The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday we concluded our reflection by discussing an extraordinarily important event in the inner life—in the very spiritual life—of the human being. We sought to bring before our soul an impression that the Atlantean initiate experienced at the beginning of the last third of the Atlantean cultural epoch. We saw how an ideal human figure stood before the initiate’s soul—a mental image on which he had to concentrate during meditation—and how this filled the Atlantean initiate’s life of imagination, feeling, and will. This mental image was to become, more and more, the model for the future human being.

[ 2 ] Now we must once again try to visualize what this mental image actually looked like. It was not quite like the human being of today; it was not like that. If we were to imagine a kind of combination of man and woman, in which everything that is base is left out—if we were to imagine a kind of dual figure of which only the upper part of the body is clearly discernible—then we have the actual sensory-supersensory image that stood before the meditator at that time. This image had such a powerful effect that those who were to be initiated actually made their outer bodies more and more like this image.

[ 3 ] Now, one circumstance is very important: namely, that the meditating initiate had before him a kind of human figure that stood opposite him within his inner being. Once the initiate had been prepared to see this image vividly before him, he had to realize the following when he saw this image light up before him: By gazing at this image, I transport myself to the primordial state of Earth’s evolution, when the Earth, Moon, and Sun were not yet separate. — At that time, the Earth consisted of its primordial atom, but within this atom the clairvoyant could see the image that now appears before me. The image already existed in the Earth’s primeval era, when there were still no animal, plant, or mineral forms. At that time, the Earth consisted only of the human atom, of the reawakened human beings. However, the first rudiments of animals had already formed during the Earth’s lunar phase; the animals were already there. But we also know that when a planetary system disappears, it enters a Pralaya, in which all forms are then dissolved. Even though the ancient Moon was already populated by animal forms, the Earth did not initially have animals and plants; they came only later. It was only after the separation of the Sun that animals gradually appeared. In its primeval era, the Earth was nothing but human.

[ 4 ] The initiate thus gazed upon this primordial state of the Earth. He saw in the primordial atom the ideal image of the human being. The initiate had this human form before him, and now it became clear to him: Thus I transport myself into the primordial state of the Earth. That which lives within the Earth—the ideal image, the ideal form of humanity—tells me the following: The Deity works from eternity to eternity; it has poured itself into these forms and breathed this primordial human form forth from itself. — Now he asked himself: Where did the animals, plants, and other beings come from?

[ 5 ] In his mind, the initiate saw, as it were, the primordial form of the deity, and he viewed the animals as secondary forms; he also regarded the plants as secondary forms that had come into being only later. Everything that lives here in the lower kingdoms—the Atlantean initiate regarded all of this as having emerged only from the human form. We can get an idea of this concept if we think about how coal was formed. Let us think of the great primeval forests that arose and thrived back then and are now coal. They have been left behind; they have evolved from a higher realm into a lower one. There we see how the plants have turned to stone, how they have hardened.

[ 6 ] Thus the Atlantean initiate saw everything—the entire environment—emerging from the human form. This impression was conjured up before the human soul in time immemorial, and these impressions were preserved in memory throughout the time of the Flood; and the ancient Indian initiators also evoked this image of the primordial human being in the soul of the disciple—the image of the primordial human being who had been breathed forth by the eternal Self. When the Indian disciple had this image before him, he felt that everything had arisen from it, that what was present in this primordial image like blood had become the waters of the earth, and so on. And so this image expanded to encompass the primordial source of the universe. Now the following was presented to his soul. He was told: “You see two things in this archetype: first, the archetype itself; and second, what shone forth within you as your innermost being as you contemplated the image. Outwardly, the macrocosm; and inwardly, what you perceive, as it were, as an essence within yourself—the microcosm.”

