The Rudolf Steiner Archive

14. Moses

[ 1 ] When considering those great historical figures we have dealt with in the previous lectures—Zoroaster, Hermes, and Buddha, we encountered figures who interest us as human beings insofar as we feel that we participate with our entire soul life in the overall development of humanity, and that we can understand the present only when we look back to those spiritual giants of the past who helped shape what extends into our present. With Moses, whose personality we are to consider today, the situation is quite different. In everything associated with the name of Moses, we feel that an infinite portion of it still lives on directly within what constitutes the spiritual content of our own soul. We feel, as it were, the impulses that emanated from Moses still resonating within our very being. We feel how he still lives on in our thoughts and feelings, and how, in a sense, when we engage with him, we are engaging with a part of our own soul. For this reason, the ongoing tradition associated with Moses is present to us in a completely different way; it stands before our eyes more directly than the ongoing tradition associated with the other great figures under consideration. On the one hand, this makes it easy to address the personality of Moses, for everyone today knows from the Bible this powerful figure who looms large throughout the ages. Even though meticulous research and serious scholarship in recent decades and years have brought many things to light that, in certain respects, may shed new light on the story of Moses—as we derive it from the Bible—we must nevertheless say, upon closer examination: Very little has actually changed in the overall image of Moses that we carry within us and have derived from the Bible. We therefore speak of him as someone known to the widest possible circles. This makes the examination, so to speak, easy. On the other hand, however, we must also say that it is precisely the nature of the tradition we have about Moses in the Bible that makes this examination difficult again. This can already be seen in the fate of biblical scholarship in the nineteenth century. It cannot be emphasized enough that—even when we consider the natural sciences—hardly any branch of human scholarship or serious scientific endeavor can command such deep esteem, such sacred respect, as nineteenth-century biblical scholarship. That diligence, that acumen, which was devoted, for example, to understanding the individual parts of the Bible in terms of their style and what one might suppose to know about their origin—that selfless scientific dedication, as it was practiced—is, for those who are more familiar with biblical scholarship, truly unparalleled. Nevertheless, one can see something tragic in this nineteenth-century biblical scholarship. For the further it has progressed, the more it has, in a sense—if one may put it that way—taken the Bible out of our hands. For it has, so to speak—and anyone who picks up the popular books on the results of biblical scholarship can see this for themselves—dissected the Bible, especially the Old Testament—in order to show us how one part followed a different stream of tradition than another, how all of this was, so to speak, brought together over time into a whole that scholarship would first have to break down again in order to understand it. And in a certain sense, the result of this research can be called tragic, because it is, at its core, entirely negative; because it has contributed nothing to reviving what the Bible is capable of bringing to life—what it has brought to life for millennia in the hearts and souls of people.

[ 2 ] In a certain sense, it is the task in our time of that school of thought—which we must call spiritual science—that, in contrast to the other sciences of our time, often has the task of building up rather than merely criticizing, to help us learn to understand the Bible itself once again, and above all to raise the question with regard to the Bible: Is it not necessary, first of all, to penetrate the overall meaning of the traditions in all their depth, and only then, after fully understanding them, to inquire into their origin? This is by no means easy, especially with regard to the Old Testament, and particularly difficult with regard to those parts of the Old Testament that deal with the personality, with the great figure of Moses. For what does spiritual science reveal to us as a distinctive feature of the biblical accounts? It shows us that external events and external facts associated with this or that individual, or with this or that people, are presented exactly as they unfold from an external, historical perspective, so that we thus encounter the figure of Moses in the Bible presented in such a way that his experiences in the outer physical world—as they unfold in space and time—are laid before us. But then it becomes apparent—and, strictly speaking, only a spiritual-scientific deepening of the Bible can yield this result—that a narrative which initially deals with external events and experiences in the external world immediately continues in the biblical account as a narrative of an entirely different kind, one that is difficult to distinguish from what precedes it. Stories are told of journeys and other external experiences that we must simply accept as such. Then the narrative continues in such a way that at first we do not even notice that, as we read on, we are in the midst of a description of an entirely different kind—as if a journey were continuing from one place to another, and as if the subsequent experiences were to be taken just as external physical experiences as the preceding ones. And then we find ourselves in the midst of a description of the inner life of the person in question—a description that does not refer at all to external events, but rather to inner spiritual struggles, spiritual triumphs, and spiritual experiences, through which the person in question then ascends to a higher stage of spiritual development, of insight, to a higher level of initiative, or to a mission in the development of the world. In a sense, the descriptions of external events abruptly give way to symbolic representations that are entirely in the style of the earlier external events, but which do not refer to external experiences at all, but rather to inner spiritual experiences. It must be said that this assertion will remain just that for anyone as long as they do not, guided by spiritual scientific interpretations, immerse themselves more and more deeply into the distinctive nature of the Bible’s descriptions, especially those passages dealing with Moses. But when one immerses oneself in this distinct character, one learns to sense how, at such points where an external description of physical experiences gives way to a description of soul experiences and developments, the entire style and underlying tone indeed change—so that a new element of the narrative suddenly emerges, prompting us to ask: Why is this so? This “why” can then be answered in no other way than through the conviction that can be drawn from the soul itself. We are dealing with that peculiarity of presentation that has just been characterized. This is found, in essence, in all ancient accounts of religious history, and especially when personalities are to be portrayed who have attained a certain height of insight and spiritual activity; and one becomes familiar with such a style as one immerses oneself more and more deeply in spiritual science. This, so to speak, makes it difficult once again to gain a full understanding from the biblical account of what is meant in the individual passages describing Moses.

