The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] Now that we have seen what Theosophy has to say today about the history of human evolution, let us first examine what the Apocalypse tells us about it.

[ 2 ] To recognize this, we must go back beyond our own culture to the Greco-Latin cultural epoch, the fourth in our great post-Atlantean age. In spiritual science, we date this epoch back to the 8th or 9th century B.C. Going further back, we arrive at the Egyptian-Chaldean cultural epoch, then at the Proto-Persian period, of which modern historical research perceives only the faintest echoes. We then proceed to the ancient, sacred Indian culture; and thus we finally arrive at the great Atlantean culture, of which all religious texts tell us. Before the great Atlantic flood, the ancient Atlantic continent lay between Europe and America. It was home to the ancestors of humankind, whom we call the ancient Atlanteans.

[ 3 ] We will now begin by examining the spiritual life of the Atlanteans; for it was there that the same souls lived who are here today, though with different spiritual abilities or states of consciousness, and these are of primary interest to the spiritual researcher.

[ 4 ] During the heyday of Atlantean culture, we find that today’s powers of perception were present in humans only in their earliest, embryonic form. The ancient Atlantean did not see external objects as we do today, with sharp contours, but rather as if they were surrounded by an aura. When he fell asleep in the evening, the external image disappeared for him; but he was consciously present in the spiritual world. He possessed a twilight-like clairvoyance. However, he did not yet possess what we today call calculation and counting, judgment, and logical thinking. He did not yet possess all the mental faculties that have built our present-day culture; for example, he was not yet aware of the power latent in coal. But in return, he possessed magical powers through which he could awaken the forces latent in seeds and put them to work for him. Thus, he possessed clairvoyant and magical powers. In Atlantis, the best technicians were those who could make the best use of their magical powers. What our scholars and natural scientists are today can be compared to the people of that time who were most gifted in clairvoyance.

[ 5 ] Back then, there were great mystery sites. Our mystery and secret schools today operate much more secretly than those did. The ones from that time were widely known as places that were both schools and churches. Piety and wisdom were cultivated there simultaneously. Those who were leaders in that era can be called the great teachers of the mysteries. They taught in these Atlantean oracle sites. There were seven of them. There, students who were ready were initiated into the mastery of magical powers and into conscious clairvoyance in the spiritual world. Atlantean wisdom extended well beyond the physical Earth to spiritual realities, not merely to the three lower kingdoms as in our culture. Modern science sets itself a limit that does not extend beyond the Earth. Through the development of clairvoyance, however, the Atlantean initiate was also able to see and experience the high spiritual beings who act beyond the Earth’s sphere, up to the stars and their orbits.

[ 6 ] At that time, there were mystery sites that focused specifically on the various stars of our solar system and the spiritual powers behind them. Hence, there were oracles dedicated to Mars, Venus, the Sun, Jupiter, Mercury, Saturn, and the Moon. The greatest and most sublime of these, however, was the ancient Sun Oracle. The initiates of this Solar Oracle were able to oversee all other oracular sites and watch over them. At the head stood the great Solar Initiate of the Solar Oracle; he foresaw the great flood in Atlantis. Therefore, it was his responsibility to ensure that civilization would be guided through the catastrophe.

[ 7 ] Now, those people who were most predisposed to clairvoyance were not at all suited to the post-Atlantean culture. For this new culture, it was necessary to select those who had nothing left of the old magic, but who—like the dawn of the great post-Atlantean culture—developed individual spirituality, thought, and judgment in their earliest, most primitive forms. The simplest among them were precisely the ones best suited for the future.

[ 8 ] They were then brought together by the great Sun Initiate in a colony near what is now Ireland; from there, they were later led to the heart of Asia. These, then, were the ones who, even back then, were already closest to our present states of consciousness. In addition, for the most advanced among them, the images of the etheric bodies of the greatest initiates of the Atlantean oracles were brought over and incorporated into those most gifted for today’s culture from the various oracles, as this was necessary for the future.

[ 9 ] There is a law of spiritual economy that ensures what humanity has once attained is not lost. If we were to look around the various oracle sites, we would find everywhere what is achieved through the secret training: the transformation of the etheric body from the “I,” so that it is fully formed and organized. Otherwise, upon death, the etheric body of the ordinary human being dissolves into the world ether, but with the high initiates it is different. Such a transformed etheric body is preserved for the blessing and salvation of humanity. The great Solar Initiate preserved the etheric bodies of the seven great Atlantean initiates as a spiritual treasure and took them with him to Asia. These were then imprinted upon seven of the very best human beings, so that they grew up endowed with the etheric bodies of the greatest initiates of ancient Atlantis. Over many generations, he also applied his art of education to health and spiritual discipline, so that he, so to speak, cultivated the very best human material.

[ 10 ] In their outer lives, these seven people were ordinary individuals; they had their ego and their astral body, but in certain states of consciousness they spoke as if inspired by higher powers. They were then sent down by the great Solar Initiate to ancient India, to those who still longed for humanity’s true primordial homeland and regarded everything external as māyā, or illusion. This was the choir of the seven holy rishis. What harmonized this choir like a spiritual symphony was the primordial wisdom of the pre-Vedic era. Thus, we glimpse a time far older than that of the Vedas. What was written down in the Vedas is merely an echo; it reaches us only in fragmented rays through the wisdom of the holy Rishis.

