The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] Before we move on to our topic today, I would like to add a brief comment to what I said yesterday. I pointed out how, in the processes of human development—especially in the great, significant events of our existence—there is something to be seen that can be characteristically expressed through a language drawn from the processes of the cosmos. I mentioned how impossible it is to clothe in ordinary words, clearly, distinctly, and thoroughly, what needs to be said regarding the great mysteries.

[ 2 ] If we wish to characterize that significant process which we may call the interaction between the two great disciples of Zarathustra—between Hermes or Thoth and Moses—we can best do so by depicting it as the repetition of a great cosmic process, although we must understand the latter in such a way that it appears to us in the sense of occult wisdom, in the sense of the secret science. To begin by visualizing this cosmic process, let us look back repeatedly to that time when our Earth separated from its Sun, when both, so to speak, continued their own lives in the cosmos with an independent center. We can form a mental image of this process by conceiving the entire substance of the Earth and the Sun in the distant past as a single whole—as it were, a great cosmic body—and that these two separated in the distant past. However, we must always bear in mind that we are disregarding other cosmic processes that occurred in parallel with the separation of the Sun and the Earth, such as the formation of the other planets in our solar system. For our purposes, we can initially disregard the temporal relationships of these other separations and say: A separation thus took place in such a way that the Sun formed one center and the Earth the other.

[ 3 ] When we now consider this moment of the Earth’s separation from the Sun, we must first take into account that we are looking back to times when what is now called the “Earth” still contained within itself—in its own bosom—the substance of what is today our Moon, so that, as it were, Earth, Moon, and Sun stood opposite one another. All the spiritual and physical forces that existed prior to this separation split in such a way that, as it were, the coarser element—the coarser, denser forces—went with the Earth, while the finer, higher, spiritual-etheric forces went with the Sun. Now we must create a mental image of the situation in which, for a long time, the Earth and the Sun underwent their evolutionary development separately from one another; that, at first, everything emanating from the Sun toward the Earth was of a completely different nature than, for example, those influences that are active today, descending from the Sun onto the Earth. Here we first have a kind of earthly existence, an earthly life that manifests itself, so to speak, as an inner, closed earthly life, which receives little from the life of the Sun—from that which radiates from the Sun to the Earth, spiritually and, in its expression, physically.

[ 4 ] During this initial period of the Sun’s separation from the Earth, the Earth was, so to speak, heading toward a state of drying up, withering away, and mummification. And if the Earth had continued to retain the Moon within its bosom, the life that exists on Earth today would never have been possible. While the Earth still contained the Moon, the life of the Sun could not manifest itself to its fullest extent; it could do so only later, after the Earth had separated from itself that which is now the Moon, and in doing so had also separated from itself the spiritual beings connected to the Moon, just as the Moon’s substance had been separated from the Earth.

[ 5 ] But there is something else connected with this separation of the Moon from the Earth. We must be clear that everything we today call life on our Earth has developed slowly and gradually. And in Spiritual Science, we also describe the successive states as they took shape and unfolded, which made life on Earth possible. First, there was the ancient Saturn existence, then the ancient Sun existence, the ancient Moon existence, and finally our Earth existence. Thus, what we refer to as the separation from the Sun—or the Earth’s prior union with the Sun—was preceded by other evolutionary processes of a completely different nature: namely, the Saturn, Sun, and Moon phases, from which our Earth phase subsequently developed. And when the Earth begins in its present form, it is still connected to the substance of all the planets that belong to our solar system and that will only later differentiate themselves. This differentiation is the result of forces that were at work during the Saturn, Sun, and Moon phases.

[ 6 ] We now know that during the Saturn phase, matter did not exist in the same configuration as it does today. Solid, liquid, or aqueous bodies—and even gaseous, vaporous, or air-like bodies—did not yet exist on ancient Saturn. In its entire structure, it was merely something that existed only as heat. A mere differentiation of heat, a mere heat structure, existed on this ancient Saturn. We can therefore say: Ancient Saturn had only a body of heat, and everything that developed on it developed within the element of heat. I need not repeat here that anyone who says such a thing knows full well how impossible it is for modern physics to conceive of a body consisting solely of heat, since “heat” is, after all, merely a state for modern physics and not something substantial. But we are not concerned here with modern physics, but solely with what is true.