[ 3 ] So, in a sense, we have the Bible on the one hand—but on the other hand, we also face difficulties due to its style of presentation, where it delves into particular depths. This has led people to sometimes go quite far too far in their interpretation of the Bible. If, for example, we consider the interpretation of ancient Hebrew history by that philosopher who lived at the time of Christianity’s founding—Philo—we see how he sought to present the entire history of the ancient Hebrew people as an allegory. He sought to provide a symbolic interpretation of history, so that the entire history would be a kind of symbolism of a people’s spiritual experiences. That would have been going too far. Philo went that far because he lacked the spiritual discernment to know where external experiences converge with spiritual experiences.

[ 4 ] We shall now see, in the case of Moses, how a personality intervenes in the living course of human development, a personality who was destined to bring something of the highest and most significant to humanity. If we sense in this significant figure that we still have something akin to him within our souls, then a full understanding of the Moses impulse becomes a very special necessity for us. Therefore, we can, so to speak, proceed directly to the mission of Moses without further ado. But one cannot understand this mission of Moses unless one assumes that, fundamentally, the biblical account is based first and foremost on the awareness of a fact that we have already been able to grasp when considering the individualities of Hermes, the Buddha, and Zarathustra: that, with regard to the soul life of human beings, the development of humanity has, over the course of time, undergone a transition from an ancient clairvoyant state to the present state of our intellectual consciousness. Let it be mentioned once more that in ancient times the human soul, in certain intermediate states between waking and sleeping, was able to glimpse into a spiritual world; that what was thus perceived in the spiritual world was represented in images; and that these images have been preserved for us in the mythologies and legends of antiquity. If someone asks, “How can one prove the existence of the ancient clairvoyant consciousness externally without resorting to spiritual science?” they can find the answer to this question through conscientious research that has already been conducted in our own time, though it has not yet gained full recognition. It should be noted that certain mythologists, with regard to myth-like formations, legends, and so on—which emerged among individual peoples even in relatively later times—felt compelled to assume a completely different state of human consciousness as the basis for the origin of such myths. In the past, I have often referred to an interesting book written by a mythologist who, as such, must be regarded as the most significant mythologist in modern scholarship: I am referring to Ludwig Laistner and his book *The Riddle of the Sphinx*. This book is among the most significant in its field. It demonstrates that certain myths appear to be continuations of events from the world of dreams, as typically experienced. Laistner did not venture into spiritual science; he was unaware that he was providing the first building blocks for a true understanding of ancient mythologies. But one cannot understand myths and legends merely as the reworking of typical dreams, as Laistner conceived them; rather, one must understand them as emerging from an earlier state of human consciousness that perceived the spiritual world in images and therefore also expressed it in images. No one can truly understand the ancient sagas, myths, and legends—which is why so little progress is being made toward understanding them!—unless they assume—initially as a hypothesis—that the ancient mythologies were created from a different state of human consciousness. This ancient pre-human, or at least prehistoric, state of the soul has transitioned into the present state of consciousness, which can be briefly characterized by saying: In terms of our consciousness, we alternate between waking and sleeping. In waking consciousness, we take in perceptions of the external world through our senses and link these perceptions together, combining them through our intellect. This sensory-intellectual consciousness, which operates through our intellect and reason, has replaced the ancient clairvoyant state of mind. In this way, we have characterized a phase of history—how history presents itself when one considers the development of humanity in its depths.

