The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Tenth Lecture

[ 1 ] We were concerned with the entire law governing the post-Atlantean development of humanity, and we sought to understand why the founding of Christianity had to take place at a very specific point in time within this post-Atlantean development. We mentioned yesterday at the end of the lecture that understanding important questions regarding the Gospel of John and Christianity as a whole depends on our clearly grasping this very law of development in the esoteric-Christian sense. Only in this way will we be able to gain a full understanding of the meaning of the words “Holy Spirit” and “Father and Mother of Jesus.” Above all, let us recall that it has become clear to us in the course of the last few lectures that post-Atlantean humanity—that is, the humanity to which we ourselves belong in the narrower sense, the one that developed after the Atlantean Flood—is divided into seven subdivisions. I deliberately avoid the term “subraces” because the concept of “race” does not actually fully correspond to what is at issue here. We are dealing with periods of cultural development, and what we still experience today as the “law of race” in our present-day humanity is actually an echo of Atlantean development. The phase of human development that preceded the Atlantic Flood—that is, the one that took place largely on the continent that once lay between present-day Europe and present-day America, ancient Atlantis—is also divided into seven successive stages. The term “racial development” still applies to these seven stages. For these seven successive stages of humanity on ancient Atlantis were still very different from one another—physically, as well as in terms of inner and outer physical characteristics (the outer body also includes the inner configuration of the brain, the blood, and the other bodily fluids)—whereas there can be no question that the first humans of the post-Atlantean era, the ancient Indians, were so different from us that we could still apply the term “race.” One must, of course, always uphold the continuity of Theosophy, and for that reason it is often necessary to build upon this ancient concept of races. But the word “race” all too easily gives rise to false notions, because people overlook the fact that the criterion for classifying humanity that we have today is a much more inner one than that associated with the term “race.” And certainly, in the culture that will succeed ours—the culture following the seventh subdivision—the term “race” will no longer be applicable at all, because humanity will then be organized according to entirely different fundamental laws.

[ 2 ] You must view it from this perspective when we divide the post-Atlantean era, first, into the ancient Indian epoch; second, into the ancient Persian epoch; third, into the Babylonian-Assyrian-Chaldean-Egyptian epoch; fourth, into the Greek-Latin epoch; and fifth, into the epoch in which we now live; our own will be succeeded by a sixth and a seventh epoch of development.

[ 3 ] We are now in the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch and say to ourselves: Christianity entered the development of humanity in all its depth and significance during the fourth epoch. It has exerted its influence, as far as humanity in the fifth epoch has been able to grasp, and we will prophetically foretell how it will continue to exert its influence, to the extent that spiritual science makes such predictions possible. But we already mentioned yesterday that the mission of Christianity was prepared during the third cultural epoch. Egyptian culture belongs to the third cultural epoch, and from its very heart, the faith of the Old Testament guided the development of Hebrew culture in such a way that, so to speak, Christianity was born from the womb of the third cultural epoch and then came fully into the world for the fourth epoch with Jesus Christ. We can therefore say: Humanity in the post-Atlantean era experienced a certain spiritual influence during the third cultural epoch. This influence continued into the fourth epoch; there it concentrated in Christ Jesus, continued to influence the fifth cultural epoch—our own—and will carry over from ours into the sixth epoch, which will follow ours. And now we must understand precisely how these effects came about.

[ 4 ] Let us recall precisely that, in the course of human evolution, the various fundamental parts of the human being undergo their own development. Let us recall what it was like during the last Atlantean epoch. We have explained that the etheric head descended into the physical body, and that it was there that the human being received the first capacity to say to himself, “I am.” When the Atlantean Flood occurred, the human physical body was permeated by the power of this “I am”; that is to say, by that time, humanity had progressed far enough to have prepared the physical instrument for “I” consciousness or self-consciousness. To be perfectly clear: If we were to go back to the middle of the Atlantean epoch, no human being would have been capable of developing such self-consciousness as to utter from within themselves, “I am an ‘I’!” or “I am.” This could only come about through the part of the etheric head we have spoken of connecting with the physical part of the head. At that time, up until the downfall of Atlantis through the Atlantean Flood, human beings developed the first elements necessary to become bearers of this self-consciousness: they developed the physical brain structure and the other aspects of the body. Thus, by the time of the Atlantean Flood, the physical body had matured to the point of being capable of bearing the “I.”

