The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. Pentecost, the Feast of the Liberation of the Human Spirit

[ 1 ] It was foreseeable that only a small congregation would gather today. Nevertheless, I have decided to hold this evening meeting in order to say a few words to those who have come today in connection with the feast of Pentecost.

[ 2 ] Before I go into that, I would like to share with you one of the results of my last trip to London, which is that Mrs. Besant will most likely visit us here in the fall. We will therefore have the opportunity to hear once again one of the most significant spiritual forces of our time. The next two public lectures will be held at the Architect's House: today in eight days on spiritualism and the following one on somnambulism and hypnotism. Then the Monday events will resume here on a regular basis. On Thursdays in the coming period, I will speak about Theosophical cosmology, about the ideas that Theosophy has to offer regarding the formation of the world structure. Those who are interested in these questions will hear many things that they may not yet know from the usual Theosophical literature. I would like to give the lectures on the elements of Theosophy at a later date.

[ 3 ] What I am going to say today comes from an ancient occult tradition. Of course, the subject cannot be exhausted today. Some things will even seem unbelievable. I therefore ask you to regard today's lecture as an episode in which nothing is to be proven, but simply told.

[ 4 ] People today celebrate their festivals without really having any idea what they mean. In the newspapers, which are the main source of education and enlightenment for a large part of our contemporaries, one can read the most varied articles about such festivals without the writers having any awareness of what such a festival means. But for theosophists, it is necessary to point out the inner meaning again. And so today I would like to point out the early beginnings of such an ancient festival, the origin of Pentecost.

[ 5 ] The festival of Pentecost is one of the most significant and most difficult to understand festivals. In Christian consciousness, it commemorates the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. This event is described to us as a miracle story: the Holy Spirit poured out upon the disciples and apostles of Christ, so that they began to speak in all kinds of languages. This means that they found access to every heart and could speak according to people's understanding. This is one meaning of the feast of Pentecost. But if we want to understand it more thoroughly, we must go much deeper. The feast of Pentecost—as a symbolic feast—is connected with the deepest mysteries, with the most sacred spiritual goods of humanity. That is why it is so difficult to talk about it. However, I would like to point out at least a few things today.

[ 6 ] What the Feast of Pentecost actually symbolizes, what lies at its foundation, what it means in a deeper sense, is only written down in a manuscript that is kept in the Vatican Library and guarded with the utmost care. This manuscript does not speak of Pentecost itself, but of that for which Pentecost is only the outward symbol. Hardly anyone has seen this manuscript who was not initiated into the deepest secrets of the Catholic Church or able to read it in the astral light. A copy of it is in the possession of a personality who has been greatly misunderstood by the world, but who is now beginning to be of interest to historians. I could also say “possessed” instead of “possesses,” but that would create confusion. Therefore, I say: a copy is in the possession of the Count of Saint-Germain, from whom the only information about it in the world probably originates.

[ 7 ] In the spirit of theosophy, I would like to say just a few words about this. We are led to something that is deeply connected with evolution, with the development of humanity in the fifth root race. Human beings acquired the form they have today in the third root race, the ancient Lemurian period, and developed it further through the fourth root race, the time of ancient Atlantis, and then entered the fifth root race with the result. Those who have heard my lectures on Atlantis will remember that the Greeks still had a vivid memory of that time.

[ 8 ] For orientation, we need to gain a brief insight into two currents within our fifth root race, which are alive as hidden forces in the minds and often conflict with each other: one current is found in its purest and clearest form in what we call the Egyptian, Indian, and Southern European worldview. All later Judaism and also Christianity contain something of this. On the other hand, however, this has mixed in our Europe with the other current, which lives in the worldview we find in ancient Persia and which we can rediscover — if we do not listen to what anthropologists and etymologists tell us, but go deeper into the matter — stretching westward from Persia to the regions of the Germanic peoples.

[ 9 ] I would argue that these two currents point to two important, two great spiritual intuitions that underlie them. One emerged in its purest form in the ancient rishis. They were inspired by the intuition of higher beings: the so-called devas. Anyone who has undergone occult training, anyone who can research in this field, knows what devas are. These purely spiritual beings, who live in the astral and mental realms, have a dual nature, while human beings have a triple nature. For human beings consist of body, soul, and spirit. The nature of the devas, however, consists—as far as we can trace it—only of soul and spirit. It may have other components, but we cannot trace them even with occult training. A deva has the spirit directly within itself. The deva is a spirit endowed with a soul. What you cannot see in humans, namely the desires, instincts, passions, and wishes that live within them, but which are perceptible as light phenomena to those who have opened their spiritual senses, these soul forces, this soul body of humans, which is the inner being of humans and is carried by our physical body, is the lowest body of the devas. We can regard it as their body. Indian intuition focused primarily on the worship of these devas. Indians see these devas everywhere. They see them as the creative forces when they look behind the scenes of our worldly phenomena. This intuition forms the basis of the southern worldview. It is expressed in a grand and powerful way in the Egyptian worldview.

