The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday we spoke about the mysterious connection between the earlier stages of our Earth’s development and the various worldviews of the successive cultural periods of the post-Atlantean era. And a remarkable fact became clear to us: that when the Atlantean catastrophe had transformed the face of the Earth, the pre-Vedic, ancient sacred Indian culture—with its profound philosophical conception of the first cultural period—reflected, as it were, the events that had taken place at the dawn of Earth’s evolution in a distant past, when the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth were still united. What was perceived in the spirit at that time—and to which those to whom it was given were elevated—was nothing other than a spiritual form grasped in the spirit, which was real when our Earth stood at the beginning of its development. And we have seen that the second state of the Earth, when the Sun had separated itself, but the Earth and Moon still formed a single body—that this peculiar opposition of two worlds emerged in the second cultural epoch, the ancient Persian one, as a philosophical-religious system in the contrasts between the principle of light in the solar aura and the principle of darkness, as the opposition of Ormuzd and Ahriman. The third of the great cultural periods, the Egyptian-Babylonian-Assyrian, is a spiritual reflection of what took place when the Earth, Sun, and Moon had become three separate bodies. And we have already been able to point out in outline form that the trinity of Osiris, Isis, and Horus reflects this astral trinity of the third Earth epoch, this stellar trinity: Sun, Earth, and Moon. We have also already pointed out that this separation took place during the Lemurian Age, and that this was followed by the Atlantean Age—the fourth stage of our Earth’s development—in which conditions of consciousness were entirely different from those of today. At that time, through a different form of consciousness, human beings lived alongside the gods they knew—the gods who were later named Wotan, Baldur, Thor, Zeus, Apollo, and so on. These are beings whom the Atlantean people were able to perceive through their clairvoyance. We find a echo of this perception of divine-spiritual beings from the Atlantean epoch in the memories of the peoples of the Greco-Roman era, as well as among the peoples of northern Europe. It was the memory of experiences from earlier states of consciousness. Whether it was Wotan or Zeus, whether it was Mars, Hera, or Athena, all were a memory of the ancient spiritual beings who constituted the essence of that ancient world of gods.

[ 2 ] The fourth cultural epoch is characterized by the fact that its religions reflect what took place in the Earth’s evolution during the Atlantean epoch. Today, we must gradually delve a little deeper into the souls of the ancient Indian, Persian, and Egyptian civilizations. If we wish to form a true picture of these experiences—of what was alive religiously in the ancient cultural periods—we must bear in mind that both the main segments of these ancient peoples and the enlightened individuals—the seers and prophets—were all successors of those who had already lived in the Atlantean era, and that by no means did everything that constituted the ancient Atlantean culture perish immediately after the great catastrophe; rather, what was alive at that time was gradually transplanted into the new era. And we will best understand the souls of the ancient post-Atlantean descendants if we immerse ourselves in the inner life of the last Atlanteans.

[ 3 ] During the last Atlantean epoch, people differed greatly from one another. Some had retained a high degree of clairvoyant abilities. This clairvoyance had not suddenly disappeared entirely; it was still present in many of the people who took part in the great migration from the West to the East, while others had already lost it. There were advanced and less advanced people, and it is understandable that, given the overall nature of development at that time, it was precisely the least advanced who were the most clairvoyant, for they had, so to speak, remained stagnant and had preserved the ancient character of the Atlanteans. The most advanced were those who had first mastered the physical perception of the world, who had already adopted our way of seeing things during the day to a greater extent. These were the most advanced ones, who ceased to see the spiritual world clairvoyantly at night and who saw the ever sharper contours of objects while awake during the day. And it was precisely that small group, already mentioned, led by one of the great—indeed, the greatest—initiates, commonly referred to as Manz, and his disciples—this small group, which was led deep into Asia and from there enriched the other civilized lands; it was precisely this small group, which was the first to lose, under ordinary conditions of life, the gift of the ancient clairvoyance—that was composed of the most advanced people of that time. Daytime consciousness—what we perceive as physical objects with their sharp boundaries—became increasingly evident to them. And their great leaders had led this people as far into Asia as possible so that it could live in seclusion; otherwise, it would have come into too close contact with other peoples who had still preserved the ancient clairvoyance. Only by remaining separated from other peoples for a time could they develop into a new kind of humanity. A colony was established in Inner Asia, from which the great cultural currents were to flow out to the most diverse peoples.

[ 4 ] At first, northern India was the region that had received this new cultural influence from that center. Now, it has already been hinted at here that these small groups of people, who were sent out as cultural pioneers, found no uninhabited land anywhere, for even earlier, before that great migration moved from west to east, there had always been large-scale migrations, and whenever new tracts of land rose from the sea floor, they had been populated by the migrating hordes. Consequently, the people sent out from that Asian colony had to intermingle with other ethnic groups, all of whom, however, were less advanced than those led by Manu. Among these other peoples, one still encountered many who had preserved the ancient gift of clairvoyance.

