The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Tenth Lecture

[ 1 ] There are many myths and legends of the ancient Egyptians that were well known within the spiritual-scientific worldview and are once again becoming known, but which are not actually recorded in the external, historical tradition concerning the Egyptians. Some of these myths have been historically preserved in the form in which they took root in Greece, for the greater part of Greek mythology—other than the legends concerning Zeus and his family—originated in the Egyptian mysteries. And today we will be dealing with all manner of legendary material that we need, even if contemporary cultural history claims that Greek mythology actually contains little of significance for people.

[ 2 ] Why, then, did we need to examine, so to speak, the other side of human development—that is, the spiritual side? Everything we see on the physical plane always remains an event, a fact of the physical plane. But in spiritual science, we are interested not only in what exists on the physical plane, but also in everything that takes place in the spiritual worlds.

[ 3 ] We know, of course, from what we have heard in lectures on spiritual science, what happens to a person between death and a new birth. We need only recall that, at death, the human being passes into the state of consciousness we call Kamaloka, in which—even though the human being has become a spiritual being—they are still held back by the astral body. This is the time when a person still longs for the physical world, when they suffer because of it, when they feel a sense of loss due to no longer being in the physical world. Then comes the time when the human being must prepare for a new life: the state of consciousness known as Devachan, where the human being is no longer directly connected to the physical world or to physical impressions. If we wish to imagine how life in Kamaloka differs from life in Devachan, we can consider two examples.

[ 4 ] We know that when a person dies, they do not immediately lose their desires and cravings upon death. Let us suppose that a person was a gourmet in life who took great pleasure in delicious food. When he dies, this craving for pleasure—this desire for delicious food—does not disappear immediately. After all, a person does not have these desires in the physical body, but in the astral body. Therefore, since a person retains the astral body after death, he also retains the desire, but he lacks the organ to satisfy these desires: the physical body. The desire for food does not depend on the physical body, but on the astral body; and after death, a true craving arises in a person for whatever gave them the greatest satisfaction in life. Therefore, a person suffers after death until they have broken the habit of craving pleasure, until they have cast off all the desires they cultivated through their physical organs. For as long as this is the case, the person remains in Kamaloka. Then begins the time when the person no longer has desires of this kind, which can be satisfied only through the physical organs. Then he enters Devachan.

[ 5 ] To the same extent that a person ceases to be bound to the physical world, to that same extent does he begin to develop an awareness of the Devachanic world. It shines ever more brightly. However, he does not yet have a sense of self there as he does in this life. They are not yet independent there. In devachanic life, a person feels like a limb, like an organ of the entire spiritual world. Just as the hand would only feel itself to be a limb of the physical organism if it were aware of it, so does a person feel in their devachanic consciousness: “I am a limb of the spiritual world, a limb also of the higher beings.” They will gradually grow toward their independence. But even now, there, they are already working in the cosmos; they are working in the plant kingdom from within the spiritual world. Human beings participate in everything, not out of self-interest, but as a serving limb of the spiritual world. When we describe what human beings experience between death and a new birth in this way, we must not imagine that the events of the Devachan world are not also subject to change. People secretly harbor the belief that while our Earth here is subject to change, over there—beyond death—everything remains the same. That is not the case at all. When the stay in Devachan is described in this way today, it means that this is roughly the current state of Devachan. But let us recall what it was like when our souls were incarnated during the time of Egyptian civilization. Back then, we looked upon the gigantic pyramids and other great structures. In earlier times, things looked very, very different on this side—the physical side. Let us consider how the face of the Earth has changed very, very much since then. We need only follow materialistic science to discover, for example, that just a few millennia ago there were entirely different animals in Europe, and that Europe looked quite different. The face of the Earth is constantly changing, and that is why human beings repeatedly find themselves in new circumstances of existence. This seems quite obvious to everyone. But when one describes the conditions of the spiritual world, people are so quick to believe that what happened in the spiritual world—say, if they died around a thousand years before Christ—that what took place over there would have been exactly the same as what happens today if they were to be reborn today and die again today.

[ 6 ] Just as the physical plane changes, so too do the conditions in the other world. Life in Devachan was quite different in the past than it is today; this was true when one entered Devachan from an Egyptian or Greek life. Evolution is taking place there as well. It is only natural that we should now describe the current conditions in Devachan; however, those conditions have changed. We can already assume this when we consider what the recent lectures and their descriptions have revealed to us.

