The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Seventh Lecture

[ 1 ] From what has been said here in the last two lectures, you will gather that there are certain facts in the development of humanity that are scarcely noticed in outer life, but whose neglect leads to many misunderstandings regarding what takes place in the spiritual foundations of this development. As you can see from the conclusion of yesterday’s lecture, what might be called the mystical Christ experience—the experience a person can have when, through deep contemplation within, they permeate their soul experiences with what we have called the Christ substance—has not always existed, but has developed over the course of time. Indeed, one can see that the historical event of Christ’s descent was necessary as a prerequisite for the presence of the mystical Christ in the soul; thus, one cannot say that the mystical Christ experience would have always been possible for human souls even in pre-Christian times; a Meister Eckhart or similar figures with their inner mystical experiences are possible only within the Christian era, not before. Abstract thinking will not grasp this at all from the outset; only concrete, spiritually realistic thinking that focuses on the facts can do so. Likewise, what has been said about the relationships between the Luciferic beings and the Christ Being can only be understood if one assumes that a transformation—imperceptible to the external senses and the external intellect, yet no less radical—of the entire human organization took place over the millennia preceding the appearance of the Christ and throughout the centuries following it. Human beings have undergone a fundamental transformation since the Atlantean catastrophe. And while in the present human cycle everything in external life experience depends on the fact that, when a human being enters into incarnation, they perceive the world through the instruments available to them in the three bodies—the physical, etheric, and astral bodies, the way they perceive the world depends on the changes that the organization of these bodies undergoes. There is no single, absolutely true way of perceiving the world that applies to all times. People can only perceive the world in a way that corresponds to their own organization.

[ 2 ] Let us now bring to mind the most radical change in human nature that has taken place since the Atlantean catastrophe—through the first great human civilization of the post-Atlantean era, through ancient India, and through ancient Persia, through the Chaldean-Egyptian and Greek-Latin cultural epochs, right up to the present day. You know that before the Atlantean catastrophe, the entire relationship between the individual components of human nature was different than it was later. The interaction between the etheric body and the physical body was not the same before the great Atlantean catastrophe as it was afterward. The etheric body of the head, for example, was more powerfully developed in relation to the physical head and more loosely connected to it. It is precisely in this that the process of evolution is expressed: the connection between the etheric body and the physical body is becoming ever more intense, and the two are becoming ever more alike. Now, all the forces for the organization of the physical body—for the assembly and harmonization of the physical body’s members—reside in the etheric body. One can therefore say: In Atlantean humanity, the situation was such that the forces that constructed the physical body acted from the outside, as it were, from an etheric body that was located outside the physical body—particularly in relation to the head. Then these forces withdrew into the space of the physical body and today act more from within, animating and stimulating it. But this has only recently come into being. A slow slipping of the etheric body into the physical body has taken place. — And if one wishes to understand ancient Indian culture, one must be clear that at that time the situation was still different from what it was during the Chaldean-Egyptian period. In the people of the Greco-Latin period, however, a complete interpenetration of the etheric body and the physical body had already been achieved, so that to the clairvoyant consciousness, the etheric body would not have extended far beyond the physical body at any point in the human organism.

