The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] These lectures have frequently taken into account something that emerged from the stage performances that preceded them, but which is also intrinsically linked to the goal set for this year’s lecture series. They have taken into account the structure of the Greek pantheon. And if we take a moment to reflect: why, since we wish to enlighten ourselves about the wonders of the world, trials of the soul, and spiritual revelations, have we spoken so much about this Greek pantheon? — we can answer that, among other things, it is precisely through such contemplation that we can establish a foundation necessary for a spiritual-scientific view of the world. We have already mentioned that the ancient Greeks did not possess the concept of nature and natural existence that we have today as our modern concept. Chemical, physical, and biological laws in our present-day sense—if we consider ancient Greece as it truly was in its thinking and feeling—we would never find there. What shone in the soul of the ancient Greek, what was kindled in the spirit of this wonderful Greek culture when the eye—be it the physical eye or the clairvoyant eye—was directed out toward the wonders of the world, what took shape there as a kind of knowledge, of wisdom, can simply not be characterized otherwise than as the wonderful formation of the Greek pantheon. Anyone who views this pantheon as it is usually viewed, without any inner connection, knows in truth nothing of what it actually intends. This Greek pantheon, in its wisdom-filled form, is nothing less than the answer—as the Greeks could give it—to the question: What is capable of shining forth in the human soul when that human soul beholds the wonders of the world? — The ancient Greek soul did not answer the world’s riddles and wonders with a natural law in our modern sense, but rather through the depiction of some aspect of the divine beings or divine forces. Therefore, we must do nothing other than seek, within those wondrous threads we have traced—and which have indeed revealed themselves to us in a striking manner at times in the recent lectures, bringing together everything that this Greek world of gods presents—the true equivalent for our own dry, sober, abstract wisdom. And if we truly wish to advance in spiritual science, we must acquire a feeling, a sense of the fact that one can think and feel about the wonders of the world in a manner entirely different from that of modern wisdom.

[ 2 ] However, in our last lecture, by bringing the figure of Dionysus to mind, we had already pointed to something else. While the rest of the pantheon presented itself to us as that which shone in the soul of the Greek when he sought to make sense of the wonders of the world, the figure of Dionysus confronts us with something into which the ancient Greek had instilled what we might call, in the broadest sense, the contradiction of life. And one cannot proceed without turning one’s gaze toward this contradiction of life. Abstract logic, abstract, intellectual thinking, will always seek to discover contradictions precisely in the higher worldviews, only to then say: This worldview is full of contradictions, so it cannot be valid. - The fact is, however, that life itself, the living fabric of our world’s wonders, is indeed permeated everywhere by contradiction; indeed, that becoming in the world would not be possible at all if contradiction did not rest at the very foundation of all things. For why is the world different today than it was yesterday? Why does anything come into being? Why does not everything remain as it was? Because in the configuration of things yesterday there was a contradiction within itself, and through the realization of this contradiction—through its expulsion from yesterday’s configuration—today’s has come into being. Whoever considers things as they truly are must not say: by demonstrating contradictions, we expose untruths. —For contradictions lie at the heart of reality. What would the human soul be like if it were free of contradictions? Our entire life, when we look back from any point in time, has moved within contradictions. If we are more perfect at a later point in time than at an earlier one, this is because we have removed the earlier state, having found it to be in contradiction with our own inner being; that is, we have brought forth a reality of our own inner being in contradiction to what was. Contradiction lies at the very foundation of all beings. But we find this contradiction in particular—and in such a way that it speaks not only to our intellect, to our philosophy, but to our heart, to our entire spiritual being—when we view the complete human being in our spiritual-scientific sense, the fourfold human being, just as we are accustomed to viewing him through occult facts.

