Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 7 June 1911, Copenhagen

43. The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Humanity III

Yesterday we tried to get a sense of that which projects into human life from higher worlds and which we can address in such a way that we can say: we feel in it something like a guidance of both the individual human being and of humanity as a whole. And in order to obtain a mental image, a sense of this guidance, we had to turn our spiritual gaze to that epoch of individual human life in which the human being as such is not yet fully conscious, but works all the more intensively on his outer physical human being: We had, in order to discover the highest in man, to turn our gaze towards that which works there before we have received our present consciousness for the time between birth and death; into the first age of childhood we had to look.

You will find a curious parallel to that which announces itself in individual human life if you consider what was said to the ancient Greeks by the teachers and leaders of ancient Egypt about the guidance and direction of Egyptian spiritual life. It is said - and rightly so - that when the Egyptians were asked by whom they had been guided and directed since ancient times, they answered the Greeks: In ancient, gray times, the gods ruled and taught among us, and only then did men come as leaders. - They called the first leader on the physical plane “Menes” to the Greeks, who was recognized as a human-like leader. This means that the Egyptian people in their leaders referred to the fact that the gods themselves - as the Greek records say - had previously guided and led the Egyptian people.

With such a statement, which resounds to us from ancient times, we only ever have to understand the right thing. What did the Egyptians mean when they said that the gods were our kings and the gods were our great teachers? - The person who said this to Herodotus himself said: "If you were to go back to the ancient times of the Egyptian people and ask those people who felt something like a higher consciousness, like wisdom from higher worlds: Who is actually your teacher? - they would answer: If I wanted to speak of my real teacher, I would not have to point to this or that person and say: This or that person is my teacher, but if I want to find my teacher, I must first put myself into a clairvoyant state - we know from other lectures that this was relatively easy in ancient times - and then I will find my true inspirer, my true teacher; he only approaches me when my spiritual eye is open. - For in ancient Egypt such beings descended from the spiritual worlds to human beings who did not embody themselves in the human physical body. The gods still ruled and taught through the physical humans in the ancient, gray times of Egypt, and by “gods” the ancient Egyptians understood the beings that preceded humans in their development.

We know that the earth, before it became “earth”, went through a different planetary state, which we call the “lunar state” and which we have described in many lectures. At that time man was not yet man in the present sense; but there were other beings on the old moon who did not have the present human form, who were differently shaped, but who were at that stage of development which man has now reached on earth.

So we could say: On the old planet Moon, which perished and later became Earth, there lived beings who are the predecessors of humans. In Christian esotericism, such beings are called angelic beings, Angeloi, the higher ones then archangels, Archangeloi, but they were human beings in an even earlier time. What in Christian esotericism are called angels or Angeloi, in oriental mysticism “dhyanic beings”, were “humans” during the lunar age of the earth; during the earth age - when they have fully developed - they are a full step higher than humans. Humans will only have arrived at the end of the earth's evolution where these beings were at the end of the moon's evolution.

When the earth state of our planet began and man appeared on earth, these beings could not appear in an outer human form. For the outer human fleshly body could only appear later; it is essentially an earthly product, but is only suitable for the beings who are now human beings.

Those beings who stood one level higher than human beings could not be active in such a way that they would have been embodied in human bodies; but they could only participate in the earth government in such a way that they enlightened, inspired and worked in a roundabout way through these clairvoyant people in the state where the ancient people became clairvoyant.

The ancient Egyptians still remembered such a state in which the leading personalities were vividly aware of their connection with what are called gods, angels or dhyanic beings. What kind of beings were these that did not embody themselves as human beings, did not take on human fleshly form, but worked into humanity in the way described above? We said that they were the predecessors of humans who had grown beyond the level of humanity.

