The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] When the modern human being, the human being of our time, undergoes such occult training that leads him to experiences such as those hinted at in the first two lectures, he thereby ascends into the spiritual worlds. He then actually experiences certain realities in the spiritual worlds and encounters certain beings. The expression used yesterday, “beholding the sun at midnight,” is essentially just an expression for spiritual realities and the encounter with spiritual beings connected to the nature of the sun. Now, however, this human being of our present age, when he ascends in this way into the higher worlds, undergoes certain experiences that can be described only by saying: Through such an ascent, the human being experiences many significant things within the spiritual worlds; but he also experiences something that must be described by saying: he feels as if he were forsaken, abandoned, and lonely. They feel in such a way that they can express their experience in words like this: You see many, many things here; but precisely that which you must now, after having gone through all these things, long for most of all, that you cannot experience. — And all the beings one encounters after such an ascent—one would then like to ask them about certain mysteries for which one must yearn. One has this feeling. But all these beings, who reveal to one much that is great and mighty, remain silent and reticent precisely when one wishes to inquire of them about those very mysteries that, after all, one must now regard as the most important. Therefore, one must say: The human being of the present feels the most painful sorrow when he has ascended in this way into the higher worlds; despite all the splendor, despite all encounters with the noble beings, he feels an immense emptiness within himself. And if nothing else were to happen, a prolonged experience of this emptiness, this loneliness, this desolation in the higher worlds would ultimately lead to a kind of despair settling upon the soul.

[ 2 ] Something may now occur—and will generally occur if the ascent has been undertaken according to the true rules of initiation—that can initially protect one from this despair, even if it cannot provide lasting protection. What can occur is something like a memory entering the soul, or one might also say a looking back into distant times of the past, a kind of reading in the Akashic Records of such things that are long past. And what one experiences there—one cannot characterize these things any other way than by attempting to clothe the experiences in words that approximate them—one might express as follows: When you, as a present-day human being, ascend into these higher worlds, you are met with despair and abandonment. But there images show you certain events that are long past, events consisting of the fact that in times past other human beings ascended into the worlds into which you now wish to ascend. Indeed, you can probably also recognize from what you now behold as if in memory that your own soul was once involved, in earlier incarnations, in what these people—who ascended into the higher worlds back then—experienced. It might well turn out that the soul of a person of the present perceives what it sees there—from times long past—as its own experiences, which were once lived through in times long past. Then such a soul would have been an initiate in times long past. If this is not the case, then it will only know that it was connected to those who, as initiates in times long past, ascended into the higher worlds, but that it now feels lonely and forsaken, whereas those once-initiated souls did not feel lonely or forsaken in those same worlds, but rather experienced bliss, the innermost bliss in those worlds. This was due—as one further recognizes—to the fact that in those ancient times the souls were of a different nature, and that because of their different dispositions, they experienced what is beheld in the higher worlds differently. What is actually experienced there?

[ 3 ] What is experienced there, however, brings before one’s soul beings from the higher worlds who act upon the sensory world from the supersensible realm. Beings that stand behind our sensory world—one sees them; conditions such as those described yesterday—one certainly sees them. But if one tries to summarize all that one sees, one can characterize it roughly as follows: One feels oneself to be in the higher worlds and, as it were, looks down into the sensory world. One feels, as it were, united with spirits who have passed through the gate of death, and looks down with them to see how they will then use their powers again to come into a physical existence. One looks down and sees how forces are sent down from the supersensible worlds to bring about the processes in the various realms of nature within the sensory world. One beholds the entire stream of events that are prepared from the higher worlds and directed into the sensory world. Since, during such a sojourn in the higher worlds, one is outside the physical body and the etheric body, one looks down upon one’s physical body and etheric body, and one then also observes those forces in the cosmos, in the entire spiritual universe, that are at work upon the human physical body and etheric body. And through what the beings do, in whose company one has come, one learns to understand how physical and etheric bodies come into being within the physical world. One learns to recognize this quite precisely. One learns to recognize how certain beings, who are connected, for example, with the Sun, work down into the earthly world and are active in the formation of the human physical and etheric bodies. One also comes to know certain beings associated with the lunar realm who work down from the cosmos to contribute in the same way to the formation of the physical and etheric bodies of human beings.

