The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. Moses, His Teachings, and His Mission

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! When I had the opportunity to speak here a few weeks ago about the figure of Zarathustra, the aim was to show the significance that such a leading individual has for the general spiritual life of humanity. We may say that we can sense this significance to a heightened degree in a figure whose influence still extends so powerfully into the immediate present, as is the case with the figure of Moses. For who would deny that a large part of our emotional and intellectual life—and indeed, a large part of what our thoughts bring to bear on the institutions and conditions of our surroundings—is still deeply influenced by the aftereffects of those deeds in the development of humanity that are linked to the name of Moses? Although we are taken back nearly one and a half millennia to before the founding of Christianity, we can say that the aftereffects of this deed can be felt right down into the innermost fabric of our souls. Therefore, it must be of the deepest interest to us to understand what precisely this mission, this teaching of Moses, signifies in the evolution of all humanity.

[ 2 ] Now, it is not exactly easy to speak specifically about the figure of Moses. On the one hand, it is not like the figure of Zarathustra or Zoroaster, whose historical contours are blurred for us and about whom we can scarcely identify even minor character traits from external documents; rather, the personality of Moses is sharply outlined and vividly presented to modern people in the biblical records of the Old Testament. On the other hand, however, it cannot be denied that, in the broadest circles—especially among those engaged in so-called critical biblical scholarship—all manner of doubts are attached to this portrayal of Moses’ personality — doubts that, for some, not only challenge what the Bible tells us about the figure of Moses, but even go so far as to call into question the very existence of Moses himself.

[ 3 ] Now, as we have seen on numerous occasions from other descriptions here, a genuine spiritual-scientific approach to religious texts provides evidence that we should not dismiss what is written in these texts so easily; for it is precisely more detailed research that has often shown that the information contained in ancient religious documents is much, much more accurate than is sometimes believed. But it is precisely when one adheres to the image of Moses presented to us in the Bible that it becomes difficult to elucidate this figure from a spiritual-scientific perspective—difficult for the reason that one must have insight into the manner of expression used specifically in those parts of the Bible that speak of Moses. These descriptions are very peculiar in style; they are written in such a way that we can characterize them, in a few words, as follows:

[ 4 ] Throughout the Old Testament, the Bible continually interweaves external, physical events—external facts that once took place historically before people’s eyes—with symbolic descriptions; it allows—without one being able to recognize the transition so immediately and easily—the historical, external facts to give way to symbolic depictions of inner soul processes. In the Bible, for example, a character may be portrayed as undertaking this or that journey, does this or that, and as the narrative continues, it appears as though what is described next are also external events, whereas in fact the descriptions of these events are now used to depict inner soul conflicts, inner soul developments, and stages of the soul. In certain passages, the description of external events serves only to illustrate inner soul processes. As I said, the transition from one to the other is not always readily apparent in the biblical narrative. Only that level of understanding that can be gained from the foundations of spiritual science enables us to recognize: Here, in a biblical account, the narrative ceases to describe purely external, physically observable events, and a sequence of symbolic actions begins, suggesting to us that the personality—who up to that point had been doing this or that externally—is now undergoing a spiritual development; it ascends from stage to stage and acquires this or that aspect of spiritual life. However, it is not the inner life that is described here; rather, symbols are presented.

[ 5 ] This even led a great theological and philosophical writer who lived around the time of Christianity’s founding—Philo of Alexandria—to regard, based on his own views, all the events described to us in the oldest parts of the Old Testament merely as symbols of the soul’s processes [of the Hebrew people]. Such a view, however, goes far too far; it fails to take into account that in the biblical account, external events are intertwined with internal psychological processes. Today we will endeavor to present the image of Moses that can be gleaned from the Bible in such a way that we are increasingly able to truly distinguish between these two different types of descriptions.