[ 3 ] We must constantly keep in mind this fundamental framework of our spiritual science, so that we may view the human being, as he stands before us, as indeed composed of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and his I. Our human being consists of these four members. Let us now take a look at these four members of the human being as they first appear to us on the physical plane, in the physical world. So let us now set aside for a moment how the human being appears to the clairvoyant eye; let us ask: How do the four members of the human being present themselves to the physical eyes, to the physical world? — Let us first take the innermost member of the human being, which, as you know, we regard as the youngest: the ego, or rather the ego-bearer. The most striking characteristic of this human I immediately presents itself to everyone’s soul, provided they observe the world with even a modicum of discernment. What, then, is the most striking characteristic of this human I? That we can go far and wide throughout the world with our external sensory apparatus, with all the cognitive powers we possess for the physical world, and never find this I. It is not visible to our eyes and cannot be perceived in any way by any external faculty of cognition. Therefore, even when we stand face to face with another human being in the physical world, if we wish to observe them only physically—without the aid of the clairvoyant eye—we can never observe this “I” in another person using mere physical means. The person stands before us, presenting their outer form to us, but their I eludes the physical faculties of perception. We move among people, yet we do not see their I’s with our external organs of perception. If anyone were to believe that they could see I’s, that would be the greatest possible delusion. Therefore, we cannot observe this I in itself with external physical faculties of perception. We can only observe the manifestations of this “I” through the organs of the physical body. A person may be a thoroughly deceitful individual on the inside; yet if they do not express the lie so that it passes into the external physical world, we cannot perceive their “I” with external physical tools, because the “I” cannot be perceived at all with external physical tools. This is why, no matter how much we investigate with external physical faculties of perception, this “I” confronts us only once. Although we know full well that there are so many “I’s” on Earth, it confronts us for perception only once: namely, as our own. In the physical world or for physical instruments of cognition, there is only one possibility for every human being to perceive the I, and that is their own. So that we can say: The I, this youngest and also highest member of the human being, has the peculiarity that we are able to perceive it only in one instance—in ourselves—with regard to its existence, its reality. For all other people, it remains hidden from us within their physical bodies.

[ 4 ] Let us now move from the “I”—as the innermost, the youngest, but also the highest link in the human being—to the outermost, the physical body. The physical body, as you know from the various printed and oral statements of recent years, is, of course, in its true inner essence, recognizable only to a clairvoyant consciousness. To the outer consciousness, to the forces of the physical world, to the physical powers of human cognition, the physical body appears only as the outer Maya, or illusion. What we have before us in the human being as his physical body is outer Maya, illusion. But this illusion of the physical body appears to us in as many instances as there are human beings on Earth. And our own physical body, insofar as it is Maya, appears in this respect to be completely identical to the physical bodies of other human beings. Now there is a great difference between the perception of our own I, which is given to us in a single instance, and the perception of the physical human bodies, which are given to us in as many instances as there are human beings on Earth. We come to know the I only when we direct our physical faculty of cognition inward. We must look within ourselves with the power of cognition acquired on the physical plane if we wish to learn to recognize our I. It may be worth noting here—since even among thinkers there is sometimes confusion in this regard—that what is meant here, namely what is perceived by our I through physical powers of cognition, belongs entirely to the physical world. It would be utter nonsense to say that what a person with normal faculties ever finds within themselves as their ego belongs to any world other than the physical one. If anyone were to regard the ego—viewed not clairvoyantly but with normal faculties—as belonging to a world other than the physical plane, they would be committing a grave error. Things appear quite differently in the higher worlds to the higher consciousness; even the ‘I’ is, to clairvoyant observation, different from the one one encounters within with normal consciousness. Of this ‘I’ of which external psychology and all external science speak, we must believe nothing other than that it is something that belongs to the physical plane. But we look at it from within, and because we stand, as it were, within this ‘I,’ because we view it from within rather than standing opposite it externally, we can say: we do indeed learn about this ‘I’ only on the physical plane, but at least we know it in terms of its inner essence through our immediate powers of perception. But what the outer physical body is—which we see in so many instances in the world—we come to know only as Maya; for the moment the clairvoyant faculty, the power of clairvoyance, confronts the physical body, this physical body dissolves like a mist, shatters, and reveals itself as Maya. And we must ascend, if we wish to recognize the physical body in its true form, not merely to the astral plane, but to the highest realms of the spiritual realm, the Devachan plane, so that a high degree of clairvoyance is necessary if we truly wish to come to know the physical body in its true form. Down here in the physical world, this physical body has only a completely illusory afterimage, and we see this afterimage when we confront this physical body from the outside. Thus we are faced with a most remarkable, contradictory fact when we consider these two members of the human organism, the lowest and the highest. We see the human physical organism as Maya here in the physical world; that is, we see it in a way that is completely inappropriate to our innermost being. The ego, however, we see here in the physical world in a way that, as a physical being, is very much appropriate to our inner being. I ask you to take good note of this; it is an extraordinarily important fact.