[ 4 ] But then comes the great longing, a longing that becomes immense for modern humanity. This is the longing to learn how the astral body and the “I” itself are born out of the cosmos, how they come into being. While one can see clearly how the physical body and the etheric body come into being from the forces of the cosmos, everything that might relate to how the astral body and the human ego come into being remains hidden from us. Everything relating to the human astral body and ego is shrouded in the deepest darkness and mystery. Thus one gets the feeling: What you are in your innermost being, what you actually are yourself, is now veiled from your spiritual vision, whereas that which you clothe yourself in when you live in the physical world is revealed to you quite clearly!

[ 5 ] What has just been mentioned is what people today experience when they ascend into the higher worlds in the manner described. This was also the experience of those souls who undertook their ascent in primeval times, to which reference has been made. The difference is that people today feel that great longing just described, and that the souls of past times did not feel this longing, because they had no need yet to behold their innermost being, since they were so disposed as to feel the deepest satisfaction when they perceived how the beings they had reached were working precisely on the building up of the physical body and the etheric body. Just as essential spiritual forces worked down from the sun to build up the physical and etheric bodies, so did the souls of past times, when they were initiated, find their highest satisfaction in this.

[ 6 ] There is also the following to consider. In those ancient times, the work of these beings took a different form; hence the satisfaction. Now, in our time, this work presents itself in such a way that one asks: What is the point of all this preparation of the physical body and the etheric body if one cannot understand what these sheaths contain? — Such is the difference between a person of today and a person of the past. And the time to which these experiences particularly refer as a past era is the time in which Zarathustra initiated his disciples, leading them up into the higher worlds. If disciples were to be led up into the higher worlds today in the same way that Zarathustra led them, they would feel the emptiness and desolation just described. Back then, in the time of Zarathustra, those to be initiated perceived the working of Ahura Mazda upon the physical and etheric bodies, and in the unveiling of these wondrous mysteries they felt bliss and satisfaction, because they were so disposed that they felt inwardly stirred when they saw: Thus arises that which man must have as his sheaths if he is to fulfill his earthly mission. In this they were satisfied.

[ 7 ] Such was the Zarathustra Initiation. For in this Zarathustra Initiation, one could “see the sun at midnight.” That is to say, if one did not look at the physical form of the sun, but rather at the spiritual beings connected to the sun’s existence, then, starting from the sun, one saw the forces that work into the physical body; one saw how the forces coming from the sun shape the human head and form the various parts of the human brain. For it is nonsense to believe that a marvel of construction such as the human brain could arise solely from terrestrial forces. The solar forces must be at work here. They assemble, in the most varied ways, the complex lobular structure of the brain above the human face. And not just one, but a whole series of beings are at work in this construction of the human brain. Zarathustra called them “Amschaspands” for his disciples. They are the agents of the cosmic forces that enabled the structure of the human brain to come into being, as well as the uppermost nerves of the spinal cord, with the exception of the lower twenty-eight pairs of nerves. Then Zarathustra also pointed out how other currents emanate from beings connected to the lunar realm, and showed how wonderfully the structure of the world fits together, how currents emanate from twenty-eight kinds of beings, “Izeds,” which build the spinal cord with its twenty-eight lower nerve strands. Thus, the physical body and the etheric body are built up from currents emanating from world beings.

