The Rudolf Steiner Archive

8. Zarathustra, His Teachings, and His Mission

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! In many respects, it is already extraordinarily difficult today to gain a certain understanding of [the lives and works of] figures from the past, even one that is not too far behind us. But the difficulties become particularly great when we seek to shed light on the depths of the soul and the mode of action of those individualities of humanity who, in the very, very distant past—one might say in prehistoric times—contributed to culture and human development through their work. And such a figure, such an individuality, is to appear before our spiritual gaze today in the often-mentioned figure of the ancient Persian founder of religion and worldview, Zarathustra, or, as he is also called, Zoroaster.

[ 2 ] It is already relatively difficult, I said, for us today to truly and objectively put ourselves in the shoes of ways of thinking and feeling that are not so far behind us. Today, in particular, there is an extraordinarily strong tendency to believe—once one thinks one has grasped something and regards one’s understanding as the truth—that it is, in a certain sense, the sole truth that leads to salvation, and that everything else is simply false, or, in essence, nonsense. The fact that truth and human knowledge themselves are in a state of development, that every epoch is compelled to view the mysteries of the world in its own way and to solve them to a certain extent, and that each epoch must, so to speak, speak a different language regarding these mysteries—there is little understanding of this today. We can only hope that the descendants of today’s human race will not treat this era the way we so easily treat our ancestors.

[ 3 ] Who among us today would not, from the heights of his stern—let us say, scientific—throne, decree that a mind like Paracelsus’s, who lived not so long ago, was nonetheless steeped in the prejudices of a long-gone era, with all manner of judgments that are, of course, long since outdated today? We do not even consider—as we naturally ought to—that what we today regard as seemingly irrefutable in our science will most certainly, once as much time has passed after us as has elapsed between Paracelsus and us, be just as corrected and, to a certain extent, transformed as Paracelsus’s views have been transformed by ours. One can only hope that future generations will be more just than we are, that they will know that truth is in a state of development, and that, fundamentally, every way of expressing truth is merely a form of expression for what we might call primordial truth or primordial wisdom. In short, what we humans call truth is in a state of constant transformation, and therefore we must view the human quest for truth solely as a process in the making. If we allow ourselves to be imbued with such a perspective and ask ourselves: How did our ancestors think? What about them can still make a profound impression on our souls today? — then we will also be able to look back with a certain degree of open-mindedness upon such spirits as the great, radiant Zarathustra.

[ 4 ] However, people have never really agreed on the era in which Zarathustra lived. Today, there are even scholars who claim that Zarathustra probably lived only six centuries before our era; other scholars point to a period of 1,000 years before our era, and still others go back even further. What spiritual science has to say based on its research will be mentioned here only briefly for now, for our concern is less with merely establishing historical facts than with shedding light on the soul of this great individual. Therefore, it should only be briefly mentioned that spiritual science must indeed go back at least five millennia before our era—even into the sixth millennium—if it is to encounter, with its gaze turned backward, this radiant figure of Zarathustra.

[ 5 ] Well, even if one might argue about the era in which Zarathustra lived—one really shouldn’t argue about it, for the course of human cultural development speaks all too clearly on this point, because what is associated with the name of Zarathustra and what emerged from him as a cultural movement has exerted the deepest, most significant, and indeed extraordinarily long-lasting influence on human progress. If, however, we wish to look into the soul of Zarathustra, if we wish to recognize the mission that this unique individual played in the progress of humanity, then we must try to grasp Zarathustra’s task on a grander scale; then we must realize that we can only if we assign him a task of the very highest order in human development since the great Atlantean catastrophe, as spiritual science views it. Much is said about this catastrophe; it is recounted in the religious texts and traditions of all the peoples of the earth—the Christian tradition speaks of it as the Great Flood.

[ 6 ] We cannot go into detail now about the time when this catastrophe swept across our Earth; but even the external, geological science is today increasingly compelled to acknowledge that such a great catastrophe once [took place] and that, as a result of this catastrophe, the face of the Earth was profoundly altered. If spiritual science, through its research, is compelled to recognize that where the Atlantic Ocean lies today there was once a continent on which human beings lived at a time when the present-day continents of Asia, Africa, Europe were still largely submerged, then it may be said that even the natural sciences today are not far from admitting that the fauna and flora in the western regions of Europe and the eastern regions of America do, after all, indicate that there was once land between western Europe and eastern America, which became the seabed as a result of subsidence during that great catastrophe. And the fact that our present-day continents have repeatedly risen and subsided has already become a commonly accepted truth even in geological circles.

[ 7 ] For the spiritual sciences, such great catastrophes and such changes in the face of the Earth are connected with significant processes within the development of humanity. Today I can only hint at what I have already explained in greater detail to the audiences of my lectures on earlier occasions. I can only hint that the people who lived on the Atlantic continent during that epoch possessed a state of mind of a completely different kind than that of today’s people, who are the descendants of those ancient Atlanteans. If we wish to briefly describe the kind of culture that existed in that primeval era of humanity, we can, in a certain sense—if we do not misuse the term—call it a “clairvoyant culture.” However, the word “clairvoyant” must not be misused in the sense in which it is very, very frequently misused today. What does this mean to us—“clairvoyant culture”?

[ 8 ] Yes, if one wishes to speak from the standpoint of spiritual science, then one must truly believe in human evolution; one must be genuinely convinced of this human evolution; one must not merely be fascinated by the kind of evolution that mainstream Darwinists speak of today. We look back at an earlier humanity that possessed a completely different kind of cognitive and spiritual capacity. We can briefly form a picture of this ancient state of the soul by recalling what has remained from that time as a kind of inherited remnant in the dream consciousness, where a person sees echoes of daily life in dream images. These dream images no longer have any reality for us today; they are echoes of what was experienced during the day—various pictorial representations of this or that event. Dream consciousness, however, is like an ancient legacy, like a faded remnant of a prehistoric human consciousness, when people did not perceive and recognize their environment as directly as modern humans do, who perceive everything solely through their senses and through the intellect, which is bound to the brain. People from that time perceived what provided them with explanations and solutions to mysteries in states of consciousness that would seem abnormal by today’s standards—states of consciousness that lie right in the middle between our present-day waking and sleeping states. They saw with a kind of pictorial consciousness, but these images were not phantasms like our dream images; rather, they stood in a clear relationship to realities. Back then, people did not speculate about the mysteries of the world in terms of concepts and ideas; rather, they experienced states—states that seem abnormal by today’s standards—in which images emerged that were not dream images, but rather depicted the fundamental foundations of existence.