[ 7 ] We have seen how, as we go further back in time to the Atlantean era, human beings lived more in the spiritual world and moved about in it while they slept. We found that this gradually diminished over time. However, if we go back far enough, we find that human beings lived entirely in the spiritual world. In ancient times, the distinction between sleep and death was not so great. In the distant past, people experienced long periods of sleep. This roughly coincided with the period that is now traversed through an incarnation and the life after death. As human beings descended onto the physical plane, they became increasingly entangled in it. It has been shown how the Indians gazed into a higher world, and how people in Persia were already attempting to conquer the physical plane. Humanity descended further and further, and a union between spirit and matter—between the spiritual worlds and the physical plane—had come about during the Greco-Roman era. The more humanity immersed itself in the midst of this final epoch, the more it learned to love the physical world and take an interest in it. With this, however, everything we call “experiences” between death and rebirth also changed.

[ 8 ] If we go back to the earliest days of the post-Atlantean epoch, we find that people had little interest in the physical plane. The initiates of that time could be transported to higher worlds—the devachanic worlds—and they would then share their experiences with others. For the person who felt himself lifted upward with all his thoughts and all his senses into the true world—his true homeland—this meant that he had little interest in the conditions of the physical plane. But when he ascended to Devachan, having barely connected with the physical world, he possessed a relatively clear consciousness in Devachan. When such a person then reincarnated in Persian culture, he already felt more intertwined with physical matter, and as a result, he lost some of the clarity of consciousness he had possessed in Devachan. In the Egyptian-Chaldean era, when human beings began to grow attached to the outer physical world, their consciousness in Devachan was already very clouded and shadowy. Although this consciousness was still, by its very nature, higher than that in the physical world, its degree continued to decline and grow ever darker until the Greek-Latin era. During this period, Devachanic consciousness became increasingly dark and shadowy. It was not a dream-like consciousness; it never was. It was a consciousness to which one could pay attention; it was still a consciousness of which the human being was aware. A darkening of this consciousness thus took place as evolution progressed.

[ 9 ] The mysteries essentially existed to enable human beings not only to have a shadowy consciousness in the spiritual world, but also to bring that consciousness back into the light. Let us imagine that there had been no Mysteries, that there had been no initiates. Then human beings would have had an ever more twilight-like, ever more shadowy consciousness in the spiritual worlds. It was solely through the fact that initiation into the Mysteries proceeded in parallel with the darkening of consciousness in Devachan, and thus the acquisition of certain abilities through which select individuals could already glimpse into the spiritual worlds with bright clarity—solely through the fact that the initiates were able to recount these experiences in myths and legends—that a shade of brighter, more luminous light, so to speak, entered into the Devachanic consciousness between death and a new birth. But for all those who had already truly found their place in the physical world, it was the case that they had already sensed this fading of consciousness in the spiritual world; and it is no fairy tale, but the truth, that the initiate in the Eleusinian Mysteries was able to have a very special experience. The principle of initiation is that a person can ascend into the spiritual worlds even during their lifetime and experience what takes place there. The initiate of that time was indeed able to experience the shadows in the spiritual world directly. It is truly the saying of an initiate when it is stated: “Oh, better to be a beggar in the physical world than a king in the realm of shadows.” This saying springs from the experiences of the initiates. We cannot take such things seriously enough, and we understand them only when we know the realities of the spiritual world.

[ 10 ] Now let's take what was hinted at in abstract terms yesterday and put it into a more concrete form.

[ 11 ] If nothing else had occurred besides humanity’s descent into the physical world, consciousness would have grown ever darker between death and a new birth. Ultimately, humanity would have completely lost its connection with the spiritual world. Now, however strange it may seem to anyone who is even slightly afflicted within by any form of materialism, what I am about to say is nevertheless true. If nothing had occurred in the course of human evolution, humanity would have been spiritually doomed to death. But there is a possibility of enlightening consciousness between death and a new birth, and this enlightenment can be attained either through initiation itself, or—already today, to a lesser degree—by a person participating in the spiritual world even in this life, by having experiences that do not die with their physical bodies but remain connected to them in their eternal core of being, even in the spiritual world. This was ensured by the Mysteries, by the entire spiritual development; it was ensured by the great Initiates before Christ and, above all, by the Being Himself whom we know as Christ. All other Initiates were, in a certain sense, precursors of Christ; they were forerunners who pointed to the coming of Christ.