[ 11 ] Now we come to the ancient Persian culture; there, the primordial Zarathustra had taken the place of the seven Indian teachers. He himself was the initiated disciple of the great Sun-Initiate who stood behind the Rishis. Through this, he was able to proclaim the great teaching about the spiritual essence of the Sun, about Ahura Mazdao. And here we see how the development of wisdom is guided by the great teachers of humanity.

[ 12 ] From the very beginning, the Indian was spared from falling into materialism; for him, the longing for insight, for the spiritual, and for a sense of connection with the divine was still too great. The Persians, on the other hand, were farmers and warriors; therefore, in order not to fall into materialism, they had to embrace the teachings of the great Ahura Mazdao, the Spirit of the Sun, the supreme being.

[ 13 ] The great Zarathustra initiated one of his disciples in such a way that the disciple brought his astral body to a high level of development; in another, however, he developed the etheric body to the highest level of clairvoyant consciousness, so that through this etheric body—which is, after all, always the bearer of memory—he became able to read the Akashic Records.

[ 14 ] Now the first of the disciples was reborn as Hermes, the great inspirer of Egyptian culture, trained especially with regard to his astral body. When he was reborn, he was able to carry within himself the astral body of the great Zarathustra. As the Egyptian Hermes, he thus carried the astral body of the great Zarathustra within himself and was therefore able to work in the spirit of Zarathustra.

[ 15 ] The other student who was reborn is also one of the most important figures in post-Atlantean culture, namely Moses. For this reason, even as a child, Moses had to be guided in such a way that his etheric body and ego could be fully influenced by the etheric body of Zarathustra. Thus, at a tender age, he had to be placed in a small box and submerged in water; this is a symbol of his calling. And so he became the great Akashic seer, able to record the images he perceived from the Akashic Records: the great images of Genesis. In this way, behind the scenes of humanity’s physical evolution, the past is carried over into the future.

[ 16 ] Zarathustra also became the greatest teacher of the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. As Zarathas or Nazarathos, living in the Near East in the 6th century B.C., he was the teacher of the most important Greek teachers and initiates—including, for example, Pythagoras.

[ 17 ] These four post-Atlantean cultures were inspired by the great solar oracle of ancient Atlantis, and running parallel to them is the continuous culture of the ancient Hebrew people, among whom one ethnic group at a time lives in each of these cultural epochs. Ancient Indian culture was initiated into the mystery of the spiritual worlds and planetary conditions; the ancient Hebrews... [gap in the postscript.] Then, living contemporaneously with the Persian culture of Zarathustra, the Hebrew ancestors also developed a doctrine such as that described to us in Persia as the doctrine of Ormuzd and Ahriman—the doctrine of good and evil; this was followed by the third, the Egyptian-Chaldean culture; at the same time, the Exodus from Egypt under the leadership of Moses; then the Greek-Latin culture, coinciding with the great Hebrew initiated prophets Elijah, Jeremiah, and so on. They had already received in ancient times the concept of the greatest being, Ahura Mazdao, proclaimed by Melchizedek. Thus, in their culture, they possessed the same nuances at the same time, in parallel with those of the other peoples.

[ 18 ] Such a culture has, however, always borne its own late blossoms. The culture of Hermes had very soon begun to decline. It had revealed profound mysteries to the ancient Egyptian culture; but it had fallen into the worst kind of decay and, as black magic, had descended into the most terrible decadence. The ancient Indian culture had fallen into decadence the least.

[ 19 ] Thus we see how everything that occurred in succession has been preserved among the ancient Hebrew people in the various groups that had retained the sensibilities and states of consciousness of the different cultures. These groups could be referred to by the names of the ancient cultures, depending on which of those cultures’ sensibilities they had preserved.

[ 20 ] When the author of the Apocalypse speaks of the “Church of Ephesus,” he is referring to the representatives of the first, Indian, culture; the Persian culture is represented by the “Church of Smyrna”; the Egyptian-Chaldean culture by the “Church of Pergamon”; and finally, the fourth—the Greek-Latin culture—in the “church of Thyatira.” In this way, he was able to address the representatives of the four ancient cultural epochs in groups situated side by side.

[ 21 ] Now he looks further into the future and sees our cultural flowering in the “Church of Sardis.” He refers to the “congregation” that will follow us—which we are consciously preparing through the Theosophical Movement—by the name “Philadelphia,” after which people will finally enter the “Congregation of Laodicea,” where no new impulses can be generated. We usher in the age of Philadelphia, or brotherhood, when we work and act as conscious representatives of theosophical spiritual life in the fifth era.

[ 22 ] The seven spirits of God, the seven stars—these are the theosophical teachings on the Earth’s evolution through the planetary stages, which are meant to lead us to an understanding of the mystery of the stars and their spirits. Thus, we consciously enter the church of Philadelphia when we embrace the teachings of theosophy.