[ 9 ] And this humanity, which possessed such a consciousness, also had leaders and teachers who had raised this consciousness to a very special height and who—being clairvoyant—gained a particularly deep insight into the spiritual foundations of existence. I can only mention this briefly today as an introduction. Those teachers of that time, who perceived the spiritual world through clairvoyance, related to humanity in much the same way as those do today who, in their normal state of consciousness, arrive at brilliant insights, ideas, and concepts. Just as these individuals relate to humanity as a whole, so too did the great clairvoyants of old, fundamentally speaking, because they had an understanding of looking into the spiritual world, because they possessed natural clairvoyance. The development of humanity begins with the fact that humanity truly originated from spiritual sources. Our present age no longer has much awareness of this; this awareness [of humanity’s spiritual origin] has in fact been lost, even though in the first centuries of the Christian era there was still a clear awareness of an ancient, inherited wisdom that had come from the forefathers of humanity—of whom nothing remained but traditions derived from that ancient clairvoyant insight into the spiritual world. Plato, for example, speaks of the people of the realm of Cronus, of whom he says that they were able to look into the spiritual world and that they were the guardians of primordial wisdom. Plato was aware that much of that wisdom had simply been passed down from generation to generation. And Plato, the philosopher who had gone far in his own research, was nonetheless aware that this wisdom of the forefathers could penetrate deeper into the very foundations of the world than anything he himself, using ordinary human faculties, could impart to his students. We also find the greatest respect for this primordial wisdom among other thinkers. We must seek this primordial wisdom in its original form prior to the Atlantean catastrophe described earlier.

[ 10 ] The evolution of humanity consists in the fact that in this post-Atlantean epoch in which we live today, humanity has gradually, so to speak, seen this primal wisdom fade away, losing the old, elemental clairvoyance because it was meant to develop the ability to judge things through external, sensory perceptions and to penetrate the mysteries—as far as possible—with the intellect bound to the brain. Short-sighted people today will, of course, believe that present-day knowledge constitutes the entirety of wisdom, that no other wisdom can possibly exist. But anyone who views human development from a broad perspective knows that even the knowledge bound to the intellect—which humanity had to attain during its age of man (the preceding era being the age of childhood)—belongs only to a passing epoch and is merely a transitional stage in human development.

[ 11 ] They know that humanity will once again rise to a future state of clairvoyance and that they will carry with them what they have attained through their understanding of the physical world. This kind of knowledge is a necessary stepping stone. And so we can say: What we today, as ordinary human beings, call our knowledge—and even more so, what we possess under the influence of this knowledge in terms of moral and aesthetic ideals and moral judgments about the world—all of this has only recently been acquired. Everything we have recognized as the true characteristics of modern humanity arises from the foundation of the ancient clairvoyance that humanity lost for a time. This modern form of knowledge, however, is so characteristic of our present epoch that we must say: The post-Atlantean era—the era in which the Earth has its present physiognomy—is destined to develop precisely this kind of thinking and feeling and, so to speak, to close the door to all clairvoyance for the normal human condition, so that human beings are compelled to fix their gaze on the sensory-real in order to pass through this epoch as well in their development of knowledge.

[ 12 ] There were now two cultural currents in this post-Atlantean epoch that were, in a sense, tasked with guiding humanity from the wisdom of the forefathers to the wisdom of the intellect and reason, as I have just described. There were two currents. And curiously enough, the originators of these two currents are quite close to one another, both geographically and in the context of world history. We must look for one of the main currents of the post-Atlantean era in the settlements that formed after the Atlantean catastrophe in India, that venerable land of culture. We must look for the other main current to the north of it, in that region that was fertilized by the great, radiant spirit of Zarathustra. And although these two currents of human spiritual development are so close to one another, although they appear so similar to the outside observer—to the point that sometimes the words for this or that in the older languages of the two cultural currents are the same—we must nevertheless, when we look more deeply into these matters, see in these two currents of post-Atlantean cultures entirely opposite ways of establishing our present-day culture.

[ 13 ] You see, when the spiritual researcher looks back on that ancient culture of venerable India, which can now be perceived only with the spiritual eyes—for what is contained in the great, wondrous Vedas is, after all, merely a later echo of the primordial wisdom of the Indians— then we are led back to something that preceded the entire Vedic culture and is of such sublimity that anyone with a sense for the transformation and development of human spiritual life stands before this ancient, sacred culture of India with the deepest reverence. And there is some truth to what is usually regarded merely as legend: that this ancient Indian culture traces its origins to a line of great sages, the seven Rishis of ancient India. If we examine this ancient Indian culture from the perspective of spiritual science—how does it then appear to us?

[ 14 ] We cannot describe this more precisely than by saying: It appears to us as a kind of ancient genetic heritage that may have been carried over from the wisdom that existed among humanity before the Atlantean catastrophe. We need only imagine the nature of the transmission of an ancient body of world wisdom in the correct way. Just as it still existed as primordial world wisdom among the Atlantean people, this wisdom—based on clairvoyance—could naturally not be directly transferred to a humanity whose soul constitutions were entirely different. Just as a tradition must be adapted to a new capacity of the soul, so was the ancient wisdom incorporated into Indian culture. In essence, only a few people were still able to develop within their souls something that could point toward that realm which, in the ancient era of humanity, had been beheld through living clairvoyance beyond the sensory world. Anyone who, through living inner life, wished to rise to the kind of vision that had once been, in a certain sense, normal for humanity, had to become what is called an initiate. He had to develop certain soul capacities that are not normally present; he had to undergo certain exercises, a certain training of the soul, in order to develop a faculty that otherwise lay dormant within his soul. Then he became capable of knowing through his own observation what the great teachers of India, the seven Rishis, had to proclaim. To what, then, was he led? He was, as it were, led back to an earlier stage of development; he became capable of perceiving something that humanity could no longer perceive in its normal state, but which it had once been able to perceive.

