The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] When we ask ourselves what the purpose of the spiritual sciences should be for humanity, we will likely, based on all manner of impressions and feelings we have formed in the course of our work in this field, repeatedly pose an answer to our souls: For us, the spiritual sciences should be a path toward the higher development of our humanity—the human essence within us.

[ 2 ] We have thus set forth a life goal that, in a certain sense, is self-evident to every thinking and feeling human being—a life goal that encompasses the attainment of the highest ideals, but also the unfolding of the most significant and profound forces within our soul. Essentially, the finest of humanity throughout the ages have asked themselves: How can a person properly bring to fruition what is inherent within them? — And answers have been given in the most varied ways. Perhaps no answer can be found that is shorter and more concise than the one Goethe offered, springing from a profound conviction, in *The Mysteries*:

From the force that binds all beings,
The person who overcomes themselves is set free.

[ 3 ] These words contain an immense amount of meaning and a profound insight, for they clearly and concisely show us what is essential in terms of all development. What matters is that human beings develop their inner sensibility by transcending themselves. In this way, we find that we rise, so to speak, above ourselves. The soul that overcomes itself finds the path beyond itself and thus to the highest goods of humanity.

[ 4 ] It is worth recalling this noble goal of spiritual science as we are about to address a topic precisely like the one that concerns us here. It will first lead us beyond the ordinary horizons of life to higher matters. We will have to survey vast stretches of time as we address our subject—an epoch extending from ancient Egypt to the present day. We must take in millennia, and what we hope to gain will truly be something connected to the deepest matters of our souls, something that touches the very core of our inner life. For it is only seemingly the case that, by striving toward the heights of life, a person distances himself from what is immediately given to him; it is precisely through this that he gains an understanding of what occupies him moment by moment. A person must turn away from the misery of “the day”—from what everyday life brings—and look up to the great events of world and national history; only then will he find what the soul preserves as its most sacred treasure. It might seem strange to suggest that we should seek connections—intimate connections—between ancient Egypt, the times when the mighty pyramids and the Sphinx were built, and our own present. At first, it might seem somewhat odd to seek a better understanding of our own time by casting our gaze so far back. Yet it is precisely for this reason that we will have to look back over even more comprehensive, broader periods of time. But this, too, will yield the result we have in mind, the result we seek: the possibility of transcending ourselves.

[ 5 ] To anyone who has already studied the basic concepts of spiritual science in depth, it cannot seem at all strange that we seek connections between periods of time that are far apart. For it is, after all, one of our fundamental convictions that the human soul returns again and again, that the experiences between birth and death are repeated for the individual. The doctrine of reincarnation has become increasingly familiar to us. As we reflect on this, we may ask: Yes, these souls that dwell within us today have been here many times before; is it not possible that they were also once present in ancient Egypt, during the Egyptian cultural epoch, that the very same souls are within us who, back then, looked up at the gigantic pyramids and the enigmatic sphinxes of ancient Egypt?

[ 6 ] The answer to this question is yes. The picture has been renewed, and our souls have looked up to the ancient cultural monuments, which they now see once more. Thus, it is essentially the same souls that lived back then, who passed through later eras and have reappeared in our time. And we know that no life remains without fruit; we know that what the soul has gone through in terms of experiences and events exists and remains within it, and that it reappears in later incarnations in the form of strengths, temperaments, abilities, and aptitudes. Thus, the way we view nature today, the way we take in what our time brings forth—the way we view the world today—was laid down in ancient Egypt, the land of the pyramids. Back then, we were shaped in such a way that we now look out upon the physical world as we do today. Let us explore just how mysteriously these vast periods of time are linked together.

[ 7 ] If we wish to consider the deeper meaning of these lectures, we must go far back in the history of Earth’s evolution. We know that our Earth has changed many times. Ancient Egypt was preceded by other cultures. Through occult research, we can look back even further, into the mists of time of human evolution, and there we indeed encounter eras when the Earth looked quite different from how it does today. The landscape of ancient Asia and Africa was entirely different. If we look clairvoyantly back into ancient times, we arrive at those eras when a massive catastrophe, caused by the forces of water, took place on our Earth and thoroughly altered its face. And if we go back even further, we arrive at ancient times when the Earth had an entirely different appearance; we arrive at times when what today forms the floor of the Atlantic Ocean between Europe and America was above, was land. We arrive at a time when our souls lived in bodies quite different from those of today; we arrive in ancient Atlantis, in ancient times about which conventional science can still tell us very little today.