However, it is now good to get a somewhat more precise mental image of the inner nature of these beings. I don't know whether you are aware that one word has been much abused in recent times, the word “superhuman”; I don't know whether it has happened here in the north as it has in Germany. If one could truly speak of “superhumans”, then it was these beings who were already human beings during the lunar period, the planetary predecessor period of our earth, and who have now outgrown humanity, have grown so much that a human body is no longer suitable for their development and their constitution. They could therefore only appear to clairvoyant humans in an etheric body. Thus they appeared, descended and reigned on earth even in the post-Atlantean times. What were they themselves like? It is best to describe a little of the spiritual nature of these beings.

These beings had the strange characteristic - and still have it today - that they do not need to think; one could also say that they could not think at all, as man thinks.

So let's understand: how do humans think? More or less in such a way that he starts from a certain point and says: I have understood this or that, and from this point he now tries to understand various other things. If this were not the path of human thought, the school path would not be so difficult for some things. I can assume that the Theosophists have a mental image in this respect: you cannot learn mathematics from one day to the next, because you have to start at one point - and progress slowly. It takes a long time. You cannot overlook thinking at a glance, because human thinking takes time. It is not there in one fell swoop. You have to search, you have to make an effort to find the thought. The other beings do not have this peculiarity of man; but with the same speed with which an animal, for example, realizes when it has something edible for its instinct in front of it that it snatches at it, the thought arises in the soul of such a superhuman being - and is there. Instinct and thoughtful consciousness have no difference in relation to these entities, they are one and the same. Just as animals have instinct on their levels, in their realm, so these dhyanic beings or Angeloi have direct spiritual thinking, direct spiritual imagination; they have something like an instinctive inner life of imagination, so they are of a completely different nature than humans.

You could therefore easily form an idea of how it is impossible for such beings to use such a brain or such a physical body as we have. They must use an etheric body, because a human body and a human brain only form thoughts in time, whereas these beings do not form thoughts in time and have all wisdom as if by themselves. Wisdom is within them. They cannot possibly think wrong things, cannot err, because the course of thought shoots into them as an immediate inspiration. Therefore, those personalities who could approach these dhyanic or angelic beings, who stood opposite them, had consciousness: There they stand face to face with certain wisdom! So even in ancient Egypt, when a human being who was a teacher or king faced his spiritual leader, he knew that the commandment he gave and the truth he spoke were directly correct and could not be wrong. - This was again felt by those to whom these truths were transmitted, who had received them from these clairvoyant teachers, for they could speak in such a way that one believed to receive from their words what came down from the spiritual world. In short, it was a direct stream up to the higher hierarchies.

And what I described to you yesterday for the childhood of man, what the child has as its own inner soul, what works in the child, we see working on a large scale in the world of humanity as the next world of the Hierarchies hovering over the whole evolution of humanity, as the next realm of the Angeloi or dhyanic beings, who stand one step higher than human beings and rise directly into the spiritual spheres, and who work into what they bring down and work into human culture in the same way as the childlike soul works on the construction of the human brain. Thus the Egyptians, who described their connection with a divine being, felt the openness of the soul of humanity to the hierarchies. Just as the child soul, up to the time we indicated yesterday, opens its aura to the hierarchies, so the whole of humanity opened its world - through the processes of humanity - to the hierarchies with which it was connected.

This connection was most powerful with those teachers whom we call the sacred rishis of the Indians, the sacred teachers of the first post-Atlantean culture, that first Indian culture which spread throughout a certain area of Asia. When the Atlantean catastrophe had passed, the physiognomy of the earth had changed and the new organization of Asia, Europe and Africa had developed in the eastern hemisphere, the culture of the ancient great teachers of India was at work - even before the time to which we have now alluded from the legends of the Egyptians themselves. People today will generally have a rather false mental image of these great teachers of India. For if, for example, a scholar of today - a person who is called a “scholar” today - were to meet one of the great teachers of ancient India, he would make strange eyes and perhaps say: “This is supposed to be a ”sage"? I have never imagined a sage like that! - Because in the sense of what is wise or clever in today's scholars, the ancient holy teachers of India had nothing clever to say. They were all simple-minded people in the modern sense; people who answered in the simplest possible way even to questions of everyday life. And there were many, many times when you couldn't get much out of them other than this or that word, which would seem quite simple to a scholar today. But again, there were certain times for the holy teachers of India when they presented themselves as something other than mere plain men. At these times they had to be together in the number seven, because what each one of them could feel had to sound together harmoniously as in an octave of seven notes, so that each one had the possibility of feeling this or that according to his particular instrument and his particular development. And out of the harmony of what each individual felt, there then arose that which sounds out as the primordial wisdom, if we understand how to decipher the real occult documents, those documents which are not the Vedas or the Vedanta - however much we admire Vedas or Vedanta; but what the holy Rishis taught is much earlier still, and only a faint echo of it is what we have before us in the Vedas.