[ 5 ] But there is something else underlying such descriptions as those found in the Bible. Namely, that every people, every tribe, and every human race—as they appear in the course of human development—is, so to speak, assigned a certain mission. The ancient clairvoyant forms of consciousness manifested in various ways and in the most diverse forms, depending on the gifts and temperament of the individual peoples. That is why the unity of the ancient clairvoyant consciousness has been handed down to us through the various mythologies and pagan religious beliefs of the individual peoples. Thus we can say: There is not merely an abstract unity in this ancient worldview, but rather the most diverse missions have been entrusted to the most diverse peoples and races, and through this, the shared consciousness has taken on the most varied forms. However, if we wish to understand this development of humanity, we must bear in mind that it is not a meaningless succession of cultures, but that a meaning runs through the entire course of human history, so that a certain form of consciousness later finds its expression in a particular culture, because what comes later has something like a new leaf or a new blossom to add to what came before, because the overall meaning of human development finds its expression in successive forms. Thus, in the spiritual-scientific sense, we best understand a people by telling ourselves: These particular peoples—be they the ancient Indians, Persians, Babylonians, Greeks, or Romans—all had a specific mission; in a very special way, that which can live in human consciousness took shape among them. We do not understand these peoples unless we are able to perceive their very special, individual character as their mission. Now, however, the overall development of humanity proceeds in such a way that, so to speak, a specific time is allotted to each such mission. When this time has elapsed, the mission in question is fulfilled. The mission in question was assigned to a people. The hour, so to speak, may have run out for that particular national mission. What was contained within it in embryonic form has borne fruit and run its course. But then the situation may arise in which this or that people retains the corresponding character—that which lies in its temperament and other dispositions. Then, so to speak, the people in question skip the point in time when a new mission is supposed to take the place of the old one; they carry their distinctive character over into a later era, while the objective course of human development has put something new in its place.

[ 6 ] This can be seen particularly clearly in the Egyptians, whose distinctive character we learned about in the lecture on Hermes. The Egyptians had a lofty mission in the overall course of human history. But this mission had, at one point, fully manifested everything that lay within it. What was to come next was indeed present in embryonic form within Egyptian culture, but the Egyptian people as a whole retained their temperament and their distinctive character; they were unable to shape the new mission from within themselves. Therefore, the guidance and leadership of humanity had to pass to another element of humanity. Although this had to grow out of the Egyptian element, it still had to be something different. Thus we see something like a change of direction in the overall course of human development. To understand this, one must reflect on the course of the Egyptian mission. Moses first allowed whatever could be drawn from it to take effect upon his own soul. This also had an impact on the souls of his people. But his calling was not to continue the old Egyptian mission, but rather to use it as a foundation from which to instill something entirely new into the development of humanity. And because this new element was of such a powerful, comprehensive, and far-reaching nature, the personality of Moses is so significant for the overall course of human history; and that is why the way in which Moses’s mission emerged from the past development of the Egyptian people remains so interesting and fruitful to consider even in our own time. For what Moses drew out of the Egyptian people, and what he then added as if from the eternal heights of spiritual development, continues to resonate deep within our souls. That is why Moses was perceived as a figure who, in a sense, did not have to draw what he had to give to humanity did not have to draw directly from any particular era or any specific mission, but rather Moses was understood as a personality whose soul must have been touched by the waves of the Eternal, which time and again flow into human development through new channels to fertilize it. What existed, as it were, as the eternal core within Moses’s soul had to find its foundation and come to fruition in what he was able to draw out of Egyptian culture.

[ 7 ] The fact that Moses is a soul who had to offer the very best he had to give, drawn from eternal sources, is symbolically suggested to us—in the manner of ancient depictions—by Moses being placed in a basket shortly after his birth. Anyone familiar with such depictions in religious development knows that they always seek to point to something significant. From earlier presentations in this lecture series, we know that if a person wishes to raise their consciousness to higher, spiritual worlds, they must pass through certain stages of soul development by completely shutting themselves off from their surroundings and awakening the most elemental spiritual forces of their soul. If it is to be depicted that such a person already brings with them at birth those spiritual gifts that lead to the heights of humanity, this cannot be better expressed than by saying: For this personality, it was necessary, so to speak, to undergo an experience that penetrated into the physical realm, through which their senses—and all their powers of perception—are, as it were, cut off from the physical world. — It then makes sense to us when we hear that the Egyptian princess, the daughter of the Pharaoh, herself pulled the boy out of the water and named him “Moses,” because she said, “For I drew him out of the water.” For those who understand the name Moses—as the Bible also suggests—this is already contained in the name itself. This was meant to signify that the representative of Egyptian culture, the daughter of Pharaoh, guided life into a soul filled with the essence of eternity. Thus, we are wonderfully shown how the eternal truth that Moses was to bring to humanity is enveloped within the outer shell of Egyptian culture and mission.

[ 8 ] Then, in the story of Moses’s development, external experiences are described to us. Here we see once again how the Bible presents its account in such a way that it refers to external experiences. What we read in the Bible about the fortunes of Moses and about all the suffering he experienced because of his people’s enslavement in the land of Egypt can be regarded as a depiction of external circumstances. But then the narrative—one must say, almost imperceptibly—shifts to a description of Moses’ inner spiritual experiences. This occurs when Moses flees and is led to a priest, the Midianite priest Jethro or Reguel. Anyone familiar with the conventions of ancient spiritual narratives can recognize—right down to the names—that the account here shifts into a description of Moses’ inner spiritual experiences. This is not to suggest that Moses did not actually undertake such a journey to a temple site, a place of priestly instruction; rather, the narrative is artfully crafted so that the external events are interwoven with the experiences that Moses’s soul undergoes. Thus, the external experiences presented to us here are, at every turn, hints of what Moses is struggling through in order to ascend to a higher state of the soul. What is hinted at in Jethro? One can easily gather from the Bible that he is one of the individualities to whom we are led again and again, as we trace the development of humanity—individuals who have struggled to a high degree to attain a comprehensive insight, an insight that can only be gained by slowly and gradually immersing oneself, through inner spiritual struggles, in what can give understanding to those spiritual heights on which such people walk. Moses was inspired to his mission by the fact that he became, as it were, the disciple of such a mysterious figure—one who withdraws from the rest of humanity with his thoughts and is only a teacher and guide to humanity. I am well aware that what I am saying here is likely to be offensive to many people today. But it is something that should be immediately apparent to anyone who takes a deeper look at the historical development of humanity: that such mysteries and mysterious personalities exist.