[ 15 ] This is essentially how this ancient, pre-Vedic Indian culture—which is later echoed in the Vedas—should be understood. This is also the source of that underlying mood in which, when speaking of this ancient, sacred Indian culture, there is a sense of wistful retrospect, as if to say: There was a time when people could look into the spiritual world, when the origin of humanity lay open. That time is gone. The senses now have only the capacity to perceive external, physical reality. And only by developing a special faculty can one transport oneself back to that ancient time; then one can once again perceive the spiritual, which is veiled by humanity’s sensory faculties of cognition, by the intellect bound to the brain. — Such were the feelings of those who, within this worldview of the ancient Indian, lived with the sense that humanity had been cast out of the perception of its spiritual origin and yearned for that origin. — Thus the ancient Indian believed that truth lay only beyond what humanity could now perceive. He believed that spreading over everything humanity could now perceive was the great illusion, “maha aja,” the great delusion, “maya,” the great non-being. And beyond that lay the true being that human beings had once perceived.

[ 16 ] A worldview such as that of the pre-Vedic Indians cannot be understood by merely focusing on what appears to be dogma, but only by putting oneself in the shoes of those people and imagining how they felt at that time—how they felt cast out of their spiritual homeland into a world of Maya, illusion, and how they longed, from this external, sensory-physical reality, for that ancient, primordial world. And it is wonderfully moving—and, in the highest sense, deeply stirring—to put oneself in the place of this ancient Indian soul with its pessimism, which is not as frivolous as it sometimes appears today, but is rather a heroic pessimism that refuses to remain stuck in this great delusion and merely lament it, but instead declares: “The sensory world is simply not reality; rather, reality is found when one turns away from this sensory world and journeys back in one’s soul to earlier epochs.”

[ 17 ] What, then, does one actually find when one goes back to what people in the past were able to perceive in the spirit of the ancient Indians? I have already pointed out that all spiritual science leads us to the fact that the soul, which now lives within us between birth and death, has lived on Earth many times before and will live here many times again. Spiritual science thus leads us to the realization of repeated earthly lives, so that when we look back on past times, we do not, so to speak, find other souls, but our own souls—that is, ourselves in earlier incarnations. And the soul of such an ancient Indian could say to itself: Just as I now live between birth and death, I am bound to illusion. I am now more entangled in the body of the senses than I was in earlier lives, for example, when I experienced primordial wisdom firsthand.” — Essentially, such a member of ancient Indian culture looked back upon his own earlier states of soul. His soul used to live in such a way that it could look into the spiritual world itself. It has descended into the world of the senses and can no longer look into the spiritual world. When a follower of the ancient Indian tradition wished to regain that earlier perspective, he essentially ascended to his own earlier incarnation; he penetrated completely into his own being. This is roughly how we can characterize the spirit of ancient India.

[ 18 ] In a certain sense, the cultural influence brought about by Zarathustra in the north of ancient India—in Bactria, Media, and Persia—represented the exact opposite. If we can call ancient Indian wisdom a kind of genetic heritage from ancient times—one that also awakened a longing for those ancient times—then we must say: What Zarathustra gave to humanity, what he imprinted on human development, points just as strongly toward the future as ancient Indian teachings point toward primordial wisdom. There is a remarkable contrast between the teachings of Zarathustra and the ancient Indian teachings. If we allow not dogmas, not doctrines—which are actually of little consequence for human development—but rather moods and feelings to come before our souls, then we can say: The mood of the ancient Indian worldview just characterized is a mood of redemption: Out of this body, which can no longer perceive the truth, and into the former perception! That was the mood of the ancient Indian: to be liberated from a body that is dependent on Maya. Therefore, in the best sense of the word, everything that has emanated from ancient Indian culture, right up to Buddhism, is a kind of religion of salvation.

[ 19 ] In Zarathustra’s worldview, what first emerges is not a religion of salvation or a worldview of salvation, but rather a worldview of resurrection, a worldview of reawakening. And in this respect, this teaching up there in the North is the exact opposite of the teaching that emerged in the South. Zarathustra was to be the first great leader of humanity to point out radically that it is a necessary step [for humanity] to develop the senses for what unfolds before them and to develop the spirit for what constitutes logical thinking and rational understanding. However, the great Zarathustra does not stop at the external sensory world in a materialistic way; rather, as an initiate, he says in his own way: Certainly, post-Atlantean humanity has the task of sharpening the senses for what presents itself to the eyes, the ears, and the entire sensory human being. Post-Atlantean humanity has the task of grasping the phenomena of the sensory world in accordance with intellect and reason; but as we grow together with the sensory world, we must become capable—by developing certain dormant powers in our soul—of not stopping at what the senses offer us, but of penetrating through the veil of the senses to what lies beyond this sensory world.

[ 20 ] This is the great contrast between the Indian worldview and the Zarathustrian worldview. The ancient Indian says: When I look upon the world as it unfolds in color, form, and all its sensory qualities, this is not the true world, but rather Maya. I can only reach the true world when I turn away from this outer sensory world; thus I turn my eyes, ears, and the rest of my senses away, and allow my intellect to come to a standstill insofar as it combines ideas and concepts. I pay absolutely no attention to this sensory world if I wish to attain truth; rather, I immerse myself in the human inner life, I empathize with this “I” that existed in earlier incarnations; I climb the ladder of incarnations to acquire the ability to behold the truth. — In a certain sense, the fundamental attitude of the ancient Indian was to flee from the sensory world and ascend to the truth through rigorous immersion in one’s own inner life—in that which can live within the soul when it turns away from its surroundings. It was a mystical immersion in the inner life of the soul, detached from the external world, a soul that wants nothing to do with “maha aja,” the great illusion: this is the tendency of ancient India.