[ 3 ] This was not yet the case with the Indians. There, the observant eye would have seen everywhere how the etheric body—particularly in relation to the head—protruded beyond the physical body. This is why the members of the ancient Indian people viewed the world differently from the members of the Egyptian people. The members of the Greco-Latin people essentially already saw the world as we do today; they saw it spread out as a tapestry of colors, sounds, forms, and so on. Yet this entire world, as it is spread out in today’s sensory perceptions, was, for the Indian mind of the earliest times, still finely interwoven with what one might call clouds of etheric mist rising from all things, as if all things were burning and a fine mist of smoke were streaming forth from every form. People perceived an ethereal element that lay over all things like fine dew or frost. This peculiar way of perceiving was natural at that time. Today, the human soul can acquire it only through spiritual scientific exercises. This is the meaning of humanity’s evolution through the various cultural epochs: that the etheric body sinks ever deeper and deeper into the physical body. This changes human perception, since it depends on the way the etheric body is organized. And this, in turn, is connected to the fact that the Luciferic beings—of the kind that reveal themselves within the earth and within the soul—ascend to cosmic levels of existence, and that the Christ Being, which was previously a cosmic Being and descended to incarnate in the human body, now becomes one that reveals itself within the earth and within the soul. This interpenetration of the Apollonian and Dionysian principles—this, as it were, overlapping of the Luciferic and Christ-beings—had become possible only because the human constitution had changed in this way. But it has changed not only for the purpose of assessing the past, but also for preparing for the future. We are indeed now living in an age in which the most intimate interpenetration between the etheric body and the physical body is already behind us; we are now once again moving in the opposite direction of development. We are living in a time when the etheric body is slowly withdrawing from the physical body. This is the normal course of human evolution into the future—that the etheric body gradually leaves the physical body once more; and times will come when the human organism will once again view itself as it did in ancient times, so that we will once again perceive how the etheric body protrudes beyond the physical. We are right in the midst of this process, and many of the finer symptoms of illness today would be understood if one knew this. All of this, however, corresponds to great cosmic laws. Human beings could not reach their evolutionary goal if they did not, as it were, undergo a kind of cross-fertilization of their organizational elements in this way. But everything that is within us is permeated by our entire environment; it is permeated by the divine-spiritual beings who dwell in the spiritual world and who send their currents into us, just as the physical elements of the earth send their currents into our physical organism. Back when the etheric body existed apart from the physical body, currents constantly flowed into this etheric body; human beings perceived these consciously and experienced them as cosmic revelations. Human beings felt this as something that revealed itself to their inner being. The currents from the spiritual world that sank into their etheric bodies were also what worked to shape the physical body.

[ 4 ] If we now characterize from an external perspective what has been said here in recent days, we can say: What had sunk into the human etheric body and what the human being had experienced as the innermost element were the influences of the Luciferic world. Since the ancient times of pre-Atlantean evolution, human beings had carried with them a legacy: the Luciferic influences that flowed into their etheric bodies. The fact that these Luciferic influences became obscured—that, precisely at the time of Christ’s appearance, a human being perceives nothing of them unless he or she is highly initiated—is explained by the fact that the etheric body is increasingly merging with the physical body, becoming one with it, and that the human being is learning more and more to make use of the physical organs; Therefore, it was necessary for humanity that the divine being who was to appear on Earth should appear in a physically perceptible form, physically embodied just like other physical beings on Earth. Humanity at that time could only understand a God appearing in a body because it had become accustomed to calling “true” that which is seen through the instruments of the physical body. This had to be the case for humanity so that those who were with Christ could speak to confirm what had happened: “We have placed our hands in his wounds and our fingers in the marks of his nails.”—This sensory certainty had to live within people as a feeling, a feeling that, when present, contributes to the truth of the matter. A person in ancient India would not have attached any importance to this; he would have said: “The spiritual, when perceived through the senses, does not mean much to me; if you wish to perceive the spiritual, you must rise to some degree of intuitive knowledge.” Thus, understanding of Christ had to develop first, just as everything else in the world does.

[ 5 ] But that which the human being had in his etheric body as the Luciferic influence—which he brought with him from time immemorial, when his etheric body did not yet dwell entirely within the physical body, when it was still outside and received the influences of Lucifer through its outer parts—that disappeared; it was gradually exhausted. As the etheric body slipped into the physical body, human beings lost the ability to perceive the higher worlds with their etheric organs. Thus, looking back to a certain time, one can say of our human ancestors: They were still able to look into the higher worlds; what they saw is preserved in the sacred texts. — One can point to this as an ancient wisdom. But later on, this wisdom was no longer directly accessible, because to the same extent that the etheric body moves into the physical body, human beings can make use only of their physical senses and their physical intellect, and the power of vision is paralyzed. The ability to look into the spiritual world is then possible only for the initiate who, through systematic training, ascends to the supersensory worlds.

[ 6 ] Now I told you: The reverse process is now taking place. Humanity is entering a stage in which the etheric body, in a certain sense, is once again forming itself out of the physical body; but you must not believe that it now retains, of its own accord, everything it had brought with it from the past as an old heirloom. If nothing were to happen other than the etheric body emerging from the physical body, it would simply emerge. It would contain none of the forces it once possessed. In the future, it will be born out of the human physical body. If the human physical body imparts nothing to it, then it is empty; then it is barren. This will be the future of human development: that human beings will, so to speak, release their etheric body from their physical embodiment and may eventually send it forth empty. What would that mean? The etheric body is the bearer of forces, the initiator of everything that takes place in the physical body. It must supply the physical body with forces not only when it is fully within the physical body, but at all times; it will also have to supply it when it is once again partially outside the physical body. If you leave the etheric body empty—if you give it nothing to carry with it—then it cannot exert a return influence on the physical body, for then it lacks the power by which it can do so. After passing through the physical body, the etheric body must draw its forces from within the physical body. From there, these forces must be imparted to it so that, when it is outside, it can exert a return influence on the physical body. It is the task of present-day humanity to take into itself that which can only be taken in through activity within the physical body. What is developed within the physical body progresses with evolution, and when, in future incarnations, human beings live in such organizations where the etheric body is, to a certain degree, released from the physical body, then it will live on in consciousness, as it were, as a memory through the etheric body that has become partially free.