[ 7 ] Now the evolution proceeds from Saturn’s heat body to the later, ancient state of the Sun. As described in An Outline of Esoteric Science, Saturn’s heat body condenses, so to speak. Some of the heat naturally remains; but the thermal body condenses in part into the gaseous, air-like state of the Sun. However, this process involves not only condensation but also rarefaction; at the same time, an upward evolution toward light takes place. We can therefore say: When we move from the thermal state of ancient Saturn to the solar state, we arrive at a celestial body that contains within itself air, heat, and light.

[ 8 ] And when we then move on from the Sun to the ancient lunar state that preceded our Earthly state, we find that a process of condensation occurs once again; we now find not only a gaseous or air-like state, but also, alongside it, a watery state. But on the other hand—toward spiritualization, so to speak, toward etherization—a change has also taken place. We see that not only is light present during the lunar state, but also what is called the “sound ether,” which is identical to today’s chemical ether. What is referred to here as the “sound ether” is not the same as what we physically call sound or tone. The latter is merely a reflection of what the Hellesian faculty perceives as the harmony of the spheres, as an etheric tone that weaves and lives throughout the world. We are therefore speaking of something far more spiritual, of something far more etheric, when we speak of this ether and this sound itself.

[ 9 ] Then we move from the old lunar state to the earthly state. There, the process of condensation into solid matter takes place. Such solid bodies as exist on Earth did not exist on the old Moon. This is a state that has only formed on Earth. Thus, we now have on Earth heat, gaseous or air-like substances, watery or liquid substances, and solid bodies; and on the other hand, we have light ether, sound ether, and then life ether. This is what the evolution on Earth has brought about. So on Earth we have seven states of an elemental nature, whereas on the ancient Saturn we have only one—a middle state, the state of heat. Therefore, we must create a mental image of our Earth—as it emerged from the cosmic darkness at the beginning of its present existence, when it was still united with the Sun and the other planets—as weaving and living within these seven elemental states. But with the separation from the Sun, something very remarkable occurs.

[ 10 ] In today’s external life, as it manifests itself through the forces radiating from the Sun to the Earth, there is indeed heat and light; but these forces, which belong to the perceptible sensory world and fall within the entire realm of sensory perception, do not include the manifestations—the revelations—of the ether of sound and the ether of life. For this reason, what we call the effects of the tone ether manifest only in chemical compositions and decompositions—that is, in the mutual relationships of material existence. And what we call the effect of the life ether, as it radiates in from the sun, cannot be directly perceived by human beings in the same way that light becomes immediately perceptible to them when they distinguish between light and darkness through sensory perception. Life is perceived in its effects within living beings, but the life-ether streaming in is not perceived directly. Therefore, science, too, is compelled to say that life as such is a mystery to it. - Thus we find that the two highest forms of etheric manifestations—the life ether and the tone ether—although they emanate from the sun and belong to the finest of what emanates from the sun, are not immediately manifest to earthly existence. Here we have something that, although it radiates down from the sun, is hidden from ordinary perception. For everything that lives in the sound ether and life ether, something of a human inner nature becomes perceptible on Earth, even under present-day conditions. It is not the immediate effects of life and the harmony of the spheres that become perceptible on Earth, but rather what is at work in the entire constitution of the human being.

[ 11 ] Now, the easiest way for me to describe this to you is by referring once again to the evolution that humankind has undergone on Earth. We know that in ancient times, extending into the Atlantean epoch, human beings were endowed with direct clairvoyance, through which they were able to perceive not only the sensory world as we do today, but also the spiritual background of sensory existence. How was this possible? It was possible because, for people in those ancient times, there existed an intermediate state—a state between what we today call our waking consciousness (from the moment of waking until falling asleep) and what we call the state of sleep. In the waking state, a person perceives physical and sensory things; in the sleeping state, he—or the majority of people—initially perceives nothing at all today; he merely lives. If, however, you were to examine this life of the human being during the sleeping state through clairvoyance, you would make strange discoveries—strange, that is, only to the person who views the world from the outside.