[ 8 ] These were powerful impressions that the initiates of Zarathustra received in this way. And by receiving these impressions as the expression of Ahura Mazdao’s work, they felt a sense of inner bliss regarding what is happening in the world. Modern man, who were to live his way up into the higher worlds in the same manner, would of course also be able to admire them and would also be able to begin to feel this bliss. But he would gradually come to a feeling that can only be expressed in these words: What is the point of all this? I know nothing at all about that being who goes from incarnation to incarnation! All I know is of those beings who, in every new incarnation, build the sheaths from the cosmos, but build them only as ‘sheaths.’ — That was precisely the essence of the Zarathustra initiation: that the connection between the human-earthly and the solar existence was “revealed” to the initiates. And the Zarathustra epoch is characterized by the fact that people were able to take in the secrets just described into their occult knowledge.

[ 9 ] The souls who were initiated in ancient Egypt—those who, for example, underwent the Hermes initiation—immersed themselves in the higher worlds in yet another way. We have already spoken about all these things. Here, in these lectures, they will be presented in somewhat greater detail than has been possible so far. When, in ancient Egyptian times, souls ascended into the higher worlds through the Hermes initiation, then naturally what must always occur during initiation also took place: that these souls felt themselves outside their physical and etheric bodies, that they knew they were now within a world of spiritual realities and spiritual beings. These souls were then guided far and wide; that is to say, their vision was guided. The individual beings and the individual realities were shown to them, just as might be the case with a soul today. But one must not form a mental image of this as if one were walking around with physical feet; rather, the vision is guided around, as if one were being guided with one’s vision throughout a universe-wide realm. This is what happened in this initiation,

[ 10 ] Then came a moment in the experience when one felt as if one had reached the end, as if one had been wandering through a land surrounded on all sides by the sea and had finally reached the “shore.” One knows that one has reached the furthest point one could possibly go. And then, in the Egyptian initiation, one experienced precisely what can only be expressed in words: While you were led with your gaze through the vastness of the worlds, through the universe, you came to know the beings and forces of which you can say that they work upon your physical body and etheric body. But now you are entering the holiest place. Now you are entering a realm where you actually feel united with the essential being that works upon that within you which passes from one incarnation to the next, which works upon your astral body. It is a significant experience at this point, for in a sense all things become different once this experience has taken place at this point.

[ 11 ] For example, in the very near future, the initiate will no longer have the possibility: In the world one has now entered upon the shores of universal existence, the possibility ceases entirely to apply one’s power of judgment—that which one was once able to think, that which one was once able to conceive—to these worlds. If one cannot divest oneself of all this physical, earthly power of judgment, if one cannot set aside what has guided one up to that point, then one cannot have this experience on the shores of existence, cannot feel united with precisely that being who is at work when the spiritual-soul human approaches birth in a new incarnation, seeking out family, nation, and parents in order to clothe oneself as a spiritual-soul being in a new form. All the beings one has previously come to know, who explain how the physical and etheric bodies arise and are formed from the cosmos—all these beings are unable to explain what forces are at work in that essential being with which one now feels connected, and which is building and weaving at the innermost astral being of the human being itself. It becomes quite vivid to one—and it became quite vivid to the Egyptian soul that underwent the Hermes Initiation—that now, having emerged from its sheaths and passed through what was previously called “universal existence,” it felt connected to a being. And the soul can feel the qualities of this being, only that it feels itself as if within these qualities, not outside this being, and it can know: This being is there, is really there; but at the same time one is within this being. And the first impression one gets of this being is that one says to oneself: In this being rest the forces that carry the soul from one incarnation to another, and also rest the forces that enlighten the soul between death and the new birth. All of that is in there. But when a force blows toward you like spiritual warmth, a force that carries the soul from death to the new birth; when something shines toward you like spiritual light, which illuminates the souls between death and the new birth; and when you feel how this warmth and this light stream forth from the being with you are united with, then you are now in a very special situation. You have, as it were, had to drink the water of Lethe, have had to forget your art of understanding, which previously guided you through the physical-sensory world, have had to lay aside your former power of judgment, your intellectuality, for these could only mislead you here, and you have not yet acquired anything new. As you feel the warmth of the world that carries the soul toward its new birth, you stand within the sea of power that illuminates the soul from death to the new birth. You thus feel the power and the light emanating from the being. You look upon this being as if you could do nothing else but ask it: Who are you? — for only you alone can tell me who you are, and only then can I know what carries me, as a human inner being, from death to the new birth. Only then, therefore, when you tell me, can I know what my human innermost being is! — And silent, speechless remains the being with whom one feels so connected. One senses that within it lies the deepest part of oneself. The urge arises for self-knowledge, for knowing what one is—and silent and speechless remains the being.