[ 7 ] Now one might ask: What is it that enables the physical body to pass something on as a legacy to the etheric body? What enables a person to send forces into their etheric body so that they will one day be able to bear such an etheric body, which in turn sends certain forces back from the outside? If a person had lived, let us say, from the year 3000 B.C. up to that time and again for three millennia after Christ, in such a way that nothing had happened to him other than what existed prior to the Christ event, then that person would have experienced nothing in the physical body that could carry over as a force for the etheric body when it detaches itself from the physical body. What a human being can carry with them is what they can gain through the Christ experience within the physical world. All connection with the Christ principle—with the experiences one can have through the appearance of Christ—sinks so deeply into the soul’s experiences within the physical world that this soul, and with it the entire physical being, is prepared in such a way that it can pour into the etheric body what the latter will need in the future. Since the experience of Christ had to come, it had to permeate the human soul so that people might understand their own development in the future. What is in the physical body today sends out forces into the etheric body; and this etheric body, when it is nourished, as it were, by what the physical body experiences at the time of the Christ event, will receive the forces to become radiant once more and possess the life force necessary to sustain the physical body in the future. What human beings thus experienced in Christ through that reversal of principles has its positive significance for the future of human evolution.

[ 8 ] But this event alone would not be enough. For do consider that, by undergoing the Christ experience within your own soul—as Christ becomes ever more familiar to you and increasingly merges with your soul’s own experiences—you do indeed influence the etheric body, pouring streams of energy into it. But if this etheric body now moves outward and enters an inappropriate element—if, once outside, it does not encounter the forces that can in turn have a sustaining and enlivening effect on what has been drawn into it as the Christ principle—then, when the etheric body becomes partially free, it will indeed possess the Christ force, but it will penetrate an element where it cannot live. It would be destroyed by external forces. Because it is permeated by Christ, it would meet its destruction in an element unsuitable for it and would have a destructive effect on the physical body. What is the second thing that is necessary? It is that this etheric body make itself fit to receive once again the light from Lucifer’s realm. Thus, whereas human beings once saw Lucifer emerge as an inner experience through the veil of their soul life, they must now prepare themselves so that they can experience Lucifer as a cosmic being in their surroundings. Lucifer is transforming from an underground deity into a cosmic one; and human beings must prepare themselves to endow their etheric bodies with such powers that Lucifer can be a fertilizing, a fostering element—and not a destructive one. Human beings must pass through the Christ experience, but in such a way that they become receptive to seeing, in this world, the spiritual foundations—the foundations of the spiritual events—from which the world has sprung. Thus, human beings pass through the Christ experience, and it is justified within the very nature of evolution that spiritual scientific training prepares people to once again understand the light from Lucifer’s realm, because only in this way can the human etheric body receive its corresponding life forces. Humanity had already been influenced by Christ even before He appeared on Earth. Even when Zarathustra pointed upward toward Ahura Mazda, the power of Christ shone down. And from the other side, the power of Lucifer shone. This is reversed. In the future, the power of Lucifer will shine in from the outside, while Christ will live within. The human organism must once again be influenced from two sides. The ancient Indian perceived, on the one hand: “This is you”—and on the other hand: “I am the universe”; he perceived that what he saw outwardly was the same world as that within. In ancient India, this was perceived as an abstract truth; it will then be experienced as a concrete spiritual reality on Earth when the time is ripe, when—through the appropriate preparations—what was previously revealed in ancient India revives in a new form. Such is the course of human development in the post-Atlantean era.