But when these men stood face to face - each one with such an ancestor of mankind - when they looked clairvoyantly, listened clairaudiently to what they saw or heard through this predecessor of mankind, it shone like the sun from their own eyes. And then what they could say had an overwhelming effect on their surroundings, so that everyone knew: Now it is not human life or human wisdom that is speaking, but now the gods, the Dhyanic beings, are speaking into human culture!

The ancient cultures began from this sounding forth of what the gods knew, what the gods could do. Only gradually, in the post-Atlantean period, did the gate close, so to speak, to the divine-spiritual world, which during the Atlantean period was still completely open to the human soul. And in the various countries, among the various peoples, it was felt how man became more and more dependent on himself - just like the child. First the divine-spiritual world enters through the unconscious soul of the child, which creates in the child; then comes the moment when man learns to say “I” to himself, up to which he then remembers himself in later life; but before that lies a time which one does not normally remember in everyday life. There lies that of which we have said that the wisest can still learn from the soul of the child.

But then the individual is left to himself, the ego-consciousness emerges, and everything now comes together in such a way that one can remember it. Thus the time also came in the life of the peoples when they began to feel more closed off from the divine inspiration of the original fathers. Just as the child is closed off from the aura that surrounds the child's head in the first years, so too in the life of the peoples the divine forefathers receded more and more, and people became more and more dependent on their own research and their own knowledge. History also calls this the “coming of man” into the leadership of humanity. “Menes” was the name given to the one who inaugurated the first “human” culture, and at the same time it indicates that this also gave man the opportunity to err.

From now on, he was dependent on the not entirely reliable tool of his brain. The fact that man could fall into error is indicated by the fact that at the time when man was abandoned by the gods, the labyrinth was created, which, with reference to human thinking and the convolutions of the brain, is an analogy for how man could from now on lose himself with his thinking in the convolutions of thought.

The Orientals called it “Manas” when man became independent in this way. The Greek peoples called it “Minos”, and the legend of the labyrinth is also linked to Minos, because people felt how they were now gradually transitioning from divine guidance to ego guidance.

Now, however, we must also look at other beings of the most diverse categories - besides those forefathers of mankind, the true supermen who had completed their humanity on the moon and had now become angels. We must also always look at those who have not completed their development on a planet. The beings that are called dhyanic beings in oriental mysticism and Angeloi in Christian esotericism completed and concluded their development on the old moon and were already one step higher than human beings when man began on earth.

But there were other beings who had not completed their human development on the old moon, just as the higher categories of Luciferian beings had not completed their development. Therefore, when the earthly state of our planet began, not only the human being was present, who as such needed the inspiration of the divine spiritual beings, for otherwise he could not have progressed - like the child; not only the childlike human being was there, but there were also the beings who had completed their development on the moon. But between these and the human beings there were still such beings who had not completed their development on the moon; beings who - as you can imagine - were of a much higher kind than the human beings, were of a higher kind because they could have become angels, dhyanic beings, already during the old moon time.

But they did not reach full maturity at that time, they lagged behind the angels, but still towered far above man in terms of everything that man called his own. Basically, these are the beings that occupy the lowest level in the hosts of Luciferian beings. The realm of the Luciferic entities already begins with these entities, which stand in the middle between humans and the angels.