[ 12 ] One must first have stood before this silent, taciturn being for a while, and one must have deeply felt the longing to have the mystery of the world solved in a new way; one must have felt this longing long enough to have the mystery of the world solved in a way that can never be achieved on the physical earth, one must have brought into this world, to this being, the deep longing as one’s own power to have the riddle of the universe solved in this manner foreign to physical existence, and the soul must live entirely in the longing to have the riddle of the universe solved in this way: Then, when one has felt united with the silent, taciturn spiritual being with whom one is united, and has lived within it with the longing for the solution to the riddle of the world just described, then one feels that the power of one’s own longing flows out into the spiritual being with whom one is united. And because this power of one’s own longing to solve the mystery flows out into the being of this spiritual form, after some time this being gives birth to something that emerges from it as another being. But what is born there is not like an earthly birth. One also knows immediately through one’s observation that it is not like an earthly birth. No, an earthly birth takes place in time; it occurs in time. But what one now observes—what the entity just described gives birth to—one knows this about it: That which is born from it has been born from it since time immemorial—always, and this birth continues from time immemorial right into the present. One has simply not seen this birth of one being from another until now; it has eluded one’s gaze until now. This birth consists in the fact that it is actually always there, but that because one has prepared oneself for it through one’s longing to solve the riddle, one now sees it, that it is now a perception in the spiritual world. One knows this. So one does not say to oneself: “A being is now being born”—but rather one says: “From the being with whom you have united, a being has always been born since time immemorial; but now this birth of the being and the being itself become perceptible to you.”

[ 13 ] What I have just described to you, as best as our language allows, is what the Hermes Initiator led his disciples toward. And the sensations I have just described to you—I would say as if with stammering words, for these things contain so much that the words of our language can only express them in a stammering way—these sensations were the experiences of the so-called Egyptian Isis Initiation. Whoever underwent the Isis Initiation said to himself, when he had reached the shores of universal existence and had beheld the beings that constitute, for example, the physical body and the etheric body, when he had stood before the silent Goddess from whom warmth and light emanate for the innermost being of the human soul: This is Isis! That is the silent, the speechless Goddess, whose face cannot be revealed to anyone who looks only with mortal eyes, whose face can be revealed only to those who have worked their way through to the shores that have been described, so that they may see with those eyes that pass from incarnation to incarnation and are no longer mortal. For mortal eyes, an impenetrable veil shrouds this form of Isis!

[ 14 ] When the initiate had thus beheld Isis and lived with the described sensation in his soul, he perceived what has been described as a birth. What was this “birth”? He perceived this birth as what might be described as “the resounding out into all spaces of what is the music of the spheres,” and as the merging of the tones of the music of the spheres with what is called the World Word, the creative World Word, which permeates the realms and pours into the beings everything that must be poured into them, just as the soul must then be poured into the physical body and etheric body after it has passed through the life between death and new birth. Everything that must thus be poured into the outer physical world from the spiritual world, so that what is poured in may then be inner and soul-like, all of this is poured in by the harmony of the spheres resounding through space, which gradually takes shape in such a way that it can be heard—significant, expressing inner significance — as the World Word that animates the beings who are lived through by the forces of warmth and light and who pour themselves into those bodies, into those physical forms, that spring from the divine forces and beings which can already be beheld in the preceding vision.