[ 9 ] It is now clear from this that the development of humanity is not linear, but follows a course similar to that of everything in nature. I gave you the example of the plant that grows but could not bear fruit unless its development took a new turn. Here you have an image that shows you that other influences must come from the side. There is no such thing as linear development. Thus, the Luciferic and Christ principles had to, so to speak, overlap. Anyone who seeks only linear development can never comprehend the true development of the world; only those who grasp the separate currents and then see how the currents mutually enrich one another—only they can truly understand what is developing. In the era of ancient Indian culture, when human beings were, in a certain sense, organized differently than they were later, this human perception was different. Only those who acquire it today through the methods of spiritual scientific research appropriate to our times can gain a concrete experience of what this human perception was like back then. Today, this can only be acquired artificially; in the past, it was a natural ability. Even for a well-prepared adherent of spiritual science, it is difficult to understand how soul experiences differed in ancient India from those of later times, and one can only attempt to put into words, in an approximate way, how they were different.

[ 10 ] When people today look out into the world, they perceive it through their various senses. We cannot go into everything there is to say about sensory perceptions from the perspective of modern science. Nor does that need to concern us today; we can stick to the common understanding that human beings perceive the external world through their various senses and synthesize the various impressions using the mental faculties that are bound to the physical brain. If you think about it, however, you will surely realize that there is a tremendous difference within sensory perceptions with regard to their entire nature. Compare, for example, hearing—the sensation of hearing—with the sensory experience of sight. Isn’t it quite obvious, when it comes to hearing, that in the external world—if we look for the corresponding facts—there exists a form of motion of matter that corresponds to how we hear: regularly moving air. We find this outside; when we hold the instrument of our hearing up to this regularly moving air, we experience what we call the auditory sensation. Yet the inner auditory experience and what exists externally as moving air are two entirely different things. If you take the sense of sight, you will be able to see that the matter is not as simple as it is with hearing. Modern physics has taken the easy way out. It has reasoned analogously: Let us assume a finer substance that moves just like the air outside. — For the realistic thinker, the major difference is that one can very easily verify what is vibrating outside in relation to the ear. It is easy to conclude that something is actually moving out there—when it comes to the process of hearing—if one places small pieces of paper on a string and plucks it. But as for what vibrates in the ether, no one can verify its existence; that is a hypothesis, something that exists only for the sake of physical theory. For realistic thinking, it does not exist. The sensory perception of sight is something fundamentally different from that of hearing. When we speak of the perception of light, what we perceive is, so to speak, much more objective to us than what we perceive through the sense of hearing. We perceive light as color; we perceive it as extending throughout space; but we cannot go out into the external world in the same way and seek objective processes as we do with sound. These are the kinds of differences that modern people so easily overlook. With his more refined awareness of the entire external world, the ancient Indian could not overlook such things. He perceived all these subtle external differences.

[ 11 ] I just wanted to point out that there are characteristic differences in the nature of the individual sensory realms. If you observe the German language, you may notice that the same word is used to describe both an inner psychological experience and—I admit, this does happen in imprecise speech—an impression that, in a certain sense, comes from the outside. That word is “Gefühl.” As you know, when we speak of the five senses, we list sight, hearing, smell, taste, and the sense of feeling; in the trivial sense, the “sense of feeling”; by this we mean the sense of touch, but we speak of “Gefühl” and count what this sense experiences among the external sensory experiences—we call it “Gefühl.” But we also describe—and in a much, much more spiritual way than is commonly thought, stemming from the genius of language—an inner experience of the soul as a “feeling.” When you feel joy or pain, you describe that as a feeling. This feeling we are now discussing is an intimate experience of the soul; in the other case, mediated by the sense of touch, there is always an external object that serves as the cause. The other feeling may be linked to the external object, but you can already see from this that it is not the sole cause, because it can manifest differently in one person than in another. The genius of language, as I said, truly works its magic here. We have two experiences: one bound to the external senses, and one bound to the inner self. In today’s experience, the two seem quite distant from one another. This was not always the case. And here we come to a different perspective on what we characterized earlier as coming from the outside. We described the slipping in of the etheric body and its slipping out. This is connected to the fact that something is also taking place within the human being. Today, these two experiences—the inner emotional experience and the emotional experience that we also describe with the word “feeling,” which is elicited by an external object through the sense of touch—are two distinct things. The further back we go in human evolution—that is, the further the etheric body is outside the physical body—the closer these two experiences come together. Only today are they far apart for human beings. In the Indian era, this distinction was not as valid as it is today. Back then, the inner emotional experience and the outer one were still infinitely closer to one another. Yes, how so?