These entities are now extremely easy to misjudge; for man can easily ask himself two questions. One is to ask lightly: Why did the divine beings, the rulers of good, allow such beings to remain behind and thus allow the Luciferic principle to enter humanity? One should believe that the good gods direct everything for the good. This is an obvious question.

And the other misunderstanding that could arise is to say that these beings are “evil” beings. - Both are just a misunderstanding. For these entities are by no means merely “evil” entities, although the origin of evil in human development must be sought in them; rather, they stand in the middle between humans and the superhumans, between humans and the dhyanic or angelic entities[. They] tower above humans. These beings have already attained a high level in all the abilities that humans must first acquire. And they differ from the human ancestors described earlier in that - because they have not completed their humanity on the moon - they are still capable of incarnating in human bodies while man is developing on earth. While the actual dhyanic or angelic beings, who are the great inspirers of men, and to whom the Egyptians still referred, could not appear in human bodies, but could only reveal themselves through men, the beings who stand in the middle between men and angels, because they have not attained their full development, but have nevertheless outgrown man, are still capable of incarnating in human bodies. That is why we always find in the Lemurian and Atlantean times among the people on earth those who carry within themselves such a retarded angelic being as their innermost soul entity.

That means: In the old Lemurian and Atlantean times of our earth there are not only ordinary people walking around on earth, who through their successive incarnations are supposed to come to what we have indicated in the various lectures and also yesterday, but there are quite strange ones walking around among the people of earlier times. Outwardly they look like other people, for the outward form of a person in the flesh depends on earthly circumstances.

But especially in the older times such beings went around among men who belonged to the lowest category of the Luciferic beings who were incarnated. In addition to the angelic beings who worked on human culture through human beings, such Luciferic beings also incarnated and founded this or that culture here or there. And when legends tell us that one or the other great person lived here or there who founded a great culture, such an entity is not dismissed by saying: "There is a Luciferic entity incarnated, it must be something evil! In fact, an infinite number of blessings come into human culture through these entities.

I would now like to make clear to you the real difference between those beings who had completed their development on the moon and could only reveal themselves to human beings, and these beings who could appear in human bodies and who stood on the lowest level of the Luciferic beings.

Occultism knows - today's materialistic science may deny this or come to it more or less in hypotheses, it makes no difference: There was in ancient times, namely in the Atlantean period, something like a kind of primordial human language, a kind of speaking which was similar over the whole earth, because “speaking” in those times came much more from the innermost part of the soul than speaking comes today. You can see this from the following. In the Atlantean times, people perceived all external impressions in such a way that the soul, when it wanted to express something external with a sound, was urged to make a consonant - that is, what stood there in space or in the soul was urged to be imitated consonantly. The blowing of the wind, the sound of the waves, being protected by a house was felt and imitated by consonants. And whatever one experienced inwardly in terms of pain or joy, or even what another being could feel, was imitated in the vowel. From this you can see that in ancient times the soul grew together with the external processes or entities in a speaking way.

I will paint what we are told from the Akashic Chronicle. For example, a person approached a hut that arched over a family in the old way and gave it protection and shelter, and observed the hut in the way it arched over the family. He expressed the protective arching of the hut with a consonant; and that there were souls in bodies - which he could feel - he expressed with a vowel. Then the word “protection” came into being; I have protection, protection over human bodies. - The word was formed from vowels [and consonants] because the human soul felt it that way.

This was the case all over the world. It is not a dream that there was a human “original language”, but such an original language did exist. And in a certain sense, the initiates of all peoples still understand this primordial language. Yes, there are certain sounds in all languages that are nothing more than remnants of this original human language.

This language, which I have just described, is stimulated in the human soul through the inspiration of the superhuman beings, the true predecessors of men, who had completed their development on the moon. You can now see from this: If only this development had taken place, the whole human race would have remained basically a great unity; people would have spoken and thought uniformly over the whole earth. Individuality, diversity would not have been able to develop - and therefore neither would human freedom. For every human being to become an individuality, divisions had to occur in humanity.

