Spiritual Science and the Future of Humanity

GA 69e — 31 January 1911, Cologne

XXII. Zarathustra, His Teaching and His Mission

It is difficult to communicate with someone who expresses himself differently than we do. To clarify our own spiritual secrets, it is important to measure our own thinking, feeling, and willing against the spirits of others.

The usual newer historical research does not even know how to determine the lifetime of Zarathustra; they place him in the time of the Buddha, the ancient Greeks place them 5000 years before Christ: as far back as possible or not very far back. Theosophy places him in pre-Asian culture, but his influence can be seen into Christian times.

All soul life has been greatly modified, and the development of what has come into being is now a satisfying study. Man's spiritual development would have to undergo the same investigation to shed light; one has to go back to earlier states of mind, where people became aware of a different environment than they are now. There was a kind of clairvoyant consciousness, an often misused word, an image consciousness. The images that go up and down in the usual forms mean little, they are a leftover remnant of a completely different state of consciousness. The earlier image consciousness can be related to the external reality in the spiritual world behind the sensory world, when the object consciousness was still in its infancy, of an intermediate world between waking and sleeping, through symbols that related to the real spiritual world.

A certain ability is achieved at the expense of another. We have to go back up, but to a form of clairvoyance imbued with intellectuality. First the intellect was lost. Myths, sagas, legends are the oldest records of ancient clairvoyance. The images of the gods in mythology were initially only images. There were two spiritual currents: one from ancient India, the other, more northern, from ancient Persia. These went alongside one another in the older millennia, flowing together in ancient Greek culture. That is why the pessimism of the ancient Indians is so characteristic. The ancient Indian found it uncanny when he saw spiritual beings behind external things. He called them asuras. The last impulse of this, which was therefore so significant, appeared in Buddha. Through an unspiritual tendency towards the inner, he was transported into Maya, and so he had to come out of it into Nirvana. Nirvana has nothing of what the senses offer. Nirvana is the last great call of the senses as this development of humanity is felt to be a descent. This too is shot through with pessimistic anti-reality muzzling.

In ancient Greece, this submergence was not felt in quite the same way. In the Dionysian culture, the Greeks felt what was not yet present in the culture transplanted to Greece from ancient India. Zarathustra developed precisely the opposite, the Persians wanted to lend a hand to direct reality, a transition to a new, joyful future for humanity. He had gained something new, new human soul forces. Zarathustra pointed out to the Persian people that the physical world is not only Maya. To him, the outer world was like the garment of a spiritual world, the sensual world like a carpet. The spiritual world lies behind the sensual world; the spiritual world is behind everything. This is not only meant as a pantheistic reference to spiritual wisdom, but as a concrete insight into the spiritual world. Behind the most important sensual reality, the spiritual importance is hidden. And just as the sun has its great aura, so does man have his small aura: Ahura Mazdao, later Ormuzd. He no longer finds the good through mere mystical insight. These are dying forces, therefore the devas are evil to him, the asuras are the right thing.

This reversal can be explained from the development of culture. Ahuras are the Indian Asuras. There is spirituality in and behind all sensuality, especially behind the center. The Greek Apollo is the Greek translation of the Mazdao culture. Both currents came together when the greatest impulse for humanity came, in Christ.

At that time, in Zarathustra's time, completely different signs were needed, a completely different writing to make sense of this. This ancient writing was in the heavenly bodies. Zarathustra attributed both contradictions to something higher. He needed symbols. During the day, the sun passes through part of the zodiac; the day sun is Ormuzd, the night sun is Ahriman. Ormuzd is associated with one half of the zodiacal signs and Ahriman with the other. There is a common basis for good and evil. In an ever-widening arc, the circle becomes flatter and flatter, finally becoming a straight line, infinity. A circle with an infinite diameter is a representation of the infinite passage of time. The past holds back, the future is for progress, uplifting. The entire zodiac is actually a line, imagined as a minimized circle. “Zaroana akarena” is the image of infinite time.

Thus, the writing in the stars represents what is in the spiritual world. Zoroaster is not an abstract spirit who only moves in generalities; that is why lower spirits are under Ormuzd. Today's man is comfortable and wants to ascend to the highest God right away. The six or seven Amschaspands were, as it were, messengers. Goethe mentions in his Faust: Sons of the gods, preserve the beautiful, and so on. It is the same. Ahriman also has five to six evil spiritual entities; that makes twelve in total.

Each constellation is an expression of one of the forces. Ormuzd, for example, works through [the] lion as a good disposition, through the ram as wisdom. In this way, the spiritual beings enter into people, as it were. But people are not as wise as their little finger, which knows that it is nothing without the whole organism. So the powers of the human soul enter into the person and continue in the person, becoming materially condensed in what is in the person. Thus, a person can be an Ormuzd or an Ahriman person. The new physiology, which dissects the human being, says [anatomically and physiologically]: twelve pairs of brain nerves emanate from the brain. Thus, the materialized twelve Amshaspands have been found again after millennia. Both ages join hands.

There are 28 to 31 Izeds, spirits that perform subordinate functions that are effective in the cosmos and in human nature. In the human head, these are the mental abilities [= the Amshaspands] and the abilities that emanate from the spinal nerves and, for all I care, return [the Izeds]. Then, in the Feroars, we see the spiritual archetypes that underlie everything else.

Plato says: All sensual things are based on archetypes. But here it is meant more abstractly. Plato speaks of the spiritual world, Zoroaster of the spirit world. But Plato still had a living feeling for today's views. Zoroaster saw in the outer light what is inner wisdom, as does spiritual science today.

Pythagoras learned from the Persians the correct attitude towards the spiritual and the moral world. This is quite different from the way it is in Egypt or in the Dionysian mysteries. There, the masculine and the feminine, Osiris - Isis, Apollo - Aphrodite, are valid. Such sexual opposites can be found everywhere. Even with the ancient Hebrews, Lucifer, evil, is indicated by the feminine. Only Zoroaster has it the other way around, taking the organic, moral contrast of good and evil in images, not from nature.

Therefore, Zoroaster must be important in the present day in order not to reduce everything to the opposites of the sexes, as it is today. Hence the scent that emanates from Zoroastrianism. Through purification, through moral cleansing, heroic, moral strength develops, not philistine morality like today's. The ancient Persian is not contemplative, he is hardworking, lays his hands on the treasures of the earth. Thus he becomes the companion of Ormuzd, who always wrestled with Ahriman. Such was the case with this simple cultured people. Through moral purification the obstacles are overcome.

I will speak, come and listen to what is highest in the world. I speak not of it with an evil tongue, but of the opposite. Listen to what I mean, otherwise you will hear bad things at the end of the world. – Thus speaks Zoroaster. It is not enough to study the Gathas literally; one should put oneself in Zoroaster's feelings and thoughts. This requires a sense of history. One should be grateful to Ahriman.