[ 7 ] And when the Greeks ventured into India during Alexander’s campaigns and heard the last echoes of what the disciple had felt back then, they came to the following realization. They said: When the disciple contemplates what is spread out in the great world as a human being, he sees Heracles before him. The Indians called that which lives as the forces of the universe Vâc. — But in the human being, they sensed, as it were, the essence of the whole: Brahman. — In this way, the Greeks clarified for themselves what are the echoes of what was taking place in the soul of the disciple within the ancient sacred Indian culture. This was the fruit of a Greek expedition to India under Alexander the Great. It was precisely out of this fundamental feeling that the ancient sacred Indian initiatory teaching developed, which appears as a spiritual reflection of that primordial state of the Earth, when the Earth still contained within itself the solar forces and high beings, whose sublimity people later longed for. Therefore, it was a sublime experience of spiritual life when the disciple was initiated, when he was able to allow that which is grasped as Brahman to arise within himself. It was a tremendous process in the human soul. It was an ascent into higher worlds. There was no other way to be initiated and attain true vision than by ascending to the highest worlds. The world that surrounds us is the physical world. Surrounding it and within it surges the astral world. Higher still is Devachan, the world of the gods, and the disciple had to be carried away to the highest regions of Devachan if he was to feel Brahman, the Primordial Self, within the macrocosm. The disciple then found himself in the highest Devachan, the world of the gods, from which springs the noblest thing that a human being possesses. It was a realm of the highest, most perfect order into which the disciple was transported—a realm that offered much more in the way of knowledge; for what has been described here was not the only thing.

[ 8 ] But before we go any further, we must also get to know the teachers. You have all heard of the holy Rishis, the original founders of the ancient sacred Indian culture, who themselves had Manu as their teacher. Who were these seven great teachers of ancient India? We must try to clarify for ourselves, as far as possible, the nature of the holy Rishis. To do this, we must once again look out into the vast world. We must realize that what we can perceive with our physical senses—our eyes and so on—is a consequence of the spiritual realm. If we conceive of the entire environment we see in spiritual terms, we can compare it, for example, to a primordial etheric mist. This mist then gradually became denser; it descended into the state of matter, and various celestial bodies coalesced from it: the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth separated.

[ 9 ] But why did the other planets break away? Because that’s what happened during each of the separations as well. Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury broke away. Why did that happen?

[ 10 ] We will understand this when we realize that something similar to what happens in our ordinary, mundane lives is also taking place in the vast universe. It is not only high school students who fail to advance; in the great cosmos, too, there are beings who fall behind and cannot keep up. Now let’s make this perfectly clear. It was a group of high beings who could not keep up with Earth’s pace; they extracted the finest substances and fashioned the Sun from them as their dwelling place. These were the highest beings linked to our evolution. But they, too, had undergone a process of development. So there were beings who were on the verge of becoming sun spirits at that time, and others who had been left behind—beings who stood at a lower level than the sun spirits but higher than human beings—who could not keep pace with the sun spirits’ development because they were not as mature as the sun spirits. They could not go out with the sun; the sun would have scorched them. But they were too noble for the Earth; therefore, they had selected special substances—in terms of subtlety, situated between the Sun and the Earth—that corresponded to their nature, and had established dwelling places for themselves between the Sun and the Earth. Thus, Venus and Mercury split off. Here we have two groups of beings who had not risen as high as the Sun Spirits, but were more advanced than human beings. They became the spirits of Venus and Mercury. These beings are the instigators of the formation of these two planets. Furthermore, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn had already formed earlier, for other reasons. These, in turn, became dwelling places for certain beings.

[ 11 ] Thus we see how spirits are the cause of the formation of the planets. Now, one must not believe that these beings, who inhabit the various bodies of the solar system, are not connected to the inhabitants of Earth. We must realize that physical boundaries are not the true boundaries, and that even beyond these boundaries there are many ways in which the beings of other celestial bodies can exert magical influences on Earth. Thus, the influences of the spirits of the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mercury, and so on extend into the Earth. The latter two are closer to Earth; they helped humankind, after the Sun had emerged, to prepare the Earth as we now have it before us.

[ 12 ] I would like to add something here because some misunderstandings have crept in regarding the naming of the planets. In all occult nomenclature, what is today called Mercury in astronomy is called Venus, and conversely, what is called Venus in astronomy is called Mercury. Astronomers who focus solely on the external aspects are unaware that there are underlying mysteries, because one did not wish to reveal deep, esoteric names. This was done to conceal certain things.