The diversity of language, the fact that languages became different in the most diverse regions of the earth, that a differentiation occurred in the languages, stems from the teaching of such teachers in whom a Luciferian entity was incarnated. Such incarnated, for example, among the Egyptians, among the Persian people and so on. Depending on whether this or that - retarded - angelic being was incarnated there, it was able to instruct people in this or that language. So the ability to speak a particular language among all peoples can be traced back to the presence of such great enlighteners who were angelic beings who had remained behind and were far higher than the people in their immediate surroundings.

For example, what is described as the original heroes of the Greek or other leaders who worked in human form are those in whom a regressed angelic being was incarnated. We must not, therefore, describe these beings merely as “evil” beings. On the contrary, they brought to mankind that which made them free beings over the whole globe, which differentiated that which would otherwise have formed a uniform whole over the whole earth. So it is with languages, so it is with many areas of life. The individualization, the differentiation, the freedom - we can say - comes from these beings who had remained behind on the moon. It was indeed the intention of the wise world leadership - one could say - to bring all beings in planetary development to their goal; but then certain things would not be achieved. Certain beings are held back in their development because they have a different task in development. Because the beings who had fully achieved their task on the moon could only have produced a unified humanity, they were opposed by those beings who remained behind on the moon, who were now given the opportunity to turn what was actually a mistake with them to the good.

From there I ask you to gradually work your way up to another feeling that can give you direction in a certain respect when the question arises: Why is there evil, the bad, the imperfect, the morbid in the world? - Look at it from the point of view from which you have now seen the imperfect angelic beings. Everything that at any time represents an imperfection, a retardation, is nevertheless turned into something good in the course of development, and everything that is bad in our earthly development is nevertheless turned into something good on the whole. - We will see that there is no justification for evil and that no one can say: So I do evil, since it is turned to good after all. These things are not for the practice of life, but for the understanding of life. We ourselves must therefore not do evil.

This also answers the question: Why does the wise world government allow certain entities to remain behind so that they do not reach their goal? This happens precisely because it makes good sense in the near future - for example, that certain beings have remained behind on the moon. For when the peoples could not yet direct and guide themselves, there lived the teachers of the times and of individual men. And all the individual teachers of the nations - such as Kadmos, Cheops, Pelops, Theseus and so on - have in a certain respect an angelic being at the bottom of their souls.

There we see how mankind is indeed subject to a leadership, a guidance. Yes, we could almost point out how above man, who gradually develops from the childhood stage of culture, there are first such superhuman beings who had not reached their angelic stage on the moon and can incarnate in human bodies - and then such beings who can no longer incarnate in human beings, but can only have a revelatory effect.

Now, however, at every stage of evolution beings remain behind who do not reach the goal that is to be achieved. And now I would like to draw your attention to the following: I would like to draw your attention to the ancient Egyptian culture, which took place several millennia ago in the land of the Nile, in such a way that superhuman teachers revealed themselves to the Egyptians, of whom the Egyptians themselves said that they guided the people like gods; in addition, however, such beings also worked who had only half or partially reached their angelic level.

Such beings then incarnated into Hermes or Thoth, for example, and walked among the Egyptians as humans. Now you must realize that man in ancient Egypt achieved something; that is, your own souls in Egyptian times achieved something. But every individuality achieves something in an epoch.

