple, so spake that his parents did not recognize Him. They only knew Him, the Child descended from Nathan, as He had been up to this time. But when He began to reason with the doctors in the temple, it was possible for Him to speak as He did because the spirit of Zarathustra had come into Him. Until the thirtieth year did the spirit of Zarathustra live in the Jesus who was descended from the Nathan line of the house of David. In this body He ripened to a still higher perfection. The following remark must here be added: as regards this personality in which the spirit of Zarathustra now lived, an extraordinary feature was that into his astral body the Buddha rayed forth his impulses from the spiritual worlds.

[Buddha]

The oriental tradition is correct which says that the Buddha was born as a “Bodhisattva” and only during his time on earth, in his twenty-ninth year, rose to the dignity of a Buddha. When the Gautama Buddha was a little child, the Indian sage Asita came weeping into the royal palace of his father, Suddhodana. He wept because, as a seer, he knew that this King's son would become the Buddha, and because as an old man, he felt that he would no longer be living to see that event take place. Now this sage was born again in the time of Jesus of Nazareth. It is he who is brought before us in the Gospel of St. Luke as the priest of the temple who saw the revelation of the Buddha in the Child Jesus descended from Nathan. And seeing this he was able to say: “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace for I have seen my Master,” What he had not been able to see previously in India, he saw through the astral body of the boy Jesus, Who comes before us in St. Luke's Gospel: the Bodhisattva become Buddha.

All this was necessary in order that that body might be produced which received the baptism of St. John in the Jordan. At that moment the individuality of Zarathustra left the threefold body, the physical, the etheric and the astral body of that Jesus who had grown up in so complicated a manner, in order that the spirit of Zarathustra might be able to dwell in Him. The reincarnated Zarathustra had to pass through two possibilities of development which were given in the two Jesus children. Thus there stood before the Baptist the body of Jesus of Nazareth and in it from that time onwards there acted the cosmic individuality of the Christ. Now, as we have shown, in the case of any other human being, the cosmic spiritual laws work upon him only in so far as they give him a start in earth-life. Afterwards there appear in opposition to these laws, others which arise out of the conditions of the earth-evolution. In the case of the Christ-Jesus, after the baptism of John the cosmic-spiritual forces alone remained effective without being influenced in any way through the laws of the earth evolution.

Thus in Palestine during the time that Jesus of Nazareth walked on earth as Christ-Jesus — during the three last years of his life, from his thirtieth to his thirty-third year, the entire Being of the cosmic Christ was acting uninterruptedly upon Him, and was working into Him. The Christ stood always under the influence of the entire cosmos — He made no step without this working of the cosmic forces into and in Him. That which here took place in Jesus of Nazareth was a continual realization of the horoscope, for at every moment there occurred that which otherwise happens only at a person's birth. This could be so only because the whole body of Jesus descended from Nathan had remained open to the influence of the sum total of the forces of the cosmic spiritual hierarchies which direct our earth. If thus the whole spirit of the cosmos worked into the Christ Jesus, who was it that went, for example, to Capernaum? He who went about as a being upon the earth appeared quite like any other man. The forces active within Him, however, were the cosmic forces, coming from the sun and stars; and these directed his body. And it was always in accordance with the collective being of the whole universe with whom the earth is in harmony, that all which the Christ Jesus did took place. It is because of this that in the case of the acts of the Christ-Jesus there is so often some slight hint given in the Gospels about the relative grouping of the stars at the time. We read in St. John's Gospel how the Christ finds His first disciples. There we are told: “It was about the tenth hour,” because in this fact the spirit of the whole cosmos found expression in conformity with the appointed moment of time. Such intimations are less clear in the other Gospel passages, but he who can truly read the Gospels finds them everywhere. From this point of view also the miracles are to be judged. Let us take one passage — the one that runs thus: “When the sun was set, they brought the sick unto Him, and He healed them.” What does that mean? The evangelist is drawing attention to the fact that this healing was connected with the whole position of the constellations and that, at the time in question, the constellations throughout the heavens stood as they only could have when the sun had set The meaning is that, at the time, the requisite healing forces could make themselves felt after sun-set, and the Christ Jesus is represented as the intermediary Who brought the sick into connection with the forces of the cosmos which, just at that time, could work curatively. These forces were the same as those which worked as Christ in Jesus. It was through the presence of Christ that the healing took place. Only thus could the sick person be exposed to the healing forces of the cosmos which could only work as they did when they were in the right relationship to time and space. Thus these forces worked on the sick person through their representative, the Christ. But it was only just during the time of Christ on earth that they could so work. It was only then that such a connection existed between the cosmic constellations and the powers of the human organism that for certain illnesses, healing could intervene when through the instrumentality of the Christ Jesus the cosmic grouping of the same forces was able to work on men. A repetition of this relationship in the evolution of the cosmos and the earth is as little possible as is a second incarnation of the Christ in a human body. Regarded in this way, the life of the Christ Jesus appears as the earthly expression of a definite connection between the cosmos and the forces of man. The tarrying of a sick person by the side of Christ means that through the proximity of Christ this sick person found himself in such a relation with the macrocosm that the latter could work upon him curatively.

Herewith the points of view have been stressed which enable us to discern how the guidance of humanity has come under the influence of the Christ. The other forces, however, which had remained behind in the Egypto-Chaldæic times worked on side by side with those that are permeated by the Christ. This is evident even in the attitude frequently adopted today towards the Gospels. Literary works appear in which great pains are taken to show that the Gospels can be understood through an astrological interpretation. The greatest opponents of the Gospels employ this astrological interpretation to prove, for example, that the way taken by the Archangel Gabriel from Elizabeth to Mary signifies merely the progress of the sun from the constellation of Virgo to another. This, in a certain sense, is correct, except that these thoughts were poured in this manner into our age by the beings who had remained behind during the Egypto-Chaldæic period. Under such an influence people are induced to a make-belief that the Gospels present only allegories in the place of definite cosmic relations. The truth really is that in the Christ the whole cosmos finds expression. Therefore one can express the life of the Christ by connecting its separate events with the cosmic relations which work into earth existence unceasingly through the Christ. A right understanding of this matter will thus lead to a full recognition of the Christ as having lived on earth. Whereas if the interpretation were true that the Christ life as expressed in the Gospels is only a matter of constellations being treated allegorically, then we should have to conclude that there was no real earthly Christ at all.

If a comparison were to be used, we might think of each human being as represented by a spherical mirror — which, if it were set up, would give pictures of all its surroundings. Let us suppose we were to trace with a pencil the outline of all that is shown from the surroundings. We could then take the mirror and carry the picture about with us wherever we went. Let this be a symbol for the fact that when a person is born, he brings with him a copy of the cosmos in himself, and afterwards carries about with him all through his life the effect of this one picture. The mirror might, however, be left untouched by the pencil, so that wherever the person carried it, it would depict the immediate surroundings. It then would always be giving a picture of the collective environment. This would be a symbol of the Christ from the baptism of St. John up to the Mystery of Golgotha. That which, in the case of any other person, passes into his earthly existence only at birth, flowed into the Christ-Jesus at every moment. And when the Mystery of Golgotha was consummated, that which had been radiating from the cosmos passed over into the spiritual substance of the earth, and has from that time forward been united with the spirit of the earth.

When St. Paul became clairvoyant before Damascus, he could recognize that That Which had formerly been in the cosmos has passed over into the spirit of the earth. Of this every one can be convinced who can bring his soul into such a condition that he can have the same experience as had St. Paul. It is in the twentieth century that those people will first appear who will have St. Paul's experience of the Christ event in a spiritual way.

Whereas up to our times this event could be experienced only by such persons as had gained clairvoyant powers by means of an esoteric training; hereafter to look upon the Christ in the spiritual sphere surrounding the earth will be possible for the advanced powers of the soul in the course of the natural evolution of humanity. This — as a repetition of the experience of the event before Damascus — will be possible for some people from a certain point of time in the twentieth century. The number of such people will afterwards increase, until in the distant future, it will be a natural faculty of the human soul.

[worldview of the solar system]

With the entrance of Christ into the evolution of the earth an entirely new impulse or direction was given to this evolution. External facts of history also express this. In the early times of post-Atlantean evolution men knew very well that above them there was not merely a physical Mars, but that what they saw as Mars, Jupiter, or Saturn was the expression of a spiritual being. In later times this perception was completely forgotten. The heavenly bodies became, according to human ideas, mere bodies to be estimated according to their physical condition.

In the Middle Ages people saw in connection with the stars what only the eyes can see — the sphere of Venus, the sphere of the Sun, the sphere of Mars and the other planets, up to the sphere of the fixed stars. Then came the eighth sphere like a solid blue wall behind.

Later Copernicus appeared and broke down the idea that only that which is perceptible to the senses can be authoritative. The modern physical scientists may indeed say: “It is madness to declare that the world is Maya, or illusion, and that you must look into a spiritual world in order to see the truth, for in spite of all you say true science is that which relies on the senses and records what these senses tell.” But when did astronomers rely only on the senses? Surely at the very time when that astronomical science was dominant which is attacked by the science of today! It was at that time when Copernicus began to think out what exists in the cosmic space beyond the evidence of the senses, that our modern astronomy as a science began. And so it is in every domain of science. Wherever science, in the most modern sense of the word, has arisen, it has done so in opposition to what had been apparent to the senses. When Copernicus declared “what you see is Maya or deception; rely on what you cannot see” — that was the moment when the science came into being which is recognized as such today. It might thus be said to the representative of modern science “your science itself only became ‘science’ when it was no longer willing to depend upon the senses only.”

Giordano Bruno came as philosophical interpreter of the teachings of Copernicus. He led the gaze of man out into cosmic space, and announced that what people had called the limitations of space, what they had placed there as the eighth sphere limiting everything in space — was in reality no limitation; it was Maya, or illusion; for an infinite number of worlds had been poured forth into cosmic space. That which was formerly considered to be the boundary of space was shown to be only the boundary of the sense-world of man, and if we direct our gaze beyond the sense-world, we shall no longer see the world only as known to the senses, but we shall also recognize Infinity.

From this it is apparent that in the course of human evolution man originally started from a spiritual view of the cosmos and in time lost it. In its place there came a mere sense-perception of the world. Then there came into evolution the Christ Impulse. Through this, mankind was led to stamp the spiritual view once more upon the materialistic. At that moment when Giordano Bruno burst the fetters of sense illusion, the Christ evolution was so far advanced that the soul power which bad been kindled by the Christ Impulse could then become active within him. An indication is thus given of the whole significance of the manner in which the life of Christ penetrates all human evolution, at the mere beginning of which humanity stands today.

To what then does spiritual science now aspire? It completes the work begun for external science by Giordano Bruno and others in that it says: that which external science is able to perceive is Maya, or illusion. Just as formerly one looked to the “eighth sphere” and thought that space was thereby bounded, so contemporary human thought believes that man is shut in or enclosed between birth and death. Spiritual science, however, expands man's vision by directing his attention out and beyond the limits of birth and death.