[ 9 ] What Moses was to experience as a disciple of this great priest-sage is presented to us in such a way that, at the very place where he seeks out the priest—at a well (yet another symbol, a symbol of the source of wisdom)—he first meets the seven daughters of the priest-sage. Anyone who wishes to understand the deeper meaning behind such a description must, above all, remember that in all mythical representations, at all times, that which the soul can develop within itself in terms of higher insights and soul forces is always represented by the symbol of female figures—right down to Goethe’s words at the end of *Faust* about the “eternal feminine.” Thus, in the “seven daughters” of the priest Jethro, we recognize the seven human soul forces over which the wisdom of the priest-sage had dominion. One must bear in mind that in those ancient times, which were still thoroughly animated by the consciousness of ancient clairvoyance, different conceptions prevailed regarding what the human soul is with its individual powers. We can form a conception of this consciousness only if we start from the concepts we ourselves have today. Today we speak of the human soul and its faculties—thinking, feeling, and willing—in such a way—and it is correct to speak this way from the standpoint of intellectualistic consciousness—that we possess these faculties within ourselves, that they form, as it were, inclusions of the soul. The ancient human being, under the influence of clairvoyant gifts, thought differently. To begin with, they did not sense within their soul such a unified being, nor did they perceive in their thinking, feeling, and willing such powers that act from the center of the “I” and organize the soul as a unified whole. Rather, ancient people felt as if they were surrendered to the macrocosm and its individual forces, and they perceived the individual soul forces as connected to specific divine-spiritual beings. Just as we could imagine—though we do not—that our thinking is nourished and sustained by a different spiritual force from the macrocosm than our feeling and our willing, so that various currents, various spiritual forces from the macrocosm pour into our thinking, feeling, and willing, and that we are in relationship with them—so the ancient human being did not perceive the soul as a unified whole, but rather said to himself: What is within me is merely the soul’s stage, and it is the spiritual-divine forces from the universe that play out their lives upon this stage.

[ 10 ] There were seven such soul forces present in Moses that exerted their influence on the arena of soul life. If we wish to see how, in the development of human consciousness, all concepts became increasingly abstract and increasingly intellectual, we can look, for example, to Plato, whose ideas are living beings that exist in a way that, for modern humans, only material things do. And each individual soul force has something that exerts an influence on the stage of the entire soul. But more and more, the soul’s faculties are becoming abstract concepts, and the unity of the “I” is increasingly asserting itself. We can—as strange as it may sound—recognize in an abstract form what the seven daughters of the Midianite priest-wise man are meant to symbolize—namely, the seven living spiritual powers that are to act on the stage of the soul—even in the medieval seven liberal arts; the way in which the seven liberal arts emerge from the human soul is the final abstract echo of the awareness that seven faculties are expressed within the soul, and that these seven faculties have the soul as their very stage.

[ 11 ] When we take this into account, we are led to the realization that Moses, with his soul, stood before the totality of the seven human soul forces, but that his primary task was to instill one of these forces completely, as an impulse for human development. He was able to do this because the particular hereditary disposition and temperament of his people were such that they took a special interest in this soul force, whose effects extend all the way down to us. This was the soul force that unites the other soul forces—previously conceived as separate—into a unified inner soul life, into an “I” life. That is why the story is told: One of Jethro’s daughters marries Moses. This means that one of the soul forces became particularly active in his soul—so active, in fact, that under his impulse it became, for a long period of human development, the dominant soul force that unites the others into a unified “I”-soul.