[ 12 ] During sleep, as we know, a person’s astral body and ego are outside their physical and etheric bodies. Now I have repeatedly pointed out that one should not create a mental image of the astral body and the “I,” which are outside the physical and etheric bodies at night, simply floating very close to the physical body, like a cloud of mist, as is commonly said. What one might perceive as such a cloud of mist—for example, in the state of lower astral clairvoyance—and what we call the astral body is merely the crudest beginning of what a human being constitutes during the state of sleep. And if one were to regard this cloud near the physical and etheric bodies as the only thing present, one would thereby only prove that one is proceeding from the lowest forms of astral clairvoyance. What a human being actually is during sleep is far more extensive. In fact, at the moment of falling asleep, the inner forces in the astral body and in the I begin to expand throughout the entire solar system; they become a part of the entire solar system. From all directions, while in the state of sleep, a person draws into their astral body and into their “I” the forces needed to strengthen this life, only to contract again upon waking within the narrower confines of their skin and to incorporate into it what they have drawn out during the night from the entire expanse of the solar system. This is why medieval occultists also called this spiritual body of the human being the “astral” body, because it is connected to the stellar worlds and draws its forces from them. Thus, we can say: During nighttime sleep, the human being is indeed extended throughout the entire solar system.

[ 13 ] What, then, permeates our astral body during sleep? When we are outside our physical body at night, our astral body is permeated and interwoven with the harmonies of the spheres—with that which can otherwise only spread through the ether, through the ether of sound. Just as on a metal plate sprinkled with a certain kind of dust, the vibrations that pulse through the air when one strokes the plate with a violin bow continue to pulse within this dust as well, producing the familiar Chladni figures, so, too, do the harmonies of the spheres tremble and pulse through the human being during the night, restoring to order what the human being has thrown into disorder during the day through external sensory perceptions. And whatever weaves through and animates the life-ether also pulses through us during sleep; it is just that human beings have no perception of this inner life of their sheaths when they are separated from the physical and etheric bodies. In the normal state, a person is only aware when they re-enter the physical and etheric bodies and use the outer organs of the etheric body for thinking and the outer organs of the physical body for sensory perception.

[ 14 ] But in ancient times, there were indeed intermediate states between waking and sleeping that today can only be induced in an abnormal way and, because of the danger involved, should not be induced at all in everyday life. In Atlantean times, however, these perceptual abilities were normally developed; they were intermediate states between waking and sleeping. This enabled human beings to put themselves in touch with what lived and wove within the harmony of the spheres and in the life ether. In other words: In ancient times—even though, in earthly phenomena, the harmony of the spheres and life manifest only in the outer beings of love—human beings could perceive, through the clairvoyance of those days, what the sun radiated to them as the harmony of the spheres and as the life pulsing through space.

[ 15 ] This ability gradually ceased. The door to these perceptions closed as human beings lost their ancient clairvoyance. And with that, something else gradually took its place: the inner power of knowledge, the inner power of insight. It was only through this that human beings learned to reflect inwardly, to think inwardly. Everything we today, in our waking life, call our reflection on the things of the physical world and so on—that is, our actual inner life—developed only with the fading of the old clairvoyance. Such an inner life as human beings have today—one that unfolds in feelings, sensations, thoughts, and mental images—did not yet exist in the early Atlantean times. Human beings lived in the intermediate states between waking and sleeping, immersed in a spiritual world, and they perceived the sensory world as if through a fog; in any case, it was completely removed from their understanding and from the inner reflections of outer life. — Thus, outer life rises to the fore while the old clairvoyance gradually disappears.