[ 13 ] All these spirits from the other planets now exert their influence on Earth. Effects emanate from all the planets toward humankind. However, these effects first had to be conveyed to humankind, and this was accomplished when, through the great Manu, the seven Rishis were initiated in such a way that each individual Rishi understood the mysteries of one of these planets in terms of their effects. And because seven planets were counted, these seven Rishis, in their unity, constituted a seven-fold lodge capable of transmitting the teachings of the mysteries of our solar system to their disciples. Hence, we find allusions to this in some ancient occult writings. For example, it says: “There are mysteries to be sought beyond the Seven; these are the ones that the holy Manu himself preserved, concerning the time before the separation of the planets.”

[ 14 ] What the planets preserved as forces was precisely what was hidden in the mysteries of the seven Rishis. And so this choir of the seven Rishis worked together, in perfect unity with the Manu, through the wondrous wisdom they imparted to their disciples. If we were to characterize this, we would have to say: This primordial teaching contained roughly what we now recognize as the evolution of humanity through the planetary states of Saturn, the Sun, the Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan. The mysteries of evolution were enshrined in the seven members of the Lodge, each of whom represented a stage in the progress of humanity.

[ 15 ] The disciple saw this. He not only saw it, but he even heard it when he ascended into Devachan, into the Devachanic world; for this world is a world of sound. There he heard the celestial music of the seven planets. In the astral world he saw the image; in the Devachanic world he heard the sound, and in the uppermost, the highest of the worlds, he experienced the Word. Thus, when the Indian disciple ascended into the upper Devachan, he perceived through the music of the spheres and through the Word of the spheres how the Primordial Spirit Brahma structures itself through evolution in the sevenfold planetary chain, and he heard this from the Primordial Word Vâc. That was the name of the primordial sound of creation that the student heard; within it he heard the entire evolution of the worlds. The Word, divided into seven parts—the primordial Word of creation—acted upon the student’s soul; this primordial Word, which he described to the uninitiated in much the same way as we would describe our own world evolution today. What he perceived is described in elementary terms in my *Theosophy*: “And we find this description first in the ancient sacred religion of the Indians, in what was called the *Veda* or, in German, the *Word*.”

[ 16 ] This is the true meaning of the Vedas, and what was written down later is merely the final record of the ancient sacred oral teachings. The words themselves were passed down only by word of mouth, for writing them down violates the original tradition. Only from the Vedas can one still sense something of what flowed into that culture back then. When the student experienced this in his memory, he could say to himself: What I experience as Brahman in my soul, what I possess as the primordial Word in my soul—that was already there on ancient Saturn; the first breath of the Vedic Word resounded even on Saturn.

[ 17 ] Development had now continued through the Sun and the Moon down to Earth. The Word had become increasingly dense, had taken on increasingly dense forms, and the image of humanity in the primordial seed of the Earth was already a condensation of the state in which the primordial Word existed on Saturn. What had happened now?

[ 18 ] The Word of God, the Primordial Man, had clothed itself in ever-new forms, and what mattered was which forms the Word assumed in the course of Earth’s evolution. The disciple knew that nothing is ever completely repeated in the universe and that every planet has its own mission. What he saw take shape as life on the ancient Sun, what was instilled on the ancient Moon as wisdom at the very foundation of all things—this was followed on Earth by what constitutes Earth’s task, its mission: to develop love; for love had not yet existed on the ancient Moon. Thus, that which had existed on the previous planet in a much more spiritual, yet also much colder form—the archetype of the human being—clothed itself in a warm astral sheath. That which was to become human had been clothed in an astral sheath on the Moon, and it is this part that enables inner human life on Earth to develop love from its lowest to its highest form.