[ 6 ] To understand the personality of Moses, one must take into account the entire culture from which Moses’s deeds emerged. And so it falls to me to begin by briefly characterizing ancient Egyptian culture from a spiritual-scientific perspective—that culture from which, after all, in terms of external events, emerged what we might call the mission of Moses. However, one can only understand the development of this ancient Egyptian culture and the emergence of Moses’s deeds [from this culture] if one is familiar with two important laws of spiritual science, and we must, above all, make these two laws the foundation of our consideration. One of these laws has already been mentioned here on several occasions. It is the fact that the entire nature and configuration of human consciousness and the human soul’s constitution have not always been as they are today, but that these have changed significantly over the course of millennia of human development. We already know—and this should be briefly mentioned here once more—that the further back we go in human development, the more we encounter a different state of the soul and a different kind of consciousness in human beings than what is considered normal consciousness today.

[ 7 ] Where prehistory gives way to history—that is, in those times from which we have historical documents—the old state of mind is already giving way to the newer one. This is why people today find it so difficult to conceive that the word “development”—which today exerts such a magical power over people in terms of its outward form—must above all be applied to the course of human soul life as it unfolds. And the further back we go, the more we find that the way we view things today—which we perceive through our senses and connect through the ordinary intellect bound to the physical brain—that this way of viewing things, in which we can only alternate our waking consciousness with sleeping consciousness, interrupted at most by irregular dreams, has not always existed, but that this form of consciousness has developed only gradually.

[ 8 ] The further back we go, the more we encounter a different form of human consciousness. Although what we today call our waking and sleeping consciousness had already begun to take shape over the millennia we are discussing today, there existed in those ancient times—which extend back into the earliest periods of Egyptian culture and about which external history has little to report—a kind of ancient clairvoyant consciousness, a kind of pictorial consciousness. It was this very kind of consciousness that asserted itself as a third state of consciousness, an intermediate state between waking and sleeping. Waking consciousness, as it exists today and underlies our modern view of the world, was in its early stages of development, and our “sleep consciousness” was also essentially already present. But human beings still possessed a third form of consciousness that was not permeated by the thoughts, concepts, and ideas through which we today gain insight into our surroundings. It was filled with images, of which the symbols found in modern dreams are an atavism. But in these images, which ebbed and flowed, there was nothing arbitrary; rather, these images could be clearly related to supersensible facts and beings that lie behind our sensory world, so that in this state of ancient clairvoyance, human beings actually reached into the spiritual, the supersensible world, and from direct experience—from that ancient, dreamlike clairvoyant consciousness— gained knowledge of what takes place in the spiritual world.

[ 9 ] The evolution of humanity consists in the fact that one spiritual power always develops at the expense of another. Our present-day intellectuality—the way in which we connect the external objects perceived through our senses by means of our concepts and ideas—could only develop as clairvoyant consciousness became obscured, descending into a vague subconscious within the human being and transforming itself into the present state of the soul. This will later reconnect with a certain kind of clairvoyant consciousness, which will then, however, be permeated by our intellectuality, whereas the old clairvoyant consciousness lacked precisely this intellectual element.

[ 10 ] We must also come to understand that this ancient consciousness had to take on a wide variety of forms. And for this to be possible, each of the ancient peoples—in accordance with its national character—was called upon to develop this ancient consciousness in a very specific way. One can literally say that every people had the mission to develop this consciousness in a very specific way. The Egyptian people, for example—whose ancient, sacred wisdom underlies ancient Egyptian writing and which we can still admire today—this ancient Egyptian people was the one that received its wisdom in time immemorial from its leaders through a clairvoyant consciousness, that is, through direct insight into the spiritual worlds. And from the earliest times, this tradition continued into the later periods of the Egyptian people. What we find in historical accounts from these later periods is essentially an echo of what the leaders of the Egyptian people had clairvoyantly beheld in the spiritual worlds in ancient times.

[ 11 ] Now, however, we must be clear about this—and this is the other fact that is to be presented today on the basis of spiritual science—that for every human state of mind, for every way of viewing things in the environment, there is a specific epoch, and when this has come to an end, a new state of mind must take the place of the old one. A people that, beyond this very specific point in time—when an old state of mind should be replaced by a new one—were to retain the old one, such a people would be heading toward the decline of its spiritual powers, toward decadence. And we see this as well; for why do peoples head toward decadence? Because, so to speak, they have had a certain state of soul instilled in them from their very origins as a people and now, out of a certain conservative impulse, wish to retain it. But the course of world history declares: “This far [with the old state of soul], and now a new one must take its place!” Nations may indeed retain the old one, but then they fall into decay, for the time for a new state of soul has come.