[ 16 ] Thus we can say: Something developed within us that is a faint reflection of what we call the harmony of the spheres and the effect of the life ether. But to the same extent that human beings felt inwardly filled with sensations and perceptions that the outer world echoed back to them—and which shaped their inner life today—to that same extent the music of the spheres faded for them. And to the same extent that human beings came to feel themselves as “I”-beings, their perception of the divine life-ether pulsing through the world faded away. Human beings had to pay for their present condition by losing certain aspects of their outer life. Thus, as an earthly being, humanity felt the life—which it could no longer perceive as radiating directly from the Sun—as something self-contained within itself; and today, in its inner life, it possesses only a faint reflection of the mighty cosmic life, of the music of the spheres and the life-ether. ‘What developed for the Earth itself also unfolded, as a kind of repetition, for human cognition. When the Earth separated from the Sun, it would have become self-contained and hardened had it remained connected to all the substantialities from which it had separated itself. At first, the Sun could not intervene with its effects in the Earth’s formation, and this continued until the Moon’s separation from the Earth took place. Therefore, in what the Earth cast out of itself as the Moon, we must see a rejection of all those substantialities that made it impossible for the Earth to receive the direct effects of the Sun. And by casting the Moon out of itself, the Earth thereby truly opened its being and essence to the influences and effects of the Sun from which it had separated, as it were, meeting the Sun halfway. Contrary to the direction in which the Earth itself had separated from the Sun, it sent forth a part of its own essence—the Moon—which then reflected back the effect of the Earth’s solar essence, just as it externally reflects light. The separation of the Moon from the Earth thus holds something of the utmost significance: the Earth’s opening itself to the effects of the Sun.

[ 17 ] What happened on such a cosmic scale was bound to occur—in a repetitive pattern—in human life as well. The Earth had long since opened itself to the Sun’s influence; only then had the right moment arrived for humankind to shield itself from the Sun’s direct effects. The direct effects of the sun were still present for the Atlanteans in their clairvoyance; thus the Atlanteans received what radiated from the sun. And just as a time came for the Earth when it began to harden, so a time came for humankind when it withdrew, developed an inner life, and could no longer open itself to the sun’s influence. And this process of developing an inner life—in which human beings could no longer open themselves to the sun and could only develop within themselves what was a faint reflection of the effects of the life ether, the tone ether, and the harmony of the spheres—lasted a long time, extending well into the post-Atlantean era.

[ 18 ] Thus, in the early stages of Atlantean development, there was a direct perception of the sun’s effects. Then people closed themselves off from these effects. And when these effects could no longer penetrate human beings—even as the inner life of humanity continued to blossom more and more—it was only through the sacred mysteries that their adherents were led to such a development of spiritual powers that human beings could, so to speak, perceive the effects of the sun directly—in defiance of normal earthly conditions—through what might be called yoga. Thus, in the second half of the Atlantean epoch, sites rightly called oracles developed within the land of Atlantis, where—among a humanity that could no longer normally perceive the direct effects of the tone ether and the life ether—such disciples and adherents of sacred wisdom were trained that, by initially suppressing mere sensory perception, were able to perceive the revelations of the sound ether and the life ether. And this possibility was preserved for the true centers of esoteric science in the post-Atlantean era. Indeed, it has remained so strong that even external science—though it does not understand it—has preserved a tradition from the school of Pythagoras to the effect that one can hear the harmonies of the spheres. Yet external science immediately transforms something like the harmony of the spheres into an abstraction—which it was not—and fails to conceive of it as what it actually is. For in reality, in the Pythagorean schools, the ability to perceive the harmony of the spheres was understood as the actual reopening of the human being to the sound ether, the harmony of the spheres, and the real divine life ether.