There is a continuous chain in human evolution which such ideas as these make us recognize. And in the true sense of the words, that which resulted in the conquest of sense illusion through Copernicus and Giordano Bruno proceeded from the inspiration arising from that spiritual current now working in the modern spiritual science of anthroposophy. What one might call the newer esotericism worked in a mysterious manner on Copernicus, Bruno, Kepler and others. Those therefore who now base their thought on foundations laid by Giordano Bruno and Copernicus and do not wish to accept anthroposophy, are unfaithful to their own traditions in desiring to hold fast to sense illusion. As Giordano Bruno forced a way through the blue firmament of heaven, even so does spiritual science break down the barriers of birth and death for man by showing how he originates from out of the macrocosm, lives in a physical existence, passes through death, and reenters macrocosmic life. And what we see in a limited degree in each individual meets us unrestrictedly and in a larger sense in the representative of the spirit of the cosmos — in the Christ-Jesus. Once and once only could that impulse be given which the Christ gave. Once only could the whole cosmos be thus reflected, for the conjunction of the stars which then took place can never be repeated. In order to give an impulse to the earth, this conjunction was obliged to work through a human body. As it is true that this same grouping cannot occur a second time, so it is equally true that the Christ was only once incarnated. Only if one did not know that the Christ is the representative of the whole universe and only if it were impossible to win one's way to this Christ-Idea, the elements for which are given through spiritual science — only then would it be possible to maintain that Christ could appear more than once upon the earth.

Thus we see how an idea of Christ arises out of the new spiritual science, which reveals to man in a new form his connection with the whole macrocosm. Certainly, in order to gain a true knowledge of the Christ, those inspiring forces are absolutely necessary which are now being bestowed by the same super-human beings who formerly guided the Egypto-Chaldean age and who have now put themselves under the Christ. There is need of a new inspiration of this kind, of an inspiration which the great esoteric teachers of the middle ages had prepared from the thirteenth century onwards, and which from this time forth must ever come more and more into publicity. When man, according to the meaning of this science, prepares his soul aright for the knowledge of the spirit-world, he can then hear clairaudiently and he can see clairvoyantly what is revealed by the old Chaldean and Egyptian angel beings who are now again acting as spiritual leaders under the guidance of the Christ. That which humanity will some time later actually gain thereby, could only be prepared in the first centuries of Christianity and up to our times.

Consequently we may say that in the future there will live in the hearts of men an idea of the Christ incomparable in greatness with anything which humanity has so far recognized. That which arose as a first impulse through the Christ, and has lived as an idea of Him up to the present time — even in the case of the best representatives of the Christ-principle — is only a preparation for the true understanding of the Christ. It would be strange indeed if, against those who in the West gave expression in such a way as this to the Christ-idea, it were brought as a reproach that they do not stand on the foundation of western Christian tradition. But it is quite possible, for this western tradition does not by any means suffice to help us to comprehend the Christ of the near future.

From the hypothesis of western esotericism we can see the spiritual direction of humanity gradually flowing into what may be in a real, true sense called the guidance which comes from the Christ-impulse. That which is appearing as the new esotericism will flow slowly into the hearts of men, and the spiritual guidance of men and of humanity will ever more and more be consciously seen in such a light. We realize within ourselves how at first the Christ-principle flowed into the hearts of men because the Christ had gone about Palestine in the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. Because men by that time were gradually surrendering themselves to reliance on the world of sense, they could receive the impulse which corresponded to their perception. Afterwards that same impulse so worked through the inspiration of the new esotericism that such spirits as Nicholas of Cusa, Copernicus, and Galileo were inspired, and Copernicus, for instance, was enabled to make this assertion: “That which is evident to the senses cannot teach the truth about solar systems; if we want to find the truth we must investigate behind sense appearances” At that time men, even spirits like Giordano Bruno, were not yet ripe enough to join consciously to the new esoteric stream. The spirit of the movement had to work in them unconsciously. Yet powerful and magnificent was the announcement of Giordano Bruno: “When a human being enters into existence by means of birth, then it is something macrocosmic that concentrates itself as a monad; and when a human being passes through death the monad spreads itself out again; that which was enclosed within the body spreads itself out in the cosmos in order to draw itself together again in other stages of existence, and again to spread itself out.” There Bruno gave expression to mighty conceptions which, even if expressed in stammering tongue, were in entire accord with the sense of the new esotericism.

The spiritual influences which lead humanity need not work in such a way that man is always conscious of them. For example, they put Galileo in the cathedral of Pisa. Thousands had seen the old church lamp there, but they had not seen it as did Galileo. He saw the church lamp swinging; compared the time of its oscillation with the beat of his own pulse; found that the church lamp swung in a regular rhythm resembling his pulse-beat; and from this discovered the laws of the pendulum in the sense of modern physics. Anyone acquainted with contemporary physics knows that this science would not be possible without Galileo's principle. In this way the force was then working which is now appearing as spiritual science; Galileo was placed in the cathedral of Pisa before the oscillating church lamp, and modern physics gained its principles. In such a mysterious way do the guiding spiritual forces of humanity perform their work.

We are now approaching the time when people are to become conscious of these guiding powers. We shall always come to a better and better understanding of what has to happen in the future if we rightly understand what is working inspirationally as the new esotericism. We must recognize that those same spiritual beings indicated as their gods by the ancient Egyptians when the Greeks asked them about their teachers, are now again assuming control through having placed themselves under the leadership of the Christ Ever more and more will men feel how they can cause to reappear in a brighter lustre, in a nobler style and on a higher level, that which was pre-Christian. The consciousness necessary for the present time, which must be an intensified consciousness, ought to give us a feeling of our high duty and great responsibility in reference to the recognition of the spiritual world. This can only penetrate our souls when we have recognized, in the sense indicated, the task of spiritual science.

1919-10-27-GA193

see also: Contemporary worldview war#1919-10-27-GA193

  • The Egyptian Pharaohs, the Babylonian rulers, the Asiatic rulers—they were initiates.
  • Then the priest-type emerged as ruler and the priest-type was really the ruler right up to the Reformation and the Renaissance.
  • Since that time the economist has been in command. Rulers are in fact merely the handymen, the understrappers of the economists. One must not imagine that the rulers of modern times are anything but the understrappers of the economists. And all that has resulted by way of law and justice—one should only study it carefully—is simply a consequence of what economically oriented men have thought. In the nineteenth century the “economical” Man is replaced for the first time by the Man thinking in terms of banking, and in the nineteenth century there is created for the first time the organization of finance which swamps every other relationship.

Primeval teachers of mankind as Moon beings

1923-08-29-GA227

The Moon Beings still belong to earthly-existence in a certain sense and the experiences a man goes through under their influence in the soul-world are indeed cosmic memories of earthly existence. He has experiences also of his own earthly life, though now in a backwards direction, and these are united with the judgments of the Cosmos, as I called them yesterday. These cosmic judgments are made known to men after death through the Moon Beings. We then come under the influence of these Beings, and it is they who cause the judgments to flow into us, in the same way as those that flow into us, here on Earth, from minerals, plants and animals. So we can say: On entering spiritual-cosmic existence after death, a man gains his first glimpse into such cosmic perceptions as still proceed from Beings once connected with the Earth. We have already had occasion to speak of how these Beings, before taking up their abode in the cosmic stronghold of the Moon, were Teachers of human beings in the ancient Mysteries. Hence, what a man once experienced on Earth, in primeval times, he now experiences when journeying through the soul-world, under the influence of those Beings who have been raised—we might perhaps say—to become inhabitants of the Moon. We can truly speak of them in this way if sufficient consideration is given to what was said in my last lecture. These inhabitants of the Moon, under the leadership of the one-time Teachers of mankind, judge quite differently from the way things are judged by people on Earth. For people on Earth, in their life between birth and death, are now approaching a stage completed by the Moon-dwellers in long past ages.

Reckoning by earthly years, we must say that the inhabitants of the Moon, when on Earth, accomplished quite 15,000 years ago what human beings still have to do. More than 15,000 years have passed since these Moon inhabitants acquired the power of making judgments which bring together the naturalistic and the moral.

We on Earth keep our naturalistic judgments separate, and when giving an opinion about a stone or an animal we leave morality aside. We say: “Nature follows only an amoral necessity.” But this is not true of the world as a whole. Even though we may consider that moral judgments are not applicable to individual animals, or to plants, or to minerals above all, in their separate forms of existence, yet the very fact of their creation, of their being in the world at all, is entirely the result of cosmic moral judgment.

Now these Moon-dwellers already judge in terms of cosmic morality. Therefore, when we have passed through the gate of death and are together with them, we must listen to all the Cosmos has to say about what we have thought, wished, felt, willed and done on Earth. Our entire earthly life is exposed to the light of cosmic judgment, and we learn the value our deeds have for the whole great universe.

From these lessons we develop the impulse to complete, to correct, or in some way to set right, during our next life on Earth, whatever we have done either to help or to hinder the evolution of the world. And so, while thus under the influence of the Moon Beings, we take up the impulses for our future destiny—for our karma, as oriental wisdom has always called it. These impulses are thus absorbed while the human being is still under the influence of dwellers in the Moon, who are able to tell him how much his earthly deeds and thoughts are worth for the Cosmos.

The spiritual Beings of the higher world, in whose neighbourhood a man lives while under the influence of the Moon-dwellers, are those grouped together in my Occult Science as the Hierarchy of Angels, Archangels, Archai. Of the ranks of Beings whose realm a man enters after death, they are the first who do not have to live through a phase of earthly embodiment. On their side, they stand in close connection with the Beings of the still higher Hierarchies. But it is with this Hierarchy of Angels, Archangels and Archai that a man is essentially concerned during his Moon existence after death, while the higher Hierarchies are still beyond his ken.

The judgments of the Angels are especially important for the deeds of individual men, and it is thus from the Angels that a man learns the value his deeds have in the Cosmos as a whole. From the Archangels he learns more about the value of what he has done in connection with the language he speaks, with the people to whom he belongs, and from this source also come impulses which work into his further destiny, his karma. From the Archai he learns what value his actions during a given period on Earth will have for the time when he has to descend once more from spiritual heights into earthly existence.

By means of all that a man can achieve in this way if—and I beg you to bear the following in mind—he has rightly prepared himself for life after death through the impulses he is able to receive on Earth, and particularly (as we shall see later) through his attitude towards the great leaders of mankind, he can then find the way over from the sphere of the Moon-dwellers to the sphere of the Sun-dwellers.

The inhabitants of the Moon we already know as those Beings who once dwelt on Earth and were in close connection with it. In a very, very much earlier age this was true also of the inhabitants of the Sun; they, too, participated in earthly affairs.

On coming to the realm of the Moon-dwellers it is quite clear to a man that he is meeting Beings who once dwelt with him on Earth. And when he enters the realm of the Sun Beings, something like a powerful cosmic memory of a primeval age comes over him—an age which in Occult Science you will find described from another point of view. He is taken possession of by something like a memory of an infinitely ancient time, when the Sun, with its inhabitants, was still one with the Earth. After death, therefore, we make our way through the spiritual Cosmos by growing into, as it were, two spiritual cosmic regions where we meet those Beings with whom, at one time, when we lived on Earth as quite different beings, we were closely associated.