[ 12 ] Let us now describe the appearance of the Christ-figure. Let us imagine a person who had never heard of Christ, who could never have absorbed the mysteries of the Gospel of John, who could never have said to himself: ‘I want to live according to the example of Christ, who lives and works; I want to take his principles into my very being.’ — Let us imagine, then, that Christ had never drawn near to such a person; that person would not be able to take with them into the spiritual world the treasure that people today must take with them if they wish to avoid the darkening of their consciousness. What a person takes with them as concepts of Christ is a force that illuminates consciousness after death, a force that saves humanity from the fate that would have befallen us had Christ not appeared. If Christ had not appeared, the human being would indeed be preserved, but consciousness would not be able to be illuminated after death. This is what gives the appearance of Christ its true significance: that something of far-reaching significance is incorporated into the core of the human being. The event at Golgotha preserves the human being from spiritual death when he identifies it with his own being.

[ 13 ] We must not assume that the other great leaders of humanity are not of similar significance. The point is not to claim that Christianity has an exclusive dogma. That would be a violation of true Christianity, for anyone who knows the facts is aware that Christianity was also taught in the ancient mysteries. And a statement such as that made by Augustine is profoundly true: “What is now called the Christian religion already existed among the ancients and was not absent in the early days of the human race, until Christ appeared in the flesh; from that point on, the true religion, which had already existed, took on the name of the Christian religion.” What matters is not that it is called that, but that one correctly understands the significance of the Christ impulse. And just as Christ was the figure who appeared at the lowest point of evolution, so too was it with Buddha, Hermes, and the other great beings—they possessed the prophetic awareness that Christ would come, that he lived within them.

[ 14 ] We can see this particularly clearly when we study the figure of the Buddha, and we must realize what he was. What, in fact, was the Buddha? Here we must touch upon something that can only be spoken of among students of spiritual science. People, even Theosophists, usually imagine the mysteries of reincarnation to be far too simple. One must not imagine that any soul, which is embodied today in its three bodies, was simply embodied in a previous incarnation, and then again in a previous incarnation, which was then preceded by another such incarnation, always following the same pattern. The mysteries are far more complex. Although A. P. Blavatsky went to great lengths to show her inner circle of students just how complex these mysteries are, they are still not properly understood today. People simply imagine that a soul enters a body over and over again. It is not that simple. Often, we cannot fit a historical figure into such a pattern if we wish to understand them correctly. In many cases, we must approach the matter in a much more complex way.

[ 15 ] Even in Atlantis, we encounter beings who surround human beings just as our fellow human beings do today—beings whom humans saw and got to know when they were physically absent, up in the spiritual world. It has already been mentioned how, there, he came to know Thor, Zeus, Wotan, and Baldur as true companions. By day he lived in the physical world, but in that other state of consciousness he encountered spiritual beings who had not undergone the same course of development as he had. In the Earth’s primeval times, human beings did not yet have bodies as dense as they do today; at a certain stage, there was still no question of a skeletal structure. The Atlantean body could only be seen with physical eyes to a certain extent. But there were beings who descended only to the point where they incarnated exclusively in an etheric body. Then there were beings who, back when the air was still permeated with water vapor, still took on physical form. At that time, when humanity still lived in an atmosphere of water and mist, such incarnations were still possible for them. One such being, for example, was the future Wotan. He said to himself: If human beings can incarnate in this light-like, fluid matter, then I can do so as well. - One such being took on human form and walked about in the physical world. But as the Earth became denser and denser and human beings also took on denser forms, Wotan said to himself: “No, I will not enter this dense matter.” — He then remained in invisible worlds, in worlds more distant from the Earth. This was generally the case with the divine-spiritual beings.

[ 16 ] From then on, however, they were able to do something different. Instead, they were able to form a kind of connection with people who came toward them—people who had developed from the bottom up. Let’s think of it this way: The course of human evolution was such that humanity reached the lowest point of its development. Up to that point, the gods walked alongside humanity. But then they took a different path, one that was invisible to humans on the physical plane. However, if there were people who lived their lives according to the instructions of initiates and thereby purified their finer bodies, they would, in a sense, come to meet the gods; so that the human being, embodied in the flesh, if he purified himself, could do so in such a way that he was able to be overshadowed by such a being who could not descend all the way to the physical body. The physical body would have been too coarse for such a being. For such a person, what occurred was that the astral body and the etheric body were permeated by such a higher being—one that otherwise had no human form of its own, but which entered into another being and manifested itself through that other being.