[ 12 ] In this day and age, one must present such descriptions with the utmost caution. For our age, so to speak, lacks the proper capacity to recognize that those descriptions, which appear to be external, physical experiences, are presented precisely to show that, during the period being described, the soul in question is undergoing an inner development—that is, is being specifically called upon to fulfill its mission. Thus we see what the ancient Egyptians lacked: this inspiration of Moses through the human “I”-force—the center of the human soul’s powers—is precisely what is decisive for him. We may therefore say: It was part of the mission of the ancient Egyptian people to establish a culture rooted in the mission of ancient clairvoyance. Everything that Egyptian culture has bequeathed to us as its finest achievements still sprang from the special kind of clairvoyant powers possessed by the Egyptian priest-sages and the leaders of the Egyptian people. But the “world clock,” so to speak, had run out for this mission, and humanity was to be called upon to develop the soul power that would replace the ancient, dull clairvoyance for a long period of human development. Self-consciousness, intellectuality, rationalism, reason, and intellect—all directed toward the external sensory world—were to be instilled in humanity in place of the old clairvoyance. However, I have also already mentioned that in the future these two types will merge: clairvoyant power with intellectual consciousness, so that humanity is moving toward a future in which an intellectuality interwoven with clairvoyant power will be commonplace for people.

[ 13 ] What we therefore regard today as the most important element of cultural life received its initial impulse from Moses; hence the sense that the impulse of Moses continues to work within the power of our own souls. Intellectual thinking—the workings of the mind and reason—was what was given to Moses. But it was given to him in a very special way. For everything that is to appear later in its own distinctive form must first be present in the distinctive form of ancient times. Here, then, a wondrous fact lies spread out before us. What later humanity owes to Moses is the power to develop reason and intellect—to think intellectually about the world from a place of ego-consciousness in a fully awake state, and to gain intellectual insight into the world. Moses had to be endowed with the awareness of intellectuality in such a way that, within him, intellectual consciousness still shone forth in the manner of the ancient clairvoyants. This means, then, that although Moses possessed the first intellectual impulse, in his case it was still a form of clairvoyance. For him, it was the first of the new impulses and the last of the old ones. What later humanity possessed outside of clairvoyance, he possessed within it. The knowledge accessible to pure reason and intellect was given to him when his soul was brought into clairvoyant states through the influence he had received from the Midianite priest—for example, during the experience before the “burning bush,” which blazed with such fire that it did not burn up. There, the World Spirit revealed itself to Moses in a new way, in a manner in which it had been unable to reveal itself to the clairvoyant perception of the Egyptians.

[ 14 ] Anyone familiar with the facts knows how, in the course of development, the human soul comes to perceive external objects as gradually changing, so that they appear interwoven in the background with the archetypes from which they sprang. And the image that is presented to us so magnificently in the Bible as the “burning bush” is recognized by everyone who ascends to spiritual knowledge as something through which one can glimpse into a spiritual world. Thus we understand how what had to be given to Moses in a clairvoyant manner must have been a new awareness of the World Spirit that interweaves and permeates the world. While earlier peoples viewed the majority of world forces in such a way that these forces act upon the human soul so that the individual soul forces represent not a unity but a multiplicity, and the human soul is merely their stage—Moses was now to recognize a World Spirit that does not reveal itself merely through a single soul force, that does not stand alongside spirits of equal value that act upon other soul forces; but rather, Moses was to recognize that world spirit which can reveal itself only in the deepest, most sacred center of soul life, which finds its full expression only in the “I” itself, where the human soul becomes conscious of its center. When the human soul feels that, in the “I,” it stands within the weaving and life of the spiritual just as the peoples once felt that they stood with their very being within the spiritual forces of the world, then the soul feels what first revealed itself to Moses through clairvoyant perception and what should be regarded as the foundation of the world, from which the peoples received the impulse through Moses, and which can be grasped by the intellect—which synthesizes the phenomena of the world—as that which underlies the world as a unity. When a person today looks at the center of their soul life, this center itself is still something that must appear to them as rather poor in content, even though it is the most powerful thing a person can experience. Highly gifted individuals in particular have felt drawn to this center of their soul life in the course of their lives; for example, Jean Paul, who recounts in his autobiography: “I will never forget the experience within me—which I have never told anyone—of standing at the birth of my self-consciousness, the place and time of which I can specify. One morning, as a very young child, I was standing by the front door, looking to the left toward the woodpile, when suddenly the inner realization ‘I am an “I”’ struck me like a bolt of lightning from the sky and has remained shining ever since: there, for the first time and forever, my “I” had seen itself. It is difficult to imagine any distortions of memory here, since no external narrative could have added anything to an event that occurred solely in the veiled Holy of Holies of the human soul—an event whose novelty alone was preserved by such ordinary, incidental circumstances.” — What the “veiled Holy of Holies” is may indeed appear to a person as the strongest, the most powerful aspect of the life of the soul, but one cannot become as conscious of it as of the manifold other experiences of the soul: it is not as rich. When a person withdraws to this center, they feel that in the wondrous words “I am”—powerful and intense, yet with little literal meaning—this center of their inner life resounds.