1923-11-17-GA231

The Moon was not always out there in the Cosmos; there was a time when the Moon and its substance were within the Earth. The Moon then separated from the Earth and passed out into the Cosmos. It is therefore only in the course of Earth evolution that the Moon has become a dwelling place in itself for spiritual beings. And for what kind of spiritual beings?

In my books and lectures I have often spoken of the great primeval teachers who lived among men in very ancient times of Earth evolution. When we look back with real understanding to ancient times, we cannot but be filled with deep inner reverence for the marvellous wisdom that was given long since to men on Earth by these great, superhuman teachers. For the first teachers of the human race on Earth were not themselves human; they were beings standing higher in the scale of evolution than Man, and in the Mysteries they appeared not in physical but in ether bodies which, since then, they have for the most part laid aside, for they are now in astral bodies.

These primeval teachers left the Earth and passed out into the Cosmos—to the Moon. The heavenly body we know as the Moon is therefore the colony, out in the Cosmos, of the primeval Teachers of mankind. There they have their dwelling, in the Moon. To crude perception the outer aspect of the Moon reflects merely the light of the Sun. But for a finer perception the Moon mirrors a vast number of cosmic forces. And what is reflected thence to the Earth from the forces of the Cosmos is connected with all that is sub-human in man—with what man has to-day in common with animal nature. We find, therefore, in the Moon these high spiritual beings who were once the primeval teachers of mankind, and at the same time, together with them, the animal forces of man's nature.

This is the first region the human being enters when he has passed through the gate of death; here his first experiences are undergone.

1923-11-24-GA232

For this we must go back to something which has occupied us repeatedly in former studies. We have often had to refer to the exit of the moon from the earthly planet, and have shown that the moon was formerly united with the earth-planet, and, at a definite point of time left the earth in order to influence it from afar. I have also pointed out that a spiritual cause underlies this exit of the moon. I have told you how once upon a time on the earth there lived super-human beings who were the first great Teachers of humanity, and from whom proceeded what on the basis of our human earthly thought may be designated the Primeval Wisdom, which is everywhere to be found as an original woof or weft, which is of deep significance and arouses reverence even in the shape of the fragmentary remains which exist today. This wisdom was once the content of the teachings of these great superhuman Teachers at the starting-point of earthly human evolution.

These Beings found their way into the moon-existence and are there today, united with the moon. They belong to the population of the moon, as it were. Now the point is that when man passes through the gate of death he travels by a series of stages through the realm of the planetary world which belongs to our earth. We have already considered how, after having passed through earthly existence, he enters first into the sphere of activity of the moon, then into the sphere of activity of Venus, Mercury, Sun, and so on. Today it may interest us to learn how he comes into the sphere of the moon-activity.

...

When we discuss spiritual matters we have to use expressions which may perhaps appear grotesque in such a connection, but we must make use of human language. Therefore permit me to use ordinary human words for something which takes place purely in the spirit; you will understand me. You will have to raise what I must express in this way into the spiritual.

The same beings who as the great Teachers brought that ancient wisdom to man at the beginning of earthly existence withdrew to the moon in order, so far as lay in their power, to bring the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements into the right relation to human life. Why was this necessary? Why did such exalted beings as these great primeval Teachers decide to leave the earthly sphere in which they had worked for a time, and proceed to the moon-sphere outside the earth, in order as far as was possible to bring the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements into the right relationship with man?

...

Thus whereas the Ahrimanic beings can put man into a state of confusion in reference to his ego as regards his physical impulses the Luciferic beings put him into confusion as regards his Karma; for that which comes from the outer world by no means always lies in Karma, but has first to be woven into a man's Karma by means of many threads and connections so that in the future it may lie in his Karma.

In this way the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic influences are intimately connected with human life and have to be regulated. They must be regulated in the whole evolution of man. For that reason it became necessary for these primeval Teachers of humanity to leave the earth—on which they could not have undertaken this regulation because it cannot be undertaken during man's earthly life, and man, when outside his earthly life is not on the earth—therefore these primeval Teachers of humanity had to withdraw from the earth, and they pursued their further existence on the moon. Here I am obliged to clothe in human speech something for which one really requires quite other word-pictures. After these primeval Teachers of humanity had withdrawn to the moon they had to seek, during their moon-existence, for an arrangement with the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers. Now the appearance of the Ahrimanic powers would be especially injurious to man in his existence after death if, during that existence, they could exercise their influence on him; for if man goes through the gate of death carrying the after-effects of anything evil in his soul, then, as I have already explained to you he finds himself entirely in an Ahrimanic environment, indeed, he even has an Ahrimanic appearance. He himself has an Ahrimanic physiognomy and he only perceives those human beings who also bear an Ahrimanic physiognomy. That must remain a purely psychic experience of man. If Ahriman could now intervene, if he could now influence the astral body, this would become a force which Ahriman would send into man which would not only balance itself karmically, but which would relate man closely to the earth and bring him into too strong a connection with the earthly. This is what the Ahrimanic powers are striving for. They desire, after death, while man in his spirit-form still resembles his earthly shape, gradually to insert themselves into those human beings in whom it is possible so to do because of the evil impulses which they carry through the gate of death. They wish gradually to permeate this spirit-form in as many such beings as possible with their own forces, to draw it down to earthly existence and to establish an Ahrimanic earth-humanity.

Therefore the primeval wise Teachers of humanity who now inhabit the moon made a contract with the Ahrimanic powers—which had to be entered into by those powers for reasons which I will later explain, according to which they allow the Ahrimanic powers to exercise influence in the fullest sense of the word on the life of man before he descends into earthly existence.

Thus, when man, in his descent into earthly existence, again passes through the moon-sphere, then, according to the agreement made between the wise primeval Teachers of humanity and the Ahrimanic powers, these powers have a definite influence on him. This influence manifests itself in the fact of heredity. As against this, because, through the efforts of the wise primeval Teachers of humanity this sphere of heredity had been allotted to them the Ahrimanic beings renounce what lives in man's evolution after death.

In reverse manner an arrangement was also concluded with the Luciferic beings by which these beings were only to have an influence on man after he has gone through the gate of death, and not before he descends to earthly existence.

Thereby, through the great wise primeval Teachers of humanity there came about a regulating of the influences of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings exercised outside the earth. We have already seen and only need to ponder the matter when it at once becomes clear that man is brought under the influence of nature through the Ahrimanic beings being able to work on him. Before his descent to the earth man is exposed to the influences of the impulses of heredity. Through the influences of the Luciferic beings he is exposed to those impulses which lie in his physical environment, in climate and such like, also to the impulses which lie in his psychic, spiritual and social environment through education and so on. Man thus comes into relationship with his natural environment, and into this environment both the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic influences can work.

1924-05-11-GA236

I have already told you that the forming of karma is connected with those beings who in very ancient times of evolution were actually present on the earth and who departed from the earth at the time of the separation of the moon, taking up their abode in the cosmos as Moon-inhabitants, Moon beings.

What we call Moon—of which the physical part as ordinarily described is no more than an indication—must be regarded as the bearer of certain spiritual beings, the most important of whom once lived on Earth as the great primeval teachers. It was they who established among men on Earth that ancient wisdom of which I have so often spoken. These beings were on the earth before the separation of the moon. In those times they infused the primeval wisdom into man who acquired it through a kind of inner illumination. And the way in which these Beings worked was altogether different from the way in which men can work on the earth today.

[human will]

The activity of these ancient, primeval teachers among men must in truth be described as a kind of magic, taking effect inasmuch as the influence of the human will upon happenings in the external world was infinitely greater than is possible today. Nowadays the will can work on the external world only through physical means of transmission. If we want to push some object we must put our will into operation through the arms and hands. But in the days of the primeval Teachers the human will still had a direct and immediate action upon processes in the outside world, upon the very processes of nature. It was a kind of action that we should now call magical. But in point of fact the last vestiges of this power of the human will persisted until comparatively recent times.

  • Rousseau, for example, tells us that in certain warmer regions he was able to paralyse and even kill toads which came near him, simply by fixing them with his gaze.
  • This power of the human will which in warmer climates persisted until the 18th century, has diminished through the course of the ages and has now vanished.
  • But in ancient Egypt man was still able to influence and promote the growth of plants through his will.
  • And when the primeval teachers were on the earth, even inorganic processes of nature could be brought under the sway of the human will.

These things of course depended upon a true, instinctive insight into the connections of world-existence which remain completely hidden from the crude, material science of modern times. It is evident, however, that the influence of warmth upon the working of the human will must be taken thoroughly into account, for Rousseau, who was able, in warmer regions, to kill toads with his gaze, subsequently tried in Lyons to stare at a toad in the same way, supposing that it would at least be paralysed. But the toad was not paralysed; on the contrary it fixed its eyes upon him and he himself became partially paralysed and had to be restored to life by snake-poison administered by a doctor.

This way of activating the will is of course dependent upon an instinctive knowledge of the whole environment of Man.

Out of their own spiritual foundations the primeval teachers possessed a totally different, far deeper and more penetrating knowledge of nature than is within the reach of Man today. They were endowed with powers which cannot be comprised in natural laws. Nor was this necessary when the primeval teachers were working on the Earth, for nothing in the least resembling modern natural science was then in existence. It would have seemed utterly pointless and nobody would have understood its purpose. For in those days all such activity was founded upon a far deeper, more inward knowledge and understanding than is possible today.

These primeval teachers transferred the scene of their work from the Earth to the moon and as everything in the cosmos is interconnected, a mighty task is now allotted to them within the nexus of cosmic happenings. They are beings who have a great deal to do with karma, with the forming and shaping of human karma. For an essential part of the weaving of karma is to be observed when, after having laid aside his etheric body a few days after death, the human being lives through his sleeping life (not his waking life) backwards. When he passes through the gate of death he has, first of all, a clear retrospective vision of what he has experienced in life—a grand and majestic panorama in pictures. After a few days this panorama slowly fades away as the etheric body dissolves in the cosmic ether, and then an actual journey backward begins.

...

Practically everything that in olden days was brought to humanity by the primeval teachers whom we know as the Moon Beings, has been lost. But during his backward journey in the first period after death the human being becomes acquainted in a very special way with this knowledge. He knows then how these ancient sages thought, what kind of wisdom they possessed. Hence the graphic, concrete reality of his experiences during this period.

But in our time things have become complicated and confused owing to a kind of lack of understanding. Human beings, who since the fading of the primeval wisdom have been living here on Earth with their abstract concepts, have not the power to understand the inner soul-constitution of these primeval Teachers since they entered the Moon-existence.

When a modern scholar is passing through this period of his life after death, be speaks a very different language from these primeval teachers who, as I shall describe to you in more detail, have a very great deal to do with the shaping of karma. These primeval Teachers and the men of to-day who die imbued with modern culture and the fruits of modern civilisation do not really understand one another.