[ 12 ] Now, as Egypt’s development unfolded, a new era dawned. The time of the ancient, clairvoyant culture had run its course, and within the culture of these ancient peoples, an intellectual culture was to emerge—one focused on intellect, on reason in the ordinary sense, and on the intellectual combination and comprehension of the things of the external world. This intellectual culture, this state of mind, still extends far into our present day. We ourselves have the peculiarity that we still carry within our souls what had to be introduced into the course of Egyptian culture at that time—namely, what we possess as our intellectuality, as our way of viewing things. What had to take the place of the ancient Egyptian culture in Egypt at that time extends right down to us. The figure of Moses was chosen to bring [humanity] the intellectual grasp of the environment—in contrast to the old, clairvoyant culture. It is therefore no wonder that the deed of Moses extends to us, sending its ripples into our souls. Precisely because this fertilized the very kind of human soul constitution to which we ourselves still belong, we still feel, in a certain sense, a kinship with the deeds of Moses. Moses was placed among the Egyptian people, and he was to lay the very first foundations of modern intellectual culture out of Egyptian culture. He established the new era to which the world clock was set, and ancient Egyptian culture passed it by and was bound to decline. He, however, brought what he had to give into his own people, whom he led out of the context of Egyptian life and within whom the seed of humanity’s intellectual culture was to develop.

[ 13 ] Such people, who are called to recognize, as it were, how the clock of world history ticks, are always portrayed to us in such a way that something happens in connection with their birth that has symbolic significance for the entire development of their souls. The biblical story describes it this way: Moses is found by Pharaoh’s daughter in the well-known basket in which he was placed. [Whether this actually happened that way] need not be discussed further here. This account is simply meant to point out that Moses possessed innate powers destined to enable him to bring something entirely new—a wholly new kind of soul constitution—into the world. That is why it had to be symbolically shown that this soul, in which the seed of something new lay, first had to remain completely unaffected by its surroundings for a time, was self-contained, and was then placed into the very environment from which the new was to be brought forth. And now we are presented with facts that belong to that realm I have characterized, where the biblical narrative tells us what actually took place physically in the outer world—[that realm] where one can see [the events] with one’s own eyes and trace them historically.

[ 14 ] Here we are shown how Moses, because of a certain act he committed, is forced to flee. He flees to Midian to a priest, the priest Jethro. And in this transition from the purely external events presented to us—the killing of the Egyptian and Moses’ flight— we are gently led to an event that appears to be a physical continuation of the facts, but which is nothing other than a symbolic representation of the processes that Moses must now undergo [internally]—and which he can undergo only by coming into the presence of a priest, a bearer of the most comprehensive cosmic wisdom. This is what is implied to us, and it is clear enough for those who understand how to interpret the images, which are used repeatedly in the same manner.

[ 15 ] We are told that when Moses fled to the priest Jethro, he first came upon a well. The well always symbolizes the source of wisdom—the source of human culture and of the spiritual elements of education that one encounters. And then the narrative takes a very curious turn. We are shown how Moses finds Jethro’s seven daughters—Jethro is also called Reguel by another name. The fact that he was a priest of the deity who stood above all other gods in that ancient time is indicated to us by the fact that we are told—through his name—that he belonged to this highest deity. This is always indicated by the suffix “-el”—as in Gabriel and Michael, who “belong to the highest God.” Jethro-Reguel was thus a priest of the highest God. And we are told—through symbols representing the workings of the soul—that Moses was to come into contact with a priest who could infuse the soul of Moses with the most powerful wisdom. It was through such wisdom that his soul became radiant and powerful, so that he could fulfill his mission of establishing a new state of being within humanity.

[ 16 ] In ancient psychology, however, thinking was somewhat different than it is today, and we must make clear to ourselves how people actually thought in that era. Today we speak of the human soul more or less as a unified entity, and in doing so we are correct for our time. We speak of thinking, feeling, and willing as forces living within our soul, and we even know that if these three forces are not in proper harmony within our soul, the health of our soul is impaired. And this is because our soul has evolved from what it once was into what it is today. In ancient times, the sages said that various realms existed within the human soul, and they listed seven such realms. Just as we today list the three realms of thinking, feeling, and willing, so they listed seven different realms of the soul; but in doing so, they did not conceive of the soul as a unified whole.