[ 10 ] The other intuition underlies ancient Persian mysticism and led to the worship of beings that are also only dual in nature: the Asuras. These also have what we call a soul, but in a magnificent, titanic way they have developed the physical body, which encloses a soul organ. The Indian worldview, which adheres to the worship of the Devas, regards these Asuras as something subordinate, while those who professed the northern worldview were more attached to the Asuras, to physical nature. Hence, here too, there developed a particular urge to dominate the world of sensory phenomena in a material way, to dominate the world of reality through the highest perfection of technology, through physical arts and the like. Today, there are no longer any people who adhere to the worship of the Asuras, but there are still many among us who have something of this nature within themselves. This is the source of the attraction to the material side of life, and it is the basic characteristic of the northern worldview. Those who profess purely materialistic principles can be sure that they have something in their nature that comes from these Asuras.

[ 11 ] A peculiar basic feeling then developed among the followers of the Asuras. It first sprouted in Persian intellectual life. The Persians developed a kind of fear of the Deva nature. They became fearful, shy, and horrified of anything that was purely spiritual and soul-like. This has resulted in the great contrast we see today between the Persian and Indian worldviews. In the Persian worldview, what the Indian tradition regarded as bad, as something subordinate, was often worshipped, and what the Indians regarded as worthy of veneration was downright shunned. Within the Persian worldview, this peculiar basic feeling arose toward a being that actually has a divine nature but is shunned and feared within this worldview. In short, it is the image of Satan that appears in this worldview. Lucifer, the spiritual-soul being, becomes a being filled with horror. Here we must seek the origin of what exists as belief in the devil. This basic feeling has also passed into the modern worldview; in the Middle Ages in particular, the devil became a feared and shunned figure. Lucifer was thus formally shunned.

[ 12 ] We find information about this in the manuscript mentioned above. If we follow the course of world development in the sense of this manuscript, we find that in the middle of the third, the Lemurian race, human beings clothed themselves in physical matter. It is a false idea when theosophists believe that reincarnation has no beginning and no end. Reincarnation began in the Lemurian epoch and will cease again at the beginning of the sixth race. It is only a certain period of time in earthly evolution during which human beings reincarnate. This was preceded by an extremely spiritual state that did not require reincarnation, and will be followed by a spiritual state that also does not require reincarnation.

[ 13 ] The original incarnation in the third race consisted in the virgin human spirit, Atma-Buddhi-Manas, seeking its first physical incarnation. At that time, the physical development of our Earth with animal-like beings could not yet have progressed so far that the entire animal-human being could have been ready to receive the human spirit. But a part, a certain group of animal-like beings, was already so far developed that the seed of the human spirit could descend into these animal bodies so that they could give form to the human body.

[ 14 ] Some of the individualities that incarnated at that time formed the small tribe of those who later spread throughout the world as so-called adepts. These were the original adepts, not those we call initiates today. Those we call initiates today did not yet undergo incarnation at that time. However, not all those who could have found human-animal bodies incarnated at that time, but only a part. Another part resisted the process of incarnation for certain reasons. They waited until the fourth race. The Bible hints at this moment in a hidden and profound way: The sons of the gods found the daughters of men beautiful, and they united with them.

[ 15 ] This means that at that later point in time, an incarnation began of those who had waited. We call this group the “sons of wisdom,” and it almost seems as if there is a certain presumptuousness and pride in them. We will now disregard the small exception of the “adepts.” If this other part had also incarnated at that time, human beings would never have attained the clear consciousness in which they live today. Human beings would have remained stuck in a dull trance-like consciousness. They would have assumed the consciousness that you find today in hypnotized people, somnambulists, and so on. In short, human beings would have had to remain in a kind of dream consciousness. But then they would have lacked something that was extremely important, if not the most important thing: the feeling of freedom, the human being's own decision about good and evil from his own consciousness, from his own ego.

[ 16 ] Genesis refers to this later incarnation — in the form it has already taken under the influences that come from the feeling I have characterized by saying that there is a certain shyness before the Deva — Genesis refers to this later incarnation as the “fall” of man, the Fall of Man. The Deva waited and sank down only when physical humanity had already developed one step further, in order to then take possession of the physical body so that it could develop a more mature consciousness than would have been the case earlier.