[ 12 ] If you encounter someone today and they harbor a negative thought toward you—let’s say they find you unlikable—and they express their feelings toward you accordingly, well, if you are initially equipped only with your external senses and your physical brain, you will generally not notice much of their feelings, sympathies, and antipathies. If they strike you, then you will notice it; your sense of feeling will register it. Things were different in ancient India. Back then, human beings were still organized in such a way that they perceived not only what corresponds to today’s coarse sense of touch, but also what has now retreated into the inner self; they were still able to sense what another person was conveying to them inwardly. An experience arose in their soul, just as you have it today through the sense of touch, through the sympathy that lived within the other person. They felt what was happening physically and emotionally. However, in those times, what we call our inner emotional life had not yet developed in such an inward way; it was still more connected to the external world. People did not yet withdraw into their inner selves as much as they do today. They experienced pains and joys that, in many respects, corresponded more closely to the events of the external world than ours do today; they were not at all able to withdraw into their inner selves as we do today. Today, the inner experience of the soul is much more detached from the entire environment than it used to be. Today, a person may even find themselves surrounded by circumstances that could not be better; yet because their inner life of the soul is detached from their surroundings, they may feel inner pain due to the way they relate to the world, without having any real cause for it. That would have been impossible during the era of ancient Indian culture. Back then, what took place within was such that it was a much more faithful reflection of what was unfolding in the external environment. People lived much more in harmony with their feelings within their surroundings. Why was that? Because in those ancient times, due to their physical constitution, people had a completely different relationship to, for example, light. The light that floods around us has not only its physical aspect, but everything that is physical also contains a soul-and-spiritual aspect within it. Now, human development proceeded in such a way that the soul-and-spiritual aspects of the external world withdrew more and more from human beings in these experiences; increasingly, only the physical became perceptible. Human beings now perceived light through its effect on the eye. In earlier times, they perceived it as if it were sinking into their organism from all sides like a fluid, and in the light streaming through them, they sensed the soul. Today, the soul of light stops at the human skin. The Indian constitution was still permeated by what lives as the soul within the light; and human beings perceived what, as the soul of light, permeated the light. This was the bearer of what could be perceived as sympathies and antipathies in other beings—qualities that today, along with the soul of light, are withdrawing from human beings. This was connected to other experiences. Today you breathe in and out. At most, you come to know your breath through its mechanical effects. If it has any effect that causes it to cool, you perceive it as becoming watery. That is a mechanical way of perceiving the breath. As improbable as it may sound to people today, it is nevertheless true that, for example, spiritual scientific research can now confirm that most people in ancient India perceived their breath quite differently. The soul of light had not yet withdrawn from what was happening around the people of that time; thus, they perceived the inhaled and exhaled air in various light and dark shades of color. They saw the air flowing in as if in rays of fire and flowing out again. So you can say: Essentially, even the air has become something entirely different to human perception, despite all that has changed. — Today, air is something that people essentially perceive only mechanically through the resistance it offers them, because they do not directly perceive the soul of light that permeates the air. Humanity has also moved beyond this last remnant of instinctive perception. The ancient Indian, therefore, would not simply have called what is inhaled and exhaled “air,” but rather “fire-air,” because he perceived it in varying degrees of fiery radiance. But in saying this, you have also made it possible to understand that, in general, the entire atmosphere surrounding the air was something different for the ancient Indian than it is for people today. Modern humans see the air as transparent; they do not perceive the surrounding substance of the air. When a draft passes through a room, they perceive it only through the resistance it offers. The ancient Indian consciousness saw fiery masses moving through the air.

[ 13 ] Here you have yet another example of how the transformation of human organization over the course of development is reflected even in external experiences. These are the inner processes of human evolution, and we can never understand what is written in the Vedas unless we know how the words are used. If we read those words without realizing that they described what people actually saw at that time, the words lose all meaning, and we interpret them completely wrong. One must always take the realities into account when approaching ancient texts.