[ 17 ] We can picture the ideas of these ancient sages something like this. Let us suppose that the human soul today did not feel itself to be a unified whole, but rather said to itself: Within me live thinking, feeling, and willing; but into my thinking there flows a special kind of spiritual current from the cosmos that is connected only with human thinking; into my feeling flows another current, and into my willing yet another. And these forces would not be held together by the power of the modern “I,” but rather by the fact that, as it were, divine-spiritual beings intervene from without and shape our soul life into a harmony. It would not, then, be we ourselves who harmoniously united the members of our soul life, but rather external powers reaching in from the cosmic expanses. The ancient sages posited seven such forces, and these seven forces reached into the soul, as it were, independently. What this wisdom grasped was the outflow of seven forces that, as it were, streamed through the world and poured into the seven soul realms of the human being. And what flowed in there as soul forces was imagined, in a figurative sense, as the seven daughters of the Bearer of Universal Wisdom.

[ 18 ] This is something that still resonates in all the later mystical conceptions that imagined what flowed into the soul—whether as wisdom, as the light of the soul, or as impulses of the will—as feminine: This also resonates in Goethe’s *Faust*, where it is written: “The eternal feminine draws us upward,” which must not be interpreted frivolously. And when we are told that Moses met Jethro’s seven daughters at the well, this means that the seven rays of wisdom emanated from Jethro and poured into Moses’s soul—separate from one another, just as was universally conceived in ancient psychology. In those ancient times, wisdom—the spiritual forces of inspiration in the world—was conceived of as personal and concrete, not abstract, as is the case today.

[ 19 ] In our examination of Zarathustra, we have seen how Zarathustra conceives of that which flows into human beings as concrete world forces—as the Amshaspands and the Izeds or Izards. And here we see the progress in human thought: what was conceived in living spirituality as forces acting upon the human soul with a personal character already fades, for example, in the Platonic Ideas. The seven different forces of inspiration within the soul are symbolically represented to us in the seven daughters of the high priest whom Moses meets at the well. And the fact that he is called upon to develop one of these forces in order to undertake his specific mission among humanity is indicated by his marriage to one of Jethro’s seven daughters. And we shall see which of the seven fundamental forces corresponds precisely to Moses’s mission. We can trace these seven soul forces throughout the entire Middle Ages, for what we encounter in the so-called seven liberal arts as the animators of the human soul are the faded abstractions of the seven ancient sources of the spirit.

[ 20 ] These seven sources of the spirit, which were to flow into the soul of each individual, were conceived in such a way that one related more to what constituted a wise understanding of the world—naturally, to clairvoyant wisdom— another spiritual power more on what constitutes a loving embrace of facts and beings, a third more on the impulses of the will, a fourth on memory, and so on. Moses was now intended to incorporate one of these seven spiritual powers into his special mission and to substitute it for what had previously governed humanity from the collective wellspring of wisdom interwoven throughout the world. This spiritual power is intellectuality; it is that understanding and grasp of the world which no longer relies on clairvoyance, but on the powers of the external intellect.

[ 21 ] Now a transition must be created everywhere. The old cannot simply be transformed into the new. Moses was called upon to replace the old clairvoyant wisdom—which was still prevalent in Egypt but had already fallen into decline by Moses’s time—with a new intellectuality, a rational understanding of things. He himself, however, still had to develop this new approach from a certain form of clairvoyance that had been bestowed upon him, as it were, by grace. Because Moses still viewed things according to the old mode of clairvoyance, yet viewed them in the way that the new intellectuality is meant to view them, a bridge was, as it were, created between the old clairvoyance and the new, non-clairvoyant intellectuality of humanity.

[ 22 ] To what is this new intellectuality bound? It is bound to that center of our soul that we designate by the simple word “I.” By consciously attributing existence to the center of our soul, we define the realm of our consciousness as the realm of intellectuality—that realm in which reason and intellect, concepts and ideas are at work. If one wishes to define this realm, one must be clear that it holds together only because it is held together by the unified “I.”