[ 8 ] Then great floods brought about the downfall of these lands of Atlantis. The bodies of human beings had different forms back then, and they took on different forms later on. But the souls that dwell within us today also dwelt within the ancient Atlanteans. Those were our souls. Then the flood triggered an internal migration among the Atlantean peoples—a great exodus from west to east. We ourselves were those peoples. Toward the end of Atlantis, there was great upheaval; we ourselves migrated from west to east, through Ireland, Scotland, the Netherlands, France, and Spain. Thus the peoples migrated eastward and populated Europe, Asia, and the northern parts of Africa.

[ 9 ] Now, one must not believe that what came from the West as the last great migration of peoples did not encounter any peoples in the regions that gradually came to be known as Asia, Europe, and Africa. Almost all of Europe, the northern parts of Africa, and large parts of Asia were already populated at that time. These regions were not only populated from the west, but had been settled earlier, so that it was essentially a foreign population that was already there, which this migration encountered. We can imagine that, as calmer times set in, distinct cultural conditions emerged. For example, there was a region near Ireland where, before the catastrophe that lies millennia behind us, the most advanced segments of the entire world’s population lived. These groups then migrated through Europe—under the special leadership of great individuals—as far as a region in Central Asia, and from there, cultural colonies were sent out to a wide variety of regions. One such colony from the post-Atlantean era—which came into being when a colony from that group of people was sent to India—encountered a population there that had been present since time immemorial and which also possessed a culture; and by taking what already existed into account, the colonists founded the first post-Atlantean culture, which is many millennia old, yet about which external documents say almost nothing. What these sources describe dates from millennia later. In those significant collections of wisdom that we refer to as the Vedas—in the ancient Vedas—we find only the faintest echoes of what remains of a very early Indian culture, one that was guided by supernatural beings and founded by the holy Rishis. It was a culture of a unique kind, about which we can form only a faint conception today, for the Vedas are merely a reflection of that ancient, sacred Indian culture.

[ 10 ] This culture was succeeded by another—the second cultural epoch of the post-Atlantean era—the culture from which the wisdom of Zarathustra later flowed, the culture from which Persian culture emerged. Indian culture endured for a long time, and Persian culture, which reached its culmination in Zarathustra, also endured for a long time.

[ 11 ] Then, once again under the influence of colonists sent to the Nile region, a culture emerged that we can summarize with these four names: Chaldean-Egyptian-Assyrian-Babylonian culture. In the Near East, in the northern parts of Africa, a culture took shape that we must designate as the third of the post-Atlantean era, a culture that reached its peak, on the one hand, in the marvelous Chaldean astronomy—the Chaldean wisdom of the stars—and, on the other hand, in Egyptian culture.

[ 12 ] Then comes a fourth era, which developed in southern Europe: the era of Greco-Roman culture, whose dawn is reflected in the songs of Homer, which show us what could be expressed in Greek art and which reveal a poetic art that produced such significant works as the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Roman civilization is also part of this. It is an epoch that began around the 8th century, 747 B.C., and lasted until the 14th and 15th centuries, 1413 A.D. From there, we enter the fifth period, in which we currently find ourselves, and this will be succeeded by a sixth and seventh period. In this seventh period, ancient Indian culture will reemerge in a new form.

[ 13 ] We will see that there is a peculiar law that helps us understand the workings of miraculous forces throughout these periods and the interconnection among the various cultural epochs. If we first look at the first epoch—that of Indian culture—we will find that later on we see this first culture reemerge in a new form during the seventh epoch. The ancient Indian culture will appear there in a new form. Very mysterious forces are at work there. And the second epoch, which we called the Persian one, we will see reemerge during the sixth epoch. After our culture has come to an end, we will see the Zoroastrian religion revived in the culture of the sixth epoch. And in our lectures, we will see how, in our fifth epoch, a kind of revival of the third—the Egyptian—epoch will take place. The fourth epoch stands right in the middle of all this; it is unique in itself, with no equal either before or after it.

[ 14 ] To make this mysterious law more understandable, the following should be noted. We know that Indian culture has something that strikes modern people as alien to their sense of humanity; this is the division into specific castes—the priestly caste, the warrior caste, merchants, and workers. This strict division is foreign to modern consciousness. In the first post-Atlantean culture, it was not something foreign, but rather something taken for granted. At that time, it could not have been otherwise than that humanity was divided into four grades according to the various capacities of the souls. This was by no means perceived as harsh, for people were classified by their leaders, and these leaders held such authority that whatever they decreed was naturally regarded as definitive. It was believed that the leaders—the seven holy Rishis, who had themselves received their teachings from divine beings in Atlantis—could see exactly where each person belonged. Thus, such a classification of people was something entirely natural. The grouping of people in the seventh epoch will take place quite differently. Whereas in the first epoch it was authority that brought about the classification, in the seventh epoch it will be something else: people will group themselves according to objective criteria. We see something similar among ants; they form a society whose marvelous structure, as well as its ability to accomplish a relatively immense task, is unmatched by any human society. And yet, we find there precisely what seems so foreign to humans today—the caste system; every ant has a specific task.