[ 5 ] I would like to describe this highly remarkable fact to you from a different angle—half figuratively, yet with the deepest seriousness of reality. Half figuratively, but in such a way that this figurative approach, through its richness, is better suited to expressing the truth of the matter than abstract concepts ever could. How, then, must we conceive—if I may now speak half figuratively, half with profound seriousness—that Adam and Eve were in Paradise before the Fall? We know, after all, that it is told that Adam and Eve were such before the Fall that they could not see one another’s outer physical bodies. And when they saw them, they were ashamed of these physical bodies. This expresses something immensely profound, a deep mystery. It is hinted at in the Bible, in the Old Testament, why Adam and Eve were ashamed of their bodies after the Fall. It is suggested that the earlier body which Adam and Eve had before the Fall was more or less a spiritual body—that is, one accessible only to clairvoyant consciousness—which would have looked quite different from a physical human body and would have expressed the essence of the “I” in its true form. Thus we must say: the Bible, too, knows that a completely different bodily form—albeit one perceptible only to a clairvoyant gaze—would be appropriate to the deepest essence of the human being, and that this outer physical body, as we bear it today, is actually not at all appropriate to the inner essence of the human being. What, then, did Adam and Eve feel when they no longer stood in such a relationship to one another that they did not see the physical body, but rather saw it? That they had fallen from a world to which they had formerly belonged, into matter; that they had, as it were, been imbued with denser matter than they had previously possessed. They felt that human beings, with their physical bodies, have been placed in a world to which they do not actually belong, when the true nature of their I is taken into account. There is no more apt expression of this fact than the feeling of shame that comes over a person—the shame of realizing how little the outward expression of their being, the sensory reality, actually corresponds to the divine I.

[ 6 ] But if we look at the same matter from a different angle, it presents itself quite differently. It appears then that if human beings had not descended into their physical bodies, had not incorporated the denser matter, they could not have attained their sense of self—or, to speak in terms of Greek consciousness, as we did yesterday: they could not have partaken of the Dionysian forces. —You see, this is what the Greeks felt. The Greeks felt that the human ego, as it lives on the physical plane, possesses not only those forces from a higher, spiritual, supersensible world that it had before the Fall, which flow into it, if we may put it that way, from the higher spiritual worlds, but they also felt that this ego is dependent on forces that originate from a completely different side, from the opposite side.

[ 7 ] We know, of course, that before developing their current sense of self, human beings normally possessed a clairvoyant consciousness. In ancient times, human beings possessed a clairvoyant consciousness. But this clairvoyant consciousness was an imaginative, dreamlike one, not a consciousness illuminated by true intellectual light. Humans only attained that later. This old clairvoyant consciousness had to be lost to humanity so that a new sense of self could emerge. For this, however, it was necessary that the old form of the self, the old Dionysus Zagreus, perish. Yesterday we set this magnificent image before our souls: how the old clairvoyant consciousness perished—speaking in the terms of Greek mythology—how the old Dionysus Zagreus was torn apart by the Titans and later reemerged as the younger Dionysus: that is, our present-day ego-consciousness, which is a product of the development of time in human evolution. But it was necessary that Semele, the human mother, participate in the birth of the younger Dionysus. And in the figure of Semele, the Greek soul again shows how confidently and wisely it perceived the true wonders of the world.