[ 5 ] So we may ask: What, then, was the mission of the Atlantean era? The mission of the Atlantean era was to instill the “I” in human beings, to imprint it upon them; and this mission then carries over from the Atlantean flood—which is described as the Great Flood—into our own time. But in our post-Atlantean cultural epoch, something else must come into play: Manas, or the spiritual self, must gradually take root within human beings. The influence of Manas, or the spiritual self, begins with our post-Atlantean era. We know, therefore, that by the time we have gone through various incarnations in our sixth and seventh epochs, we will already have been overshadowed by Manas, or the spiritual self, to a certain degree. But it requires a longer period of preparation for human beings to become a suitable vessel for this Manas, or spiritual self, at all. To this end—even if it takes thousands of years—they first had to become an “I-bearer” in the true sense of the word. They had to make not only their physical body a vessel for the “I,” but also the other members of their being. |

[ 6 ] In the first cultural epoch of the post-Atlantean era, human beings first make their etheric body the vehicle of the “I,” just as they had previously made their physical body the vehicle of the “I.” That was ancient Indian culture. It essentially consists of the human being acquiring the ability to have not only a physical instrument for the “I,” but also an etheric body suited to that purpose. Therefore, in this table, the first epoch—ancient Indian culture—is described as “etheric body” (see page 181).

[ 7 ] If we now wish to consider the further development of these cultural epochs in relation to the human being, we must not merely superficially regard the soul as the astral body, but proceed more precisely and take as our basis the division of the human being that you will find in my Theosophy. There you will see that we do not merely distinguish, in general, the seven members of the human being, but that the middle part of the human being is further subdivided into the sensory body, the sensory soul, the intellectual soul, and the conscious soul; and then we have the spiritual self, the life spirit, and the spiritual human being. Usually, only seven members are distinguished; the fourth, which we summarize under the term “I,” must be further subdivided because it is structured in this way in human development.

[ 8 ] What is now developed during the ancient Persian cultural epoch is the actual astral body or the body of sensation; it is the bearer of humanity’s actual active forces, and therefore the transition from the Indian to the Persian era consists in the shift toward working with matter. The use of the hands and what is connected with it—the transition to work—is what characterizes this cultural epoch. Ancient Indian culture was, to a much greater degree than one might think, inclined not to use the hands, but rather to rise through contemplation above the material world to the higher worlds. One had to sink deep within oneself if one wished to recall that earlier state. For this reason, for example, the Indian yoga initiation generally consists of the etheric body receiving special care and training.

[ 9 ] Now let us move on. The culture of ancient Persia consists in the ego being lowered into the sensory body. The culture of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, and Egyptians consists in the ego rising up into the sensory soul. What is the sensory soul? It is primarily that aspect of the sensing human being that is directed outward, through which the perceiving human being engages the eyes and other senses to perceive the ruling spirit at work in nature. Therefore, in this era, the eye is directed toward the material objects spread out in space, toward the stars and their courses. What is spread out externally in space thus acts upon the soul of sensation. In the Egyptian-Chaldean-Assyrian-Babylonian era, there was little of what one might call inner personality and intellectual culture already present within human beings. Even people today cannot properly imagine what Egyptian wisdom of that epoch was actually like. This wisdom was not, in fact, a form of thinking or speculation, as it later became; rather, when a person directed their gaze outward, they perceived the law that they read from the outside world with their senses. It was a reading of the laws, not a science of concepts, but a science of observation, a science of sensation.

[ 10 ] If our scholars were to reflect—and this is, after all, a harsh statement—they would be pointed, so to speak, to what has just been said, though with intellectual fingers. For if they have not reflected using the true inner powers of the intellect, this means nothing more and nothing less than that there could not have been a true science of concepts, a logical science, at that time. And indeed, there was not! History proves to you that Aristotle is the true founder of logic. If there had been a logic, a science of concepts, earlier on—these people would have been capable of setting it down in a book.

[ 11 ] Logic—that is, the act of thinking within the “I” itself, where concepts are combined and separated within the “I,” and where logical judgments are thus formed—does not derive from things; it first emerges in the fourth cultural epoch. Therefore, we call this fourth epoch the epoch of the intellectual soul.