[ 19 ] Now, it was precisely the one who most powerfully and magnificently pointed out that behind the sun’s effects—as it shines down upon the earth with its light and warmth—there is something else, something that is a force of sound, indeed a force of life, which manifests itself in human inner life only as a faint reflection: Zarathustra, or Zoroaster. And if we wish to translate his teaching into a language drawn from our modern vocabulary, we can say that he taught his disciples the following: When you look up at the sun, you perceive the beneficial warmth and the beneficial light that radiates toward the Earth; but when you develop higher faculties, when you develop spiritual perception, you can perceive the solar being that lies behind the physical life of the sun; and then you perceive effects of sound—and within those effects of sound, the meaning of life! - What was next to be perceived as the spiritual reality behind the physical effects of the sun, Zarathustra described to his disciples as Ormuzd, as Ahura Mazdao, as the Great Aura of the Sun. We will therefore find it understandable that, in translation, the word Ahura Mazdao can also be called “great wisdom,” in contrast to what human beings today develop within themselves as “small wisdom.” Great wisdom is that which one perceives when one perceives the spirituality of the sun, the great solar aura.

[ 20 ] Thus, a poet, looking back on the ancient times of human development, was able to point to what is a truth for the spiritual researcher and say:

“The sun resounds in the ancient way
In a contest of song among the spheres of brotherhood,
And its prescribed journey
It completes with a thunderous roar.”

[ 21 ] Aesthetes will, of course, consider this something contrived. They love it when people say it’s “poetic license” for Goethe to make the sun “sound.” They have no idea what a poet in Goethe’s sense is—one who describes only realities when he says, “The sun resounds in the old way,” that is, in the way that ancient humanity knew it. For even today, it still resounds in this way for those who are initiated.

[ 22 ] Zarathustra had pointed this out to his disciples. Of course, among his disciples, he had particularly drawn the attention of the two—whom we might describe as his closest disciples—to this momentous fact; they later appeared in their reincarnations as Hermes and Moses. But he pointed them toward what lies behind the luminous body of the sun in two very different ways. He guided Hermes in such a way that the latter remained within what comes directly from the sun. And he inspired Moses in such a way that the latter retained, as in a memory, the mystery of solar wisdom.

[ 23 ] If we now create a mental image, in the spirit of “esoteric science,” of the Earth after its “separation from the Sun,” of the departure of the Moon’s forces from the Earth, and of all of this following the Earth’s opening up toward the Sun, then we have in Venus and Mercury that which stands right in the middle between the Earth and the Sun. And if we now divide the entire space between the Sun and the Earth into three equal parts, we can say: The Earth separated itself from the Sun; it itself sent the Moon toward the Sun. Venus and Mercury then split off from the Sun and moved toward the Earth. Thus, in Venus and Mercury we see something that comes from the Sun toward the Earth, and in the Moon something that moves toward the Sun.

[ 24 ] Just as cosmic conditions take shape, so too—as if in a reflection—do the conditions in human evolution. If we regard the revelations of Zarathustra as solar wisdom—which he imparted to Hermes on the one hand and to Moses on the other—then what lived within Hermes, since he indeed carried within himself the astral body of Zarathustra, was the solar wisdom radiating from Zarathustra; and what lived within Moses was, so to speak, enclosed like a self-contained planet of wisdom that first had to develop in opposition to what radiated directly from the Sun. Just as the Earth’s activity opened itself to the Sun’s activity through the separation of the Moon, so did the wisdom of Moses open itself to the wisdom radiating directly from Zarathustra—the wisdom of the Sun. And these two—the earthly wisdom of Moses and the solar wisdom of Zarathustra in Hermes—converged in Egypt, where the legacy of Moses meets that of Hermes. Thus, what Moses developed from within himself—what he awakened within himself by receiving it, as it were, from a distance from Zarathustra, and then radiated and passed on to his people—we must understand analogously to the ejection of the from the Earth.