[ 15 ] Thus one looked into the world of spherical harmony, into the world of the Word of the Worlds; thus one looked into the world that is the true home of the human soul during the time when that human soul lives between death and new birth. That which lies deeply veiled in the physical earthly existence of the human being, yet lives between death and new birth in the reflection of light and warmth, and which lies deeply veiled in the physical world as the world of the tones of the spheres and the Word of the World—this was experienced through the Hermetic initiation as being born from Isis. Isis thus stands before one, so that on the one hand she stands there herself, and on the other hand the other being—which one must address as the world tones and the world word—has been born of her. Now one feels oneself in the fellowship of Isis and the world word born of her. And this “world word” is, first of all, the manifestation of Osiris. “Isis in communion with Osiris”—thus do they appear before one’s immediate vision; for such was the tradition in the most ancient Egyptian initiation, that Osiris was both son and husband of Isis. This was felt: that he was son and husband of Isis. And this constituted the essence of the ancient Egyptian initiation: that through this initiation, the initiate came to know the mysteries of the soul-life that remains connected to the human being even as he passes through the time lying between death and the new birth. Through the connection with Osiris, it was possible to recognize oneself in one’s deeper meaning as a human being.

[ 16 ] What has been described thus explains why the Egyptian initiate encountered the Word of the World and the Sounds of the World as the interpreters of his own being in the spiritual world. However, in ancient Egyptian times, this was only the case up to a certain point. From that certain point on, it ceased. And there is a great difference—as the visions of the Akashic Records also show when people today look back on ancient times—between what the Egyptian initiate experienced in the ancient Egyptian temples and what he experienced in later times.

[ 17 ] Let us also write down for our souls what the initiate experienced in later times. There he could be guided through the realms of the universe to the shores of existence; there he could experience all the beings that constitute the physical and etheric bodies of the human being, there he could step to the shores of existence and behold the silent, speechless Isis, and perceive in her the warm presence that holds for humanity the forces leading from death to a new birth. There he could also perceive the light that illuminates the soul between death and new birth; a longing also arose to hear the world-word and the world-harmony. Longing lived in the soul when the soul united with the silent, speechless goddess Isis. But—the goddess remained silent and speechless! No Osiris could be born in later times, no cosmic harmony resounded, no cosmic word explained that which now revealed itself anxiously as cosmic warmth and cosmic light. And it was then the case for the soul of the one to be initiated that it could not express its experiences in any other way than by saying, for example: Thus I look up to you in sorrow, tormented by a thirst for knowledge and a longing for understanding, O Goddess! And you remain silent and speechless to the tormented, suffering human soul, which, because it cannot understand itself, feels as if it were extinguished, as if it were to lose its very existence—you remain silent and speechless to this human soul! — And mourning, the goddess made her gesture, expressing that she had become powerless to give birth to the Word of the World and the Sounds of the World. One could tell from her that the power to give birth and to have Osiris, the son and the husband, by her side had been snatched from her. One felt that Osiris had been snatched from Isis.

[ 18 ] Those who underwent this initiation and returned to the physical world held a serious yet resigned worldview. They knew her, the sacred Isis, but they saw themselves as the “Sons of the Widow.” The worldview of the “Sons of the Widow” was serious and resigned. And the time between the ancient initiation, when one could participate in the birth of Osiris in the ancient Egyptian mysteries, and the time when one encountered only the silent, the taciturn, the mourning Isis and could become a son of the widow in the Egyptian mysteries—the time that separates these two phases of the Egyptian initiation—which is it? It is the time in which Moses lived. For thus was the karma of Egypt fulfilled, that Moses was not only initiated into the mysteries of Egypt, but that he also took them with him. By leading his people out of Egypt, he took with him that part of the Egyptian initiation which added the Osiris initiation to the mourning Isis that she later became. Such was the transition from Egyptian culture to the culture of the Old Testament. Yes, Moses had carried away the mystery of Osiris, the mystery of the World Word! And had he not left behind the powerless Isis, then what had to resound to him—in the way he had to understand it for his people—the great, significant word “I am who I am, ejeh asher ejeh,” could not have resounded to him. Thus the Egyptian mystery was transferred to the ancient Hebrew mystery.