[ 23 ] So what was Moses’s [task]? Well, Moses faced an infinitely important task—one might put it that way if one wants to put Moses’s experience into words. Moses could say to himself: The gods have worked into the human soul through their various powers, and when the people of ancient times perceived this or that through their clairvoyance, when they sensed this or that in the outer world, they always spoke of the gods who lived out there in the cosmos. But for intellectual life—for that grasp of the external world that is bound to the deepest human center—the God must enter into the innermost core of the human center; He must unite with this “I.” And a God must be recognized who is not merely seen in the clouds and the stars, but of whom it must be said: He works in the clouds—that is the power of the clouds; but when he flows into the soul, he brings about what this human soul experiences within itself.

[ 24 ] Not only could this be said of the external gods, but also this: Now such a spiritual power must develop within humanity—a power that can only develop through the power of a God who has His being in the human “I.” This God, who was to take up residence in the innermost being of the human being—in his “I”—appeared to Moses’ clairvoyant consciousness through the priest’s inspiration. And through clairvoyance Moses beheld the God—that is, through whatever clairvoyant power could still be kindled within him—which is hinted at to us by the image of the burning bush. As this is described, anyone who understands these things recognizes that what is presented here is an astral-clairvoyant perception of reality. The new God, who was to have His being in the “I,” appeared in the burning bush. And Moses asked this God: “If I am to lead my people in your name, what must I say—who sent me?”—You can read it for yourselves in the Bible—even though the translations of the Bible are otherwise very flawed, on this point they are correct. To the question, “Who sent you?”—Moses receives the answer: “Tell your people, ‘I Am’ has sent you.” — And that means: That divine power has sent you, the power that kindles within the innermost center of the human being the possibility for a person to speak “I am” in this innermost center—thus attributing existence to themselves and experiencing their own existence: “I am who I am”!

[ 25 ] This was what Moses clairvoyantly foreshadowed: the intellectualization of humanity. With this, he stood at a point where the old culture, in terms of the human soul’s constitution, was to give way to an entirely new culture. This was a crossing over an abyss in human culture, as if the world powers had declared: In the future, intellectuality must prevail, and those who wish to cling to the old ways are headed for decline. We must cross over this abyss. — This is what Moses might have said to himself in his soul. And this is how Moses’ successors felt: that the crossing over a cosmic abyss had been achieved. Therefore, the followers of Moses celebrated the Passover, the festival of the crossing over a cosmic abyss, in remembrance of this deed of Moses. Oh, these ancient festivals, which people today are accustomed to observing in such a trivial manner, relate to the great mysteries of worldly existence. When Moses actually arrived at Pharaoh’s court, equipped with the power to last for millennia—is it any wonder that this Pharaoh, who had emerged from the ancient Hellenic culture of Egypt, could not understand the signs that Moses unfolded before him?

[ 26 ] We cannot go into the details here of the misunderstandings that arose between Moses and the Pharaoh. These are all images intended to show us that the Pharaoh spoke from an ancient clairvoyant culture and from a state of mind that still stemmed from that culture. The ancient pictographic script also arose from such a culture. Whatever the Egyptians could understand about the course of natural events—all of that arose from it. Moses, however, developed an understanding of worldly phenomena and a synthesis of facts that emerged from modern intellectuality. Naturally, this appeared to those who were still steeped in the old clairvoyant consciousness as miracles, as wondrous events; for just as a person today cannot conceive of anything happening differently than he imagines, so too could the people of the ancient culture not imagine that things unfolded as modern people conceive them. Thus, the concept of a miracle has merely been reversed.

[ 27 ] And we know—as the Bible tells us—that Moses, through his great strength, which sprang from a spiritual inspiration, truly succeeded in leading this people—to whom he was, so to speak, bound by blood—out of Egypt, but in such a way that they could subsequently develop an intellectual culture, separate from Egyptian culture. Therefore, we see everything that we can call “thinking”—which can be traced back to a unity, the unity of Yahweh, and which can permeate the world with reason, concepts, and ideas—spring from this mission of Moses. That was the mission of the ancient Hebrew people: to permeate human culture with reason, intellectualism, concepts, and ideas. And anyone who wishes to see things as they are will understand that this unique mission of the ancient Hebrew people has continued to have an effect to this day, and that this distinctive culture of reason could have sprung only from such a source.