[ 14 ] It is precisely what lives in the human soul that changes over the course of time. And now you will understand a fact which, if you do not have these prerequisites—which are entirely independent of the evidence established by physical research—you cannot understand based solely on that evidence. Take a look at the Eastern writings to see how the elements are listed there. They are listed as: earth, water, fire, air, and ether. It is only from the Greek period onward that we find the other list, which we take for granted today and which we must take as the basis for all understanding, namely: earth, water, air, fire, and the other types of ether. Why is that so? Ancient Indian consciousness perceived things just as modern humans do: it saw the things that manifest through the solid—what is called the earthly—and through the liquid—what is spiritually speaking called water. But what we call air today was already fire to them, for they already saw fire in the air and designated what they saw as fire. We no longer see this fire; we feel it as warmth. And only when they moved somewhat higher up in the series of elements did the Indians enter an element where—because everything has changed since the fourth period of the post-Atlantean era—what emerged for humanity was what we today call air: air permeated by light, but not itself manifesting light. In fire and air, the entire human worldview was transformed. What we have said about Christ and Lucifer—that they have transcended one another, that Christ has evolved from a cosmic to an inner-human being, and Lucifer from an inner-human to a cosmic being—this has taken place in all areas of life, so that what was still, in the first post-Atlantean epoch, what we call fire is perceived by us today as air, and what is perceived by us as fire was perceived back then as air. What underlies human development is expressed not only on a grand scale but also on a small one. One must not attribute these things to mere chance. You can see how deeply one can look into what happens in the course of human development when one views things from the only real perspective—that of spiritual science. A consciousness such as that of the ancient Indian is, therefore, a consciousness that perceived what lies within the soul and what lies outside the soul even more as a unity; hence, the Indian lived even more fully within his entire surroundings. The last echoes of this—of their once-existing, instinctive state of perception—can be found in the rudimentary clairvoyance of those people today who possess what we specifically call “second sight.” When you are walking down the street somewhere, and the thought of a person whom you cannot physically see at that moment occurs to you, and you continue walking and after some time he comes toward you—why did you have the thought of him in your consciousness before you saw him? Because his influence had entered your subconscious and then risen into your consciousness as a fully formed thought. Today, human beings have only a rudimentary remnant of what was once more significant. In the past, there was a more intimate connection between inner and outer sensation. These are merely further elaborations on what has often been presented to you, so that it could be said: Humanity has evolved from the old, dull form of clairvoyance to today’s sensory consciousness and will grow into a fully conscious state of perception. This will be achieved in such a way that the human being will consciously experience it, so that he knows his etheric body is going out, and he can make use of the organs of the etheric body just as he does those of the physical body.

[ 15 ] In earlier, even more spiritual times—when people were wiser than today’s abstract, materialistic science—people were always aware that an ancient way of seeing, a way of perceiving the world, had existed; that people had stepped away from this ancient way of seeing and entered into the present-day conditions. In the past, people did not express what they knew through abstract formulas and theories, but through powerful, colorful images; and myths are not, after all, invented things—elaborate, fantastical images, as a fantastical, armchair scholarship of today would have us believe—but rather expressions of deep, primordial wisdom acquired through spiritual insight. In ancient times, there was an awareness—expressed in myths—that people once perceived the world more comprehensively. The clairvoyance of the ancient Indians was a last remnant of a primal, twilight-like clairvoyance. This was known in the past; but it was also known that this clairvoyance—let us call it that for the sake of brevity—was steadily declining, having to give way more and more to external life, which is limited to the sensory world. It was precisely this fact that was expressed in the authoritative myths. For example, it was known that there were mystery sites—we spoke of them yesterday—where the path led down to the subterranean spirits, and there were other mysteries where the path led up to the cosmic spirits. All of this had been sharply distinguished from one another. Those who were not initiated knew nothing of this, just as today those who do not seek the right paths to it have no inkling that there is such a thing as mystery wisdom. But word of it had, so to speak, more or less found its way out into the outer world. It must also be said of the mysteries that their golden age appears all the more significant to us the further back we go in time. The Greek mysteries are no longer the most glorious. The mystery tradition, too, was subject to decline. Nevertheless, people knew that what comes from places where visionary consciousness still operates is connected to the spiritual substance that permeates and animates the world; and they knew that where visionary consciousness reigns, one can still gain insight into the interrelationships of the world that cannot otherwise be known. And even though they were already in a period of decline, the oracle sites were still places where intuitive consciousness was cultivated, and where what could not be known through ordinary sensory perception or through human perception bound to the senses was proclaimed to the people. But it was also understood there that human beings evolve, and that what could be attained through the old forms of vision is only useful and applicable to ancient times, but not to the new era.