[ 17 ] If we understand this phenomenon, then we will not be so quick to imagine incarnation. There may well be a human being who is the reincarnation of a previous human who had developed to a high degree, who had purified his three bodies to such an extent that he is now a vessel for a higher being. And so Buddha became a vessel for Wotan. The same being who was called Wotan in Germanic mythology reappeared as Buddha. Buddha and Wotan are even linguistically related. We can say that much of what constituted the mysteries of the Atlantean era was thus carried over into what the Buddha was able to proclaim. And this is consistent with the fact that what the Buddha experienced was something the gods had experienced in those spiritual spheres—and something that human beings had also experienced when they themselves were still in those spheres. When the teaching of Wotan thus reemerged, it was a teaching that paid little heed to the physical plane, one that could only emphasize that the physical plane is a place of suffering and that liberation from it is of great significance—for there was much of the Wotanic presence speaking through the Buddha. That is why those who were stragglers from Atlantis have shown the deepest understanding of the Buddha’s teachings. Among the Asian population, there are those who have remained behind, races that have, in essence, remained stagnant at the Atlantean stage. Of course, outwardly they had to keep pace with the Earth’s evolution. Much of Atlantis has been preserved among the Mongolian peoples; they are the stragglers of the ancient population of Atlantis. The stationary trait in the Mongolian population is such a legacy from Atlantis. Therefore, the teachings of the Buddha serve such peoples particularly well, and Buddhism has made great progress among them.

[ 18 ] The world moves forward; it follows its own course. Those who can gain insight into the evolution of the world do not make choices; they do not say, “I prefer this or that”; rather, they say: “These are spiritual necessities—the religion that a people has.” And because the European population has become entangled in the physical world, it is impossible for them to empathize with Buddhism or to identify with the very core of the Buddha’s teaching. Buddhism could never become a religion for all humanity. For those who are willing to see, there is no sympathy or antipathy here, but only a judgment based on the facts. Just as it would be wrong to attempt to spread Christianity from a center in Asia, where other peoples still reside, so too is Buddhism wrong for the European population. No religious view is correct unless it is tailored to the innermost needs of the times; such a view can never provide a cultural impulse. These are things one must grasp if one truly wishes to understand the interrelationships.

[ 19 ] But one must not believe that the historical Buddha was fully aware of everything that was present in his own being. If I were to explain all of that, it would take me several hours. We are still far from having exhausted the complexity of the historical Buddha. There was something else living within the Buddha. It is not merely an entity that came over from the Atlantean era and incarnated in the one who, incidentally, was also a human Buddha; besides this, there was something else contained within him, something of which he could say: “I cannot yet comprehend this; it is something that animates me, but I merely participate in it.” - That is the Christ-entity. It had already inspired the great prophets. It was a well-known entity in the ancient mysteries, and everywhere, people always pointed to the One who was to come.

[ 20 ] And he came! But he came once again by conforming to the historical necessities that underlie evolution. He could not have incarnated in a physical body without further ado. It was still possible for him to incarnate in the Buddha, as it were, in a kind of subconscious state. But while walking on Earth, he could incarnate only if a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body had been specially prepared. Christ possessed the greatest power of influence, but he could incarnate only if a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body had been completely purified and cleansed by another being. And so the incarnation of Christ could take place only through the appearance of a being who had developed to such a high degree. That was Jesus of Nazareth. He had advanced so far in his development that he was able, during his lifetime, to purify his physical body, etheric body, and astral body to such an extent that it was possible for him, at the age of thirty, to leave these bodies—yet in a way that they remained viable and usable for a higher being. Often, when I have stated that a high level of development was necessary for Jesus to be able to sacrifice his bodies, people have raised a very curious objection: “But that isn’t a sacrifice at all—what could be more beautiful?” One cannot speak of a great sacrifice when it involves surrendering one’s bodies to such a high being.” — Yes, it is beautiful, and the sacrifice would not be great if viewed in such an abstract way. But one might reply: Let’s try it this way; everyone would be willing to make the sacrifice, but let’s try it. — It takes immense powers to purify one’s bodies to such an extent that one can leave them in a viable state. To attain these powers, sacrifices are necessary. Jesus of Nazareth must have been an extraordinarily exalted individual to have been able to do this. The Gospel of John hints at the moment when Jesus left his physical body, etheric body, and astral body, entered the spiritual world, and the Christ-being entered into the threefold body. This took place at Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan. Something very significant occurred in the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. Again, what I am about to say must be an abomination to a materialistic mind. Something special was taking place, even within the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. If we wish to understand what was happening at the moment of the baptism, when the Christ entered into Jesus, we must first bring to mind something that will seem quite strange, yet is true.