1924-05-23-GA239

The first sphere into which man enters is the Moon-sphere; later on he passes into the other cosmic spheres. At the moment of death he still belongs to the Earth-sphere. But at that moment, everything within the range of earthly knowledge loses its significance. On the Earth there are different substances, different metals, and so on. At the moment of death all this differentiation ceases. All external solid substances are earthy; at the moment of death man is living in earth, water, air and warmth. In the sphere of cosmic Intelligence he sees his own life; he is between the region of Earth and the region of Heaven. A few days after death he enters the region of Heaven: first, the Moon-sphere.

In this Moon-sphere we meet cosmic Beings for the first time. But these cosmic Beings are still rather like human beings for at one time they were together with us on the Earth. In my books you can read how the physical Moon was once united with the Earth and then separated from it to form an independent cosmic body. It was, however, not the physical Moon alone that separated from the Earth. At one time there were among men on Earth great, primeval Teachers; it was they who brought the primordial wisdom to mankind. These great Teachers were not present on Earth in physical human bodies, but only in etheric bodies. When a man received instruction from them, he absorbed it inwardly. After a time, when the Moon separated from the Earth, these ancient Teachers went with it and formed a colony of Moon Beings. These primeval Teachers of mankind, long since separated from the Earth, are the first cosmic Beings to be encountered a few days after death.

The life spent with the Moon Beings during this period after death is related in a remarkable way to earthly existence. It might be imagined that man's life after death is more fleeting, less concrete, than earthly life. In a certain respect, however, this is not the case. If we are able to follow a man's experiences after death with super-sensible vision we find that for a long time they have a much stronger effect upon him than anything in the earthly life which, in comparison, is like a dream. This period after death lasts for about a third of the time of life on Earth. What is now experienced differs with different individuals. When a man looks back over his earthly life he succumbs to illusion. He sees only the days and pays no heed to what he has experienced spiritually in sleep. Unless he is particularly addicted to sleep a man will, as a general rule, spend about a third part of his life in that state. After death he goes through it all in conscious connection with the Moon Beings. We live through these experiences because the great primeval Teachers of mankind pour the essence of their being into us, live in and with us; we live through the unconscious experiences of the nights on Earth as reality far greater than that of the earthly life.

1924-06-01-GA240

If man were not protected by the Guardian of the Threshold his experiences every night would be unendurable and bring about the consequences to which I have referred. If, for instance, he had done someone a wrong, he would feel during sleep as if he were transposed into the other man, experiencing what this other man had felt as a result of the wrong done to him. For the reason given there is no such experience during sleep. But after death, during the period referred to, it comes with very great intensity. We live backwards through our earthly life and through all the compensatory experiences for what we have done or failed to do. How comes it that we are able to live through these compensatory experiences?

In order to answer this question, attention must be called to a cosmic event. During the course of the Earth's evolution, the Moon—which was originally part of the Earth—separated and emerged from the Earth to lead an independent physical existence. Some time after the physical substances of the Moon separated from the Earth, the ancient primeval Teachers of humanity departed to the Moon. While they were on the Earth, these primeval Teachers had not incarnated in physical bodies, but only in etheric bodies.

Hence the nature of their influence upon human beings was imaginative, inspirational. And all the wonderful teachings which were given in a more poetic form and contained in legends and sagas, originated in a majestic, primeval wisdom imparted by these ancient Teachers on the Earth. But the essential nature of these Teachers enabled them to withdraw to the Moon which has since been their habitation.

When the human being passes through the gate of death, he moves in very truth through the Cosmos; his being expands and expands. He passes first into the Moon sphere and encounters these great primeval Teachers as they now are. They preserve as it were a naively instinctive, innocent state of the human race.

Before men succumbed to the possibility of doing evil, these primeval Teachers were present on the Earth. They take into themselves what is inscribed by us into the Akashic Chronicle during the nights we live through during our existence on Earth. They permeate it with their own being and thus make it possible for us, during the first third of our life after death when we are living through the events of earthly existence in backward order, to experience it all with greater intensity than we experienced it on Earth. Events in earthly life jolt us, impel and drive us, but those whose spiritual vision is able to witness what a dead man lives through in these first decades after his death know well that through the magical power of the great Teachers who have established their colony on the Moon, the experiences of yonder life have an intensity infinitely greater and more vivid than those of earthly life. We actually undergo all this. Suppose you once gave someone a box on the ears: after death you do not experience the feeling of satisfaction or perhaps of anger or malice occasioned in you by your action, but you are then within the other man, you experience the pain and the shock that were caused to him. You feel exactly what your action made him feel. The experience of living through such events with a dead man is deeply moving—one cannot say ‘shattering.’

1924-06-07-GA239

You will remember that in the book Occult Science: An Outline and elsewhere too, I have said that the Moon shining down upon us from the heavens was once united with the Earth, that at a certain point of time the physical Moon separated from the Earth and in a future age will again unite with it. Now it was not only the physical Moon that separated but with it went certain Beings who were on Earth when the physical Moon and the Earth were still one body. When we think of the spiritual treasures that have been contained in the evolution of humanity we shall be led inevitably to the conclusion that although in our present age men are exceedingly clever—and nearly all of them are—yet they are not truly wise. Treasures of wisdom, expressed not in an intellectual but in a more poetic, pictorial form, existed at the beginning of man's evolution on Earth, scattered through mankind by great Teachers, primeval Teachers who lived among men on Earth. These primeval Teachers were not incarnated in physical bodies, but only in etheric bodies and relations with them were different from relations between physical human beings. These Teachers moved about the Earth in etheric bodies and a man whose guide and leader they became felt in his soul their nearness to him. He felt something like an inspiration streaming into his soul; it was like an inner flashing up of truths, of visions too—for the teachings were imparted in a spiritual way.

In that epoch of Earth evolution, beings were really of two categories: the visible and, for physical eyes, the invisible. Men did not clamour for sight of those beings who were not visible for they were able to receive their teachings without seeing them. Men heard the teachings rising up from within their souls and said to themselves: ‘One of the great primeval Teachers of humanity has now drawn near to me.’ No attempt was made to form any external pictures of these great Teachers. Men encountered them in spiritual experiences, they did not stretch out physical hands towards these Teachers, but encountered them nevertheless and felt something that was like a spiritual grasp of the hand.

It was these primeval Teachers who imparted to mankind the great treasures of wisdom of which only echoes have survived, even in creations such as the Vedas and the Vedanta philosophy. Even these great teachings of the East are no more than echoes. A primeval wisdom once spread among humanity on the Earth and then perished, in order that out of themselves, by their own volition, men might again be able to scale the heights to the spiritual world. Human freedom would not have been possible if the primeval Teachers had remained among men. Hence a comparatively short time after the Moon had separated from the Earth they followed in its wake, establishing their abode upon it. And there they have dwelt, supreme among the denizens of this Moon colony, ever since they separated from the Earth, leaving human beings to their own resources.

Although we who pass from one earthly life to another no longer meet these great Teachers on Earth, we do so very shortly after passing through the gate of death. When the physical body has been laid aside at death, our etheric body expands and expands, but also becomes evanescent, and finally dissolves in the Universe. As soon as the etheric body has been laid aside a few days after death, we feel that our existence is no longer on the Earth but in the immediate environment of the Earth. When a few days have passed after death we feel that we are no longer living on the Earth; it is as though this terrestrial body has expanded as far as the sphere encircled by the orbit of the Moon. We feel that we are living on a magnified Earth; the Moon is no longer felt to be a separate body, but the whole sphere is felt as a unity, demarcated by the Moon's orbit; the Earth has expanded to become the Moon sphere, and has become spiritual. We are within the Moon sphere and there we remain for a considerable time after death. But to begin with we come together again with those spiritual Beings who at the beginning of man's existence on Earth were the great primeval Teachers. They are the first Beings whom we encounter in the Cosmos after our death; we eventually come again into their realm and there undergo a remarkable experience.

It might seem easy to picture existence after death—I shall still have to speak of its duration—as being shadowy in comparison with the life on Earth which gives the impression of being so robust. We can take hold of the things of earthly life; they, like physical men, are solid, compact; we say that something is real when we can actually take hold of it. But after death this robust earthly life seems like a dream, for entry into the Moon sphere brings us into an existence where everything seems to be much more real, much more saturated with reality than can ever be the case on Earth. This is because the great primeval Teachers of humanity who continue their existence in the Moon sphere permeate us with their own being, and enable everything to appear to us with greater reality than that which, as men of the Earth, we experience in the things of the world.

And what is it that we experience in the Moon sphere?

Our experience of earthly life is, after all, fragmentary. Looking back over earthly life with ordinary consciousness, it appears to us as a single, continuous stream. But what has it been in reality? A day that has already become shadowy was followed by a night of which ordinary consciousness has no remembrance. Another day is followed by another night—and so it goes on. In memory we string together only the days but in a true retrospect the days must always be interrupted by what we have experienced during the nights. Ordinary consciousness fails here, and with a certain justification, because it is extinguished in sleep. When we are among these Moon Beings who were once the primeval Teachers of humanity, we live through precisely what we experienced during the nights here on the Earth. The length of time this form of existence in the Moon sphere lasts can therefore be computed. If a man is not an abnormally long sleeper he spends about one third of the duration of his earthly life in sleep. And life in the Moon sphere lasts for just so long, that is to say, for about one third of the duration of the life on Earth. A man who reaches the age of twenty spends about seven years in the Moon sphere; one who reaches the age of sixty, about twenty years, and so on. We live among these Beings and they permeate us with their form of existence.

But in order to understand life in this sphere we must think of what a man becomes when the physical body is laid aside. This is within the ken of an Initiate, and also of the dead. The moment a man has left the physical body behind at death, he is within the world that is outside that body. If as I stand here I were to go out of my body, I should first of all be within this table here, and then more and more deeply within everything around me in the world—only not inside my own skin. What was hitherto my inner world now becomes my outer world, and everything that was formerly my outer world becomes my inner world. My moral life too, becomes outer world. Suppose that I once gave another person a box on the ear in anger and my action made a grave moral impression upon him. Now I live backwards over my life to its fortieth year when I injured him in this way; in my life I may have laughed about the incident, but now I experience, not what I experienced at the time, but his physical pain, his moral suffering. With my whole being I am within him. In reality it was the same every night during sleep, but then it remained below the level of consciousness; it was a picture only, not an actual experience. After death, when we are permeated with the substance of the great primeval Teachers in the Moon sphere, the experience is infinitely more intense than it was on Earth. What on Earth is like a dream, is in yonder world a far stronger reality—and this is what we experience. This same intense reality is experienced, too, by one who with clairvoyant consciousness is able to follow a human being on his way after death and, through the attainment of Inspiration and super-sensible vision, to live with him as a real presence. Then we realise that the experiences through which men pass after death have far greater intensity and reality than the experiences undergone before death. And to experience what a human being is undergoing in his existence after death makes an incomparably stronger impression than earthly influences can ever make. To give you an example.

1924-09-18-GA238

This again appeared in a peculiar way as one followed his path of life after his death. Ordinarily, when there are no special difficulties, we find the human being living gradually into the sphere of the Moon, for that is the first station of the life after death. When we arrive after death in the Moon-region, we find all those whom we might call the “Registrars” of our destiny, who in primeval time were the wise Teachers of humanity. How often we have spoken of them here!