[ 15 ] Even into this veiled Holy of Holies, the World Spirit—which became clear to Moses as the unified World Spirit—is at work. No wonder, then, that when this World Spirit revealed itself to him, Moses said to himself: If I am given the task of standing before the people to inaugurate a culture founded on self-consciousness, who will believe me? In whose name shall I establish my mission? He received this answer: “You shall say: I am the I AM!” — That is to say: You cannot express the name of that Being who makes Himself known in the innermost Holy of Holies of the human being in any other way than with the word that denotes self-existence! Thus, in the vision of the burning bush, Moses beheld the nature of Yahweh or Jehovah, and we understand that at the moment when the name of Yahweh dawned upon Moses as “I Am,” a new current, a new element entered into the development of humanity—that the old Egyptian culture was to be superseded, a culture through which Moses had only to prepare his soul to understand what he was to encounter in life as the highest reality.

[ 16 ] Then we have Moses’s conversation with Pharaoh. We can easily see that Moses and Pharaoh are at odds with one another and cannot understand each other. The descriptions are intended to show that everything Moses has to say from a completely transformed human consciousness must remain incomprehensible to Pharaoh, in whom only the lingering effects of the ancient clairvoyant Egyptian culture can survive. This is vividly illustrated to us by the way clairvoyant texts speak. For Moses speaks a new language, expressing what he has to say in words that spring from the “I”-consciousness of the human soul—words that were bound to remain entirely incomprehensible to Pharaoh, who could only think in terms of the old clairvoyant consciousness. Thus, up until that pivotal moment in world history, the entire Egyptian people had been entrusted with a mission that they could fulfill on the basis of the old clairvoyant consciousness. But the time for that had run out. If the Egyptian people continued to live, they did so with the national characteristics, temperament, and so on that they had possessed before, but they did not find the passage out of the abyss that had opened up between the old era and the new one—the one for which the Hebrew people in particular were destined. It was Moses who found this passage from the old era into the new. Therefore, the commemoration of what Moses had achieved with his people—the Passover—was celebrated as a remembrance of the transition from the old to the new era. For this Passover was meant to remind people that, through Moses, the possibility existed to bridge the chasm between the old and the new eras. The Egyptians could not bridge this chasm; instead, they remained stagnant as a people while time passed them by. This is how we must understand Moses’ relationship to the Egyptians and to his own people.

[ 17 ] What Moses had to give to his own people was entirely rooted in the nature of the ancient Hebrew people. What was it? The ancient clairvoyance was to be separated from intellectual, rational consciousness. Now, in the preceding lectures, it has been shown how clairvoyant consciousness is not bound to the outer physical body, how it unfolds freely precisely when the human being, through soul exercises, becomes free in the life of the soul from the outer physical instrument. Intellectual consciousness, however, has as its very instrument and tool the human organism, as it is bound to the brain and the blood. What formerly hovered, as it were, above the physical organization and found its further development beyond that organization through the relationship between teacher and student had to become established as bound to a physical organization—that is, bound to what flowed on through the blood of the people from generation to generation. Therefore, what Moses was to give—because it was the impulse toward an intellectual culture—could only be given to a people who strictly upheld the continued flow of blood through the generations. The essence of the new culture was initially bound to this instrument. It had to unfold in such a way that it did not merely manifest itself in the spiritual realm, but rather in such a way that the people were drawn out from among the other people, within whose midst they had undergone their preparation, and then, entirely on their own, in a separate succession of generations and through a distinct flow of blood across the centuries, developed the external instrument that was to lay the foundation for intellectual culture for all time to come.

[ 18 ] This shows us how world history takes on meaning and how the spiritual is linked to the external, physical instrument of blood. We can see in the Bible how the author strives to show that the transition from the ancient culture of the Egyptians to the culture of Moses should be portrayed in its world-historical significance—for example, in the crossing of the Red Sea. Behind the Israelites’ crossing of the sea and the drowning of the Egyptians lies a wondrous fact concerning the development of humanity. This fact becomes clear to us only when we understand these events.

[ 19 ] Here we see, in the Egyptian people, the truth of what, in terms of the soul’s powers, is necessarily connected to what is called clairvoyant culture. Based on what has been presented so far in these lectures, you will not assume that I intend to bring human beings closer to the animal nature. But what needs to be clarified here is best understood if we take the animal organism as our starting point. We must realize that the entire animal realm of imagination and the animal soul life are dreamlike and dull in comparison to the human soul life—particularly in comparison to the intellectual soul life. Although ancient human clairvoyance must by no means be equated with animal mental life—and differs radically from it—we can nevertheless discern in animal mental life, in the animal’s instinctual life, a trait that ancient human mental life also possessed. Even if the descriptions in question are often exaggerated, there is nevertheless some truth underlying the fact that, where earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and so on occur, animals take to their heels and flee days in advance. While humans, who understand everything through their intellect, remain where they are, the animals are stirred into action. Thus we see that the animal’s rudimentary instinctual life is interwoven with the life of nature, and we see how it works. The descriptions are often exaggerated. But anyone familiar with spiritual science knows that animal nature is so deeply interwoven with the entire surrounding natural world that we can speak, in a sense, of an “knowledge” that governs the animal’s life through its elemental forces—a knowledge that humans lack because they have developed their higher intellect, which enables them to synthesize things through concepts but has also torn them away from this interwoven connection with nature itself.