[ 28 ] How did those for whom Moses was the source of inspiration view those who still came from the old clairvoyant culture? How did the followers of Moses, whom he led out of Egypt, regard the Egyptians? Here we must familiarize ourselves with some peculiarities of the spiritual constitution of those people who were under the influence of the ancient clairvoyant culture—and perhaps still are to this very day. There are always those who lag behind, and these are the ones whose intellectual development has stagnated. To help us understand how certain soul forces operate in this context, I would first like to remind you—although I do not wish to compare the human with the animal—of certain aspects of animal behavior. In the case of animals, we speak of instinctive activity. Let us not criticize the word “instinct” any further; everyone knows what is meant by it, namely this elemental, immediate activity and action, as we find it in the animal kingdom, which stands in contrast to [purposeful] human action. In humans, we have deliberate action; in animals, activities arise from instincts. The further back we go to the ancient clairvoyant state of being, the more human action also becomes instinctive. People are guided and driven to their actions; they do not first account for them in terms of concepts and ideas. We find a certain instinctive action in every ancient state of the soul.

[ 29 ] Now let me remind you of something that is truer than people realize. You may have heard accounts that, for example, when volcanic eruptions are imminent, animals leave the area beforehand and thus avoid the catastrophe. There is some truth behind these accounts: just as birds follow their instinct when it comes to flight, so too do animals follow a mysterious impulse during volcanic eruptions. Humans, however, who have already risen to the level of thinking in concepts and ideas, can no longer act so instinctively; they remain [and succumb] to the catastrophe. Even if such reports are often exaggerated: there is nevertheless a grain of truth underlying them, for where instinct is present, there is a deeper connection between natural phenomena and what is felt in the human soul than in actions based on concepts and ideas. Thus, the state of mind of ancient peoples also changed; it became different among those who thought intellectually.

[ 30 ] And so the followers of Moses now stood face to face with the ancient Egyptians: the Egyptians, an ancient people; the followers of Moses, the new people. And this new people, by virtue of their very nature, was predisposed to combine natural phenomena intellectually and rationally, and to think in a reasonable manner. Indeed, it must be considered that the time for the old instinctive aspect of the soul’s constitution had run its course. [And when this time has run its course], then the [old] forces fall into decay; they are no longer of any use. They were suitable for ancient times; back then, people instinctively sensed the course of natural events and acted in accordance with them. But this fell into decline around the time Moses was called to bring a completely new culture, and by then there was simply no longer any place for the old instinctive soul forces. And now let us imagine that, in relation to natural phenomena, we have Moses on one side and the ancient Egyptians on the other. The ancient Egyptians could not combine natural phenomena in an intellectual way. In ancient times, they had instinctively sensed in their souls when the sea level rose again; there was an intimate connection between their inner life and external natural phenomena. The soul would never have failed to sense and feel when the sea level receded, so that one could cross over the exposed seabed. But those ancient times were over. The Egyptians no longer possessed these ancient, instinctive powers, for the time had come when one was to intellectually grasp the interrelationships of things. Moses was called to do this. He now stood before the sea, and he knew how to deduce from the course of natural events when the sea level would recede, so that he could lead his people across. Through this newly developed intellectuality, he was able to discern this moment in nature. In ancient times, the Egyptians would have sensed that they could no longer cross, but they were not yet ready for this new kind of insight; their soul forces had fallen into decadence and decay, and so they perished in the waves. Thus we see Moses, who, through intellectual reasoning, led his followers across the receding sea, and we see the Egyptians succumbing to the floods, because they could only have sensed—through old, instinctive power—that the sea was rising again, but they no longer possessed that instinctive power.

[ 31 ] We stand at the dividing line between the old and the new eras; we stand at the point where Moses’ mission stands in stark contrast to what the mission of the ancient Egyptian people was. At such a point, we sense how profound and meaningful the descriptions in the religious texts are, but spiritual science is needed to interpret these religious texts; it aims to serve as a guide to understanding them. I can only sketch this out today, but try for yourselves to compare everything you find in the Bible or in other documents with what has been said today, and you will see: The more closely you take to heart what spiritual science has to say, the more you will find that what can only be sketched out today with a few strokes of the pen is true, for it corresponds everywhere to reality.