As the Moon separated physically from the Earth, and, having been a part of earthly substance, became a heavenly body by itself, so the primeval Teachers of mankind afterwards followed the Moon, and we today, when as dead men we pass the region of the Moon, find the great primeval Teachers of mankind. They were not here in physical bodies, but they founded the primeval wisdom of which the traditions of sacred literature are but an echo.

Unhindered, if there are no special hindrances, we find our way after death into that region of the Moon. Now with the human being who was the archetype of Strader, something peculiar occurred. It was as though he was simply unable to approach the Moon-region unhindered and undergo that life of soul which follows directly after death. There were perpetual hindrances, as though the Moon-region simply would not let this individuality approach it.

Then if one followed the real events and causes in pictorial Imagination, the following appeared.—It was as though the Spirits, the primeval Teachers of mankind who had once brought to humanity the original and spiritual wisdom, called out again and again to this human being, the archetype of Strader: “Thou canst not come to us, for owing to thy special qualities as man thou mayst not know anything as yet about the stars. Thou must wait, and first repeat and recapitulate many things that thou didst undergo not only in thy last, but in thy former incarnations. Thou mayst not know anything at all of the stars and their real being, till thou hast thus prepared thyself.”—It was a strange scene. One had before one an individuality who simply could not grow out towards the spiritual of the world of stars—or could only do so with the greatest difficulty. And in this case I made the strange discovery that these modern individualities of the rationalistic, intellectualistic mind, find the great hindrance in the shaping of their karma, inasmuch as they cannot approach unhindered the spiritual being of the stars.

Castes as segmentation

1904-10-28-GA092

Last time I discussed the great initiates of the northern region. On that occasion I pointed to the fact that the initiate, or anyone who is in any way connected with initiation, has a distinguishing mark, and that to be invulnerable is one of these symbolic distinctions. This invulnerability, which we find in Siegfried, is also to be found in Achilles.

In fact in the myth with which Achilles is associated, a deep esoteric meaning is hidden.

You must realise that what I put before you comes about gradually in the fifth epoch.

The Manus so arranged the guidance of the race that the entire leadership of mankind was in the hands of the priesthood, which received its inspiration direct from higher spiritual beings, from super-men. This priesthood could be entrusted with the classification of mankind. It would have been impossible to carry out a division into castes rightly, except in cultural communities guided by priestly rulers. Hence caste is only to be found in the authentic priestly cultures, in ancient India and in Egypt, where initiated priests were at the head of affairs, initiates who followed no impulses derived from kama but only intuitions from above, and they could be trusted to bring about that important classification which - in its origin in the Egyptian and the Indian castes - was fully justified.

When you study these castes, you find that they are an expression of the whole plan of development of the fifth epoch.

According to this plan, the guidance of this fifth epoch or root-race should pass over gradually from the priestly outlook to that of the world.

  • A worldly king, a king who was not a priest, would, in the early stages of the fifth root-race, have been quite impossible. It was impossible in Atlantis, when the leader still worked with other forces, when the impulse did not yet pass through the thinking mind.
  • But in the fifth root-race there had to come a halt, guidance had to be entirely withdrawn from cosmic powers and handed over to those who receive divine inspiration. Hence in the Indian and Egyptian cultures we have priestly rulerships. The priest is the Regent, it is from him that everything emanates. The priest belongs to the first caste, the warrior to the second. After that come the castes which follow purely worldly occupations. We come down in stages to those who are concerned with agriculture. Little by little these castes are to attain independence. Thus the first caste was the priestly one, the second the warrior caste.

.

We never find that the temporal relationships which emerge in the course of evolution are the same as those which show themselves externally in space. I beg you to note that if a spatial relationship is to become a temporal one, it occurs in the ratio of four to seven, occurs in such a way that the fourfold expands to sevenfold.

Thus during the fifth epoch the four castes find their outward expression in time in the gradual training to independence of the seven sub-races.

The ratio of four to seven comes from a quite specific law. Today I will merely say that evolution takes place in such a way that

  • in the first sub-race, in all essential matters, guidance is entirely in the hands of the priests
  • In the second sub-race we have one led by the priest-kings. Zarathustra, the true magician, is the counselor of priest-kings.
  • During the third sub-race the rulership is able to pass over to worldly kings, who however still follow the guidance of the priests or the priest-kings.
  • It is only during the fourth sub-race that we find purely worldly kings, kings who are no longer associated with priestly power. This fourth sub-race has its first beginning in the Greek folk. It is in Greece that we first see worldly kings, and, as the Greek colonies become established, in them too we find worldly kings.
1906-03-14-GA097

In the schools where initiates are trained, this knowledge was and is consciously used to work on the different bodies, more so in the past than today. This has to do with cycles of evolution.

Occult teaching is very different today from the way it was 5,000 years ago. Then work had to be done more on groups of human beings. The deliberate aim of the work was to enable whole categories of people to be in harmony in their next life.

In India the whole population was divided into four castes, and the purpose of the work alone was to enable them to be a proper part of a particular caste in their next life.

Systematic training was given to provide for millennia, to shape people's view of the world for millennia. This gave tremendous powers to the occult leaders.

Now it has all changed. Progressive human evolution releases people from their groups or castes; they can no longer be educated in such wholesale fashion. Man will and must become more and more highly individualized.

1906-04-29-GA097 Q&A

The Indian caste system is based on knowledge of karma. The clairvoyant guides of the Indian nation foresaw the destined caste of an individual so that each was born into the appropriate caste.

As the intellect develops with people marrying outside the family, conscious clairvoyance will develop and by the end of the sixth cultural age (sub-race) people will be organized in moral castes. With the next cultural age, all love between blood relations will vanish.

The gods will be deprived of food and withdraw progressively from humanity, moving on to higher stages of evolution. Human beings will be guided by their masters, who have risen from the ranks of humanity, as it were, but have consciously evolved more quickly. These divine guides do not need human love to feed them, and sexual love will thus come to an end.

1906-08-28-GA095

error on rsarchive - the same lecture as 1906-03-14-GA097 on rsarchive, to be checked

From this we can see how we can work for our next life: and in occult schools this is done with conscious intention. In former times it was done more often than it is today because of the changes in human evolution.

Five thousand years ago the occult teacher had a quite different task. He had to concern himself with people in groups; human beings had not reached the stage where each man has to take responsibility for himself. The deliberate purpose was to enable whole classes and groups of people to work together harmoniously in their next lives.

But human beings are becoming more and more individual and independent; the occult teacher can no longer use anyone as a means to an end but has to treat everyone as an end in himself, and to help him to develop as far as is possible for him. In the oldest civilisations, in India for example, the entire population was divided into four castes, and the training given was intended to fit everyone for a particular caste in the next life. The development of human beings, together with the picture of the world they were to have, was deliberately planned for thousands of years ahead, and it was this that gave occult leaders their great power.

1912-05-29-GA155

(SWCC)

Let us go back to the ancient civilisation of India. In that civilisation there were certain divisions of the people; they were divided into four castes.

  • The highest of them being the Brahmins, who cultivated wisdom. The separation of the castes in ancient India was so strict that, for example, the sacred books might only be read by the Brahmins and not by members of the other castes. The Brahmins alone were allowed to explain any passage from the Vedas or have an opinion as to their meaning and it was strictly forbidden for all other people to have any opinion on the treasure of wisdom which was contained in the sacred books.
  • The members of the second caste, the Warrior caste, were only allowed to hear the teachings contained in the Vedas or in the epitome of the Vedas—the Vedanta. The second caste consisted of those who had to cultivate the profession of war and the administration of the country.
  • Then there was a third caste which had to foster trades,
  • and a fourth, a labouring caste.
  • and last of all, an utterly despised part of the population, the Pariahs, who were looked down upon so much that a Brahmin felt he was contaminated if he so much as stepped upon the shadow thrown by such a one. He even had to perform certain rites of purification if he had touched the shadow of such an outcast as a Pariah was considered to be.

Thus we see how the whole nation was divided into four recognised castes and one that was absolutely unrecognised.

Though these regulations may now be considered severe they were most strictly observed in ancient India. Even at the time of the Graeco-Latin civilisation in Europe, no one belonging to the Warrior caste in India would have ventured to have his own independent opinion about what was in the sacred books, the Vedas.

Now, how could such divisions as these have arisen amongst mankind?

It is certainly remarkable that we should find these castes exactly in the most outstanding people of human antiquity and in the very people who had wandered over to Asia from Atlantis at a comparatively early date and also precisely those amongst whom were preserved the greatest wisdom and treasures of knowledge from the old Atlantean epoch. This seems very remarkable, and how can we understand it?

It almost seems as if it contradicted all the wisdom and goodness in the order of the universe, in the guidance of the world, that one caste, one group of people should be separated off, who alone were to preserve what was looked upon as the highest possessions and that the others should be destined from the very beginning, by the mere fact of their birth, to occupy subordinate positions.

[Differentiation]

This can only be understood by an examination into the secrets of existence. Development is only possible through differentiation, through organisation; and if all men had wished to arrive at the degree of wisdom reached in the Brahmin caste not a single one would have been able to achieve it.

  • If all human beings do not attain to the highest wisdom, one may not say that it is a contradiction of the Divine regulation of the world, for this would have no more sense than if someone were to demand of the infinitely wise and infinitely mighty Deity that He should make a triangle with four angles. No god could make a triangle other than with three angles. That which is ordered and determined inwardly in spirit must also be observed by the divine regulation of the world, and just as the laws concerning the limits of space are strict, for example, that a triangle can only have three angles, so also if it a strict law that development must come about through differentiation, that certain groups of people must be separated in order that a particular quality of human nature can be developed.

To this end the others must be excluded for a time. This is not only a law for development of mankind, it is a law for the whole of evolution.

  • Consider the human form. You will at once admit that the most valuable parts in the human form are the bones of the head. But by what means could these particular bones become bones of the head and envelop the higher organ, the brain? As far as the rudiments are concerned, each bone that man possesses could become a skull-bone, but in order that a few of the bones of the whole skeleton could reach this height of development and become bones of the forehead or of the back part of the head, the hip bones or the joints had to stop at a lower stage of development—for the hip bones or the joints have within them the possibility of becoming skull bones, just as much as those which actually have done so.

It is the same everywhere throughout the world. Progress is only possible in evolution through one remaining behind and another pushing forward, even beyond a certain point of development. In India the Brahmins passed beyond a certain average of development, but on the other hand the lower castes remained behind it.

[Migrations from Atlantis + Two streams of development]

When the Atlantean catastrophe took place, great bodies of people gradually wandered from Atlantis, that ancient continent which lay where the Atlantic Ocean is today, towards the East, and peopled the continents now known as Europe, Asia and Africa. We shall not at present consider the few who went westward, whose descendants were found in America by its discoverers.

When the Atlantean catastrophe took place, the body of people which then migrated towards the East did not consist merely of the four castes which settled down in India and there gradually differentiated themselves, but there were seven castes, and the four which appeared in India were the four higher castes.