[ 20 ] Now, when considering ancient clairvoyance, we must imagine such an instinctive interweaving of human beings with the facts of nature—an instinctive recognition that told people: This and that is happening; this or that is in the making—just as it is with people who, through the efforts of the soul, elevate themselves to a higher level of knowledge; when their entire disposition is favorable to this, such an insight into the facts of nature becomes possible—an insight for which one cannot give any “reasons.” Anyone who works on their soul and, drawing from the soul’s inner configuration, is able to say things that intellectual consciousness cannot express, feels uneasy when people everywhere ask: Why is that so? Prove to me what you have to say! — They fail to realize that such knowledge takes entirely different paths than the knowledge derived from rational logic. It is quite fitting that Goethe, when he looked out the window, could often predict for hours in advance what the weather would be like. If we imagine that this ability was present in the people of antiquity—that by entering the spiritual world they had the opportunity to be interwoven with nature and its phenomena in a way entirely different from how people today are connected through their science—then we will grasp one of the fundamental aspects of ancient clairvoyance as applied to everyday life. Ancient humanity had no meteorological agencies or reports from which the weather could be predicted via newspapers and the like, but they had an intuition; they guided themselves by their observations, which vividly revealed to them what was to come. This was particularly true to a high degree among the ancient Egyptians, even though they lacked our analytical knowledge and science; they knew how to conduct themselves in a way that corresponded to their living connection with the entire environment. But precisely because the world-age for Egyptian culture had come to an end, this ability of the Egyptians had fallen into disuse more and more, and they were less and less able to attune themselves to the facts of nature; they no longer knew how to determine from the constellations of the outer elements how they should conduct themselves. For human beings were to learn to penetrate the constellations of the external elements with their intellect, and Moses was to provide the impetus for this from within clairvoyant consciousness.

[ 21 ] There we see Moses standing with his people before the Red Sea. Through a form of knowledge similar to our own—which, in his case, is further enhanced by clairvoyance—he recognizes how, through natural processes—specifically, a unique combination of the east wind and the ebb and flow of the sea—there is a possibility of leading his people through the sea at the right moment. To this end, the following fact is described and shown to us: Moses stands there as the founder of the new, intellectualized worldview, one that by no means seems to have run its course, and which will teach humanity once again to bring the practice of life into harmony with natural conditions, just as Moses did. The Egyptians were a people whose time had run out; they could no longer know what would happen in the future. Their ancient natural instincts had fallen into disuse. Thus, they stood in the same place as in ancient times. But in ancient times they would have said to themselves: “We can no longer cross over now!”—This old, instinctive sense of nature had fallen into decadence among them, and they were unable to adapt to the new, intellectual consciousness. Therefore, they stood before the Red Sea, at a loss and misled by their consciousness, which no longer served as a guide, and thus fell into misfortune. Thus we see how the new element of Moses stands in sharp contrast to the old element; we see the old clairvoyance so decayed that it must inevitably go astray and, by no longer fitting into the new age, must bring about its own downfall. If, through such seemingly external descriptions, we look beyond to what the narrator actually intends to say, we find in these accounts the major turning points of human development characterized, and we come to understand that it is by no means easy to discern the significance of such personalities—such as Moses, for example—from the entire peculiar presentation of the ancient scriptures. The fact that Moses was entirely grounded in an ancient form of clairvoyance—that in his case the new intellectual culture was still clairvoyant—is also shown to us later on, when the decision is to be made as to whether he is truly to lead his people across to Palestine. This people was, after all, to be led across as the one that, through its entire bloodline, was to establish the intellectual culture. What Moses possessed as clairvoyance could provide the impulse, but it could not itself be this culture. For this culture was not meant to be clairvoyant; it was meant to emerge precisely as something new in contrast to the old clairvoyance. Therefore, we see how Moses felt called to lead his people up to a certain point, but could not himself lead them into the new land. He was to leave that to those who are called to the new culture. This is clearly stated to us in the Bible. While Moses is the herald of the God who reveals Himself down into the very essence of the “I,” we are also given to understand that Moses is only capable of perceiving the eloquence of this world spirit through his clairvoyant gaze. And when he finds himself in a situation where—left to his own devices—he is supposed to help his people, he flees to the tent, where he might once again behold his God through clairvoyance. But there he is told: “Because you were unable to carry forward what was given to you in clairvoyant thought, another must lead your people forward.” — This reveals something that also makes him appear to us as if in a radiance, suggesting that no one in Israel has since appeared as a prophet with such clairvoyance. This implies that he was the last to possess such clairvoyance, and that the new culture—devoid of clairvoyance, based solely on tradition and mere intellectuality among the respective peoples—was to continue to take effect, so that the “I,” of which humanity had now become conscious on this new cultural foundation, could assimilate a new element within itself.