[ 19 ] This was an attempt to describe, in words capable of conveying such things, what the experiences were like in the Zarathustra Mysteries and in the Egyptian Mysteries. These things cannot be described with abstract words. For what matters is that the soul actually undergoes the very experiences I have tried to characterize. And it is now important to sense what was going on in the soul of the Egyptian who was later to be initiated, to sense how his soul soared up into the higher worlds, how he encountered Isis with her sorrowful gaze, Isis with the face of sorrow—who had that sorrowful gaze and face of sorrow because she had to behold the human soul, which could have a longing and thirst for knowledge of the spiritual worlds, but which could not be satisfied.

[ 20 ] Certain Greek initiates, too, perceived the same being whom the Egyptians later referred to as Isis. Hence the solemnity of Greek initiation where it appears in all its solemnity. For what had been perceived by the initiate? — What had formerly been experienced in the supersensible worlds, what had given meaning to these supersensible worlds by being permeated with the Word and Tone of the World, was now no longer there. The supersensible worlds into which human beings had been able to enter through earlier initiation were now desolate and forsaken by the Word of the World. The Zarathustra initiate could still feel satisfied when the beings spoken of met him in these worlds, for he still felt satisfied by the world-light he perceived as Ahura Mazdao. He perceived it as masculine, sun-like; the Egyptian perceived it as feminine, moon-like. And the one to be initiated to a higher degree then also perceived the World Word in the Zarathustra Initiation. He did not perceive it as concretely, born of a being such as Isis; but he experienced it, and he knew of the harmony of the spheres and the World Word.

[ 21 ] In later Egyptian times—but also in other countries during this later Egyptian period—when a person ascended into the higher worlds, they felt much the same way as people still feel today, as was mentioned at the beginning of this lecture. One ascends into the higher worlds, one becomes acquainted with all the beings involved in the formation of the physical body and the etheric body, and one feels abandoned, feels lonely, when nothing else occurs besides what has been said, because one has something within oneself that yearns for the word of the world and the harmony of the world, and because the word of the world and the harmony of the world cannot resound. Today one feels forsaken and lonely. In the later Egyptian period, one felt not only forsaken and lonely, but—if one was what was called “a true son of the widow” and had emerged from the physical body and the etheric body and was in the spiritual worlds—as a human soul in such a way that one could only clothe one’s feeling in the words: God is preparing to depart from the worlds you have always entered when you felt the world-word; God has become ineffective there! And more and more this feeling condensed into what one might call the supersensory equivalent of what one encounters in the sensory world as the death of a human being: when one sees a person die here, when one knows they are leaving the physical world. And when one now, as an initiate of the later Egyptian period, ascended into the spiritual worlds, one was a participant in the slow dying of the god. Just as one feels when a human being enters the spiritual world, so did one feel, as an initiate of the later Egyptian period, how the god takes leave of the spiritual world in order to pass into another world. That was the significance and the peculiarity of later Egyptian initiation: that one actually lived one’s way up into the spiritual worlds, not for joy and bliss, but to participate in the gradual passing away of a god who was present in these higher worlds as the Word and Tone of the World.

[ 22 ] Out of this atmosphere, the myth of Osiris—who is snatched from Isis, carried off to Asia, and mourned by Isis—gradually took shape.

[ 23 ] With this lecture, we have taken our stand on one bank, on one bank of that river which divides human development into two parts. We have come here from the direction of this human development to the bank, we stand on the bank, and we have visualized this standing through the mood of the later Egyptian initiate, the “son of the widow,” who is initiated to experience grief and resignation. We now face the task of crossing the river that separates the two banks of human development in the boat of Spiritual Science. In the final lecture, let us see what lies on the other bank when we push our boat away from the place where we have experienced the mourning for the God dying in the heavens, when we leave that place to swim across a river, and arrive at the other bank. Let us see, when we arrive on the other bank with the memory that we have previously experienced the passing of a God in the heavens, what then presents itself to us on the other side of this stream, when the boat of Spiritual Science carries us there.