Besides the fifth, which was completely despised and which in India formed, as it were, an intermediate body of the population, besides these Pariahs there were other castes which did not accompany them as far as India, but remained behind in various parts of Europe, Asia Minor and especially Africa. Only the more highly developed castes reached India, and those who remained in Europe had entirely different qualities.

Indeed, one can only understand what took place later in Europe when one knows that

  • the more advanced sections of humanity in those days reached Asia, and that
  • in Europe, forming the main body of the population left behind, were those who furnished the possibility for very special incarnations.

[Betrayal mysteries in Atlantean epoch]

If we wish to understand the special incarnations of souls in the most ancient European times in the general mass of the population we must take into account a remarkable event which took place in the Atlantean epoch. At a certain stage in Atlantean development great secrets of existence were betrayed; these were great truths, concerning life, which are of infinitely greater importance than all those to, which post-Atlantean humanity has since attained.

[segment A]

It was essential that this knowledge should have been limited to small circles, but owing to the violation of the mysteries, great bodies of the Atlantean population became possessed of occult knowledge for which they were not yet ripe. In consequence of this, their souls were at that time driven, as one might say, into a condition which was a moral descent, so that there remained on the path of goodness and virtue only those who later went over to Asia.

However, you must not imagine that the whole population of Europe consisted only of people in whose souls, were individuals who through being misled in the Atlantean epoch had suffered a moral downfall.

[segment B]

Here and there in this European population were others who during the great emigration to Asia had remained behind to act as leaders. Thus, all over Europe, Asia Minor and Africa

  • there were people who simply belonged to castes or races providing the requisite conditions for misguided souls to live in their bodies
  • and there were also other better and more highly developed souls who remained behind to guide those who did not go on to Asia.

The best places for these souls who had to assume the leadership at that time—in the age in which the Indian and Persian civilisations developed—were the more northerly parts of Europe, the regions where the oldest mysteries of Europe have flourished.

Now they had a kind of protective arrangement as regards what had previously taken place in old Atlantis. In Atlantis temptation came to the souls described, through wisdom, mysteries and occult truths being given them for which they were not ready. Therefore in the European Mysteries the treasures of wisdom had to be guarded and protected all the more. For this reason the true leaders in Europe in post-Atlantean times withdrew themselves entirely and they preserved what they had received as a strict secret.

We may say that in Europe also there were persons who might be compared with the Brahmins of Asia, but these European Brahmins were not outwardly known as such by anyone. In the strictest sense of the word they kept the sacred secrets absolutely secluded in the Mysteries, that there might be no repetition of what had once taken place in the Atlantean epoch among the souls whom they were now leading onwards. Only through wisdom being protected and most carefully guarded did it come about that these souls were able to uplift themselves; for differentiation does not take place in such a way that a certain portion of humanity is destined from the beginning to take a lower rank than another, but that which is made lower at a certain time is to develop higher again at another period. But the conditions must be formed for this end to be attainable.

Hence it came about that in Europe there were souls who had fallen into temptation and had become immoral, but they were now guided according to wisdom which proceeded from deeply hidden sources.

[more segments]

Now, the other castes who had gone to India had also left members behind in Europe.

The members of the second Indian caste—the Warrior caste—were those who then chiefly attained to power in Europe. Where the wise teachers—that is, those who corresponded to the Indian Brahmins—entirely withdrew, and gave their counsels from hidden sanctuaries, the Warriors came out among the people, in order to improve and uplift them according to the counsels of those ancient European priests. It was this second caste that wielded the greatest power in Europe in primeval times, but in their way of life they were guided by the wise teachers who remained hidden. Thus it came about that the leading personalities in Europe were those who shone by virtue of the qualities of which we spoke yesterday: valour and bravery.

Whereas in India, wisdom was held in the highest esteem and the Brahmins were revered because they explained the sacred writing; in Europe bravery and valour were the most valued and the people only knew of the divine mysteries through those who were filled with valour and bravery.

The civilisation of Europe continued under these influences for thousands of years and gradually souls were improved and uplifted. In Europe, where souls existed who were the successors of the people who had undergone temptation, no real appreciation of the caste system of India could develop. The souls were mingled and interwoven. A division, a differentiation into castes such as existed in India did not arise. The division was rather between those who guided in an upper class, who acted as leaders in various directions, and the class that was led. The latter consisted principally of souls who had to struggle upward.

...

I must remind you that the old division into castes in India really received its first blow, its first shock, through Buddhism, for among many other things which Buddhism introduced into Asiatic life was the idea that it did not recognise the division into castes as something justifiable; that as far as it was possible in Asia it recognised the power of each human being to attain to the highest possible to man. We know too that this was only possible through the pre-eminent1y great and mighty individuality of Buddha. We also know that Buddha became a Buddha in the incarnation of which we are usually told and that in the earlier part of his life he was a Bodhisattva, which represents the stage next below Buddhahood. Through the fact that this son of King Suddodana, in the twenty-ninth year of his life, experienced and felt deeply in himself the great truth of life and sorrow, he had attained the greatness to announce in Asia the teaching known as Buddhism.

1913-06-01-GA146

Thus, for example, in the region where self-consciousness was first to make its appearance, men were strictly divided into castes.

They respected this division. A man born in a lower caste felt it as his highest endeavor so to order his life within that caste that he might raise himself in later incarnations into higher ones. It was a mighty driving force in the evolution of the human soul. Men knew that by developing their soul forces they were making themselves fit to rise into a higher caste in their next life.

So too they looked up to their ancestors and saw in them what is not bound to the physical body. They revered their ancestors, feeling that although they had died their spiritual part remained, working on spiritually after death. This ancestor worship was a good preparation for the mighty goal of human nature because in it they could see what is now living already in us—the self-conscious soul, which is not bound to the physical body and passes through the gates of death into the spiritual worlds.

Just as during four centuries the kind of education that forced men to think out natural science was the best education toward spirituality, so in that ancient time mankind was best educated by the inspiration of great reverence for their castes and their ancestors. Men developed a strong liking for the system of castes. In that pious reverence they had something that worked into their lives with great power and deeply affected them. Spiritual beings were working into it, preparing for the future possibility for a man to say with every thought, “I think,” with every feeling, “I feel,” with every impulse of will, “I will.”

1917-01-15-GA173C

about four estates or principles, not castes

In ancient India there were four castes, in ancient Greece four estates. They came into being one after the other during the course of the second, third and fourth post-Atlantean periods.

In the fifth post-Atlantean cultural age the fourth estate, social life, that which belongs to mankind as a whole, must come into being. Not everyone can be a priest, but the priestly element can strive to become the powerful, the dominant estate. *We see it doing this in the third post-Atlantean period; there we see it coming to life again in the hierarchical, theocratic, Roman force.

  • And we can see the second caste, the kingly estate in ancient Greece and Rome, coming to life again in the second post-Atlantean element, where the diplomatic, political element is particularly active; for the republican element in France is only the opposite pole of this, just as everything generates its own counterpart.
    • The actual character of the French state corresponds solely to the monarchic principle, so that even now France is a Republic in name only. In reality she is ruled by a king, who happens to be a lawyer who used to conduct cases in Romania. It is not a question of terminology but of facts. What is so terrible today is the way people allow themselves to be so easily intoxicated by words. If somebody is called a president it does not necessarily mean that he is a president, for what matters is the actual situation.

The third estate, as we know, is the industrial element, what was commerce in ancient Egypt and Greece. This is striving to come to the fore again in the British Empire and for the moment must still be dominant over the fourth element, which will eventually be the general, human element. It is interesting to observe this in one particular phenomenon. You do have to gain some insight into what is really going on if you want to understand the world. Ask the question: Where has the theory of Socialism been worked out with the greatest discernment? You will receive a curious answer: Among German Socialists. For in accordance with the principle I explained to you, the Germans always have the mission to work concepts out in their purest form. So even for Socialism the Germans have worked out pure concepts, but the German concept of Socialism does not fit in at all with the state of affairs in Germany.

Social conditions in Germany do not correspond in any way to the German theory of Socialism! For instance, it is quite comprehensible that, after teaching in a Socialist school for a while, I should have been banned from teaching there, after I said that it ought to be in keeping with Socialism to develop a theory of freedom. On behalf of the leader of the Social Democrats I was told: It is not freedom that matters, but reasoned persuasion! Socialist theory does not fit in with social conditions. In other words, social theory ought to be developed on the basis of the evolution of mankind. On this basis its three great principles are developed: Firstly the principle of the materialistic view of history, secondly the principle of added value, and thirdly the principle of class war.

The three principles are minutely worked out, but they do not fit in with social conditions in Germany. However, they correspond exactly to social conditions in England. That, after all, is where they were worked out. That is where Marx worked on them first of all, and then also Engels, and Bernstein. This is their source. Here they fit in because—to take the third principle—they are founded on the class war. And this class war is waged, basically, in the British soul. Think of Cromwell. If you study all the impulses that have reigned in the British soul since Cromwell, you will wind up with material for the third principle, the principle of class war. Furthermore, since the invention of the spinning-jenny and the commencement of the social life which came into being as a result, everything that has flowed into the theory of added value has been uppermost in the British Empire. And the materialistic view of history is, when you look at it, nothing but Buckle's view of history translated into a pedantic German way of thinking. Look at Buckle's History of Civilisation. It is written in accordance with the way such things are written within the framework of British culture: namely, according to the principle of never entering into consequences. Darwin, too, did not enter into the consequences. He limited himself in a certain way. But in Karl Marx's materialistic view of history the matter is transformed with severity—regardless of consequences—in, if you like, a pedantic, German way.

It is interesting that no theory has been worked out for the general human element, the fourth caste or class. In this element there can be no question of dominance, for there is nothing below it over which dominance might be exercised; it is solely a matter of laying the foundation for human beings to relate with one another. A theory for this will only come about when the general human element given in anthroposophical spiritual science is made the foundation.

1917-01-22-GA173C

add section before to position context primordial soup and castes

The undifferentiated ‘primordial soup’ of humanity was not quite without structure, even though it was undifferentiated. It is right to distinguish between what was at first undifferentiated and what later became differentiated.

The ‘primordial soup’ contains what migrated down towards the south; it is there as one of the parts. This part (red in the diagram) migrated southwards with all its one-sidedness. Drawing an analogy to what people meant by the ancient castes, we could say that a caste migrated southwards, a caste with a capacity for priestly things, a priestly caste. Since then a priestly element has always emanated from that part of the periphery. This has taken many forms and, although in an extraordinary way, even the latest phase has a kind of priestly character. Not only is the impulse called ‘holy egoism’, sacro egoismo, but also, d'Annunzio, for instance, could not have used words of a more priestly nature. Right down to the rephrased ‘Beatitudes’, everything that came from that quarter was clothed in priestly robes. Whether good or bad, everything was of a priestly nature. What remained in the ‘primordial soup’ became the opposition to all this, in the way I have described. What appeared in the Reformation was the element which had remained in the ‘primordial soup’; it came to be the opponent of the one-sided priestly element. The fact that today nothing more can be detected of this priestly element, or that all that can be detected is what is obviously there, is simply the result of that hollowing-out of which I have spoken.

