The Rudolf Steiner Archive

33. What benefit does a person gain from knowing their past?

[ 1 ] Through his past, he comes to know his future. He connects the past with the future. The ancients called death the brother of sleep. What we are today is a continuation of yesterday; sleep connects us, and yesterday is the cause of today’s karma. Human beings sustain themselves by building on what came before. So it is with the human race. We learn from our past to master our future; through the future, we also come to know the present.

[ 2 ] More highly developed individuals, such as Plato, have revealed more of the higher fundamental aspects than others; what he was, others must become. Plato is an artificial Fifth-Rounder. Buddha, Christ, and Zarathustra are Sixth-Rounders. They, too, continue to evolve. At the end of the seventh round, humanity will have reached a certain degree of harmonious development.

[ 3 ] The lunar epoch became disharmonious only when it became a new principle. So it will be at the end of the seventh round as well. Sin does not come from God; it came into the world through the law, but the law is from God, according to Paul. Manas approached Kama to elevate it to a new level. Kama had to conform—that is, be shaped and refined, like a wheel for a clock—through the Law; Kama, or the flesh itself, was good. At the end of our terrestrial epoch, the firstfruits will arrive with a level of development far higher than the harmonious state of the masses. The Dhyan Chohans call this Theosophy.

[ 4 ] This is how it was at the end of the Lunar Epoch: The first Pitris were so far ahead that they came over to undergo a development in the Earth Epoch that went beyond the ordinary. They were not able to intervene until the Earth beings could sense something of Manas within themselves. They were initially active in the formation of human beings so that they might later be understood by them. [For example: The] Elohim of the Old Testament, who were only understood once the spark of the spirit had awakened within them [—the human beings]. In particular, they were able to understand Yahweh-Elohim, the Lord of Form, who clothed everything in a physical shell.

[ 5 ] The great teachers, Sons of Light, Manasaputras, had appeared in this teaching capacity. In revelation, everything can appear only in polarity, in dual form; human beings must understand through opposites; they enjoy the light when they see the shadow. Here, too, polarity manifested in God Michael—Yahweh—and Lucifer. Yahweh-Elohim and his group are destined to direct human intellect toward the external in form; the other group focuses attention more on the purely spiritual, on the inner self within the human being. Thus, God and the serpent appear as opposites in the myths: God seeks to teach love; the serpent seeks to teach wisdom. God wants to teach form; the serpent wants to teach life.

[ 6 ] The distinctions between imagination and sensibility, and between the sexes—which had not existed before—now emerged. And with them, language, as an expression of the imagination.

[ 7 ] Thus, two kinds of intelligence were at work: “You shall know!” said Lucifer, and he linked language with thought. He brought about inner life. Jehovah was the God of form and procreation, and also of love—who sanctified outward sensuality through nobler feelings. You shall bear children in pain.

[ 8 ] We thus see the intervention of higher intelligences in the form of the God of Love and the God of Wisdom. — When Love was to become a personality in Jesus, the serpent’s head had to be crushed.

[ 9 ] So we have the three currents: Lunar Pitris in embryonic form, which are enlivened by the mineral kingdom and must mature in order to receive the influence of the Elohim. The Elohim have the task of guiding them up to this point. Thus, in the first three rounds, the ordinary beings progress until they are ready to unite with the Elohim and continue onward together with them.

[ 10 ] What happened, then, is what is described as the fall into matter, as the Fall. Humanity only became aware of sensuality once it was already there; that is why they made themselves garments of leaves. The Sons of Form and Love and the Sons of Wisdom then guided humanity up to the fourth race, in which something new emerged. The Sons of Wisdom are concerned with thinking and imagination; the Sons of Love with the sanctification of human sensuality. This is the greatest task, for it is meant to lead to divinity. It is difficult because sensuality contains desire—that is, the tendency to remain within sensuality. First came the fall into matter; now there is the tendency to remain there unless one is guided upward. It was a sacrifice for the Sons of Light to become guides of sensuality—a greater sacrifice than becoming guides of thought. The Sons of Light are exposed to all the dangers of sensuality; the more they developed it, the more seductive it became. And so a portion of the Sons of Light succumbed to the power of matter. This led to the great catastrophes of the Atlantean period. This is what is called black magic. The second case is this: the danger became a downfall for some of the Sons of Light—material self-interest rather than guidance from matter. The Flood—a mythical account.

[ 11 ] The Sons of Light found the daughters of the Earth beautiful: this race was doomed to perish. What could not be taken along was cast aside. And now we have what remained; our “savages” are the decadent descendants of those ancient races that perished. Within Asia, those who had maintained their equilibrium were set apart and advanced to the fifth race. This small group went to India, and some to Babylonia, Egypt, Europe, and so on.

[ 12 ] What happened back then is happening today at a higher level of consciousness. Today, it is not possible to geographically set aside a region—the Ark. Today, instead of a spatial separation, a separation of thought and mindset must take place.

[ 13 ] Individuals from the lost Atlanteans can now incarnate as well—only their culture and their geographical homeland had fallen prey to destruction. The culture of the fifth race, too, will be destroyed if it becomes corrupt. A portion must be gathered to form the foundation for the sixth race; united by what will constitute its core: love. In the spirit of love, we must now gather; we must consciously do what once happened unconsciously—calling upon all peoples to join in brotherhood. We have the lofty task of being for the sixth race what was once done for the fifth.

[ 14 ] Those who have an interest in the future culture are working toward it. Even those who do nothing to contribute to it will enjoy its fruits; had the lost Atlanteans found what they had sown, they would have found a hell; likewise, the fifth race would find it in the sixth race if we were not working to prepare new karma for the sixth race. What we sow, we will reap, even with regard to racial karma.