[ 5 ] The Initiates did not establish colonies in the same way that colonization is carried out today; they did it differently. They knew that one had to proceed from the souls of those they encountered in the lands to be colonized. It was not the case that the emissaries imposed their own views. They took into account what they encountered. A balance was struck, and the needs of the original inhabitants were taken into consideration. One had to take into account the religious views based on memories of earlier times, as well as the ancient clairvoyant abilities. Therefore, it was natural that pure concepts could develop only among a small handful of the most advanced individuals. Among the vast majority, compromise concepts emerged from a blend of the old Atlantean and post-Atlantean worldviews. That is why, throughout these vast populations—in India, Persia, and Egypt, and everywhere where the various post-Atlantean cultures arose—we find, at the core, religious conceptions that were less advanced and less refined for that time, but which were nothing other than a kind of continuation of the ancient Atlantean conceptions.

[ 6 ] To understand what these concepts actually were in these folk religions, we must first form a picture of them. To do so, we must put ourselves in the minds of the last Atlantean population. We must remember that in the Atlantean era, human beings were not unconscious at night, but perceived just as they did during the day—if one can even speak of day and night in that era. By day, they perceived the first glimmer of what we today see so clearly as the world of sensory perception. By night, they were companions of the divine-spiritual beings. They needed no proof that gods existed, any more than we today need proof that minerals exist. The gods were their companions; they themselves were spiritual beings by night. In his astral body and with his I, he wandered through the spiritual world. He was himself a spirit and encountered beings of a nature similar to his own. Of course, the higher spiritual beings were not the only ones he encountered. He also met lower spirits—such as those later described as Zeus, Wotan, and so on. These were, of course, not the only ones; they were merely the most exalted figures. It was like seeing kings and emperors today. Many do not see them and yet believe that kings or emperors exist. In this state, which was common to all humans, even when one was conscious during the day, one perceived the surrounding objects differently than today; even daytime consciousness was different, and we must try to understand what this latter consciousness of the Atlanteans was like.

[ 7 ] It has been described how divine beings withdrew from a person when he descended into his physical body in the morning. He saw objects as if shrouded in a mist. Such were the images of waking up in those days. But these images had another peculiar characteristic that we must grasp very precisely. Let us imagine such a soul approaching a pond. This soul did not perceive the water in the pond as sharply defined as we do today; but when this soul focused its attention on it, it experienced something quite different from what someone experiences today when approaching a pond. As it approached the pond—merely by looking at it—a feeling arose within it, as if it were getting a taste of what lay physically before it, without needing to drink the pond’s water. Simply by looking at it, it would have sensed whether the water was sweet or salty. In general, it was not at all like how we see water today. Today we see only the surface, but we cannot penetrate to the interior. Those who, in the past, when dim clairvoyance still existed, approached the pond did not feel a sense of alienation from it; they felt themselves immersed in the qualities of the water. They did not stand before the object in the same way as we do today; it was as if they could have penetrated into the water. Let’s suppose we had come upon a lump of salt; as we approached, we would have sensed its taste. Today we must first taste the salt; back then, that would have been provided by mere observation. Human beings were, as it were, immersed in the whole, and they perceived things as animated. They perceived, so to speak, the essences that, for example, gave the thing its salty taste. Thus, everything came alive to them. Air, earth, water, fire—everything, everything revealed something to them. Human beings could empathize with the inner nature of objects; they lived within the essence of their being. What appears to consciousness today as soulless objects did not exist back then. That is why human beings also perceived everything with sympathy and antipathy, because they saw the inner nature. They felt and experienced the inner essence of objects.

[ 8 ] Memories of these experiences had remained everywhere. As a result, the segments of the Indian population encountered by the colonists were imbued with such a sense of connection to things. They knew that souls lived within things. They had retained the ability to perceive the qualities of things. Now let us imagine this entire relationship between human beings and things. Back then, a person perceived the taste of the water as he approached the pond. There he saw a spiritual being that gave the water its taste. He could encounter this spiritual being at night when he lay down beside the water and fell asleep. By day he saw the material; by night he saw that which permeates everything. By day they see objects—stones, plants, animals—and hear the wind blowing and the water rushing; by night they see within themselves, in their true form, what they sense by day—there they see the spirits that live in everything. When he said, “Spirits live in minerals, in plants, in water, in the clouds, in the wind—spirits live everywhere,” these were by no means mere poems to him; they were not a figment of his imagination—they were something he could perceive.