[ 25 ] What Moses conveyed as wisdom to his people, we can also refer to by the name that sums up the wisdom of Moses: the wisdom of Yahweh or Jehovah. For if we understand the name Yahweh or Jehovah correctly, it is like a summary of the entire wisdom of Moses. But if we understand it this way, it also becomes clear to us why the ancient traditions call Yahweh or Jehovah a lunar deity. You will find this fact mentioned in many writings, but you can only grasp the reason for it once you allow these profound connections to sink in. Just as the Earth expelled what it contained within itself as the Moon and sent it toward the Sun, so too did the earthly wisdom of Moses have to move toward Hermes—who, after all, possessed the direct wisdom of Zarathustra in the astral body sacrificed by Zarathustra—and then develop on its own. We have already described how, following this encounter with Hermes, the Moses-principle developed through the Davidic era, and how a different, new Hermetic or Mercurial principle emerges in David, the royal warrior and divine singer of the Hebrew people. And we have seen how the Moses-tradition draws closer to the solar element, coming into contact—as it did more recently during the Babylonian Captivity—with the radiant solar wisdom, because Zarathustra, under the name Zarathas or Nazarathos, was himself the teacher of the Hebrew initiates during the Babylonian Captivity. Thus, in the wisdom of Moses, we see a reflection of the entire cosmic process of the Earth’s separation from the Sun and of what subsequently happened to the Earth.

[ 26 ] Such connections appeared as something that filled the ancient sages of the Hebrew people—and all those who sensed them—with the deepest reverence. They felt something like direct revelations radiating toward them from the realms of the universe and from the very fabric of existence itself. And a figure such as Moses appeared to them as a messenger of the cosmic powers themselves. They sensed it. And we must empathize with this if we truly wish to understand the ancient times; otherwise, all understanding remains merely an empty abstraction.

[ 27 ] The point is that what was thus radiated by Zarathustra and poured out upon posterity through Hermes and Moses was able to continue developing in such a way that it could reappear on a higher plane in a different form, in a higher form of development. For this to happen, it was necessary for Zarathustra himself—the individuality who had previously sacrificed only the astral body and the etheric body—to appear on Earth in a physical body so that he could sacrifice this one as well. This is a progression, a beautiful progression. First, in ancient times, Zarathustra lived in his own way and gave the impulse for post-Atlantean development in the ancient Persian, the Iranian, culture. Then he surrendered his astral body to set the stage for the next culture through Hermes, and he surrendered his etheric body to Moses. Thus he had sacrificed two of his bodies. Now he also had to be given the opportunity to sacrifice his physical body. For the great mystery of human evolution required that a single being be able to sacrifice all three bodies. Zarathustra had sacrificed his astral body for Hermes and his etheric body for Moses. The third sacrifice that still lay ahead of him was that of his physical body. This required special arrangements; for this, Zarathustra’s physical body first had to be prepared in a special way. And we already pointed out yesterday how, through the unique way of life of the Hebrew people over generations, that physical body was prepared, which Zarathustra could then sacrifice as his third great sacrifice. For this to happen, it was necessary that within the Hebrew people, everything that was otherwise direct, external spiritual perception—that is, astral vision, which had fallen into decay among the Turanian peoples—become an inner reality.

[ 28 ] This is the secret of the Hebrew people. Whereas among the Turanian peoples the powers—which were legacies from ancient times— served to develop external clairvoyant faculties, among the Hebrew people these forces radiated inward and organized their inner physicality, so that the Hebrew people were destined to feel and perceive inwardly what had otherwise been seen during the Atlantean era—spread out across the sensory space behind individual sensory objects. Yahweh or Jehovah, as the Hebrew people consciously pronounce him, is the “Great Spirit” condensed into a single point, which appeared to the ancient clairvoyants behind all things and beings. We are also given to understand that the progenitor of this ancient Hebrew people received this inner organization in a very special way, precisely as a progenitor.

[ 29 ] I would like to note here something I have observed on numerous occasions: that myths and legends, which vividly recount the events that took place in ancient times, are truer and more accurate than today’s anthropological research, which pieces together a picture of the world’s origins from contemporary excavations and isolated fragments of monuments. In most cases, the ancient legends are corroborated by what we call Spiritual Science research. I say “in most” and not “in all” because I have not investigated this, although it is very likely to be the case wherever there are genuine ancient legends. Similarly, when we trace the origins of the Hebrew people, we are not led back to what modern anthropological research assumes, but rather to a forefather of whom the Bible tells us. This Abraham or Abram is a real figure, and what the Talmudic legend tells us about this forefather is entirely true.