[ 17 ] So you see that man bought his freedom by allowing his nature to deteriorate because he waited to incarnate until his nature had descended into denser physiological states. A deep awareness of this fact has been preserved in Greek mythology. If human beings had incarnated earlier, according to Greek mythology, then what Zeus wanted when humans were still in “paradise” would have come to pass: he wanted to make them happy, but as unconscious beings. Clear consciousness would then have belonged solely to the gods, and human beings would have remained without the feeling of freedom. The rebellion of the spirit of Lucifer, the spirit of deviance in humanity, which wanted to descend in order to develop itself out of freedom, is symbolized in the legend of Prometheus. But he must atone for his endeavor by having an eagle—a symbol of desire—constantly gnawing at his liver, causing him the most terrible pain.

[ 18 ] Man has thus descended deeper and must now achieve what he would have achieved through magical arts and powers with what flows automatically from his clear consciousness of freedom. But because he has descended deeper, he must also endure pain and torment. The Bible also hints at this with the words: “In pain you shall bring forth children, in the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread,” and so on. This means nothing other than that man must raise himself up again with the help of culture.

[ 19 ] Greek mythology symbolized the representative of humanity striving for culture in freedom through struggle in Prometheus. In him, it portrayed the suffering human being and at the same time the liberator. The one who brings about Prometheus' liberation is Heracles, who is said to have been initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries. Anyone who descended into the underworld was an initiate, for descending into the underworld is the technical expression for initiation. This journey to the underworld is told to us by Heracles, Odysseus, and all those whom we regard as initiates who now want to lead people within the present stage of development to the source of original wisdom, to spiritual life.

[ 20 ] If humanity had remained at the stage of the third race, we would be dream people today. Through his deva nature, man has fertilized his lower nature. Out of his self-consciousness, his consciousness of freedom, he must now develop again that spark of consciousness which he brought down upon himself in justified exultation, that is, the spiritual knowledge which he did not strive for in his former unfree state. In human nature itself lies that satanic rebellion which, as Luciferic striving, is the guarantee of our freedom. And from this freedom we develop spiritual life again. This spiritual life must be rekindled within the fifth race of humanity. Once again, this consciousness must emanate from initiates. It should not be a dreamlike consciousness, but a clear one. The Hercules of the spirit, the initiates, are those who advance humanity and reveal to it its hidden divine nature, the knowledge of the spiritual. This has also been the striving of all great religious founders, to bring back to humanity the knowledge of the spiritual that it has lost in its physiological life. The Atlanteans had a highly developed physical culture, and our fifth race still has much of material life within it. The materialistic culture of our time shows us how deeply humanity has become entangled in purely physical and physiological nature, like Prometheus in his chains. But it is equally certain that the vulture, the symbol of desire, which gnaws at our liver, will be eliminated by the spiritual human being. The initiates want to lead self-aware humanity to this goal through movements such as the Theosophical Movement, so that human beings can rise again in complete freedom.

[ 21 ] The moment we must recognize as the moment when spiritual life flows into self-aware humanity is clearly indicated in the Gospel, in the New Testament. In the deepest Gospel, which is misunderstood by today's theology, in the Gospel of John, where it is told that Jesus visited the Feast of Tabernacles, this moment is indicated. The founder of Christianity speaks there of pouring spiritual life out upon humanity. It is a remarkable passage. The Feast of Tabernacles consisted of going to a spring from which water flowed. A festival developed there which indicated that human beings should once again turn their attention to the spiritual, to the deva nature and to spiritual striving. The water that was drawn there was a reminder of the soul-spiritual. After repeated refusals, Jesus goes to the festival after all. And on the last day of the festival, the following happens (John 7:37): On the last day of the festival, which was the most glorious day, Jesus stood up and said, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink!” Those who drank celebrated a festival in remembrance of spiritual life. But Jesus connects something else with this, and John hints at it with the words: “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture says, rivers of living water will flow from within him. But he said this about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive, for the Holy Spirit was not yet there, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.”

[ 22 ] Here, reference is made to the mystery of Pentecost, to the fact that humanity must wait for this Holy Spirit of spiritual life. When the time comes when human beings can ignite the spark of spiritual life within themselves, when the physiological nature of human beings can attempt to ascend from within itself, then the Holy Spirit will come upon human beings, and the time of spiritual awakening will dawn.

[ 23 ] Human beings have descended into the physical body, so that, in contrast to the Deva nature, they consist of three principles: spirit, soul, and body. The Deva stands higher than human beings, but it does not have to overcome physical nature as human beings do. This physical nature must be transfigured again so that it can take on spiritual life. The physiological consciousness of man, the physical body as it lives today, must itself ignite the spark of spiritual life in freedom.

[ 24 ] The sacrifice of Christ is an example of how man can develop higher consciousness out of physical life. The lower self lives in the physical body, but it must be kindled so that the higher self can develop. Only then can the streams of living water flow from this physical body. Then the spirit can appear, then the spirit can pour itself out. How dead must the human being as an ego become for this physiological life.