[ 21 ] Joyful acceptance of the reshaping of our soul’s capacity, which the world reveals to us with all that it can offer to the open eye, all that it can offer to all outward human possibilities, and all that it can offer even to the mind bound to the sensory world—joyful acceptance of everything that spreads out like an outer tapestry of the senses before the senses: That was the mood of Zarathustra! When, as an Indian, one looked upon the carpet of vegetation, upon animals and clouds and air and mountains and stars, one said to oneself: All this is merely an external illusion. Dare to turn your gaze toward the One who breathed forth this great Maya, toward Brahma—whom, however, one can find only within oneself! — And Zarathustra speaks: Turn your gaze toward what spreads out before your external senses; use precisely that faculty of the soul that is right for the present age of humanity. But do not stop there; grow together with the sensory world, penetrate it, pass through it, and when you pass through this sensory world and do not allow yourselves to be held back, then you will find beyond it out there—beyond the stars, beyond the mineral, plant, and animal worlds—a spiritual world. Not only when you go within yourselves, but also when you go out into the sensory world—then, through your new abilities, you grow together with a spiritual world.

[ 22 ] What perhaps most beautifully expresses Zarathustra’s individuality—take this as a comparison, if you will—is when it is said of him: When he was born, the first miracle that occurred was that he smiled at his first glimpse of the world—the Zarathustra smile! One need only be able to put oneself in the position of understanding what is being said about such an individuality through such a truly enchantingly profound phrase. It suggests that an individuality has been born in Zarathustra who looks out upon the entire tapestry of the sensory world, yet penetrates it as if clairvoyant, seeing the spiritual realm beyond it, and which, in the awareness of humanity’s sublimity over all that spreads out around it, lets that joy radiate from within—a joy for which the smile of Zarathustra is a symbol.

[ 23 ] And so we see that a completely different spirit prevails in Zarathustrianism than in Indism. For this reason, Zoroastrianism was able to point to what the human soul is now to take in, what it is now to unite with itself. Because people look out upon the sensory world and, as a rule, no longer perceive in pictorial form what lies outside the sensory world, they take in something that they will carry over into the future and that will become a new component of the future human soul. Through this new component, it will experience a resurrection: In the future, the human soul will not merely be as it was in the past, but will have absorbed this new element, which can be acquired only in the sensory world. That is why this profound idea of resurrection lives in the teachings of Zarathustra. I cannot go into detail today to justify what I have to say by citing this or that passage; I merely wish to characterize it, and everyone can see from the available sources that what is to be presented today as a characterization of Zoroastrianism is well-founded.

[ 24 ] Zarathustra said to himself: After all, it is fundamentally incompatible with true human progress to extol only humanity’s ancient heritage as the highest good. Why, then, should people revert to earlier incarnations and the way they viewed the world back then? They should embrace what is offered to them as new; they should enrich and expand their worldview, giving it greater scope. — Thus Zarathustra knew how to say to people: Look to the future, embrace the new, gaze upon that spiritual world that presents itself to you when you perceive the sensory world as a transparent veil. — He knew how to say this to the world, and as he said it, he felt a deep reverence for what lies as a spiritual world behind the entire sensory world. He perceived it as the beginning of a new ascent [into the spiritual world], when we strive to penetrate this spiritual world through the sensory world, just as the ancient Indian sought to enter a spiritual world by descending into his own inner self. He felt, on the other hand, that humanity had in fact fallen from a higher, spiritual vantage point to a lower, physical one, and that this was accompanied by a longing to return [to the past], as expressed in its clinging to an ancient, inherited wisdom.

[ 25 ] Zarathustra was deeply convinced that something had been at work within the human soul, something that had dragged it down and entangled it in the world of the senses. But he was equally clear that this human soul could now be seized by something that would lead it upward toward the spiritual world. Zarathustra had this, so to speak, before his inner eye: the contrast between two powers, one of which leads humanity down into the sensory world and the other lifts it up into the spiritual world. This contrast confronts us when we hear Zarathustra speak of the one power that leads human beings upward—Ahura Mazdao, Auramazda, which later became Ormuzd—and set it in opposition to this other power that leads the human soul downward: Ahriman, Angra Mainyu.

[ 26 ] One must first perceive these two forces at work: one drawing the human soul down into the sensory world, the other guiding it upward into the spiritual world. But Zarathustra is, in the deepest sense, entirely consistent in that he does not accept the external, sensory world in the abstract and say that something spiritual lies behind it—as the pantheists say today—but rather he says: The individual forms of the sensory world differ; one appears one way, another another. One appears as powerfully radiant and influential upon the rest of the sensory world, the other as small and insignificant. — And everything that appears to our world, through its outward form, as a great and mighty power, Zarathustra perceived—in accordance with the worldview also embraced by his people—as a component of the sun—that sun which, year after year, conjures forth anew the plant life necessary for humanity, that sun without which there can be no life on earth.

[ 27 ] But even with regard to the sun—which he perceived as the most powerful force, the one exerting the greatest influence on the earth—Zarathustra was fully aware that it, too, belongs to the external sensory world; that is to say, what external science can fathom about this sun is merely the external expression of what lives behind it. And he felt this so deeply that he said: Just as plants are conjured forth on the earth in spring by the power of the sun’s rays, so too does that which stands as a spiritual power behind the sun—that which draws human beings out of the sensory world and can create within them the powers with which they can penetrate through the sensory world—live within it. Behind the sun, therefore, lives for Zarathustra that mighty spiritual being whom he has just called Ahura Mazdao, Ormuzd. But what is this?