[ 12 ] And we ourselves are living in an epoch—humanity entered this epoch, roughly speaking, around the middle of the Middle Ages, beginning in the 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries—we ourselves are living in the epoch of the “I” entering the conscious soul. That is how late it actually came about. The “I” did not enter the conscious soul until around the middle of the Middle Ages. This, too, could be very easily substantiated historically, and one could shed light on every aspect of it if one had the time to point out many of the factors involved. At that time, a very specific concept of individual freedom and individual “I”-capacity took root in people. If you look at the early Middle Ages, you would still find everywhere that a person’s worth was, in a certain sense, determined by their place in society. One inherited status, rank, and dignity from one’s father and relatives, and by virtue of these impersonal things—which were not consciously linked to the “I”—one acted and worked in the world. It was only later, as trade expanded and inventions and modern discoveries emerged, that self-consciousness began to expand, and we can see that throughout the European world, the external manifestations of this conscious soul appear in a very specific form of municipal charters, city constitutions, and the like. From the history of Hamburg, for example, one could easily demonstrate how these things developed historically. What was called a “free city” in the Middle Ages is the outward imprint of this breath of the self-conscious soul through humanity. And if we now let our gaze wander into the future, we can say: We are now in the very process of developing this sense of individuality within the soul of consciousness. All the demands of modern times are nothing other than people unconsciously bringing forth the demands of the soul of consciousness.

[ 13 ] But if we let our gaze wander further, we perceive something else in the spirit. There, in the next cultural epoch, the human being ascends to Manas, or the spirit-self. This will be a time in which people will possess a shared wisdom to a far greater degree than today; they will, so to speak, be immersed in a shared wisdom. It will begin with the realization that what is most uniquely human is at the same time what is most universally valid. What is understood today as an individual asset of the human being is not yet an individual asset at a high level. Today, individuality—a person’s personality—is still so closely linked to the fact that people argue, that they hold different opinions, and assert: “If we were not allowed to hold different opinions, we would not be independent human beings.” Precisely because they want to be independent human beings, they must arrive at different opinions. But this is a subordinate perspective. People will be at their most peaceful and harmonious when each individual is at their most individual. As long as people are not yet completely overshadowed by the spiritual self, there will be opinions that differ from one another. These opinions are not yet felt in the very depths of the human being.

[ 14 ] Today, there are only a few precursors to the things felt in the true inner self. These are mathematical and geometric truths. You cannot vote on them. If a million people told you that 2 × 2 = 5, and you felt within yourself that it is 4, then you know it, and you also know that the others must be mistaken—just as if someone claimed that the three angles of a triangle do not add up to 180 degrees.

[ 15 ] This is Manas culture: when the sources of truth are increasingly perceived in the strengthened individual and personal aspects of human beings, and when, at the same time, what is perceived as a higher truth also coincides from person to person, just as mathematical truths do. People already agree on these today, because they are the most trivial truths. With regard to other truths, people argue—not because there can be two different correct opinions on the same matter, but because people have not yet reached the point where they can recognize and overcome everything that divides them in terms of personal sympathy or antipathy. If personal opinion were still a factor in simple mathematical truths, many housewives might perhaps vote that 2 × 2 = 5 and not 4. For those who look more deeply into the nature of things, it is simply impossible to argue about the higher nature of things; there is only the possibility of elevating oneself to that level. Then the truth found in one soul coincides exactly with the truth in another soul; then there is no longer any dispute. And that is the guarantee of true peace and true brotherhood, because there is only one truth, and this truth truly has something to do with the spiritual sun. Just think how each individual plant grows in its own way; every plant grows toward the sun, and there is only one sun. So when, in the course of the sixth cultural epoch, the spiritual self enters into human beings, there will indeed be a spiritual sun toward which all people will turn and in which they will be united. That is the great prospect that lies before us for the sixth epoch. And in the seventh epoch, the life spirit, or buddhi, will, in a certain sense, enter into our evolution.

[ 16 ] These are distant futures into which we can only glimpse a faint vision. But we are now certain of this: This sixth cultural epoch will be a very important one, for it will bring peace and brotherhood through collective wisdom. Peace and brotherhood will come about because the Higher Self—initially in its lower form, as the Spiritual Self or Manas—will then descend not merely upon a select few individuals, but upon that portion of humanity that is at a normal stage of development. A union will then take place between the human “I,” as it has gradually developed, and the Higher “I,” the unifying “I.” We can call this a spiritual marriage—and this is how the union of the human “I” with the Manas, or the spiritual self, has always been referred to in Christian esotericism. But things in the world are deeply interconnected, and human beings cannot, so to speak, reach out on their own and draw this Manas or spiritual self to themselves; rather, they will have to attain a much higher stage of development before they can help themselves in regard to these matters.

[ 17 ] For humanity to be able to unite with the higher Self in the post-Atlantean era, help had to come to human evolution. If anything is to be achieved, it must be prepared for. If a child is to become something by the age of fifteen, one must, of course, begin working toward that goal as early as the sixth or seventh year. Every process of development must prepare its own impulses. What is to happen to humanity in the sixth epoch had to be prepared gradually. The power and strength for what is to happen to humanity in the sixth epoch had to come from outside.