[ 8 ] What, then, is the prerequisite for the younger Dionysus—or, let us say, for the younger human ego in general? For this ego to have come into being, it was necessary that the old clairvoyant consciousness had died out, that all the horizons which this old clairvoyant consciousness had encompassed had receded. Anyone who knows this—and those who developed Greek mythology knew it—says to themselves: There once was this human soul with a clairvoyant consciousness that looked out into a world full of spiritual beings and spiritual realities, into a world through which human beings were still fellow citizens of the higher spiritual worlds. But in the course of time, human beings have stepped out of this spiritual world; they have become a completely different kind of being, a being permeated by an “I.” What would happen to a person today if, suddenly and without preparation through any kind of esoteric training, instead of the physical world as it appears to the physical eye and ear, that world which existed for the ancient clairvoyant consciousness were to appear before them in an instant? Let us suppose that, through some cosmic miracle, instead of the world that appears to you—in the star-studded sky, in the rising and setting sun, in mountains and mists, in minerals, plants, and animals—the world of the ancient Atlantean were to suddenly stand before the consciousness of a normal person today. Let us assume this hypothetically for a moment. Humanity would be shattered, so terrible, so terrifying would the world be that is, after all, all around us, for this world is at the root of all things, is all around us, is there, but it is veiled by the world of our ego. We can say that there is a world around us that would fill humanity, as it is today, with fear and dread, with shattering terror, if it were suddenly set before them. But an ancient Greek soul still felt this. We also find this embedded in that wise, wondrous elaboration of the Dionysus myth. Dionysus had to come from a different direction than that of the wonders of the world, into which ancient Greek consciousness had placed the figure of Zeus and the other figures of the upper heavens. The ancient Greek sensed that in everything that exists as the human world, something else lives besides what lives up above with the gods of the world of Zeus. The ancient Greeks sensed that the world in which we walk has yet another substantial ingredient. They sensed—in other words—that an element is mingled with our physical human existence that is not initially present up in the supersensible world. Therefore, the younger Dionysus, the macrocosmic representative of our newer sense of self, could not, like the older Dionysus, be a son of Persephone and Zeus, but had to be a son of Semele, an earthly mother, and Zeus. But we must take into account what Greek consciousness later added to this legend: It was brought about by Hera’s machinations that Semele should see Zeus in his true form, not as an ancient Atlantean hero, but as he is now. This could only happen through clairvoyant consciousness. What does it actually mean, then, that Semele was to see Zeus for a moment as he truly is? Nothing other than that Semele was made clairvoyant for a moment. She perished in the flames because she saw Zeus in the flames of the astral world—that is, clairvoyantly. She was truly shattered, just as the modern human ego-consciousness would be shattered if it were suddenly confronted with the astral world. Semele shows us, so to speak, this tragedy of humanity, which would immediately arise if a human being were placed before the spiritual world with clairvoyant perception while unprepared.

[ 9 ] All the great occult truths, all the truths about the wonders of the world, we see enshrined somewhere in Greek mythology. We also see it enshrined there that Dionysus, the macrocosmic representative of the ego—which every person with normal consciousness can see only in a single instance— descends from a being of the physical world; that, so to speak, what appears to our normal physical eye only as Maya was incorporated into Dionysus; that, in other words, Dionysus had to participate in the great world illusion, in Maya. When we speak today of the wonders of the world in a sober, modern, dry sense, we speak in terms of physical, biological, and chemical laws. The Greeks spoke in grandiose images, and these truly penetrate much deeper into the wonders of the world than our laws, which remain stuck on the surface. Greek legends and myths demonstrate this to us everywhere.