[ 25 ] Herein lies the true Christian meaning and also the deeper mystery of the feast of Pentecost. Man lives first in his lower organism, in the consciousness permeated by desires. He must live in it, for only this consciousness could give him purposeful freedom. But he must not remain there; he must raise his ego up to the Deva nature. He should bring forth the Deva within himself, give birth to the Deva, who will then be a Spirit of Salvation, a Holy Spirit. To do this, however, he must consciously sacrifice his earthly body; he must feel the “die and become” so that he does not remain “a gloomy guest” on this “dark earth.”

[ 26 ] Thus, in connection with the mystery of Pentecost, the mystery of Easter presents us with a whole picture: how the human ego, in the great representative, renounces the lower living ego, how it dies in order to completely transfigure physical nature and return it to the divine powers. The Ascension is the symbol of this. When human beings have transfigured this physical body, have returned it to the spiritual, then they are ready for spiritual life to pour into them, for them to experience what, according to the greatest representative of humanity, is called the “outpouring of the Holy Spirit.” That is why it is also said: “There are three that bear witness on earth: the blood, the water, and the Spirit.” - Pentecost is the outpouring of the Spirit into humanity.

[ 27 ] The greatest goal of evolution is symbolically expressed in the feast of Pentecost, namely that human beings should advance from intellectual life back to spiritual life. Just as Prometheus was freed from his suffering by Heracles, so will human beings be freed by the power of the Spirit. By descending into matter, man has attained self-consciousness. By ascending again, he will become a self-conscious deva. Those who worshipped the Asuras and recognized the Devas as something satanic, something that does not want to penetrate into the deepest inner being, have portrayed this descent as something devilish.

[ 28 ] This is also hinted at in Greek mythology. The representative of the unfree states of consciousness is Epimetheus — the thoughtful one — who does not want to attain salvation out of complete freedom, and is therefore the opponent of Prometheus. He receives the Pandora's box from Zeus, whose contents — suffering and plagues — fall upon humanity when it is opened. The only thing left in it as a final gift is the hope that in a future state he will also attain this higher, clear consciousness. He is left with the hope of liberation. Prometheus advises against accepting the dubious gift from the god Zeus. Epimetheus does not obey his brother, but accepts the gift. The gift of Epimetheus is less important than that of his brother Prometheus.

[ 29 ] Thus we see that human beings live in two currents. Some are those who hold fast to the feeling of freedom and—despite the danger of developing the spiritual—seek it in freedom. The others are those who find satisfaction in a dull existence and blind faith and sense something dangerous in humanity's Luciferic striving. Those who established the outer forms of the Church have distorted the deepest Luciferic striving. The ancient teachings about this are contained in secret manuscripts that hardly anyone has seen in hidden rooms. They are accessible to a few who are able to see them in the astral light, and to a few other initiates. It is a dangerous path, but it is the only one that leads to the sublime goal of freedom.

[ 30 ] The spirit of man should be a liberated spirit, not a dull one. This is also what Christianity wants. Healing is connected with holiness. A spirit that is holy heals and frees from suffering and affliction. Man is healthy and free when he is torn from the bondage of the physiological, when he is freed from the physiological. For the liberated spirit alone is healthy, whose body is no longer gnawed by the eagle.

[ 31 ] Thus, Pentecost is to be understood as a symbol of the liberation of the human spirit, as the great symbol of the human struggle for freedom, for a consciousness in freedom.

[ 32 ] If Easter is a festival of resurrection in nature, then Pentecost is a symbol of the awakening of the human spirit, the festival of those who know and recognize, and—imbued with this knowledge—seek freedom.

[ 33 ] Those spiritual movements in modern times that lead to the perception of the spiritual world with clear daytime consciousness—not in trance, not in hypnosis—are the ones that lead to the recognition of such a significant symbol. The clear awareness that only the spirit liberates is what unites us in the Theosophical Society. It is not the word alone, but the spirit that gives it its meaning. The spirit that emanates from the great masters, that flows through a few who can say, “I know that they are there, the great adepts who are the founders of the spiritual movement, not of the society,” pours into our contemporary culture and gives it the impulses for the future.

[ 34 ] Let a spark of understanding for this Holy Spirit flow back into the misunderstood feast of Pentecost, and it will be enlivened and regain its meaning. We should live in a meaningful world. Those who celebrate festivals thoughtlessly celebrate them as followers of Epimetheus. Human beings must see what connects us with what is around us and also with what is invisible in nature. We should know where we stand. For we humans are not destined to live a dreamlike, half-hearted, dull existence, but to the free, fully conscious unfolding of our entire being.