II. Lucifer and Ahriman

That is the perspective which one must place before men today, so that they may learn to grasp how they must find the state of equilibrium between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic. The Ahrimanic regulates us always—even in soul and spirit—rectilinearly; the Luciferic brings us always into curving or circular movement and diversifies us. If we have a one-sided tendency to monotheism, if we strive to the whole world as a unity, then Ahriman tugs us by one ear; if we become monadists, one-sided monadists, explaining the world out of many, many atoms or monads only, without unity, then Lucifer is tugging us by the other ear.—In fact, to one who has insight things are like this: when monists dispute with pluralists, monadists, then the man who is actually disputing is generally quite guiltless, for behind him, if he is a monist. Ahriman is pulling him by the ear and whispering all the fine reasons the self-believed logic which he presents for his monism; and if he is a follower of Leibniz or some other monadist,—Lucifer is there and whispers all the fine reasons for the manifoldness of spiritual beings. What must be sought is the state of equilibrium, unity in multiplicity, multiplicity in unity. However, that is less easy and convenient than to seek either the unity or the multiplicity; as it is altogether less comfortable to seek a state of equilibrium than something where one can just rest in laziness. Men become either sceptics or mystics, The sceptics feel that they have fine minds that can doubt everything, the mystics feel that they are permeated by the divine and that with love and knowledge they can embrace all things in their own inner being. The Sceptics are in fact but pupils of Ahriman and the mystics but pupils of Lucifer. For what mankind must strive towards is the state of balance; mystic experience in scepticism, scepticism in mystic experience. It is not the point whether one is Montaigne or Augustine, the point is that what Montaigne represents is illumined through Augustine and what Augustine represents is illumined through Montaigne. One-sidednesses mislead men in the direction of the one or the other stream. What is actually the meaning of “towards the Luciferic”? The Luciferic is really there to make us headless, to take away our own intelligence and free-will. The Luciferic spirits (it is better to say “Luciferic spirits” and to say “Ahriman”, for although there are hosts in the following of Ahriman, Ahriman stands out as a unity, because he strives for unity, and the Luciferic element shows itself as plurality, because it strives for plurality—therefore one expresses it as I have already done in the course of today's lecture)—the Luciferic element really wants us to die at 28, it does not want us to grow old. And if things went entirely according to this Luciferic element we should become children, young men and women, would receive good knowledge trickled in from duration, but at approximately the age of 28 we should get sclerosis and rapidly become cretins. Thus what we could develop as human comprehension would be thrust out just as sclerosis would be thrust out and what we receive in youth could be made automatic and spiritualised. The Luciferic spirits would like to take us at once and not let us first go through the Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan evolution in order then only to become cosmic beings. They do not consider that necessary but strive to take man away from the earth with what he has already evolved through the Saturn, Sun, Moon existence. That is the one stream which wants to hurry on with man as quickly as possible, it is a premature stream. The Luciferic spirits would like to storm in and lead us as quickly as possible into cosmic reality. The Ahrimanic spirits would like to root out our past and make the earth our starting point; they would like to wipe out our past, conserve us on the earth and then set us back to where we were as Saturn-beings. It is a retrograde, retarding movement. Life is ultimately compounded out of a premature and a retrograde movement and the state of equilibrium between them must be found.