[ 18 ] The first stage of preparation was one that still operated entirely from the outside, from the spiritual realm—one that had not yet descended into the physical world. This is indicated to us by the great mission of the Hebrew people. When Moses, who had been initiated into the Egyptian mysteries, received that commission from the spiritual leadership—which we might characterize with the words: “Tell them, when you give them my laws, that my name is ‘I Am’” (Exodus 3:14), he was charged with these words: Prepare them by pointing to the formless, invisible God. Point out that—while the Father-God still works through the blood—for those who can understand, the “I Am” is being prepared, who is then to descend all the way down to the physical plane! - This was, so to speak, laid the groundwork for within the third cultural epoch. And from the Hebrew people we see the mission emanating to convey to humanity the God who then descends more deeply, who appears in the flesh. Beforehand, He had been proclaimed; afterward, He appeared in the flesh to the outer eye. Thus, what had been prepared through Moses was expressed in the true sense.

[ 19 ] Let us take a close look at this moment in history: the spiritual proclamation through Moses and the culmination of this proclamation—the appearance of the promised Messiah in the person of Christ. From this epoch onward—which we might call the first phase in the history of Christianity—the real impulse toward unity and brotherhood, which is to come in the sixth epoch, is laid into the development of humanity. It is as if a force were sunk into something, which then continues to work so that the fruit gradually emerges. Thus this force continued to work right up to our own time, to the era we have had to describe as one in which humanity, with its intellectual and spiritual powers, has descended entirely into matter. One might now ask: Why, then, did Christianity have to come into the world precisely as the immediate precursor to the most deeply material epoch?

[ 20 ] Just imagine if humanity had entered this deepest material epoch without Christianity. It would then have been impossible for it to rediscover the impulse to rise again. Imagine if the impulse implanted in humanity by Christ were to cease; all of humanity would fall into decadence, would become eternally bound to matter; it would, as occultism puts it, be “seized by the heaviness of matter” and cast out of its evolution. Thus we must imagine that humanity, in the post-Atlantean cultural epoch, takes a plunge downward into matter. And before the lowest stage was reached, another impulse entered humanity, one that propels it back upward in the opposite direction. That was the Christ impulse. Had the Christ impulse taken effect earlier, humanity would never have embarked on material development at all. Had it entered the ancient Indian cultural epoch, humanity would certainly have been permeated by the spiritual element of Christianity, but humanity would never have descended so deeply as to be able to bring forth all that we today call external physical culture.

[ 21 ] It may seem strange to say that without Christianity there would be no railroads, steamships, etc., but for those who see things in context, this is indeed the case. These cultural achievements would never have emerged from the ancient Indian cultural era. There is a secret connection between Christianity and all that which is today known as the “pride of humanity.” By waiting until the right moment, Christianity made material civilization possible; and by arriving at the right time, it made it possible for those who connect with the Christ principle to rise again out of matter.

[ 22 ] But since Christianity was accepted as something that was not understood, it has become severely materialized. It has been so deeply misunderstood that it has itself come to be regarded as materialistic. And so, in a certain sense, Christianity has even taken on a severely distorted, materialistic form over the course of the period we have just considered—up to our own time—which we can describe as a second phase. Instead of, for example, grasping the higher spiritual idea behind the Lord’s Supper, the Lord’s Supper was materialized and presented as a crude transformation of substance. And so we could cite hundreds upon hundreds of examples of how Christianity has not been understood as a spiritual phenomenon. We have now reached roughly the point in time where this second epoch is coming to an end, where humanity must necessarily connect with spiritual Christianity—with what Christianity is truly meant to be—in order to draw out its true spiritual content. And this will happen through the anthroposophical deepening of Christianity. By applying anthroposophy to Christianity, we are following the necessity of world history to prepare for the third Christian epoch, which anticipates the inflow of Manas in the sixth period. This will be, so to speak, the third chapter. — The first chapter is the period of the forerunner message of Christianity up to the appearance of Christ Jesus and a little beyond. The second chapter is the deepest plunge of the human spirit into matter and the materialization of Christianity itself. And the third chapter is to be the spiritual grasp of Christianity through anthroposophical deepening.

[ 23 ] It is due to the overall course of materialistic development that a text such as the Gospel of John has not been understood until now. A materialistic culture, as it has gradually taken shape, could not fully understand the Gospel of John. The spiritual culture that must begin with the anthroposophical movement will understand precisely this document in its true spiritual form and prepare the way for the transition into the sixth cultural epoch.

