Lecture VII

Let us now think of a soul which is rooted in the West, prepared for the mission of the West, and yet bears within itself the powerful echo of ancient clairvoyance. In India these echoes have long since died away, but they are still present in the West. The soul has the impulse to enter the elemental world, but it is prevented by its consciousness. A mood such as that of the Buddha could not arise in such souls. The Buddha mood would have said, “We are brought into the world of suffering. Let us free ourselves from it.” But Western souls wanted to take hold of what was ahead of them. They could not go back into what lay behind them. But in the world in front of them they could find only cold, icy concepts. Consider such a soul as Pherecydes of Syros who was the last to be able to see into the elemental world. Now let us think of one of the other souls who cannot see how the elements are born in a living way out of Chronos. It is unable to see how Ophioneus, the serpent-being, enters into conflict with the higher gods, but it is able to glimpse that something is at work in the physical material world. It cannot see through to Chronos, but it sees the imprint of Chronos in the world of sense, in fire, water, air and earth. It is not able to see how the higher gods are opposed by the lower gods, and how Lucifer, the serpent-god, rebels; but it does see how harmony and disharmony, friendship and enmity prevail. It sees love and hate as abstract concepts, and fire, water, air, and earth as abstract elements. The soul beholds all that still at that time penetrated into it, but what had been seen earlier by contemporaries is now hidden.