[ 9 ] We must now delve so deeply into the souls to understand them. And then one realizes that it is utter nonsense when today’s scholars speak of animism, which they claim prompts the popular imagination to animate and personify everything. No such popular imagination exists. No one who truly knows the people speaks of this. One can repeatedly find this strange example: Just as a child, when bumping into a table, strikes that table because it animates the table—so the scholars say—so too would primitive man, childlike man, have animated the objects in nature—the trees and so on—and projected something onto everything. — This analogy has been repeated ad nauseam. It is certain that there is imagination involved here, but it was the scholars who had this imagination, not the people. They are the ones who were dreaming. Those who originally perceived everything as animated were not dreaming; they were merely recounting what they themselves had perceived.

[ 10 ] This perception resurfaced as a memory among ancient peoples. Even a child does not view the table as having a soul; the child does not yet feel the soul within itself, but sees itself as nothing more than a block of wood. Precisely because the child feels soulless, it places itself on the same level as the soulless “table” by hitting it. The reality is exactly the opposite of what the scholars’ books say on the subject. Whether we go to India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, or anywhere else, everywhere we find at the root the same ideas that have been characterized above. And into these ideas was poured what was given as culture by the ancient initiates.

[ 11 ] In ancient India, the Rishis guided the culture. But now we must also gain some understanding of what actually gave rise to the figure who has emerged as one of the most important figures in the Indian worldview. We know that there have always been so-called mystery schools, where those who were able to develop their spiritual faculties learned to look more deeply into the universe, where they awakened their dormant abilities to perceive the spiritual interconnection of all things. Spiritual impulses for cultures emanated from these mystery centers everywhere. And so that we may truly understand the initiates from the ground up—when we consider these initiates, we usually look at them in the post-Atlantean era, because their nature is most easily understood there; however, we would already encounter something similar to schools of initiation in the Atlantean era as well. So that we may now understand them thoroughly from the ground up, let us try to put ourselves in the mindset of such an ancient Atlantean school of initiation.

[ 12 ] At that time, therefore, the states of consciousness just described were present. If we go back to those times, we find that human beings did not yet have their present form. Back then, they were shaped quite differently. We are, however, going back to the first half of the Atlantean epoch. Human beings already consisted of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and the “I,” but the physical body looked quite different. The physical body was such that we could compare it, for example, to the bodies of certain sea creatures—transparent, barely visible, and just barely tangible—though already permeated by certain lines of direction that shone within them. The human physical body was much softer than it is today; there were no bones yet. Even though there were already cartilage-like structures, this physical body in the earliest times was by no means of the form we see today.

[ 13 ] In contrast, the human etheric body was the far more important component. At that time, the physical body of human beings was more or less small, whereas the etheric body was extraordinarily large. This etheric body differed from person to person in such a way that one could have discerned roughly four different types. These four typical forms existed in such a way that some people exhibited one type, while others exhibited another. These types have been preserved in four names: the names of the apocalyptic beasts—the ox or bull, the lion, the eagle, and the man. Now, it is not entirely correct to imagine that these forms were completely similar to today’s animals, but their impression nevertheless recalled the kind of impression that the corresponding animals make today. One could understand the impressions made by the etheric bodies through the image of the lion, the bull, the eagle, or the human. A group whose characteristic was a strong reproductive capacity—or an extraordinary appetite—was compared, for example, to the bull; another type of human lived more in the spiritual realm—these were the eagle-people, who felt somewhat out of place in the physical world. And then there were people whose etheric bodies, so to speak, already resembled today’s physical body; although it was not quite the same, it already had the form of a human being. We must, of course, imagine that in each individual, not just one type was represented, but that all four were present, though one of these four dominated.

[ 14 ] Such, then, was the nature of the etheric bodies of the Atlantean population. At that time, the astral body was particularly powerful but undeveloped, and the “I” was still entirely outside the human being. Thus, people looked quite different back then than they do today. Of course, some precocious individuals took on their later form earlier, but essentially, the people of that time can be characterized as we have just described. That, then, was the normal, average state of humanity at that time.

[ 15 ] The situation was quite different for the more advanced students—those at the mystery schools who sought initiation into the ancient Atlantis. Let us now enter in spirit such an ancient Atlantean initiation site and try to visualize what the teacher had to offer. Who, then, was this teacher himself?

[ 16 ] If a person were to encounter an initiate today, he would not be able to recognize him at all by his outward appearance. Very few people today would recognize such an initiate by his outward appearance, for today—now that the human physical body has evolved to such an extent, yet the initiate must still live within the body—he differs from other people only in subtle, intimate ways. Back then, however, the initiate was very, very different from other people. The others still had more animal-like forms; the physical body was small in comparison to the gigantic etheric bodies, and it consisted more of a clumsy, animal-like substance and mass. The initiate, however, differed in that his physical body more closely resembled the human form of today; he bore a human face similar to that of modern humans, and possessed a forebrain like that of the average person today. At that time, the initiates already had a highly developed brain for their era, whereas the brains of others were still underdeveloped. Now such initiates existed and had their schools, and into these schools of initiation they admitted students from among ordinary humanity—using specific methods—depending on whether these pupils proved to be mature and sufficiently developed.