[ 30 ] In this legend, Abraham’s father is described as a general under that legendary—yet nonetheless real—figure known in the Bible as “Nimrod.” And based on a dream, the son of his general is foretold to Nimrod by those who understand the signs of the times as a being who will dethrone many kings and rulers. Nimrod fears this and orders that the son of his general be killed. This is what the legend tells us; this is what occult research confirms. Abraham’s father makes an excuse and presents a stranger’s child to Nimrod. His own son, however—Abraham—is raised in a cave. And the fact that Abraham is indeed the first to develop, through those very forces that were otherwise used for external clairvoyant abilities, now develops within himself that organizing power intended to lead to inner consciousness of God—this reversal of the entire sum of forces is hinted at in the legend by the fact that during the three years he is raised in the cave, the child, by God’s grace, suckles milk from his own right index finger. This self-nourishment—the channeling of the forces that formerly produced the old clairvoyance into the inner organization of the human being—is wonderfully characterized for us in the forefather of the Hebrew people, Abraham. Such legends, once we understand their true basis, have such a powerful effect on us that we say to ourselves: We understand that the ancient narrators could not express what lies behind the legends in any other way than through images. But these images were capable of evoking, if not consciousness, then at least feelings for the great truths. And that was sufficient for ancient times.

[ 31 ] Thus, Abraham is the one who first developed the inner reflection of divine wisdom—divine insight—in such a truly human way as human thinking about the divine. Abram, or Abraham as he was later called, did indeed—as occult research always emphasizes—have a physical constitution different from that of all the other people living around him. The people around him at that time were not physically constituted in such a way that they could have developed inner thinking through a special instrument. They could develop thinking when they became free of the body, when they developed powers, so to speak, in their etheric body; but while they were still confined within the physical body, they had not yet developed the instrument of thinking. Abraham is, in fact, the first to have developed the physical instrument of thinking in an exceptional way. Therefore, he is not wrongly—though this, too, must of course be understood with the necessary grain of salt—referred to as the inventor of arithmetic, the science of thought that relies in an exceptional way on the instrument of the physical body. Arithmetic is something that, in its form and because of its inner certainty, comes very close to what can be known in the Hellean sense. But arithmetic is dependent on a physical organ.

[ 32 ] Thus, we have here a profound inner connection between what external forces have hitherto used for clairvoyance and what an inner organ now uses for thinking. This is implied by the fact that Abraham is identified as the inventor of arithmetic. We must therefore regard Abraham as the figure who was the first to receive the physical organ of thought—the very organ through which human beings, by means of their physical thinking, were able to rise to the concept of a God. Previously, human beings could only gain some knowledge of God and divine existence through clairvoyant observation. All knowledge of God and divine existence that originated in ancient times stemmed from clairvoyant observation. To rise to the divine through thought required a physical instrument; this was first implanted in Abraham. And since this involves a physical organ, the entire relationship to the objective world and to the subjective being of the human being—as perceived through this thought of God, which was grasped by a physical instrument—was different than it had been before.

[ 33 ] In the past, in the secret schools of divine wisdom, people had grasped the idea of God, and they were able to pass it on to those who were also capable of doing so—provided they had reached the point where they could have perceptions in the etheric body, independent of the organs of the physical body. But if what is a physical instrument is to be passed on to another, there is only one means: heredity in the physical organization. Thus, what was most important and essential for Abraham—the physical organ—had to be passed down through physical heredity from generation to generation if it was to be preserved on Earth, precisely because it was a physical organ. Thus we understand that heredity among the people—the passing down, so to speak, of this physical predisposition through the blood of the generations—is of such great importance to the Hebrew people.

[ 34 ] But what was initially a physical predisposition in Abraham—namely, the formation and crystallization of a physical organ for perceiving the divine—first had to take root. As it was passed down from generation to generation, it penetrated ever more deeply into the human being and grasped it ever more deeply, the deeper it was passed down. We can therefore say: What Abraham had received as the mission of the Hebrew people had to be perfected; as it passed from person to person through heredity, it had to become more perfect in its further development. But what was a physical organ could only become more and more perfect through heredity.