[ 19 ] In the upper Devachan, the Indian disciple could clearly perceive the human form, the archetype. Then, in the lower Devachan, it enveloped itself in an astral sheath that possessed the power to develop love. Love, Eros, was called Kama. Thus Kama acquires meaning for earthly evolution. The divine Word, Brahman, clothed itself in Kama, and through Kama the primordial Word resounded to the disciple. The garment of love was Kama; the garment of the Primordial Word was Vâc—the word Vâc that underlies the Latin “vox.” And so the disciple sensed in his innermost being that the Word of God had clothed itself in an astral garment of love, and now he said to himself: The human being, who today consists of four members—the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the ego—has the ego as his highest member. And this ego descended into the garment of love and formed Kama-Manas. That was the innermost essence of the human being; it was Kama in which Manas clothed itself: that was the ego. But we also know that this innermost essence will develop three higher members; these will transform the lower members, including the physical body, and just as Manas emerges from the astral sheath, and just as Budhi corresponds to Prana on a higher level, so too will the physical body, when it is fully spiritualized, become Atma. All of this, however, was already present in embryonic form within the Vâc, and a Vedic verse still recalls how the disciple expressed the mystery of the innermost being.

[ 20 ] We know that the physical body first came into being on Saturn, the etheric body on the Sun, the astral body on the Moon, and the “I” on Earth. But the true, original human potential—the primordial word Vâc—already contained within itself the three subsequent members. Humanity still has three higher aspects to look forward to; only then will it become a true image of the Word of Creation, the Primordial Word. And the student should be made aware that only the initiate could understand the true nature of the physical, etheric, and astral bodies. Today, a human being is truly himself only when he utters his “I am,” when he grasps what is entirely his own. Only then is he fully human. The other elements are indeed also manifest, but he remains unconscious of them. But in the fourth, Vâc has become manifest: “In the fourth, the human being!” That was the saying of the Veda. When the word of the “I” resounds, the fourth part of Vâc resounds. The Vedic saying was: “Four quarters of Vâc are measured; three are kept hidden and do not stir; only the fourth quarter do human beings speak.”

[ 21 ] Here we have a wonderful description of what we have heard so often. This was before the disciple’s spiritual gaze. His gaze was directed back to the state where nothing was yet separated, where there was still a primordial earth, where the full Vâc spoke. This is expressed in another Vedic verse: “Before, I did not know what ‘I am’ is; only when the firstborn of the earth came upon me was the spirit filled with light, and I had a share in the sacred Vâc,” that is, wisdom. This verse conveys a vision that the initiate had.

[ 22 ] This merely hints at a few of the experiences of the ancient Rishi disciples, at the wondrous teachings that flowed into Indian culture, were passed down to subsequent ages, and were adapted to the needs of other peoples. But all of them had understood the primordial word, Vâc.

[ 23 ] We will understand many things better if we consider a mystery in its full context. We must imagine that, back then, the influence of the teacher on the student was quite different from what it is today. Today, such an influence is possible only to a certain extent if the student has already been brought to a certain level of initiation. Back then, the forces of the teacher that were transmitted to the student were much stronger. We can get a sense of these forces when we say: It was not only what the teacher could convey through speech or writing that had an effect. All of that actually affected only the intellectual soul, but in addition, magical, mysterious forces flowed from the teacher to the student, and it was essentially the teacher’s forces that were capable of filling the images the teacher presented to the student’s soul with brightness and living power. This unique effect was first lost in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, the Greco-Roman culture. Forces simply change. It was quite different when an ancient Egyptian stood before a young person than when a teacher stands before a student today. Entirely different forces acted from the older generation upon the younger. Anyone who wishes to understand what is still described in ancient Greek literature must be aware of this. Socrates, for example, actually possessed telepathic powers, which he imparted to his students while teaching them. Such things can no longer take effect in our time. Such matters are alluded to in Plato’s writings. Today, it would naturally be considered a reprehensible vice, whereas back then it was entirely justified. Changes are simply taking place; no one has the right to imitate that today. Contemporary phenomena claim to draw upon this, but the same thing would be reprehensible today.