[ 17 ] There is something we must take into account if we are to fully understand what follows. We must realize that, as time has progressed, the dominion of the human being’s spiritual members over the physical body has, with a few exceptions, completely diminished in modern humans. Even though people today can move their legs and arms and pedal a bicycle, even though they can control their facial expressions—in short, even though they have a certain degree of control over their bodies—all of this is merely a pitiful, final remnant of the old relationship of dominion over the physical body as it existed in the Atlantean epoch. Back then, thought and feeling had a much greater influence on the physical body. What a person thought exerted a much more substantial influence on the physical body at that time. If a thought is given to someone today for weeks, months, or even years, it will continue to have an effect only on the etheric body in very special, exceptional cases. It is very rare, for example, for the physical body to be influenced by meditation. If someone were able, through this means, to move a receding forehead slightly forward—that is, if the frontal bones were to shift a little further forward, so that the effect extended all the way to the bones—that would already be a tremendous success today. This is very, very rarely the case today. Today, an immense amount of energy must be generated if thought is to affect the physical body. It is certainly easier to influence blood circulation or respiratory conditions, but even that is still difficult. Thought can already affect the etheric body today, and in the next incarnation, thought will have exerted such a powerful influence that the physical conditions will have changed. One should work today in such a way that one knows one is not working for a single incarnation, but beyond that, for future incarnations. The soul is eternal; it returns again and again.

[ 18 ] The situation was quite different, however, in the ancient schools of initiation. There, it was the power of thought that exerted an influence on the physical body within a relatively short time. The initiate was able to elevate his own constitution to a human-like state through his own efforts. So back then, it was possible to accept a student from among ordinary humanity; one only had to give him the right impulse. The student did not even need to think for himself; thoughts were instilled into his soul through a kind of suggestion. A very specific spiritual form had to stand before his soul, into which the student had to immerse himself again and again. In every instance, the Atlantean initiate gave the student a thought-form into which the student had to immerse himself again and again. What kind of image was this? What was the student supposed to think? What did he meditate on?

[ 19 ] Reference has already been made to the primordial state of the Earth; its entire evolution has already been outlined; and mention has also been made of the luminous figure within the primordial dust. Had one been able to observe the atom clairvoyantly at that time, the archetype of modern man would have emerged. It grew out of this speck of dust, this primordial atom. Not the form of the human being of ancient times, not that of the Atlantean human, but the form of modern man grew out of this primordial atom. And what did the Atlantean initiate do? He presented precisely this archetype—this human archetype rising from the primordial seed—to the souls of his disciples. Thus, the disciple had to meditate on this archetype. The initiate of Atlantis presented the human form as a thought-form before the disciple’s inner eye, with all the impulses and sensations contained within it. And whether the disciple possessed the lion-type or another, he had to hold before himself the mental image of what the human being was to become in the post-Atlantean era. He always received this mental image as an ideal. He had to will this thought: “My physical body shall become like this image.” — And through the powers of this image, which the student had to learn, the body was so influenced that it then differed from that of other human beings. Through the powers of this image, certain parts were transformed, and gradually the most advanced students became more and more like modern human beings.

[ 20 ] Here we look back on strange secrets; here we look into the mysteries of the Atlantean era. And something else will also strike us. No matter how human beings were formed, one image hovered before their souls—an image that already existed as a spiritual form when the Sun was still united with the Earth. And this image emerged more and more as the essence of the Earth, as that which spiritually underlies the Earth. And this image did not appear to them in this or that form, as the image of this or that race; it appeared to them as the universal ideal of humanity.

[ 21 ] This is the feeling the student is meant to have developed from this image: The highest spiritual beings willed this image—the image through which unity comes to humanity. This image is the purpose of Earth’s evolution; to bring this image to fruition, the Sun separated from the Earth, and the Moon emerged. Through this, humankind was able to become Mersch. This is the one thing that is ultimately to appear as the high ideal of the Earth. And into this high ideal flowed the feelings that animated the student in his meditation.

[ 22 ] This is how it was around the middle of the Atlantean era, and we will have to trace how this image of meditation—which stood before the disciple in human form—transformed into something else, and how it was preserved after the Atlantean catastrophe. This is what came to life in the Indian initiatory teachings—that which can be summed up in the ancient, sacred name: Brahma. What the World God intended as the purpose of the Earth was the holiest thing for the ancient Indian initiate; when he spoke of Brahma, he was referring to this. From this sprang later the teachings of Zarathustra and Egyptian wisdom, which will be discussed later. Tomorrow we will continue to see how this transforms from Brahma into Egyptian wisdom.