[ 28 ] We can only begin to imagine the thoughts that lived within Zarathustra if we remember that in spiritual science, too, we do not regard the physical body of a human being—as that person stands before us—as the sole reality, but rather we tell ourselves: This physical body is the outer expression of his spiritual being. — And when the eye becomes clairvoyant, it sees this spiritual being, and we call what the clairvoyant eye perceives as the content of spirituality the human aura. We perceive the physical body as the expression of the human aura, the small aura. Now Zarathustra says: Just as the human being has his aura, just as he has his spiritual being behind the physical, so the sun is the outer body of a spiritual being, namely the great aura, the Great Ahura—the word always means the same thing—the solar aura. — There we have Ahura Mazdao, the great aura, in contrast to the small aura of the human being.

[ 29 ] Thus Zarathustra pointed people toward that which lives out there in the universe as a mighty spiritual being and has its body in the sun, just as a human being has a body that is permeated by a spiritual-soul being, the small aura. This is [also] Ormuzd; this is what can unleash all the forces within the human being that are directed toward the spiritual. For this spirit that lived within Zarathustra, Ahura Mazdao—this great aura—was a truth, a reality, as seen through his clairvoyant gaze. And he said to his disciples, whom he was able to initiate more intimately into his mysteries, something like the following: “Look, if you seek what impels and guides human beings toward the good, then you must lift your gaze to that which stands spiritually behind the sun. Human beings are, after all, called to rise higher and higher in the course of their earthly development. Ahura Mazdao will help them in this.” But, Zarathustra says, the spirit of the sun will not always be visible only up there behind the sun’s physical body; rather, it will grow ever larger and larger, will encompass the earth more and more, and will finally extend all the way down to the earth. The spirit of the sun will one day become a spirit active on earth.

[ 30 ] When we look back on [Zarathustra’s] time and the development of humanity, we see that the two are in harmony with one another. What Zarathustra saw behind the physical sun could, in his time, only be sought in the sun in outer space; but today it has expanded to such an extent that we find it within the Earth’s aura itself. And the event in which Ahura Mazdao, the great aura, descended to Earth—when we stand on the ground of true spiritual science—we see it in what took place through the Christ impulse, which unfolded on Earth in the events of Palestine.

[ 31 ] From the perspective of spiritual science, we can understand what Zarathustra once said to his disciples: I will speak; now come and listen to me, all of you who yearn for this from near and far—now I will speak, and never again shall he who, with evil intent, leads people astray with his tongue be able to poison the development of humanity. I will speak of what God has revealed to me in the world, of what He Himself reveals to me—He, the Great Ahura. And whoever does not wish to hear my words as I mean them will suffer greatly when the cycles of Earth’s evolution draw toward their completion. — When Zarathustra spoke thus of the Spirit of the Sun, we who stand on the ground of modern spiritual science say: He was speaking of the very same Spirit who, in his time, could be found only in the vast expanse of the heavens; and today, when we study the mystery of the origin of Christianity in its full truth—how it emerged from the Mosaic religion—we find him. Ahura Mazdao has, as it were, descended from the sun, having evolved all the way into the Christian era, and the Christians call him the Christ. And the one who intervenes in the entire course of world history to halt the progress of human development—which is brought about by the great power of Ahura Mazdao—is Ahriman.

[ 32 ] Zarathustra did not view the development of the world and humanity in such a one-sided way that he might have asked, as many modern people do: “Yes, how can I actually believe in an all-wise, great God when there is so much evil in the world?” That is, after all, a common sentiment today; people do not want to believe in a wisdom that permeates and animates the world when they are forced to observe so much evil. Zarathustra does not speak that way, and he also guides his disciples so that they do not speak that way. Zarathustra was fully aware that what comes from Ahriman—which stands as opposition in all life—must exist, and that it must be permitted precisely through the wisdom of the world, so that human beings, who are meant to undergo an upward development, may be strengthened by this resistance and gradually be able to transform the evil into good. In this way, a higher level of development is achieved than if human beings were simply placed comfortably in a world of goodness and had nothing evil to overcome.

[ 33 ] Thus, while Ahriman was perceived by Zarathustra and all those who professed their allegiance to him as the enemy of Ahura Mazda, he was also regarded as a necessary component of the world’s development. If, however, we wish to understand the inner structure of Zarathustra’s teaching, we must draw attention to certain aspects that today may well cause considerable offense among intelligent people who believe they stand firmly on the ground of the most modern worldview. But what good does it do to try, time and again, to cautiously conceal the truth? One must immerse oneself in Zarathustrian clairvoyance and describe in greater detail the nature of the entire structure of thought that I have now characterized in general terms. One must be clear that Zarathustra was one of those thinkers who, although they joyfully turned their gaze toward the sensory world, nevertheless sought the truth in the spiritual world and, in essence, beheld [the essence] of the entire content of the world in the spiritual realm. Powers such as Ormuzd and Ahriman are spiritual forces; they stand before us in the world as spiritual beings.

[ 34 ] But in light of these spiritual powers, how did such lofty spirits as Zarathustra view the outer structure of the world? Just as Zarathustra turns his gaze upward toward the sun and says: “That is the outer body of a spiritual power”—so he looked up at the starry sky and at everything that the outer, sensory gaze could grasp, and he and his disciples perceived what was spread out in space as a script, as symbols, as allegories that expressed the weaving and essence of the spiritual powers. This is extraordinarily important. Unlike the way we are accustomed to viewing the outer world of the stars today with a materialistic mindset—seeing only spheres moving through space—Zarathustra and his disciples saw in this world of the stars the expression of spiritual beings and spiritual processes, and in the arrangement of the stars they saw symbols of what the spiritual beings behind them were doing. The world of the stars was for them a celestial script that expressed to them what was taking place behind the scenes in the spiritual world. Neither in the manner of today’s materialistic mindset nor in the manner of today’s materialistic astrology—which seeks to see in the stars themselves the cause of humanity’s destinies, when in fact they are merely signs—did Zarathustra’s thinking go in either direction. For him, what he could see in the script of the stars was something like the meaning of a sentence to us, which we commit to paper with written characters. To him, the stars were cosmic characters. And what mattered to him were the spiritual beings standing behind them.