[ 35 ] If the being whom we first came to know as the individuality of Zarathustra were to have a physical body as perfect as possible—that is, a physical body that also possessed the organs capable of serving as instruments for grasping the thought of God within the physical human body—then what had been implanted in Abraham as a physical instrument would have to be raised to the highest level. It had to become firmly established within, had to be passed down through generations, and had to develop in such a way that it could become a true body for Zarathustra, possessing all the qualities that Zarathustra needed in his physical body. But if a human being’s physical body is to become perfect in this way, if it is to become as suitable as it needed to be for Zarathustra, then it was not enough for merely the human being’s physical body to become more perfect. It is, of course, impossible for the human being’s physical body alone—torn away from the whole human being—to become perfect on its own. All three bodies had to gradually become perfected through physical heredity. Whatever, therefore, could be given to the physical, etheric, and astral human beings through physical heredity had to be given to them in successive generations.

[ 36 ] There is a certain law governing development. We are familiar with this law as it applies to the development of the individual human being and have described it on several occasions. We have shown how, in human beings, a particular phase of their development corresponds to the period from birth to the sixth or seventh year: the development of the physical body takes place during this time. The development of the etheric body occurs from the sixth or seventh year to the fourteenth or fifteenth. From then on, up to the ages of twenty-one or twenty-two, we have the development of the astral body. This is, so to speak, the law—represented by the number seven—governing the development of the individual human being. A similar law applies to the development of humanity’s outer sheaths through the generations, and we shall yet have to point out the deeper laws of this process. While the individual human being passes through a stage of development every seven years—developing his physical body up to the age of seven, which becomes more and more perfect during this time—the entire structure of the physical body, as it can be perfected through the generations, is brought to a certain degree of perfection over the course of seven generations. But heredity does not occur in such a way that it passes from one person to the next descendant, nor directly from one generation to the next. The characteristics that matter cannot be passed on directly from father to son or from mother to daughter, but only from father to grandson—that is, to the second generation—then to the fourth generation, and so on. Thus, heredity cannot manifest itself directly. We would have to deal with inheritance in multiples of seven across the generations; but since inheritance always skips a generation, we are in reality dealing with a sequence of fourteen.

[ 37 ] The physical body inherent in Abraham could have reached its peak after fourteen generations. But if the etheric body and the astral body were also to be affected by this, then that development—which for the individual human being continues from the seventh to the fourteenth year—had to pass through another seven or fourteen generations. And what for a human being constitutes a development over the next seven years starting at age fourteen—that, in turn, had to pass through fourteen generations. This means, then, that what was inherent in the patriarch Abraham as physical organization had to play out over three times seven, or three times fourteen, generations; only then had it come to encompass the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body. Through three times fourteen generations—that is, through forty-two generations—it is possible for a human being, through heredity across the generational line, to fully develop in the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body that which Abraham received in its initial form.

[ 38 ] If we trace the line down from Abraham through three times fourteen generations, we arrive at a human body that is thoroughly permeated and imbued with what was present in its earliest form in Abraham. Only such a body could have served as the vessel for Zarathustra’s incarnation. This is also what the author of the Gospel of Matthew tells us. And in the genealogy he provides, he explicitly points out that he lists fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian Exile, and fourteen from the Babylonian Exile to Christ. Through these three sets of fourteen generations—with one always skipped—what was predisposed in Abraham for the mission of the Hebrew people has, in a certain sense, been fully developed. It is thus fully imprinted in the very structure of the human being. From this, the body could be taken that Zarathustra needed to come into incarnation at the time when he was to open up something entirely new to humanity.

[ 39 ] Thus we see that the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew draws from a very special depth. But we must first understand such things. We must understand: What is being told to us through these three sets of fourteen generations is meant to point us to how, in what could be passed down from Joseph to Jesus of Nazareth, the essence of what was present in its earliest form in Abraham, what then radiated out to the entire Hebrew people and was ultimately able to gather in that one instrument, in that one vessel—which was the vessel for Zarathustra—in which Christ was able to incarnate.