[ 21 ] In the course of human evolution, individual organs have gradually developed and become increasingly distinct. We have seen how, as the organs reached the mid-hip region, certain structures and functions emerged in human beings. Along with this increasing independence of human individuality, a hardening of the skeletal system also occurred. The more independent human beings became, the more their skeletal system hardened; but the power of death also grew accordingly. We must pay attention to this now if we are to understand what follows correctly. Why, after all, must human beings die, why does the body decay completely? It is because there is something in the human body that can be burned: the bones. Fire also exerts a power over human bone substance. Human beings have no power—at least no conscious power—over their bones. This power still lies beyond human control. At the very moment when, during the baptism in the Jordan, the Christ entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth, at that very moment the skeletal system of this being became something entirely different from that of other human beings. This was an event that had never occurred before and has never occurred since, right up to the present day. Something entered the being of Jesus along with the Christ-being that had power over the forces that burn bones. Today, it is not yet within human free will to build up the bones. But this power reached right down into the bones. The conscious power of the Christ Being reached right into the bones; this is part of the meaning of John’s baptism. Thus, something was planted in the earth that can be called sovereignty over death, for it is through the bones that death first entered the world. Through the fact that the power over the bones entered the human body, the overcoming of death has come into the world. This expresses a most profound mystery; through Christ, something most holy—something of the highest holiness—entered the skeletal system of Jesus of Nazareth. That is why it could not be touched. That is why the words of Scripture had to be fulfilled: “You shall not break any of his bones.” — For then human power would have interfered with the powers of God. Here we glimpse a very profound mystery of human development.

[ 22 ] And this brings us at the same time to a very significant concept in esoteric Christianity, one that can show us how this form of Christianity is imbued with the highest truths. We come to what we also encounter in baptism. Because the Christ-being took possession of the three bodies—of that in which the I-being of Jesus had previously resided—a being was now linked to the Earth that had formerly had a dwelling place on the Sun. It had been connected to the Earth until the moment the Sun emerged from the Earth. Christ had departed at that time and, from then on, could only exert his power upon the Earth from the outside. At the moment of the baptism, the exalted Christ Spirit united once more with the Earth in the fullest sense. Previously, he had worked from the outside, overshadowing the prophets and acting within the mysteries. Now he was incarnated in a physical human body on Earth itself. And if a being from a distant point in the universe had been able to look down over the course of millennia, then such a being—who would have seen not only the physical Earth but also its spiritual currents, its astral body, and its etheric body—would have witnessed significant events at the moment of John’s baptism and at the moment when the blood flowed from Christ’s wounds on Golgotha. The Earth’s astral body was thereby profoundly transformed. At that moment, it absorbed something different and took on new colors. A new power was incorporated into the Earth. That which had previously acted from without was reconnected to the Earth, and as a result, the gravitational pull between the Sun and the Earth will become so strong that the Sun and the Earth will reunite, and humanity will reunite with the solar spirits. It was Christ who made it possible for the Earth to reunite with the Sun and thus find itself in the bosom of the Godhead.

[ 23 ] This is the process that took place, and its significance. We had to preface this in order to make it clear what something of such profound significance entered the earth with Christ. And through this we can understand how, indeed, through union with Christ, a human being can receive something that can once again illuminate human consciousness after death. If we keep this in mind, we will also be able to understand how there is an evolution during the time between death and a new birth. Let us now ask: for what purpose did all this actually happen?

[ 24 ] At first, humankind lived in the bosom of the Divine. Then it descended to the physical plane. Had it remained there, it would never have attained its present self-awareness. It would never have acquired an “I.” Only within the physical body could it kindle self-awareness in its radiant clarity. External objects had to confront him; he had to be able to distinguish himself from those objects; he had to descend into the physical world. It was solely for the sake of the human “I” that man descended. In terms of his “I,” man is descended from the gods. It descended from the spiritual world; it was forged to the physical body so that it might become bright and clear. It is precisely what has appeared as the hardened matter of the human body that has given humanity its self-conscious “I,” that has made it possible for humanity to acquire knowledge. But it has also forged humanity to the earth’s mass, to the mass of rock.