[ 15 ] Whatever people may think today, they will come to realize that humanity’s salvation lies in the division into functional groups, and they will find a way to achieve both a division of labor and equality. Human society will appear as a marvelous harmony. This is something we can see in the annals of the future. Thus, ancient India will reappear. And in a similar way, certain characteristics of the third period will reappear in the fifth period.

[ 16 ] If we now turn our attention first to what is directly related to our topic, we see there as well a vast realm: we see the gigantic pyramid, the enigmatic Sphinx; we will see that the souls that belonged to the ancient Indians were also incarnated in Egypt, and are still incarnated there today. And if we examine that general characteristic in a bit more detail, two phenomena should first come to mind that will show us how we can already trace mysterious threads in the supernatural connections between Egyptian and modern culture. We have seen the law of repetition in the various historical periods, but it will appear infinitely more significant to us when we trace it in the spiritual realm.

[ 17 ] We are all familiar with a painting of profound significance that has surely touched the soul of each of us at some point—that famous painting by Raphael, which, through a series of circumstances, has come to be housed here in Central Germany: I am referring to the Sistine Madonna. In this painting—which, of course, can be seen by many in countless reproductions—we may have learned to admire the wondrous purity that radiates throughout the entire figure; we may also have sensed something in the Mother’s face, in the figure’s unique sense of floating, and perhaps also in the deep expression in the child’s eyes. And when we then look around at the cloud formations from which numerous little angel heads emerge, we experience an even deeper feeling—a feeling that makes the entire painting seem more comprehensible to us. I know I am making a bold statement when I say: If someone looks deeply and earnestly at this child in his mother’s arms, with the clouds behind him forming a multitude of little angel heads, then he will have the thought: This child was not born in the natural way; he is one of those who float beside him in the clouds. This infant Jesus is himself such a cloud-like figure, only slightly more substantial than if such a little angel had flown down from the clouds into the Madonna’s arms. That would be precisely a healthy perception. If we bring this emotional content to life within ourselves, then our perspective will broaden; it will free itself from certain narrow conceptions of the natural interrelationships of existence. It is precisely from such an image that a narrow perspective can broaden to the realization that even what must happen according to today’s laws might once have been different. We will come to understand that there once existed a form of procreation other than sexual reproduction. In short, we will perceive deep connections between the human realm and the spiritual forces in this image. That is what lies within it.

[ 18 ] If we let our gaze wander back from this Madonna to the Egyptian era, we encounter something very similar—an image just as sublime. The Egyptians had Isis, that figure to whom the words are linked: “I am that which was, that which is, and that which will be.” No mortal has yet lifted my veil.

[ 19 ] A profound mystery, hidden beneath a deep veil, reveals itself in the figure of Isis, the lovely divine spirit—Isis, who, in the spiritual consciousness of the ancient Egyptians, stood alongside the Horus child just as our Madonna stands with the infant Jesus. The fact that this Isis is presented to us as something that bears the eternal within her reminds us once again of the feeling we experience at the sight of the Madonna. We must see profound mysteries in Isis—mysteries rooted in the spiritual realm. The Madonna is a reminder of Isis; Isis reappears in the Madonna. Such is the connection. We must recognize, with feeling, the profound mysteries that represent a supernatural connection between Egyptian and modern culture.

[ 20 ] Today we can draw yet another connection. We recall how the Egyptians treated their dead; we recall the mummies and how the Egyptians placed great importance on preserving the outer physical form for a long time, and we know that the Egyptians filled their tombs with such mummies, in which the outer form had been preserved, and that they placed certain utensils and possessions in the tomb with the deceased—as mementos of the past physical life, utensils that corresponded to the needs of physical life. In this way, what the person had possessed in the physical realm was to be preserved. In this way, the Egyptians connected their dead to the physical plane. This custom became increasingly established. This, in particular, was a defining feature of ancient Egyptian culture.