[ 35 ] Zoroaster saw the highest spiritual beings in Ormuzd and Ahriman. To him, they belonged together, even though one is the enemy of the other. They originated, so to speak, in a single, great spiritual being. In the Persian language, this primordial being can be called Zaruana Akarana or, as it is often expressed, “eternity shrouded in glory.” It is difficult for the modern human mind to ascend to that height where the followers of Zarathustra stood and where they grasped what must be grasped if one is to view Ormuzd and Ahriman as one. The best way to arrive at this is by striving, step by step, to arrive at the following idea: When I look back in time, farther and farther back, I arrive at what existed in antiquity and where the causes of the present lie. I, too, come from what has developed out of this stream of the past. But there is a stream of the future flowing in the opposite direction, and if one can rise to the level of seeing that the future is something coming toward us from the other side—something we are moving toward—then one gradually arrives at a true understanding of what Zarathustra sees as the unity behind Ormuzd and Ahriman.

[ 36 ] Imagine a curved line extending forward and backward so that it forms a small circle. If you make the circle larger, the line becomes less curved; if you make the circle even larger, the line approaches a straight line more and more. If you let the diameter of the circle extend to infinity, the arc gradually becomes a straight line that extends into infinity. Thus, by tracing any straight line forward and backward, we can regard it as a circle that is infinitely large. And so we can also say: When we go back into the past, we come to a point where the past and the future merge into a circle. This is the flow of eternity to which Zarathustra referred—Zaruana Akarana. The past and the future have intertwined to form the circle of eternity of the world, and from this springs the god of the sun, of light, and of all that is good—Ormuzd, Ahura Mazdao—as well as the god against whose resistance the forces of good must develop—Ahriman—both emerging from the serpent of eternity: Zaruana Akarana. One need only immerse oneself in these concepts of eternity to gain a sense of the spirit that prevailed among those who gathered around Zarathustra; then one feels something of the full grandeur of the sentiments that flow from the teachings of Zarathustra, whose influence continues to resonate within humanity to this day.

[ 37 ] And so Zarathustra said to his disciple: “Now look—you have in your mind a conception of the closing circle of the world, of one part of that circle as the higher power of light, Ahura Mazdao, and of the other part as the dark power, Ahriman.” What we have just expressed is written in stellar script, and written in stellar script you see this circle, which closes in upon itself as a symbol of Zaruana Akarana: the zodiac, which encircles the vault of heaven. This is the symbol of the outer world circle, and when you stand on Earth and turn your gaze toward the zodiac, imagine the Sun as the great Ormuzd, traversing this circle. And what the deeds of the circle of light are, that appears to you as the realm of Ormuzd’s creation; and what lies in the night, what is shrouded in darkness for humankind and lies on the other half of the Earth—that is what Ahriman symbolizes. The seven signs of the zodiac on one side, in the Sun’s daytime course, and on the other side, the five signs in the Sun’s nighttime course: these are the symbols of Ormuzd and Ahriman.

[ 38 ] Thus, the stars were perceived as a script in the heavens revealing the nature of Ormuzd and Ahriman. People imagined these beings, which stand behind the sensory world, as influencing human nature, but they were aware that these beings were not a unified whole; rather, there were partial spirits and subordinate spirits. And in the individual signs of the zodiac, people now saw symbols for seven or six serving spirits of Ormuzd. These were subordinate spirits, called Amshaspands in the Old Persian language. The best translation is the one Goethe chose in his *Faust*, when he said:

But you, the true sons of the gods,
Rejoice in the living, rich, and beautiful one!

[ 39 ] Sons of the Gods! Six—on the side of light in the zodiac—were associated with Ormuzd; the five other spirits, whom Ahriman opposes, were called Devs. This sounds strange and highlights the contrast with Indian thought, with what the Indians revered as their highest powers, the Devas. While for Zarathustra the highest spiritual powers are found in penetrating the veil of the senses—these are the Asuric powers that operate in the outer world—for the Indians, the highest powers are those found by entering into the mystical inner realm of the human being. The simplest explanation for the fact that ancient Indian religion saw the Devas as the highest, whereas the Persian religion viewed them as something dangerous, and that, furthermore, the Indians saw in the Asuras something they wanted nothing to do with, while the Persians revered them, is this: In the spirit of Zarathustra, one was to turn away from that world which relies solely on the inner realm—a world that can become seductive to human beings if they refuse to engage with the outer world of the senses. Therefore, for the Persians in particular, delving into the inner realm—the world of the Devas—became something dangerous, whereas for the Indians, the Devas represented something of the highest order.

[ 40 ] Thus, the five spirits of Ahriman are symbolized by the five dark winter constellations of the zodiac. And so there stand twelve spiritual beings: Ormuzd with his servants and Ahriman with his servants. Essentially, we must conceive of the realms of Ormuzd and Ahriman in such a way that these twelve [spirits] work together in the spiritual world—Zaruana Akarana! How do they work? By communicating to the human being what, for Zarathustra, is the expression of the world’s purpose; by pouring into the human being that which they allow to flow through the cosmos. Zarathustra perceived that the human being, as a small world, is a confluence of what is spread throughout the entire cosmos as great cosmic forces. That is how he perceived it. Therefore, one should actually find it only natural that Zarathustra did not see in the human being what is found today in the dissected human body through anatomy, physiology, and so on. The wisdom of Zarathustra did not dissect the human being, but there was a clairvoyant insight that revealed how the spiritual forces acted upon human nature and composed it. Thus Zarathustra says: Twelve forces surge through the cosmos, emanating from the twelve spirits of Ormuzd and Ahriman; these compose the human body. In the human body—like a seal impression—is expressed on a small scale what is spread out in the great world among the Amshaspands, the sons of the gods. Within it, this continues to work as currents from outside.