It is not only the guided human being who achieves something by allowing himself to be guided, but this guidance also means something for the guiding, leading beings, that they progress in their development. An angel, for example, is more after he has guided people for a while than he was before he started this guidance. Through his work in guiding, the angel also progresses - both the one who is a full angel and the one who has only half become one. Everyone progresses; everything is in constant development. But at each stage, entities remain behind. And now we look into the ancient Egyptian culture in such a way that we say: First there are the divine leaders, the angels, then the semi-divine leaders who did not quite reach the angelic level, and then there are humans who develop higher and higher. But certain of the superhumans, of the semi-divine leaders, remain behind again; that is, they do not lead in such a way that they express all their powers, [they] remain behind as angels or as half-angels during the ancient Egyptian cultural stage. So while men advance below, certain such entities remain above under the guidance of the dhyanic entities or angels - and likewise among the Luciferic entities. So when the Egyptian culture comes to an end and the Greco-Latin culture begins, there are leading, guiding entities from the Egyptian-Chaldean culture that have remained behind. However, they cannot use their powers now, because they are now replaced in the leadership of humanity by other angels or semi-angelic beings. This means, however, that they are also unable to continue their own development.

Now we have turned our attention to a category of beings who should have used their powers during the Egyptian period, but did not use them fully during that time - and now could not use them in the subsequent Greco-Latin period because they have now been replaced by other leading beings. Just as those beings who had not reached their angelic level on the old moon later had the task of intervening again during the time on earth, so now those beings who had remained behind as leading beings in the Egyptian-Chaldean culture also have the task of intervening again later in the culture - of intervening as beings who had remained behind. We will therefore be able to see a later cultural epoch where there are indeed beings who came to lead later and who direct the normal development, but where alongside these beings intervene those who had remained behind earlier - and especially those who had remained behind during the ancient Egyptian culture. This cultural period indicated here is our own. We live in a time when, in addition to the normal rulers and leaders of humanity, such backward beings of the ancient Egyptian and Chaldean culture are still intervening and working into everything that is our present culture. - How do they manifest themselves?

Everything that is founded in the spiritual world has its effects on the physical plan. Our culture will indeed, on the whole, undertake a greater upward movement towards spirituality, and in this urge of people upwards towards spirituality the normal rulers and leaders of our present humanity reveal themselves. In everything that today wants to lead man upwards into that which Theosophy hands down to us from the great spiritual wisdoms, the normal guides and leaders of our development are revealed. But the entities that remained behind during the Egyptian-Chaldean culture intervene in our cultural tendencies, intervene in everything we think and do, and reveal themselves through the fact that all our culture is mixed with so much materialistic thinking, which often interferes even with the highest spiritual. On the whole, it is a resurgence of Egyptian culture in our time.

Not only the normal rulers and leaders of development play into our culture, but also those beings who remained behind as leaders during the Egyptian Chaldean culture. They give our culture its materialistic coloring. Thus it is that so much emerges that looks grandly like a resurrection of the old Egyptian forces - also like a resurrection of old, good forces that were right then, and which now reappear caricatured in a materialistic reshaping.

And in this reference we can point to an example of how ancient Egyptian sentiments have revived in our time. That was when a greater spirit in our time was completely imbued inwardly with the harmony of the spheres, with the harmony in the construction of the world, and then expressed this in mathematical laws - in the so-called Keplerian laws. These are apparently quite dry and abstract - but in Kepler's case they were born out of an understanding of the harmony of the universe. We can hear this from Kepler himself when he says: "So that I could find what I found, I had to go to the sacred mysteries of the Egyptians, stole their temple vessels and made the sacrifice with them that led me to what I now lay in the lap of mankind as laws, so that it would only be understood centuries later.

Such was the dark consciousness of a re-proclamation of that which lived in Egyptian times.

The fact that so much materialistic interpretation of things comes into our time stems from the fact that the leftover spirits of the Egyptian-Chaldean era play into our culture. However, something of the Egyptian genius had to enter our culture; for the Egyptians had a strong materialism in their spirituality, which found expression, for example, in embalming the physical bodies of the deceased - that is, they attached great importance to the preservation of the body. This has come down to us from Egyptian times in a correspondingly different form.

The same forces that did not reach their conclusion back then are once again taking hold in a transformed form in our time. The attitude that embalmed the corpses became the views that today merely worship the material. The Egyptians embalmed their corpses and thus preserved what was valuable to them. The modern anatomist dissects what he sees and believes he can recognize the laws of the body!