[ 32 ] Let us now continue: We see how the special calling that Moses is to impart to his people as his mission is linked, in particular, to the protection of the purity of the blood. This people, in particular, is not to intermingle; it is to remain separate from other peoples, so that the same blood flows down through generation after generation. Why is this so? We can understand this, too, if we consider the shifts in the constitution of the soul. Clairvoyance—whether it be the ancient, pictorial kind or the kind often described here, to which modern humans can rise if they undergo the appropriate exercises—is always bound up with the human being’s ability to become independent of their physical body with their spiritual part, that is, to withdraw their spiritual part, as it were, from their physical body. What the clairvoyant experiences, he experiences solely through the instrument of the soul, which frees itself, as it were, stepping out of the physical body. The modern materialist will regard this as sheer folly from the outset; he can believe nothing other than that all his soul activity is bound to the physical brain. But clairvoyance is not bound to the brain; rather, it takes place in the life of the soul without the brain. This can only be confirmed by experience, and those who lack this experience can refute it with a thousand and one seemingly quite sufficient reasons—much as a blind person might refute the existence of colors. But that is not the point. According to the principles of modern research, one should admit that only experience can decide the matter. Thus, clairvoyance is contingent upon the spiritual part of the human being freeing itself from the instruments of the physical body.

[ 33 ] We must view all ancient cultures as having been based, in a certain sense, on the paths of imagination, inspiration, and intuition that flowed into the soul. These cultures thus possessed something that was independent of the physical body and merely flowed down into the physical world. That is why the remnants of ancient cultures are so difficult to interpret, for the moment one becomes independent of the physical body through consciousness, one can no longer live in anything other than more plastic forms than the physical body. In clairvoyance, one does not have such sharply defined contours as in the physical realm; there one has something pictorial that does not relate to the physical world as directly as is otherwise the case with intellectual understanding; one has something that relates more symbolically to external things. Thus we may say that the clairvoyant cultures—and this includes Egyptian culture in all its grandeur—must be presented to us in all traditions in such a way that, in a certain sense, they use images instead of external, sharply defined conceptual outlines. The myths, the ancient legends in which the mysteries of the world are immersed, are pictorial representations of these mysteries; they are echoes of the ancient pictorial clairvoyance. In a certain sense, the transmission of culture was still bound to spiritual processes at that time.

[ 34 ] But it was precisely the mission of Moses to endow souls with such a disposition and to lay the foundation for a culture that was bound to intellectuality—and thus also to the external instrument of the body. For this is the distinctive feature of [intellectual] thought: it comprehends things in the same way as our normal, waking consciousness, and this consciousness is entirely bound to the instrument of the brain and the rest of the body. Intellectuality is, in fact, bound to the instrument of the physical body. Is it any wonder, then, that this particular intellectual gift was bound to a specific configuration—to the specific physical constitution of a people—and had to be transmitted from generation to generation through the physical blood until the mission of the ancient Hebrew people was fulfilled? Thus, the physical instrument of intellectuality had to be bound to the physical characteristics of this people—precisely through this blood flowing from generation to generation—and continually refined until it was so refined that from this people could emerge the physical vessel for that spiritual power, which then poured into it to an even greater degree than divine power had poured into the human “I Am”—to a much greater degree than had been accomplished through the ancient power of Yahweh. And in this respect, Moses’ mission was indeed the preparation for the Christ deed. But first, the outer instruments had to be developed in the appropriate manner. And so we also understand that this deed of Moses was bound to a very specific people, whose blood had to be kept pure, because this particular power, which is bound to the instrument of outer physicality, was to flow into the development of human culture.

[ 35 ] Thus, the deeds of Moses fit quite consistently and harmoniously into the overall development of humanity. We perceive him as the great standard-bearer of intellectuality—in all the uniqueness that is expressed even in mysticism, that is, in the human spiritual activity that is otherwise most foreign to intellect and reason. Even in mysticism—for example, in Hebrew Kabbalah—it becomes clear to us that this culture has a mission to introduce intellect and reason, and a combinatorial synthesis of external events, into human culture.