[ 41 ] What exactly does the disciple of Zarathustra mean by “what continues to work within”? What I must say now is something troubling for modern science. Modern science has, in its own way, rediscovered what flows in there as the twelve currents—what makes human beings capable of aspiring to the spiritual world, of possessing a brain and an intellect—and has rediscovered it in the twelve main nerves of the head. But this is a source of irritation for modern science—almost sheer madness—when one says that these twelve nerves are the crystallized, condensed currents that, according to Zarathustra, the twelve Amshaspands channeled into the human organism. And so, in materialistic research concerning human beings, we are confronted in concentrated form with what Zarathustra—that luminous, clairvoyant personality—revealed as a spiritual mystery. In those days, people saw in the spirit what was essential. And it falls to our time to see in the material realm what is, as it were, the condensed spiritual.

[ 42 ] Zarathustra went on to say to his disciples: “Yes, you see, just as today human beings, through their spirituality—which is bound to the brain—strive upward toward a higher world and a higher stage of development, so in earlier times they strove for something else. Just as human beings today are connected to Ahura Mazdao, they were once bound to the lunar evolution. — This is also a source of frustration for modern science. Nevertheless, it is a truth of spiritual science. This lunar evolution is expressed in a further stage of spiritual densification. Lower spirits were at work there. Just as the twelve great Amshaspands worked within human beings, so too had other spiritual beings previously brought about a lower form of spiritual activity. Today we would say: When a person thinks, that is a higher spiritual activity; when they merely swat a mosquito away from their face reflexively, without thinking, that is a lower activity. We see these lower activities as connected to the nerves, which have their center in the spinal cord. Zarathustra attributed what thus permeated the human organism as a lower activity to an earlier spiritual inflow.

[ 43 ] He said that the twelve great spirits were counterbalanced by 28 others, whom he called Izeds. These influenced human physicality and constituted it. He went on to say that this entailed a certain irregularity, in that the lunar government had been replaced by the solar government. In addition to the 28 Izeds, which correspond to the 28 lunar days, there are three more that are inserted due to the [longer] solar cycle—up to three irregularly inserted days. Thus, one can count 28 to 31 Izeds. This brings us close to what modern science identifies as these Izeds: they are the 28 to 31 nerves running to the spinal cord in humans—these are the crystallized Izeds. Thus, in human anatomy, you see the wisdom of Zarathustra crystallized, so to speak. No one would ever have thought to direct human thought in such a way that it could research and seek in the manner it does today, had Zarathustra not provided the impetus for it.

[ 44 ] He referred to higher spiritual forces that shone into human beings. Insofar as these were Amshaspands, they became the twelve cranial nerves in the physical organization of the human being; insofar as they were Izeds, they became the spinal nerves. This is something that now seems even more far-fetched than what I said yesterday about reincarnation. But it is something that people will gradually come to recognize, namely, that humanity originated from a spiritual worldview and only later descended into materialism. People will gradually come to see how useful it is to turn their gaze once more toward those great geniuses who, in a sense, regarded it as their mission to endow humanity with a spiritual treasure that can lead us out of this sensory world. Humanity has descended from what it once beheld in the spirit to sensory things.

[ 45 ] Well, today people are not inclined to view such things as anything other than annoying, but that is only because certain things are easily forgotten. For example, everyone will say: Now that Kepler has discovered his laws, how are we supposed to conceive of the structure of the universe as anything other than a sum of purely mechanical processes? — Well, one need only recall that Kepler arrived at his laws precisely through a spiritual worldview and made the following statement: “Thus I have carried the sacred vessels of the Egyptian mysteries up to the North and rendered them into the language of the present.” — Those who were truly great bearers of culture knew how to build upon the time when people still looked into the spiritual world. Thus, Zarathustra stands before us, in essence, as the one who, in his spiritual worldview, feels a mission to point toward the human being who, in the physical body, has the instrument for his work in the world, but who still points to it through spiritual means. That is why Zarathustra is so immensely significant. He is always spoken of in connection with the entire external life of the people into which he was placed.

[ 46 ] It is deeply significant that the legend so wonderfully recounts how this people, among whom Zarathustra lived, migrated down from the north. The legend, which is truer than history, tells us the following: This people once lived far to the northwest of the regions into which they later migrated. Before Zarathustra carried out his work there, they had once lived in these northwestern lands, where they were able to survive because conditions there were favorable. But then, according to the legend, strange changes occurred: Winters came that lasted ten months; the people could no longer remain there, and King Dschemschid led them away [to more southerly regions]. He received [from Ahura Mazdao] a golden dagger, which he thrust into the earth at various locations. As a result, grain grew in those regions, and the people settled there.

[ 47 ] If we translate what is told to us in this legend into the most sober truth, we must say: This people, among whom Zarathustra was led, depended as a people on cultivating the earth; they depended on tackling the real work of life with their own hands. Although Zarathustra’s mission for this people is, at first, the dissemination of spiritual wisdom, it is at the same time a turning toward immediate sensory reality. Hence their turning away from that worldview which wants nothing to do with work that must be performed in the sensory world, and which perceives that which the work of the hands is meant to address as Maya. No, for the people who had Zarathustra as their teacher, the earth was not Maya. It was, just as it was, a reality.

[ 48 ] And he was a reality that was to be elevated higher and higher by drawing forth its fruits from the earth. Through work, one connected with what Ormuzd willed. Work was service to Ormuzd. And everyone felt the spirit of Zarathustra coursing through their veins as they tilled the soil: I must not give in to the mood that leads me to long for another world; no, here I want to be a servant of Ormuzd. As I drive the spade into the earth, I work as a servant of Ormuzd. And man must, in truth, live here on earth. That is why even among those who were followers of Zarathustra, the most noble and beautiful faith in truth and sincerity, in moral purity, lived on. And one of the most beautiful aspects associated with Zarathustra’s mission is that the sense of truth and sincerity—precisely because of this connection to the external world, where a sense of truth is needed—came into being.