[ 10 ] And so we see how this Greek myth raises the question, as if through a powerful occult text: Yes, when we contemplate this true human self, if it were to reveal itself in a physical form, are we then permitted to look upon the external human physicality given to us in the physical world? No, for this is Maya; it is not at all an outward expression of the true self; it is truly of such a nature that the true self was rightly ashamed of the outward bodily form in Adam and Eve. What we have before us today as human beings is indeed a real contradiction, and this was felt by the Greeks, precisely the Greeks, of whom it has often been said with great superficiality that they directed their gaze only toward the outer beauties of nature. It was precisely the Greeks who sensed the contradictory nature of the outer human form. The Greeks were not naturalists in the sense that modern humanity believes, but rather the Greeks felt deeply, very deeply, that this human form of the human being walking upon the earth is a compromise. It does not appear, from any angle, as it ought to be in reality. Let us suppose, for a moment, that this human form had arisen solely under the influence of the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body. No I would have entered into this human form; this human form would have developed on Earth only in the way that humanity has come over from the previous incarnations of our Earth, from the ancient Saturn, the ancient Sun, and the ancient Moon. Then this human form would have to be different from what it actually is. If the Earth had not given the human being the I, then people would be walking around on our Earth who, as outer physical human forms, would look quite different. In a certain mysterious way, the ancient Greek soul posed this question: What would the human form look like if there were ego-less people on Earth today—people who had not partaken in the blessings of the Earth, in the development of the ego, who had not taken Dionysus into themselves? - If such people were walking among us on Earth today—people who had developed solely under the influence of the forces of the physical, etheric, and astral bodies—what would the human form look like?

[ 11 ] And the Greek soul also posed the other question with magnificent wit and a deep, inexpressible feeling: If there were nothing else but the “I,” if this “I” were not embodied in the physical, etheric, and astral bodies, what form would this “I” then take? - Then it would not have such a physical human body; rather, this “I” would be formed with a spiritual body that would be entirely different from the outer human body. This spiritual body, however, exists only for a clairvoyant consciousness; it cannot actually be demonstrated anywhere in the physical world.

[ 12 ] What, then, is the human being who actually walks the earth? He is neither the ego-less human being, who is merely under the influence of the astral body, the etheric body, and the physical body, nor is he the ego-human being, but rather a compromise of the two, a resultant, something that exists through the blending of these two. Human beings are a composite, just as they walk among us outwardly. The ancient Greeks sensed this when they said to themselves: If Dionysus—specifically the younger Dionysus—is the true first teacher of intellectual culture, then we must assume that he was not yet in a human body that was already under the influence of the ego, for humanity had to acquire the intellectual ego only through the influence of Dionysian culture. Dionysus must therefore still represent this human ego outside the physical human body. Thus, the Greek consciousness of Dionysus and of that aspect I characterized as the cultural influence of Dionysus over the earth could only properly conceive that Dionysus’s actual ego had not yet entered the human body, but was just about to do so; yet in fact, Dionysus and all those who belonged to him had such human bodies as would arise if there were no ego within the human body, if the human body were subject only to the influence of the forces of the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body. The ancient Greeks asked themselves: What must the people of the Dionysian movement have looked like? - They could not have looked like people of the present day, whose body is a composite made up of the invisible I-body and the outer body; rather, they must have been such that the I, invisible as an aura, surrounded the physical form, but this physical form had taken shape exactly as it had to under the influence of the forces of the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body—that is, as a human being on Earth would have had to form who had come over from the ancient Moon with the forces of human nature and had continued to develop on Earth without the Earth ego being drawn into him.