The second element migrated westwards: the warrior caste, the kingly caste, the element of kingship. We have spoken of this, too. This western part only fell into republicanism because of an anomaly. In actual fact it is inwardly structured through and through in a warlike, kingly manner and it will ever and again fall back into this warlike, kingly element. Again we have something that has streamed out, so that a part of this element which has streamed out towards the West has also remained in the ‘primordial soup’ and will in turn have to provide the opposition to what takes place in the West (blue).

...

Differentiated out of what I called the ‘primordial soup’ came the three castes, the first, the second and the third caste. They developed and migrated.

The fourth caste I have already described as those who simply wanted to be human beings, and nothing else. They always remained where they were and, as a result, underwent developments which to the others seemed grotesque—for instance, in relation to the first sacramental stage of alliteration, which went on to develop into the sound-shift. This is most interesting because it is a link among many others.

Let us put it this way: Those who migrated were various differentiations of ‘the people’; and those who remained were ‘the people’ per se, the ‘volk’, the ‘diet’. The name Dietrich, for instance, means ‘he who is rich in people’. ‘Diet’ later became ‘deutsch’, and to be ‘Deutsch’ means nothing other than to be ‘the people’. The people who remained where they were are the fourth caste. The other three migrated, ‘the people’ remained.

So this is the profound instinct that lies behind the designation ‘Deutsch’; it simply denotes the human element. Therefore, what stayed where it was as ‘the people’ has the capacity to be felt, not as something that has developed organically, but as something that has remained fluid in its development so that it can go beyond all the differentiations. Certainly the priestly element is there, but there is the possibility of going beyond the priestly element. The warlike element is there, but there is the possibility of going beyond the warlike element. The mercantile element is also there, but there is the possibility of going beyond the mercantile element. Similarly in language; the older form was there, but there was the possibility of going beyond it.

1921-01-22-GA203

As we have just tried to explain, in olden times man entered physical existence uninstructed by the Gods, and he had to be taught through the Mysteries. Today he enters already taught, and that which is in his soul has only to be brought to his consciousness. In ancient times, as regards the social and economic life of mankind, things were so arranged that a man was born into a definite social connection, into a certain group, according to just those forces which worked in him before his birth. It was not only the principle of physical heredity which lay at the basis of the oldest forms of inequality, which we find, for instance, in the oldest caste divisions; in the old caste division the leaders of the social orderings operated things according to the way in which man, before his birth or conception was destined for a certain group of his fellow-human beings.

[spiritual maturity <-> number of incarnations]

In those times when fewer earthly incarnations lay behind the earthly soul, then, because of his fewer earthly incarnations on Earth, a man was born into a quite definite Ggroup, and in that one definite group alone could he develop socially.

A man who, for instance, belonged to a certain caste in Old India, belonged to it because of what his soul had gone through in the spiritual world; and, because of the small number of his incarnations, if he had been transferred to another caste he would have degenerated in his soul. It was not only the blood-inheritance which lay at the basis of the Caste system, but something which I must call spiritual pre-determination.

Man has long grown out of that. Between our age and that old epoch there is in this respect another turning-point.

People today still bear within them marks of a group-nature, but that is simply a phantom-image. People are born into certain nations, and also into a certain class of society, but in the great number of people growing up in a certain age one can already see, even in childhood, that such a predetermination from a pre-earthly existence no longer prevails today.

Today human beings are instructed by the Gods in their pre-natal existence, and the stamp of a definite group is no longer impressed upon them. The last relic of this still lingers in physical heredity. In a sense, one might say that to belong with one's consciousness to a nationality is a piece of inherited sin and is something which should no longer play a, part in the soul of man.

...

In reference to the economic arrangements, formerly human beings were pre-determined, as it were; a stamp from the Gods was imprinted on them, and so they were born into a certain caste, or into one group or another. That is also past.

Today human beings are born without that stamp; they are in a sense put as single isolated individuals into humanity, and now they must bring ahout their own Group- forms by means of their spirituality.

It is really not a case of bringing such human beings as profess anthroposophy; that simply depends upon what the Gods have taught them before their birth, and whether in their former incarnations they have been found ripe for that divine instruction so that now we can draw forth anthroposophy from them, anthroposophy is in far more people to-day than one thinks, but so many are too lazy to draw forth from themselves that which is in them, or perhaps their school instruction was so organised that the veils cannot be dissolved, and so they cannot attain their consciousness.

1923-03-23-GA222

In the earliest epoch of ancient Indian existence there was no such thing as division into castes - that came later.

In connection with the Mysteries of ancient India there was actually a kind of social classification of men according to their physiognomies and their gestures. This was possible in early epochs of evolution, for a certain instinct prompted men to accept such classifications.

What later arose within Indian civilization as the caste system was a kind of schematic arrangement of what had been a far more individual classification based upon an instinctive feeling for physiognomy.

And in those olden days men did not feel outraged if they were ranked here or there according to their physiognomy; for they felt themselves to be God-given beings of Earth. And the authority of those from the Mysteries who were responsible for this classification, was absolute.

It was not until the later post-Atlantean cultural ages that the caste system gradually developed from antecedents of which I have spoken in other lectures. In the cultural age of ancient India there was a deep and strong feeling that the basis of Man's being was a divine imagination.

1924-03-01-GA353

(SWCC)

about: How the ancient Indians, Egyptians, Babylonians and Jews saw life

as related to discovery and focus on:

  • Indians: physical body    
  • Egyptians: etheric body
  • Babylonians: astral body
  • Jews: I

    .. there are all kinds of aspects where it is interesting to ask ourselves: People have been living everywhere from time immemorial; they lived very different lives. We need only mention a few things to realize how different their lives were.

[India]

In India for example there was strict segregation in castes, compared to which anything by way of classes in Europe is a mere shadow image. In India you would be bom into a caste.

  1. The highest caste were the Brahmins, priests and scholars. The children of the Brahmins all went to school in those early times. They were the ones who were able to write, the uppermost caste. Priests came from this caste (but not rulers).
  2. Rulers came from the second caste, the military and the rulers. But it would never be possible for someone to rise from the second to the first caste; it was all strictly segregated.
  3. The third caste were peasants, country people, and
  4. the fourth caste were the people who did menial work.

These castes were kept strictly apart. If it would ever have happened that someone moved from one caste to another in ancient India, it would have been as if a lion were to turn into a lamb. The castes were considered to be separate just as individual animal species are separate. And people had nothing against this. It would have seemed as crazy to them to see someone move from the third caste to the first, as if a lion had turned into an ox. The situation was entirely natural to them in ancient India.

[Egypt]

Let us move on to Egypt; they had castes, too. What I am telling you now, gentlemen, you can consider to have been at a time that was about 3000 or 3500 years, perhaps even 4000 years before the coming of Christianity. We thus have to go back five or six millennia to look at the time of which I am speaking.

In Egypt, they also had castes, but not so strictly adhered to; there it was possible for someone to move from one caste to another.

The situation in Egypt was that the whole organization of the state came from the priesthood. The priesthood arranged everything. It was the same in India, but there the division into castes determined everything, while it was less strict in Egypt. But they made sure that everything by way of law came from the priests.

[Other]

The other peoples in Syria, in Asia Minor, correspondingly had their own particular ways; they differed.

To show you the role things we have been learning play in human history, let me tell you something else about these particular nations. Let us take four of them: the Indians, then the Egyptians, and then the peoples who were in this area. Here Euphrates and Tigris enter the Persian Gulf, and the people who lived there were later called the Babylonians. They will be the third group we look at.

And then, as you know, a nation emerged here that was later to play a great role in history: the Semites, the Hebrews, the Jews. They went across to Egypt, later moved back again to live here in Palestine, a relatively small nation but one that played a great role in history.

We may thus consider the Indians, the Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Jews.

[India]

A special characteristic of the Indians was that they really looked at the people who lived there as distinct groups, like animal species, and divided them into four castes. Then there was the particular religion the Indians had in earlier times. They saw no difference between the world of spirit and the world of physical bodies; at the time when this Indian population first evolved in India, no difference was made between spirit and body. A tree would not be differentiated the way many other peoples did—this is the physical tree, and a spirit lives in it. No such distinction was made. The tree was at the same time a spirit, only a somewhat coarser spirit than a human being or animal. An animal was also not divided into body and soul; it was soul to the ancient Indians, as was the human being.

Discussion

Note 1 - On the spiritual guidance of mankind

DRAFT - outline for a text to be developed

draft outline for narrative

  • 1 - population & law of separation - re Schema FMC00.607
    • each segment needs its guidance
    • subnote
      • human beings are anyway attached to a karmic thread (rubber stretch)
      • but each of the lives in the spiral represents a different challenge .. we keep coming back .. initiate in one does not mean in all
  • 2 - guides & their support groups
    • imagery - not just teacher
      • shepherd and flock - guiding
      • missionaries .. re europeans in africa
        • also get killed, martyrs .. re sacrifice eg Cathars
      • farmer and fields, experimentor in lab (re Occult atom)
    • not all Individualities blossom
      • eg Plato/Schroer .. 'what else could one do'
      • & not in the same way .. some better than others, eg what happened to Blavatsky, Nietzsche, Kasper Hauser: stuff can happen
    • important Individuality -> develops into a stream due to following, pupils etc
      • eg theosophy - Blavatsky .. plus others not just Besant/Leadbeater etc but de Purucker, Powell, Wood, Barborka
      • eg anthroposophy - see Schema FMC00.586 and variants on Anthroposophists
  • 3 - white & black
    • working for the light vs working against evil


Note 2 - Free Man Creator in the world

DRAFT - outline for a text to be developed

Introduction

This site is a support tool for fellow human beings along the path. It contains several pages that are not so much general information or knowledge, but closer to an individual's soul - see examples listed below.

This text is to provide a frame of reference for all the above, starting this time from a positioning of the spiritual guidance of mankind.

Examples:

1/ What is guidance

spiritual guidance points to what is underlying the leadership that guides the development of humanity or segments of the population according to a certain plan and goals.

How? various aspects:

  • religion: Buddhism, Hinduism, etc
  • societal: eg pharaos, Moses, King Arthur, and the leaders of the Migrations who seeded the cultural developments underlying society in the various ages of human history
  • initiatory: Mysteries wisdom (see Mystery School tradition)

Examples: see eg Nerthus, the Two streams of development


Exoteric spiritual guidance: eg the streams of the various religions, instigated by Buddha, Lao Tsu, etc.

Esoteric - the ancient Mysteries

2/ Compare with worldly imagery

society organizes the development of the individual also with education, in stages according to age group one could say

  • from 3 to 12 years
  • from 12 to 18
  • from 18 to 25
  • After that age, it is upto Man himself to drive one's own development.

The options represented by this societal organization can be seen like a huge decision tree that branches of into many different paths. For some individuals it stops earlier than for others, and all make different choices to wokr with their hands (eg become a woodworker), brain, go into art (become a dancer).

The individual receives from society, so as to function within the system. This implicitly means: to function within a frame with certain expected behaviour and adherence to rules (legal), moral code (?), and religion (more left free).