[ 49 ] And so we also see that among all that was regarded as evil and belonging to Ahriman—deception, lies, slander—these were considered the worst vices in the teachings of Zarathustra. Essentially, much of what modern humanity perceives as the virtue of truthfulness—the abhorrence of deceit, lies, and slander—is a consequence of what the disciples of Zarathustra felt. “Deceit” is even a word that was coined in the Persian language to describe one of the most evil of the Devas. What was instilled in people through Zarathustra’s mission—moving like spiritual blood—still belongs today to the most beautiful treasures that have flowed from the East to the West and have gradually become integral parts of Western human culture.

[ 50 ] Thus, the gaze of Zarathustra and his people was directed toward external reality, but in such a way that they sought the spiritual world beyond it. In this spiritual world, man hoped to find his resurrection—his future union with Ahura Mazda—once he had worked his way through the world of the senses. The teaching of Zarathustra is a religion of resurrection, the first religion of resurrection. And so it became a worldview that looked with kindness, love, and goodwill upon what, further south, was regarded merely as Maya. Within the Zoroastrian religion, there developed what amounted to instincts for reality, for working with reality, and for connection with reality. Therefore, this religion did not have that tendency to mortify the body so that the spirit might emerge from it as easily as possible; rather, it was animated by the instinct that seeks to shape the body in such a way that the senses may become as refined as possible and thought as sharp as possible. And this had to develop into an instinct. And so one sees a wonderful collection of healthy rules for living develop—rules so sound, even extending to diet—that later Plato came to admire the religion of Zarathustra precisely in this regard.

[ 51 ] Yes, we can infer how long people appreciated Zarathustra’s mission—until the materialistic age made this impossible—from the fact that it was said that Pythagoras had learned geometry from the Egyptians, astronomy from the Chaldeans, and other sciences from the Greeks, but he had learned the worship of the gods and the rules of wisdom concerning nature from the Magi of the Zoroastrian religion. Thus, the followers of Zarathustra—known as the Magi—were revered as people who understood how to look through the sensory world into the spiritual realm; they knew that one does not reach the spiritual merely through mystical immersion in one’s own inner world, but rather by making the outer tapestry of the senses transparent. In short, those who said of Pythagoras that he had learned the worship of the gods from Zarathustra saw in the followers of the Zarathustrian religion—if I may put it this way—“experts” with the correct outlook toward the spiritual world, with the correct worship of the gods. This is how people have viewed what Zarathustra gave to humanity. But the time will come when people will once again look up to Zarathustra in reverence—namely, when, through spiritual science, they gain the ability to understand such great spirituality as is found in Zarathustra.

[ 52 ] It is useful and significant to look back to the origins of human cultures. When we do so, among those luminous figures we look back upon—to see how we actually came to be and how our present-day culture gradually emerged—there will always be the one who was the “Golden Star”—Zoroaster, Zarathustra, for one can, with some justification, translate this honorary title as “Golden Star.” Gold has always been regarded as a symbol of wisdom, and for the followers of Zarathustra, wisdom was something alive and active, not an abstract, lifeless science. It is therefore a tremendous misconception when people believe that the Amshaspands were abstract ideas for Zarathustra and his followers. Anyone who even takes a brief look [at this cultural movement] must conclude that it referred to living spirits.

[ 53 ] The followers of Zarathustra sensed that the truth of the living spirituality that weaves through space lived within him like a seal impression whenever he spoke of the spirits within himself—for example, of “Vahumano,” of the disposition that draws human beings upward toward the spiritual world that lies beyond the veil of the sensory world. They understood what Zarathustra had to offer humanity from the wellspring of his soul when they heard him say: Everything that weaves through and permeates the world as the spirit of light, as the power of light and fire, can work its way into human beings and kindle [an inner fire] within them. What is spread out in space can gather at a central point, so that the human being feels placed within the macrocosm. And as the disciples of Zarathustra look up to the spirit of the macrocosm, they say: Within us resounds something like an echo of what flows to us as a mystery [from the macrocosm]. We sense within ourselves what the power of light—the being [clothed in glory]—can become within us when we allow what flows toward us from all sides to resound within. —What they experienced there within, the disciples called “Ahuna Vairja,” which later became “the Word,” “the Logos.” And this was experienced as a prayer breaking free within the soul, humbly flowing back to the mysteries of the worlds—like a living echo that a human being can send out into the spaces of the worlds in all directions as a prayer, like a reflection of the Primordial Light.

[ 54 ] Only when one is able to understand that Zarathustra, the radiant spirit, was able to evoke such sublime feelings in his disciples—and through them, in a large part of posterity right up to our own time—can one begin to grasp something of Zarathustra’s mission. It cannot be grasped by merely pointing to dogmas or names, but only by sensing the living power of the feelings that are kindled in the living interplay between Ahura Mazdao and the light that fills space, and the Logos, the sacred Word that flows forth as an echo from the Primordial Light. When one senses this interaction and understands Zarathustra’s mission in world history, then one looks back in the right way upon that being who, some 5,000 years before Christ, was incarnated in a human body and became essential for all of humanity.

[ 55 ] What Zarathustra meant for humanity and what his mission was should be briefly outlined here. It should be noted that Zarathustra is one of the great leaders of humanity who, time and again, from one epoch to the next, proclaim the ancient, present, and future truths that give people comfort, security, and strength in all circumstances of life. And we can summarize this in the words:

They speak to the human mind
The things within the bounds of space
They change as time passes.
The human soul lives
Through the vastness of space
Boundless and unharmed through the passage of time.
It finds in the realm of the spirit
The deepest foundation of its own being.