[ 24 ] For anyone who attains a Christian initiation or a Rosicrucian initiation—and, incidentally, for anyone who attains initiation at all—a very special phenomenon becomes apparent. For them, the events that take place take on a dual meaning: one that unfolds externally in the physical world, and the other through which the events in the physical world serve as pointers to great, all-encompassing spiritual occurrences. And so you will understand me when I now attempt to describe a little of the impression that the author of the Gospel of John had on a certain occasion.

[ 25 ] There was a special event in the life of Jesus Christ, and this event took place on the physical plane. However, the one who describes it in the sense of the Gospel of John does so as an initiate. Therefore, for him, the event simultaneously represents the perceptions and experiences during the initiation rite. Now imagine the final moment of the initiation rite.

[ 26 ] For three and a half epochs—which, as we have already mentioned, were represented in ancient times by three and a half days—the initiate was in a lethargic sleep. On each day, the initiate experienced something different in relation to the spiritual worlds. On the first day, he had certain experiences that appeared to him as events in the spiritual world; on the second day, others; and on the third day, still others. Now, the person referred to here in this passage was shown what always reveals itself spiritually to the clairvoyant faculty: the future of humanity. If we know the impulses of the future, we can instill them into the present and thereby guide the present toward the future.

[ 27 ] Imagine the seer of that time. He experienced the spiritual significance of the first of the chapters described—from the point where the call resounds: “Say to your people: I am the ‘I Am,’”—through to the descent of the Messiah. As the second chapter, he experienced the descent of Christ into matter. And as the third chapter, he experienced how humanity is gradually being prepared to receive the Spirit, or the spiritual self, Manas, in the sixth epoch. And he experienced this in an astral vision. He experienced the marriage between humanity and the Spirit. This is an important experience, but one that humanity can only bring to outward expression through the fact that Christ has entered into time and history. Before that, humanity did not live in the kind of brotherhood brought about by the Spirit that has arisen within, where there is peace between one person and another. Before that, there was only love that was materially prepared through blood kinship. This love gradually develops into spiritual love, and this spiritual love descends. As the concluding point of the third chapter of the Initiation, we therefore say: Humanity celebrates its marriage with the Spiritual Self, or Manas. This can only take place when the time for it has come, when the time has ripened for the full realization of the Christ impulse. As long as that time has not come, the relationship based on blood kinship still prevails; as long as that is the case, love is not spiritual. Wherever the ancient texts speak of numbers, they are referring to the mystery of numbers. And when we read, “On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee” (2:1), every initiate knows that this “third day” signifies something special. What is meant by this? The author of the Gospel of John points out here that this is not merely a real-life event, but at the same time a great and mighty prophecy. This wedding symbolizes the great wedding of humanity, which was revealed in the initiation on the third day. On the first day, what takes place in the first epoch during the transition from the third to the fourth cultural epoch was revealed; on the second day, what takes place during the transition from the fourth to the fifth cultural epoch; and on the third day, what will happen when humanity transitions from the fifth to the sixth cultural epoch. These are the three days of the initiation. And the Christ impulse had to wait until the third moment. Before that, the moment is not yet here when it can take effect.

[ 28 ] The Gospel of John alludes to a special relationship between “me and you,” between “the two of us.” For this is what it actually says there, not the absurd statement: “Woman, what do I have to do with you?” When the mother asks Christ to perform a sign, he says, “My hour has not yet come” (2:4), to work at weddings—that is, to bring people together. That time is yet to come. For now, what is based on blood ties continues to have an effect and will continue to do so; hence the reference to the relationship between mother and son at the wedding.

[ 29 ] When we look at this document in this way, everything that is truly external stands out against a significant spiritual backdrop. We gaze into an abysmal depth of spiritual life when we comprehend what an initiate such as the author of the Gospel of John has given to humanity—and what he could give to humanity only because Christ had instilled His impulse into the development of humanity.

[ 30 ] Thus we have seen that these things must be explained not through hollow allegory or symbolism, but from the astral reality experienced by the initiate. This is not merely a matter of symbolic interpretation, but a narrative of what the initiate experiences. If this is not presented as such, one will rightly find that those on the outside say that spiritual science offers nothing more than allegorical interpretations! If we now apply the spiritual-scientific interpretation, as we have now understood it, at this point, then we learn how the Christ impulse works within humanity through three world ages—from the third into the fourth, from the fourth into the fifth, and from the fifth into the sixth cultural epoch. And we view this development in the spirit of the Gospel of John in such a way that we say: The Christ impulse was so great that humanity has understood only the smallest part of it today, and that it will be fully understood only at a later time.