Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 15 November 1909, Stuttgart

22. The Mission of Shepherds, Farmers and Fishermen

It is important to shed light on the more intimate connections in human development. First of all, the external hereditary relationships come into consideration. One need only consider how strongly a person's profession affects his whole life, including his destiny. Then the relationships connected with reincarnation and karma come into consideration. All the souls who are here have already been incarnated and bring with them as antipathy and sympathy, as qualities, what they have experienced in previous lives.

The Theosophists in particular are mostly recruited from the urban population, and it must be interesting to observe from this point of view certain types which in the past were sharply demarcated: Pastoral peoples and arable farmers. Today, people are so mixed up that such demarcations are no longer possible (Abel, Cain). This sharp demarcation can suggest to us that much, much value was placed on these differences.

You have basically done little by knowing the division of man into seven parts. It is important to know how these parts are now living out on earth. And only if you take into account the interlinking of the relationships, how the individual parts are distant or close to each other, can you learn something essential about these things. This division of the seven is a rough division. Only through fully conscious, arbitrary work on the lower members do the higher members emerge. However, it should be noted that such work has been done at all times, even if not yet fully conscious and subject to arbitrariness.

For example, in the old lunar period the ego worked out the sentient soul from the sentient body. But the ego also worked on the etheric body in ancient times, namely on the parts of the etheric body that regulate nutrition. It extracted those currents and forces that are otherwise active in nutritional processes. It must be said that the etheric body has very clearly expressed that the organ of the mind soul has been formed from the forces of growth.

Only those forces that the mind soul uses are finer forces of the etheric body; the coarser ones continue to serve growth.

From the forces of the physical body the consciousness soul has worked out the organs with which it now works; this is also clear to see, for the consciousness soul works with the physical brain. It is not indifferent to the consciousness soul how the physical body builds up the brain and so on. These things depend on each other in pairs, so to speak. A great deal depends on the interrelationship of these organs for activity on earth.

Let us now take the relationships within a pastoral people. The food consists of what is prepared: milk, meat. What kind of animals are these? They are the higher animals, the mammals. All the animals that are now herded by the pastoral peoples came into being after the Lemurian period, before that there were only the snake species as the highest form.

These animals, from which the pastoral peoples form their organization, were under the influence of the Luciferic beings, but only sporadically, because it was not important enough for them, even if the astral body of the animal was, so to speak, exposed. Hoofed animals, for example, were not subject to the influence of the luciferic entities at all.

People built up the bodies of animals that had nothing to gain from the moon. It will now be understandable to you when you are told that these pastoral peoples took nothing for their development. It was only the development of the astral body that made itself felt, and particularly strongly, what was already there: it became denser, more waxy; the sensory body became more viscous. And this constitutes what is called the peaceful nature of the pastoral peoples, but they also become more indolent, more dull in the face of external impressions. Their spirituality is subject to this influence, they can imagine little of it.

The situation is different with the farmers. They devote themselves to an occupation that did not yet exist on the moon. There was no seed on the moon that was sunk into the earth. There were only animal plants. What lies in the direction of human progress is connected with the farmer. Therefore, the farmer was the first sinner, in the sense that he freely did evil out of his own will - Cain, who slew Abel. The sin of paradise is something else: the seduction by the Luciferian entities. Geometry is closely connected with this activity. The Hyksos slow down this Egyptian ability of the farmers, their progress in this direction.

Among the pastoral peoples, the sentient soul was internalized, closed off, unable to pass through the viscous astral body.

Where the Bible speaks to us of peoples living in the outer world, it speaks of generations of farmers. (Take what was said last night.) Combinatorial thinking [was] transmitted to Abraham. Nomads are his peoples, a mixture of the two mentioned, because harmoniously both directions should be shaped into each other.

But the Christ event was to occur, which was only prepared by Abraham. How could the one who was to bring the I find his closest comrades? He had to find those who had not yet been seized by the two currents described above. It was a matter of finding that element which neither strove vehemently forwards, because such a thing had not existed before, nor that which strove backwards, which had nothing of the earth's development in it as yet.

Now take the fish. They were there before the moon's development and did not absorb the nature of the moon, nor did they descend into the earthly realm, for there was already water on the moon. - Christ Jesus therefore had to choose his comrades from among the fishermen.

Now things are beginning to change. - We have three professions: firstly, shepherds; secondly, farmers; thirdly, fishermen. These fishermen were able to understand Christ and his mission - the development of the consciousness soul - and thus the influences penetrated into the physical body.

But in terms of their way of life, they were only suitable for that time, otherwise a pendulum swing to the other side would have taken place. Therefore, the fish diet today coarsens that which is the finest and most subtle organ in man.

(One should not want to bring all people close to Theosophy who seem to have something to do with it; they are often the furthest removed from the matter.)

But one should not conclude that the fishermen are now in decadence. It is conceivable that it was a coastal people who prepared a new, invigorating impact of Christianity today.

It is one of the deepest mysteries of the Bible - the mission of shepherds, farmers and fishermen. - It is the tragic fate of our time that true Christianity is being fought against by its apparent representatives. It depends on the right naming.