[ 24 ] Back then, in ancient times, forces flowed from the teacher to the student. Even in ancient Egypt, there were indeed a large number of people who were capable of receiving such forces. When a person was particularly receptive and faced someone who had learned to intensify their thoughts, a strong thought would manifest as an image in the soul of the receptive person. Thus, in ancient Egypt, such telepathic effects were highly possible, and the transmission of thoughts was widespread. This was especially true when a strong will faced one that was not as strong. Thus, even in Egypt, it was still possible to direct and guide another through thought to an extent that is unimaginable today. Today, of course, such powers would be grossly abused. Essentially, initiations in ancient Egypt were based on similar powers. This was also possible in ancient India and Persia. These forces further reinforced the method which, to put it in exoteric terms, could also be called a medical one. Of course, this does not refer to today’s official medicine. An Egyptian physician and initiate would have merely laughed at what people today call medicine. The ancient Egyptian physician knew one thing: he knew that those states which originally existed in Atlantis—and which could be perceived during initiation—could still be reawakened in a certain sense even now. The consciousness in which human beings lived in Atlantis was a dull, clairvoyant consciousness. There was a time, the Egyptian initiate told himself, when spiritual beings exerted a much greater influence on human beings. Today, when a person sleeps, they know nothing of the higher worlds; but the Atlantean still lived there in a twilight clairvoyant consciousness alongside the gods. And just as it is far more effective than any moral teaching when modern human beings can elevate themselves to become ideal human beings, so too did the Egyptian initiate influence the student through the forces and images of higher spiritual processes. This had an effect not merely externally, but deeply within; it had such an effect that a very specific process resulted.

[ 25 ] Let us imagine a sick person who is ill because certain bodily functions are not operating normally. Where does this come from? Anyone trained in the occult knows that when the physical body functions irregularly, the cause does not come from outside; rather, all illnesses that do not originate from outside are attributable to the fact that the etheric body is out of order. But the etheric body is ill because the astral body is in disarray. Now, if there was a risk in the Atlantean human that some disorder might arise in the distribution of bodily fluids, measures were very quickly taken to restore order. While asleep, the human received such power from the spiritual worlds that, through sleep, the disturbed forces and functions were restored, and the person recovered. In a sense, by falling asleep, the person restored the healthy forces. The ancient Egyptian physicians employed a similar method. They artificially dimmed the patient’s consciousness down to a kind of hypnotic sleep, and thus gained control over the images of the spirit world that arose around the patient. They directed these images in such a way that they possessed the power to act back upon the physical body and heal it. That was the purpose of the “temple sleep,” which was used for internal illnesses. The sick person was not given medicine; instead, they were allowed to sleep in the temple. Their consciousness was dimmed, and they were allowed to look into the spiritual worlds. Their astral experiences were then guided in such a way that they possessed the power to infuse health back into the body. This is not superstition; it is a secret known to the initiates: that they introduced the spiritual into the experiences of the sick. In the healing arts—which we therefore find so intimately connected with the principle of initiation—the Atlantean state was, as it were, artificially restored during the healing process. And because the person did not resist this through their waking consciousness, the forces necessary for recovery were able to take effect. This is how temple sleep worked.

[ 26 ] In Egyptian culture, the principle still prevailed that had prevailed in India among the wise Rishis, who themselves guided events and served as mediators of the planetary forces—the disciples of Manu, the great teacher of the first sublime culture. In the first culture of the post-Atlantean era, it was the Rishis who brought that sublime teaching—a teaching that led humanity into high, sublime, spiritual worlds, all the way up to the upper Devachan world. What was beheld there was brought down through the subsequent cultural periods all the way to the physical plane; until, in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, the Being whom we have come to know as the Brahman of the Indian cultural period—whom we call Christ—descended into the physical plane; a Being who no longer had to mediate the spiritual, but became human himself in order to radiate the mysterious power of the Primordial Word to all humanity.

[ 27 ] Thus the Primordial Word descended to lift humanity back up again. And humanity must understand how this happened in order to form within itself an instrument through which it can work toward the future. We must learn about what has shaped our world so that we ourselves can contribute to the ever-higher shaping of what surrounds us.

[ 28 ] We must create a spiritual world in the future. To do so, we must first understand the cosmos.