[ 22 ] Through Moses’ mission, humanity had been guided to the point where it could recognize that the World Spirit, which permeates and animates the world, makes itself felt most clearly and most humanly in the “I Am,” at the innermost center of the human soul; yet the “I Am” must first be filled with a substance capable of encompassing the world once more, so that the humble phrase “I Am” may be endowed with the richest meaning. For this, however, another mission was necessary—the mission that could then be expressed in Paul’s significant words: “Not I—but Christ in me!” Moses had led humanity up to the establishment of a culture of the “I.” This culture of the “I” was now to take root as a gift from above, as a national culture, as a vessel intended to receive new spiritual content. The “I” was first to develop within the bosom of the ancient Hebrew people, and into this vessel was to flow that which could spring from a truly genuine understanding of the Palestinian events of the Mystery of Golgotha. There the “I” was to receive new content once more—content that was now itself drawn from the spiritual world. We can best discern what new elements were poured into the “I” from the preparatory human development of the ancient Hebrew people by bringing to mind the wondrous tragedy of the Book of Job—a tragedy that can be understood only in light of the unique character of the ancient Hebrew people.

[ 23 ] We are told that Job—even though, as a righteous man, he remains faithful to his God and is aware that everything he has comes from his God — suffers misfortune upon misfortune in his possessions, his family, and his very person, so that there is something in the revelations of his God that could lead him astray, that indeed the spirit of the world of which we have just spoken is running rampant within the human ego. It goes so far that Job’s wife cannot understand why her husband still clings to his God, and therefore says to him those fateful words, which are of incomparable significance: “Renounce your God—and die!” What, then, does this phrase—“Renounce your God and die”—mean in the context of this profound allegorical tragedy? Nothing other than this: If the God who is supposed to be the source of your life treats you this way, then renounce Him. But it is certain that death is the fate of those who renounce God, so that whoever renounces God cuts himself off from the living course of existence. Job’s friends cannot comprehend that he has committed no sin, since the consequences ought to be borne by the righteous man himself. Indeed, the author himself can make us understand that worldly justice nevertheless prevails only by showing that Job—deeply bowed down and cast into misery—nevertheless receives compensation in the physical world for everything he has lost.

[ 24 ] Thus, the consciousness of Moses already resonates in the profound allegory of the Book of Job, so that we see: Human beings are guided to their “I.” But at the very moment when he is liable to err—when the “I” can play out its role in the physical realm—he loses—or is liable to lose—the awareness of his connection to the source of life. But the point is not merely that there should be balance in the physical world; rather, that even amid all decline into the misery of the physical, into the suffering and pain of the physical, human beings can triumph over all that is physical—not only because the primordial source of all that extends in time and space shines into their “I,” but also because the power of the eternal can be received into their “I.” — that human beings might learn to understand this was the purpose of the Christ impulse. Thus, Paul’s words, “Not I—but Christ in me,” meant: Through Moses, people were led to the point where they understood that everything the world experiences and weaves through in space and time finds its deepest expression in the human “I.” One comprehends the world when one grasps it in its unity as emerging from such a self. But if you wish to receive the Eternal into the self, you must recognize not merely the synthesis of the temporal, not merely the Yahweh-unity behind all that is spread out in space and time, but the Christ-source given concentrically behind all unity itself!

[ 25 ] Thus we see the figure of Moses as the true precursor to Christianity; we see how, through Moses, the vessel, as it were, has been implanted into human self-consciousness—a vessel that is now to be filled throughout all future human development by the eternal spiritual substance, that is—understood in the proper sense—by the Christ-essence. Thus we understand how Moses is placed within the course of human development. It is precisely through such a perspective that all observation of history gains its deepest meaning. The fact that at this or that point in time these or those personalities appear, and that through them flow those eternal sources for humanity that propel humanity forward in its development, creates within us a sense of the genuine connection between the individual and the entire development of humanity—a connection to which attention was already drawn in the previous lecture on Buddha.

[ 26 ] When we survey the development of humanity in this way, we say to ourselves: We come to recognize that we are at the very heart of this living process of development. We come to recognize how, so to speak, the world spirits intended something through our existence, and how what they intended is coming to light more and more in life. Indeed, it is precisely the contemplation of the greatest minds and the greatest events in world development and human history that endows us with that sense of strength, that confidence in our souls, and that certainty of hope—which alone enables us to stand at the very heart of humanity’s destiny—as we survey world history in this way and once again feel the beauty of Goethe’s words: that “the best,” that history can produce within us, is “enthusiasm.” But this enthusiasm is not merely dead admiration; rather, it consists in our taking the seeds of the past into our souls and developing the seeds for the future into fruit. And the poet’s words come to life in a slightly altered form as we glean the truth from our contemplation of the greatest personalities and the greatest events:

Time is a blossoming field,
Humanity’s journey is one great living entity,
And everything is fruit, and everything is seed!