[ 21 ] But something like this is not without consequences for the soul. Let us remember that our souls were in Egyptian bodies. It is absolutely true that our souls were embodied in these bodies that had become mummies. We know from the descriptions given earlier that when a person is freed from their physical body and their etheric body after death, they then have a different consciousness; they do not, by any means, live in an unconscious state in the astral world. From the spiritual world, they can look down—even if they cannot look up today—they can look down upon the physical Earth. It is not irrelevant whether the body has been preserved as a mummy, or whether it has been cremated or has decayed. This creates a certain kind of connection. We will see this mysterious connection. Because bodies were preserved for a long time in ancient Egypt, the souls experienced something very specific in the interval after death. When they looked down, they knew: “That is my body.” They were bound to it, to this physical body; they had the form of their body before them. This body became important to the souls, for the soul is receptive to impressions after death. The impression made by the mummified body was deeply imprinted, and the soul was shaped according to this impression.

[ 22 ] Now this soul passed through incarnations within Greco-Roman culture, and today, in our time, it lives within us. It is not without effect that these souls saw their mummified bodies after death, that they were thereby repeatedly drawn back to these bodies; this is by no means insignificant. They have taken them into their hearts, and the fruit of this looking down is evident today, in the fifth epoch, in the tendency souls have today to place great value on external physical life. Everything we today call attachment to matter stems from the fact that the souls were able to gaze upon their own physical form from the spiritual world at that time. Through this, human beings have learned to love the physical world; this is why it is so often said today that only this physical body between birth and death is important.

[ 23 ] Such views do not arise out of nowhere. This is not meant to be a criticism of mummy culture, but merely to point out the necessities associated with the ever-recurring incarnation of the soul. Humanity could not have progressed in its development at all without observing the mummies. Today, humanity would have lost all interest in the physical world had the Egyptians not practiced the cult of mummification. It had to happen this way in order to awaken a legitimate interest in the physical world. The fact that humanity has organized its world in such a way that we now see the world as we do is a consequence of the Egyptians’ practice of mummifying the physical body after death. For this cultural movement, too, was influenced by initiates who could look into the future. Mummies were not created on a whim. At that very time, humanity was guided by exalted individuals who decreed what was right. This was done on authority. In the schools of the initiates, it was known that our epoch is connected to the third epoch. These mysterious connections were clear to the priests at that time, and they specifically ordered mummification so that the souls might adopt the disposition that seeks spiritual experience from the physical, outer world.

[ 24 ] This is how the world is guided by wisdom; this is another example of such connections. The fact that people today think the way they do is the result of what they experienced in ancient Egypt. Here we glimpse deep mysteries that reveal themselves in cultural currents. We have only just touched upon these mysteries, for what has been shown regarding the Madonna as a remembrance of Isis, and what we have seen regarding mummification, only faintly touches upon the true spiritual connections. But we will shed even deeper light on those circumstances; we will not only have to consider what appears on the surface, but we will also have to consider what underlies the outward appearance.

[ 25 ] Outward life unfolds between birth and death. After death, a person lives a much longer life—what we know as Kamaloka and the experiences in the spiritual world. The experiences in the supersensible worlds are by no means any more monotonous than the experiences here in the physical world. What, then, did we experience as ancient Egyptians in the other world?

[ 26 ] When we let our gaze wander along the pyramid, when we directed it toward the Sphinx, how very different that life was, how very differently our soul lived back then between birth and death! That cannot be compared at all to life today; it would make no sense to do so. And even more varied than the external experiences are the experiences between death and a new birth. Back then, during the Egyptian era, the soul experienced something entirely different than in the Greek world, than in the time of Charlemagne, and than in our own time. In the other world—the spiritual world—development also takes place, and what a person experiences today between death and a new birth is something entirely different from what the ancient Egyptians experienced when they shed their outer form upon death. And just as mummification has evolved in its own unique way, so that it is the cause of today’s mindset, just as this outer life of the third epoch is repeated in the fifth, so too does a continuation of development take place in those mysterious worlds between death and birth. We will have to consider this as well; there, too, a mysterious connection will emerge. And then we will have gathered enough to truly comprehend what lives within us, what within us is the fruit of that ancient time.

[ 27 ] However, we are led down into the deep chambers of the labyrinth of Earth’s evolution. But it is precisely through this that we will also come to recognize the full connection between what the Egyptians built, what the Chaldeans thought, and what we experience today. We will see what was accomplished back then shine forth again in what surrounds us, in what interests us in our environment. Both physically and spiritually, we will gain insights into this connection. To this end, it will be shown how evolution progresses, how the fourth epoch forms a truly wonderful link between the third and fifth epochs. And so our soul will rise to the meaningful connections of the world, and the fruit of this will be a deep understanding of what lives within us.