In our present-day science live the retarded forces of the ancient Egyptian and Chaldean world, which were then justified forces, but now represent retarded ones, and which we must recognize! Then they will not harm us, but will allow us to enter the world with both feet. These forces must find their utilization; they must be there; otherwise we would not have our great achievements in technology, industry and so on.

These are forces that belong to luciferic beings of the lowest level that work in there. If you do not recognize them correctly, then you consider the material to be the only possible thing - and do not see the true forces that lead up to the spiritual. This is why we have the two currents in our time.

What would have happened if the highest world guidance had not left behind in ancient Egypt and Chaldea such characterized beings as are now found clairvoyantly on the astral plan?

It is difficult to express; but it can be expressed in something like this: the present culture would lack the necessary gravity. Then only those forces would be at work which wanted to bring man into the spiritual with full force, and men would be only too inclined to abandon themselves to these forces. They would become enthusiasts. Everyone would only want to know about a life that spiritualizes itself as quickly as possible, and the general attitude would be: Why do I need to incarnate again and again? I can't gain anything from that. No, I want to go straight into the spiritual with full wings! - That would give way to infatuation. Just as the most beautiful things can become seducers and tempters of mankind if man follows them one-sidedly, so here there would be a great danger that all possible good aspirations would be brought into fanaticism. As true as it is that humanity is brought forward by its noble impulses, it is equally true that the worst can happen to humanity through the enthusiastic and fanatical representation of the noblest impulses. Only when we strive for the highest in humility and not in fanaticism do we strive for it correctly. So that we may have the necessary gravity on earth, so that we may have understanding for the material, for the things of the physical plan, that is why the wise guidance of the world has left behind those forces which should have completed their development then, and which now secure our view of physical life, which hold us fast and also make us love our material culture.

So we see how everything in the universe is turned to the good. But for this we need to know what is at work in the individual and in humanity as a whole. Thus we have, so to speak, found one of the last subdivisions of the spiritual entities that have remained behind. Something very similar to the Luciferian entities is present in our spiritual world. And anyone who only opens his clairvoyant gaze will immediately come across these beings of earlier earth epochs, which he encounters there and which are only beings that have remained behind.

With this I have, so to speak, developed for you in ideas the way how the universe is brought forward through the evolution of certain higher beings, and have shown you how, however, on certain levels beings always have to be held back so that the development can go forward in the right way. With this we have been able to form certain concepts and ideas about “development” in general, about the way in which the contrast of advancing and holding back is produced by beings who reach their stage of development and those who do not - and how development is made possible by this. In this way one can understand the whole universe in its development. But one must also understand what is revealed to the clairvoyant eye in the spiritual worlds. By opening the spiritual eye, the spiritual ear to the spiritual world through some kind of exercises, one has only achieved that one sees what is there, that one can perceive the entities and knows: There are spiritual entities of the astral plan or the devachanic plan. But it takes something else to recognize what kind of beings these entities are.

Some entity on the astral plan or the Devachanic plan can meet us; but then we do not yet know whether it is in progressive development or whether it has lagged behind, whether it is now slowing down or pushing forward. Those who only become so bright that their spiritual eyes are opened can basically never know what kind of entities they will encounter.

I say: they never can. This “never” refers in particular to our present time. It was not always like this. If we were to go back to very ancient times of human development, we could not say that no one was ever able to distinguish between the entities they encountered on the astral or devachanic plan. When an ancient Egyptian in very ancient times became clairvoyant and encountered an entity of the astral or devachanic world, it had written on its forehead, as it were, what it was. He could not confuse them. In contrast, the possibility of confusion is already very great today. While ancient mankind was closer to the path into the realms of the hierarchies, today the possibility of error is very great, and the only protection against it is to endeavor to acquire such mental images, such ideas and such clear thinking as is now indicated, if one wants to distinguish the laws of evolution. For this clear thinking alone gives us the possibility of distinguishing between the types of entities that we encounter on the astral plane.