[ 25 ] Before attaining his “I,” human beings had already acquired a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body. As the “I” gradually developed within these three bodies, it transformed them. One must realize that all the higher aspects of the human being work upon the physical body. The fact that the physical body is as it is depends on the etheric body, the astral body, and the “I” working upon it. All the organs of the physical body depend, in a certain way, on the fact that the higher aspects have also been transformed. The entities that lagged behind became the various animal forms—for example, birds—through the domination of the astral body. As the “I” became increasingly self-aware, it also transformed the astral body. It has already been stated that human beings separated themselves from the rest. What are referred to as apocalyptic beasts are types in which this or that higher aspect has the upper hand. The “I” gained the upper hand among human beings. Now all organs are adapted to the higher members of the human being. As the “I” entered the astral body and completely permeated it, certain organs formed in human beings and in the animals that later branched off. For example, a certain organ stems from the very fact that an “I” entered the Earth at all. On the Moon, no “I” was linked to the beings of human evolution. Certain organs are connected to this development: the gallbladder and the liver. The gallbladder is the physical expression of the astral body. It is not linked to the “I,” but the “I” acts upon the astral body, and from the astral body, forces act upon the gallbladder.

[ 26 ] Now let us summarize the whole picture that the initiate so clearly explained to the Egyptian: The self-aware human being has been bound to the earthly body. Imagine the human being, bound to the rocks of the Earth—that is, bound to the physical body—and in the course of evolution, something has arisen that gnaws at his immortality! Imagine the functions that the liver has brought about: they arose because the body was forged to the rocks of the Earth. The astral body gnaws at it.

[ 27 ] This is the image that was given to the student in Egypt and that made its way to Greece as the legend of Prometheus. One must not handle such a myth with rough hands. One must not strip such an image of its dust, as one might a butterfly. We must leave the dust on the wings; we must leave the dew on the flower. These images cannot be torn apart or tormented. We must not say: Prometheus means this or that; we must try to present the actual occult facts, and then try to understand the images that arose from these occult facts and have passed into human consciousness.

[ 28 ] The Egyptian initiate guided his student to the point where he could comprehend the development of the human “I.” Such a vision was meant to shape his mind. But the disciple was not to grasp the facts with clumsy hands; rather, the image was to stand before him, bright and alive, and the Egyptian initiate did not wish to cram banal, dry concepts into truths, but rather to present in images whatever he could impart. Much of the Promethean legend has been shaped by poetry, embellished and adorned, and we must not read more into it than the occult facts warrant, but rather leave the subtle creative powers to the realm of artistic expression alone. Now let us point out something else. When human beings first arrived on Earth, they were not yet endowed with an “I.” Before the “I” was initiated into the astral body, other forces had taken possession of it. Then the light-fluid astral body was permeated by the “I.” Before the “I” was present within it, the astral forces had been sent into the human being from without by the divine-spiritual beings. The astral body was also present, but it was suffused with divine-spiritual beings. The astral body was pure and luminous, and it flowed around what existed as the potential for the physical and etheric bodies. It flowed around and through them; the flow of the astral body was pure. With the entry of the “I,” however, egoism had entered, and the astral body had become darkened; the pure, golden flow of the astral body was lost, and it was lost more and more until humanity had descended to the lowest point of the physical plane during the Greco-Roman era.

[ 29 ] People were thus compelled to think about regaining the pure flow of the astral body, and this gave rise in the Eleusinian Mysteries to what was called: the search for the original purity of the astral body. To restore the astral body to its original, pure golden flow—that was the goal of the Eleusinian Mysteries, and it was also the goal of the Egyptians. The search for the golden flow was one of the trials of the Egyptian initiations; and this has been preserved for us in the marvelous legend of Jason and the Argonauts’ quest for the Golden Fleece.

[ 30 ] We have seen the development: When the lower organs still resembled in form the boats we have spoken of, the astral body in the water-earth still possessed a golden radiance. In the Water-Earth, human beings had an astral body illuminated by gold. The quest for this astral body is depicted in the story of the Argonauts. We must connect the quest for the Golden Fleece to the Egyptian myth in a subtle, refined way.

[ 31 ] External historical events are linked to spiritual events. One must not believe that this is merely symbolic. The Argonauts’ expedition actually took place, just as the Trojan War actually took place. External events are manifestations of inner processes; all of these are historical events. Time and again, the historical event took place inwardly for the Greek initiates: the quest for the Golden Fleece, the attainment of the pure astral body.

[ 32 ] This is what we wanted to keep in mind, and from this starting point we will learn more about the mysteries and then discover how the Egyptian mysteries relate to life today.