Where does Man gets its inspiration and guidance on moral standards and ideals?

3/ so actually .. positioning

one can distinguish a bifurcation or polarity, as the worldview is essentially underlying an orientation to predominantly focus on

  • serve moral ideals and spiritual goals
  • serve material goals


This point is covered by Rudolf Steiner in many lectures where he points to the fact that morality is stripped out of the contemporary dominant materialistic worldview of mineral science.

The mundane 'system' is organized to drive people in a forcing framework. If each person would be a small magnetic dipole, then the system provides a magnetic field that aligns and organizes the small magnetic dipoles in a certain direction. The worldview belief system provides the fundamental foundation to answer one's questions, say what is important, and in that way drive individuals actions and behaviour.

The spiritual system happens through evolution, through spiritual influences that are implicit in the mundane 'system'. An example is the evolution of the human nervous system and organs, and the human 'I' and threefold soul. For example, the consciousness soul and its fructification by the Christ Impulse will just happen as a cosmic phenomenum of another order ('top down') than anything that is developed in the physical world ('bottom up'). Once one has a deeper understanding of the spiritual scientific worldview, this just follows from the golden chain, just like the fact that evil cannot ultimately conquer creation at the highest level. These insights follow just like in physics allmost like with a mathematical certainty.

The polarity with the two extremes is represented by Schema FMC00.422A. The Michaelic stream can be positioned on the left side of this diagram, black magic the other right extreme side.

To bring that 'closer to home', less conceptually, is what is represented with Schema FMC00.486. Zooming in to the next great sixth epoch with Schema FMC00.505, and with reference to the Book of Revelation, one could put forth the image that part of humanity is preparing to 'take off', they will literally ascend. A train is leaving, and not everyone will be on it. The train is towards a spiritual future, further human development is leaving behind the purely lower physical world.

The split between good and evil orientation will grow and pull humanity into two opposite sides. This is already happening in the current fifth cultural age, and will continue ever more strongly in the following sixth cultural age and seventh cultural age of the current postatlantean epoch. Driven by egotism, the two-sided sword of the human 'I', it will drive humanity to destroy itself in the War or all against all.

4/ Revisiting & reflecting on the mundane earthly schooling and system

imagery: the herdsman or shepard who guides the animals or sheeps along a path and through a gat, the chickens in battery cages

every person has his/her own compass, gyroscope .. tool for guidance

what attracks most

money is symbol for all the material, as it can be used to purchase all worldly pleasures, to maximize joys of the physical senses, and even beyond the feeling of power and dominance

most often this focus however comes at a price, as it is driven by egotism of selfish goals, so the price is paid by the life of others

An illustration of the polarity, consider the world population currently estimates to be constituted of some seven to eight billion people

  • billionaire club: x %
    • global wealth pyramid and distribution, only 1% of the world population (with say some 60 million millionaires on nearly eight billion people) owns/controls over half of the global wealth, a small group of individuals each control over 100 Billion whereas 3 to 4 billion people have less that 10K EUR/USD, the gap between the super-wealthy and the masses is growing exponentially as the result of the organized levers (compare the growing gap in wealth inequality trend evolution of top 1% vs bottom 50%)
  • initiates and adepts
    • totally unknown by society, we also find initiates and adepts worldwide, who have followed the path of initiation. For example those who have mastered Bardon's first, or three books. But each culture has its 'segment', eg the sufis in islam, jewish kabbalist rabbis, buddhist monks and hindus. Together they form a counter-segment of the billionaire's club: they are the most spiritual advanced of a worldwide population.

Now in the above, it's important to realize that not one balance is represented here, but two. And both balances are similarly unbalanced.

The ideal balance is not to have an equal distribution of wealth, if nothing is said about the second balance of spiritual maturity and advancement.

5/ conclusion

In the above, a balance was sketched between what can be called the global world order on the one hand, and spiritual guidance of mankind on the other. The worldly domination has a relatively short timeframe perspective compared to the overarching plan for the development of mankind, it is actually part of it, it is contained within the spiritual plan which has consistency of purpose across eons - see occult atom. Cultures come and go, and so do large earthly reigns.

As Rudolf Steiner points out: the first is necessity in the world evolution, the important thing is the second exists also. This was coined in the two sentences: "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's" and "My kingdom is not of this world." (1917-01-15-GA174)

see more on: Contemporary worldview war#Inspirational quotes

The above sketches a frame or background against which to project Meaning of Free Man Creator and Meaning of life and Seeds for future worlds. It reinforces the messages on those pages, and is intended to help the conscientization, the progressive insight and growing consciousness, from awareness to responsibility, that drives our, also your, conscious free choices. What we choose to contribute to and how, what we dedicate our life time and energy to.

Note 3 - About contemporary spiritual teachers and their Individualities

Introduction

Schema FMC00.609 shows a number of 20th century spiritual teachers. Because it is clear these were important Indivividualities, there has been a lot of speculation about their true nature as a spiritual being, and the eternal Individuality beyond the life of the Personality.

This note by the author of this site puts forth a view with the sole intention of trying to clarify certain matters so as to bring some order in the many opinions that abound. This is not based on a literal quote or source of any of these adepts, but a great number of statements taken together. It is put forth here for consideration of the reader with no status other than that of another opinion, but worth of study and contemplation.

Commentary

Frame

Bardon, in the dictated novel Frabato, sketches in a succinct way a structure of the white brotherhood depicted in Schema FMC00.608. This view is consistent with many other statements and snippets of information, see o.a. White Lodge#Note 1 - The brotherhood of the White Lodge (non-exhaustively).

Positioning

1/ Within this frame above (see Schema):

  • Rudolf Steiner is known to have had contacts with two masters, the Individuality of Master Jesus (a.k.a. Zarathustra) and the Individuality of Christian Rosenkreutz (a.k.a. apostle John).
  • Steiner states that - as a rule - the masters themselves usually stay unknown to history, but work through their channel of helpers, that they do not themselves start earthly initiatives, movements, organizations. As a rule means there may be exceptions.

From these statements follows (though it of course remains a hypothesis), that Steiner himself (probably) was not one of the twelve.

Furthermore

  • Daskalos stated that he and Steiner were working in the same stream, and that Steiner was "a very high being, one of the highest beings at all".
  • This stream is the western christian esoteric stream of the two Masters mentioned above (re Steiner in early lectures, 1904-1906 timeframe).
  • From known astral interactions between Steiner and Daskalos, one might even deduce that Steiner was more senior than Daskalos.

Based on the above, one can put forth the premise that both Steiner and Daskalos are to be positioned as Masters underneath the twelve, either the (six or) seven Masters that are direct helpers of the Bodhisattvas (part of the 72 Sages in total) or the five Masters that are the helpers these each have (part of the 360 Masters in total).

Though it remains speculating, Steiner might - for example - be a Sage part of Christian Rosenkreutz seven pupils (say a 'right hand of'), whereas Daskalos might be part of the five assistants of these Sages.

2/ Bardon (in Frabato) positions himself to be the first-ranked of the 72 Sages or helpers of the twelve, but otherwise he shares very little about his Individuality. Very little is known about his spiritual identtity in general, other than that he was a teacher in the Mysteries for millenia, had very many incarnations on Earth, and a master in Tibet. Bardon also mentions he moved up in rank in the 20th century to become part of the twelve as one of the twelve resolved its Individuality.

Whether inductive or deductive, one can consider that Steiner, Bardon, Daskalos were initially (before the change mentioned above happened) part of this level of the 72 Sages and 360 Masters below the level of the twelve main Masters of the White Lodge.

3/Regarding Beinsa Douno, see Bodhisattva#Commentary: we supports the hypothesis that the 20th century incarnation of the bodhisattva that incarnated before as Jeshu ben Pandira, and who will become the future Maitreya Buddha, is or might be with high likelihood, the person known as Peter Dunov, or - by spiritual name - Beinsa Douno. He announced the second coming of Christ in 1898, a message later also brought by Steiner in 1910 and coined by him as 'Christ in the etheric'.

On a side-note, just for the sake of completeness (though such things are always debatable): from various unqualified quotes by Beinsa Douno about Rudolf Steiner, and vice versa (not mentioned here, but documented) - if these are true - one might/would also deduce that Beinsa Douno is a Master at a higher level as a spiritual identity then Rudolf Steiner.

The above positioning (hypothesis) is compatible with many snippets of information and makes many small pieces of the puzzle fall together.

However

It has to be added that there also statements that are not consistent.

Steiner mentions on several occasions that masters such as Master Jesus and Christian Rosenkreutz incarnate every century .. in line with what Daskalos also mentions for his own Individuality. In Bardon's Frabato however we read these masters rarely incarnate. Maybe Bardon made that statement because they work behind the curtains of what is publicly known to humanity, not unlikely given the way how Bardon stresses silence and discreteness.

Furthermore, it is noteworthy that also Beinsa Douno consistently refuted giving any information whatsoever regarding his spiritual identity, in a way similar to Bardon. This contrasts with Daskalos who was candid about earlier incarnations, and also Steiner who disclosed information in intimate circle about this. This might (but again only a hypothesis) support the fact that Daskalos and Steiner - masters and adepts themselves - are operating as the executors or workers - in the channel of the helpers of the twelve, and so more in the public frontline known to humanity.

Working together

In the early years of lecturing, Steiner stated in esoteric lectures that the masters were speaking through him. Quite some comments to this respect can be found, also eg by Elisabeth Vreede who wrote she could not help but feel that there was a higher source of wisdom, some higher spiritual entity, speaking when Steiner held the courses on the spiritual hierarchies (like 1909-GA110). And Steiner himself stated this again quite literally when making the declaration about the second coming and Christ in the etheric (1910-09-10-GA123: "we are now speaking entirely in the sense of that inspiring Bodhisattva .. we declare the manner of the future coming of the Christ to be in the form we have learned from the inspiration of the Bodhisattva himself").

In this also consider Schema FMC00.313 on Three classes of Buddhas. It summarizes how Rudolf Steiner described that, those who can be called 'human buddhas' are inspired by an angelic being; but also how such human buddha can be inspired directly by a Bodhisattva (and archangelic being).

On a side-note: this way of working had already been tried - in a way, not quite the same - with Helena Blavatsky, inspired by Christian Rosenkreutz (and other examples such as Light on the path (Mabel Collins), inspired by Master Hilarion - see Discussion Notes on Sources of spiritual science).

To complete the picture.

It might well be that the spiritual being of legendary status by the name of Sri Guru Babaji (as described by Sri M, Lahiri Mahasaya, Sri Yukteswar, Paramahansa Yogananda) fits the description of the prime initiator, named Urgaya by Franz Bardon (in Frabato), or named Maha Chohan by Blavatsky (Maga Chohan: 'chief of a spiritual hierarchy, head of the trans-Himalayan mystics').

'Man: fragments of forgotten history (1885)' states.. "the two highest adepts .. live in an oasis in the desert of Gobi, where only adepts of the higher order are permitted to visit them. Their nature and character are as little understood by the ordinary initiates as those of the adepts by the outside world."

Related pages

References and further reading

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