[ 13 ] And because the Greek soul has responded to this wonder of the world in a wholly appropriate manner, figuratively, this Greek soul truly presents—in the form of Dionysus himself, and specifically in the form of those depicted as his retinue—human figures who have lost their sense of self and who, in the form they outwardly represent, reveal nothing other than the forces of the physical, etheric, and astral bodies. These are the Silenus, the satyrs, who follow Dionysus on his procession, those strange figures of the satyrs and Silenus in this entirely pictorial form, as the Greeks imagined them. This is what a human being would look like if we could tear apart that which is a composite. Just imagine, if by some magical means the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body of a person standing before us could be treated in such a way that we could tear out the invisible, supersensible, true body of the I. Then the human being would become a figure like those who followed Dionysus on his procession.

[ 14 ] But then the Greeks introduced something else into their wonderful mythology. We know, of course, that the ego gradually became integrated into the human form, and that even in the ancient Atlantean era, this ego was not yet present in the human body. How, then, must we imagine the Atlantean bodies to have been? Greek imagination and Greek intuition have, in a marvelous way, shaped the images of the ordinary, average Atlantean human into the satyrs, the fauns, and Pan, as we shall see later. Under present-day earthly conditions, such human forms cannot, of course, arise, and such human forms as the satyrs, the fauns, and indeed the entire retinue of Dionysus consisted of those stragglers of the Atlantean people who had most faithfully preserved the ancient human form of the Atlanteans. Dionysus had to take precisely these people, who possessed the least of the ego within them, along on his journey, because he was to become the first teacher of the ego.

[ 15 ] Here we see that the Greeks, through this aspect of Dionysus, had depicted the figures of the ancient Atlantean average human beings. They were, however, designed in such a way that they were not endowed with a skeletal structure as solid as that of modern humans. The human body has become more solid; in the ancient Atlantean era, the human form was, if I may put it that way, still softer. That is why these Atlantean bodies could not be preserved, and modern geology and paleontology will hardly find any remains of the actual Atlantean people. But there is another geology, another paleontology, which has preserved the Atlantean people for us: that is Greek mythology. And one should not dig in the geological strata of the earth if one wishes to get to know the people of antiquity, who possessed higher physical forms in addition to their physical bodies. One is doing something completely absurd when one digs in the geological strata of the earth. There one will never find anything other than the decadent products of these prehistoric people. But in the strata of human spiritual life, namely in the spiritual-geological stratum that has been preserved for us in the wonderful Greek mythology, we find, enclosed like the snail and mussel shells in the geological strata of the Earth, the ancient, normal, average Atlantean human being. If we study the configuration of the faun, Pan, and Silenus, we obtain those spiritual-geological remnants that truly lead us into the pre-human era of the Earth. Thus we see how, in a manner that one might today, for my sake, call enthusiastic, dreamy, or fantastical, the ancient Greek consciousness nevertheless resolved the wonders of the world with a deeper scientific rigor than our present-day abstract, external, sober intellectual science. What the people of prehistory looked like is today constructed in countless, mutually contradictory Darwinian and anti-Darwinian hypotheses. This wonder of the world—in a way that can satisfy our soul—was set before us by ancient Greece. It is not Haeckelism, nor any other branch of Darwinism, nor the geological excavations in the external physical world that provide an answer to the question of the external physical form of the pre-human on our Earth; rather, this wonder of the world is revealed to us by Greek mythology, as it vividly presents the retinue of Dionysus. We must gain a sense, a feeling, that this Greek mythology actually provides us with serious answers to questions about the wonders of the world. Then we can delve deeper and deeper into this myth, and only those who do not understand the true basis of these things can apply the phrase to such a portrayal of the myth: “If you do not interpret it, you are suppressing something.” - Whoever knows the context in all its details and, in addition, the true development of the human being as it emerges from the Akashic Records, knows that fantasy, that fancifulness, is not to be found on the side of spiritual science or occultism, nor in what has been spoken before you today. Fantasy, exaltation, and daydreaming are found in abstract empirical and intellectual science, which believes it can still excavate and study from the physical layers of the Earth today what cannot be found there, and which overlooks the study of that spiritual geology that stands before us in the magnificent mythology of the Greeks, written in such wondrous letters for the sake of the development of human wisdom.