[ 36 ] And when we look back at the Hermetic culture of ancient Egypt, with its wondrous, ancient clairvoyant tradition, we see how, although it was called upon to bear within its bosom the no-longer-clairvoyant culture of Moses, it itself must come to an end, because the clock of world development is now set on intellectuality. And this is the significance of the Christ event: that with him and the Mystery of Golgotha, such a powerful spiritual impulse—such a mighty spiritual impetus—has once again entered into intellectual development, that little by little, as humanity—having become intellectual—becomes ever more attuned to the Christ event, this mighty spiritual impulse can also absorb the intellectual realm, carrying it into the spiritual, clairvoyant realm. We feel—to point this out once more—that we are still so deeply moved today by the significance of the Moses event because we ourselves are still immersed in the age of intellectualistic culture and can only glimpse a new spirituality and a new mission as if from a distant perspective.

[ 37 ] Thus, ladies and gentlemen, I have been able to sketch for you, with just a few strokes, this image of Moses as it emerges from spiritual research through clairvoyant consciousness, which sheds light on the external, historical account. This is the only way to distinguish between what is historical and what is a symbolic representation of inner processes within Moses himself. And so Moses stands alive before our souls, and we feel how unjustified it is to say that such an impulse could have arisen of its own accord. There are people today who fail to recognize that effects must also have causes and that effects which point to something personal necessarily presuppose a personality as well.

[ 38 ] Nevertheless, there are people today who doubt the existence of a figure such as Moses. This is certainly a sign of our times. It must be said that critical biblical scholarship has a hard time with these matters. Anyone familiar with it develops a deep respect for it, above all because perhaps in no other field of scholarship—not even in the natural sciences—has as much diligence and dedication been devoted as in the field of critical biblical scholarship. And yet, in many respects, we see it today having reached a point where it no longer knows how to deal with the greatest figures and impulses of humanity, where it knows only how to deny them—just as the historical existence of Jesus is already being disputed today. Nevertheless, one must have the utmost respect for the tragedy of this research, which, in our materialistic age and based on materialistic notions, seeks to find the inner value of the accounts in the Bible or in other ancient documents. But when one approaches a figure such as Moses from a spiritual-scientific perspective and, drawing on the mysteries of human evolution, reveals what had to sink into the soul of Moses—what had to be there so that humanity could reach the stage we are at today—then it seems utterly absurd to assume an effect without a cause, that is, a personal creation without a personality.

[ 39 ] In contrast, we can say that it is only through the spiritual-scientific interpretation that the details of the Bible are illuminated in a marvelous way and the Bible regains a new value. For now we approach the Bible in the same way that an expert in mathematical laws approaches a mathematical problem. Those who do not know the laws of mathematics see in them nothing but incomprehensible symbols—in other words, problems. Those who do not know the language of the Bible see in it, even today, only things that are incomprehensible—perhaps childlike images that the ancient world created for itself. But whoever becomes acquainted with the foundations provided by spiritual science and, with its help, deciphers the religious texts, will sense something of what has endured so magnificently through the ages; will sense the language of the peoples, of the human beings in whose souls the spiritual impulses for the progress of humanity are taking root—that chorus of humanity’s leading spirits who communicate across the millennia. It is a wondrous phenomenon when the spiritual researcher looks into the spiritual worlds and then turns to the Bible, and through the Bible comes to realize that what is being told to us there is something we can also discover for ourselves through spiritual research. Thus, we cannot help but say: Whoever wrote this must have known what goes on in the spiritual worlds and what must exist there for such progress of humanity—as we now have before us—to have been possible at all.

[ 40 ] And so, through spiritual research, we come to view Moses as a great leader of humanity. These leaders of humanity become ever more valuable to us as we delve into the depths of their spirits through spiritual research. And we feel ever more deeply blessed when, with our thinking and feeling thus sharpened, we look upon these leaders of humanity, of whom it may rightly be said: They illuminate our souls with their spiritual light in order to strengthen our souls with their mighty spiritual power.