One who looks into the spiritual world is called a “clairvoyant” in esoteric language. But just being clairvoyant is not enough; he would see but not be able to distinguish. What he must be in addition to a clairvoyant is an “initiate”. Initiation brings the ability to distinguish between the different types of entities. So someone can theoretically be clairvoyant for the higher worlds, but does not need to be an initiate. In ancient times, the distinction between entities was not particularly important, for when the old students of occultism had brought their pupils to clairvoyance, the danger of error was not very great. Now, however, the possibility of error is very great. Therefore, in the guidance of mankind, care must be taken that the principle of initiation is always added to the principle of esotericism. Man must, to the extent that he becomes clairvoyant, become able to distinguish between the particular kinds of entities.

This special task - to create a balance between the principles of clairvoyance and initiation - once approached the leadership of mankind. It was necessary for humanity to receive guidance and direction in order to establish the right balance between clairvoyance and initiation. The question arises: When did this have to happen? It became necessary at the time when humanity was going through a crisis in relation to its higher cognition. In the time of the thirteenth century, around the year 1250, we have the age when people felt most closed off from the spiritual world. Then the most outstanding spirits, who strove for a certain higher knowledge, said: "What our reason, our intellect, what [our knowledge] can find is limited to the world that surrounds us on the outside; we cannot reach a spiritual world with our rational human research and cognitive faculty; it must be given to us through revelation! Knowledge and faith are two separate areas! - There is a good reason why this was said at the time when scholasticism was flourishing; it was said because at that time humanity was most closed off from the spiritual world. Approximately the year 1250 is the time in which people during the Middle Ages had to come to draw the line between what can be believed and what can be recognized.

And then came the time when more and more opportunities arose to look into the spiritual world. The people who had a natural clairvoyance became more and more numerous, and they will continue to become more and more numerous. Around 1250 was the crisis when humanity was most isolated from the spiritual worlds, while it was then to ascend again, and today we are already on the way to the spiritual world again. At that time it became necessary to create a balance between initiation and the Hellscher principle. This was the special task of an impulse that entered into the guidance and direction of humanity as the year 1250 approached. At that time, a new kind of leadership had to begin, a new way of guiding people and creating a balance between initiation and clairvoyance.

So the Rosicrucian principle of initiation and clairvoyance was prepared, which had its beginnings in the Middle Ages, when people believed that man could not reach the spiritual world at all. For when such individuals, who had already achieved much, much in previous incarnations, were incarnated again around the year 1250, their vision was completely clouded for a time. Fully enlightened individuals had something as if they were cut off from the spiritual world. Thus we see that from that time onwards it became necessary for a new element to appear in the guidance and leadership of humanity. This was the element of the Rosicrucian principle. Only through this can we understand in the true sense how that which we call the “Christ-impulse” can intervene in the guidance and direction of the whole of humanity as well as the individual for all activities. This is only possible through the Rosicrucian principle.

All great things will again be understood in such a way that in the first time they go through something that man himself goes through in his first childhood. From the Mystery of Golgotha to the intervention of the Rosicrucian principle, the very first period of childhood was the processing of the Christ principle. People therefore received the Christ so unconsciously that later, when they were forced to receive him consciously, they made all kinds of mistakes and fell into a labyrinth. Hence we see how in the first time the Christ principle settled in and how then a new time had to come. We are not very far along in this one yet. But we will see that the new principle enters as it does in all development: that it is first absorbed without man being able to do anything about it with his self-consciousness, and that it is then replaced by fully conscious humanity.

So the Rosicrucian development will show how the Christ impulse will take possession of the leadership of humanity in ever new sequences. It will be our task tomorrow to place at the center of the guidance and leadership of humanity the conception of the Christ Impulse as it was before the Mystery of Golgotha since the earliest times of development - and after the Mystery of Golgotha, by deepening somewhat the conception we were able to give earlier by applying the Rosicrucian principle to what was before and after.