[ 16 ] Thus, the Greeks had a deep awareness that, while the messages from the oracles stimulate people’s curiosity—and people are eager to learn about the mysterious connections of the world—they had already outgrown the proper use of such clairvoyant insights; that they now stand within the world in a different way than before and therefore cannot proceed correctly if they adhere to the results of the old clairvoyance. It suited the ancient people; it no longer suits the modern ones. That is what they wanted to say, and they expressed it in magnificent imagery. One such image, for example, is the one presented to us in the Oedipus myth. An oracle—that is, a place where mysterious connections are clairvoyantly perceived, connections that are already hidden from human sight—tells the father that if he has a son, this son will bring disaster; he will murder his father and marry his mother. He has this son. He even tries to do what might prevent what was clairvoyantly perceived from coming to pass. The son is abandoned and taken to a completely different region. The son learns of the oracle—that is, something enters his soul that can only be fathomed through clairvoyant insight. Greek consciousness sought to say: Although such things reach back from ancient times, human organization has already advanced so far that it is no longer suited to this kind of clairvoyance, that it is of no further use to it. Because of this changed consciousness, Oedipus interprets the oracle in such a way that it is all the more fulfilled—that is, human beings can no longer handle clairvoyant consciousness in the proper way; the spiritual world has simply withdrawn from him; the old clairvoyance is of no use to him anymore. But there has always been an awareness that these things will reverse themselves again, that what comes from such worlds will once more become meaningful for humanity, that only for a while, so to speak, a veil of experience is to spread over what comes from such worlds. There was also an awareness of this, and the myth-forming forces of human development have expressed this as well. The Christ event was the decisive factor in human development that caused the two forces—the Lucifer principle and the Christ principle—to clash. This, then, was the decisive turning point, when—from another side, from the cosmos—that which comes from the spiritual sources was to pour into human development like a leaven. It had been lost, but it was to be poured in again like a leaven. What had become harmful to humanity, what had turned into evil within humanity itself, is to be poured in like a leaven and transformed into good. Evil is to fall into the fruitful spiritual power of human development and contribute to the good. This, too, has found expression in mythology.

[ 17 ] There is another legend that goes something like this: An oracle prophesied to a couple that they would have a son, and that this son would bring disaster upon his entire people. This son would murder his father and marry his mother. The mother gave birth to this son. Because of this prophecy, they abandoned him as well, leaving him on the island of Kariot, where he was found by the queen of Kariot. And since this couple had no son of their own, they took him in. Later, however, they had a son of their own. The foundling then felt he was being mistreated and killed the biological son. He was then forced to flee the island of Kariot. He fled and arrived at Pilate’s court in Palestine, where he was given a position as an overseer in Pilate’s household. He got into a quarrel with his neighbor, about whom he knew nothing more than that he was simply his neighbor. In the altercation, he killed him and later married his wife. Only then did he learn that the man he had killed was his real father, and that he had thus married his own mother. The legend tells us that the man who now saw all this come crashing down upon him did not fare like Oedipus, but that remorse overcame him, and that he went to Christ, and Christ took him in; for this was Judas of Kariot. And what lived within Judas—this evil—permeates the entire development of humanity like a leaven. For the events in Palestine have something to do with Judas’s betrayal; he is part of the whole, he belongs to the Twelve, who cannot be conceived of without him. Here it became evident that the oracle’s prophecy was indeed fulfilled, and that its content is incorporated into human development like the evil that is transformed and lives on in a positive sense. In a significant way, the legend—which is truly wiser than external science—points out that such a transformation occurs in human nature over the course of time, so that one must think about the same thing in very different ways at different times. One must not recount how an oracle’s prophecy is fulfilled in the same way when speaking of the Oedipus era as when speaking of the Christ era. The same fact becomes the Oedipus legend in one era and the Judas legend in the Christian era. Only when one knows the spiritual facts underlying the development of the world and humanity can one understand what appears as a consequence of this to the external eye, to the external historical perspective. Whatever exists in the sensory world—whether external sensory impressions or the products of the human soul—we understand all of this when we understand the spiritual foundations that underlie it. What the researcher of the spiritual worlds discovers, he gladly offers as inspiration to those who receive it from him, and they, in turn, investigate the external facts that confirm it. I have often pointed out this connection between spiritual and material research. If what is found in the spiritual world is true, then it is confirmed in the physical world. But every true researcher of spiritual life will tell you this: he shares what he knows from the higher world, and then he urges others to examine all external facts in light of this information. Try, for example, to compare what I have said about the reincarnation of Zarathustra with external history. You will see that what has been said about these facts stands up to any test, provided one searches carefully enough for events in external history. The external becomes understandable only through knowledge of the inner, the spiritual.