Friday, January 17, 2025

Regarding Addiction : Pride goeth before destruction

 







 




Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

—Proverbs 16:18





"The Grand Faux Pas"


... It can be observed that when it comes to addiction, a contributing element within the addicted is that of pride infesting their being overtly. Not only was pride the originator to the problem, but it is also given further exaggeration because of the addiction. It is the being of Pride manifesting in the fellow, there at the very base root of the compulsion.

Watching the drug addict or the alcoholic, you will find that although they may appear to have problems quite obvious on the outside, it is not apparent enough to themselves, in that they are so prideful that their attitude of self is very demanding. Characterized by acting out kingly or queenly imaginings of superiority, these poor folk are so deeply infested with this pride, that their very doors to self-improvement are completely blocked by it. 

After death, the astrality of a person who has died because of their addiction will still maintain their arrogance and supposition of superiority. Even when the body has long decayed and the ghost is naught more than a mumble, it will not concede that their 'superior' self was actually wrong in choosing the path that it took. 

Simply and humbly wrong. This statement is a very healthy beginning to making change within the poor form which exudes addiction. It is a fine statement, but often overlooked for the more preferred and protracted statements of excuse or whimsical reason, which just color the story and adds more to the pride than to the reality of change that we seek.

We say this in kindness, to urge one to carefully prise apart the story of one's life in a way that is candid, and not more of the same. It is dangerous for a man to believe he was ever a 'good gambler' (an oxymoron in itself in regards to a game of chance) or that their spiritual journey was in any way improved because of the internment given to some narcotic stupor. If addiction is to end, it is to end. The very thoughts which praise it are continuing to it and therefore hazardous in the extreme.

Saying ultimately that we have been completely mistaken, completely wrong about something we have done, about who we have chosen to be and become, is the one and only way we can change. If you have pride infiltrating your recall of that past person, if you have one particle of self-congratulation where it is not due, then you will find it impossible to throw off those characteristics that contribute also to the very clear review needed for ongoing assessment down the track. 

Here we can find one of the blessings of old age. Many dear people are thoroughly prepared to pass into the spiritual worlds and become anew, after they have lost their sense of pride, competitiveness and superiority. For those who depart their lives still in this bind, it does clearly travel into the subsequent life and manifest very obviously. 

Pride is not to be confused with an egoic strength. The individual who is strong in their selfhood knows that our true being lives in the future and that we must make ourselves daily into what we are. We can hope and pray that our Father will be proud of us, but even in this, it is something which is not merely a given, but a striven; and that our own true holy splendor is shared with the family of Man, so that every step to self-betterment brings glory to all as well as ourselves....









Spirit as Sculptor of the Human Organism. Lecture 3 of 16



 


Lecture 1 of 3
Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland, October 20, 1922



When we consider man from the anthroposophical point of view, as we have done before, we first have to distinguish in him the physical organism. We have this physical organism penetrated by the etheric organism, and with this system which is formed by physical and etheric organism we have joined the astral organism and the ego. From the way that man goes into the sleeping state and from there over again into the waking state, we see that on one side the physical and etheric organism are connected more closely and on the other side ego and astral organism. Though in waking state these four members are united, yet in sleep they are separated, so that on one side ego and astral body, so to speak, hold together, and on the other side physical and etheric organism. So that the astral and etheric organism do not unite as strongly as, for example, ego and astral organism, or physical and etheric organism.

If we want to consider these things in detail, we have to put them before our soul once more in their effectiveness. Now, I would like to start with something concrete. What does it mean: man sees the surrounding world? If, for once, we look merely on the factual act, it means that something makes an impression on him. But if we have the whole human being in mind, we must ask: on what, in him, has the surrounding an effect?




For a superficial observation it might look as if the effect on the physical organism is that which comes about from seeing the surrounding. Yet it is not so. We do have, when we are seeing, the physical eye, (diagram, bright) but everything that goes on in the physical eye is only something mediating. In reality, what happens first is a play of processes in the ego and the astral organism. I will indicate this by mingling the eye with this (yellow diagram) as the ego (naturally, it then goes farther into the organism) and with this “red” as the astral organism. We have to be absolutely clear about this: what first comes into consideration in seeing, are the processes in the ego and in the astral organism.

You can acknowledge this immediately, if you observe your seeing not superficially, but in a more intimate way. You only have to call to your mind, if you can, while seeing somewhere a red color, distinguish yourself, in regard to your ego, from this red. You cannot do that. You are this red. You cannot distinguish yourself from the red. This red is something that fills your consciousness completely, you are nothing else than this red. You can realize this especially well, if you, let us say, imagine that this red is the only thing you see. You see a large surface. You first have to make it clear to yourself, while looking at this large red surface, that you are an ego. You have to separate first the ego. But, while looking at the large red surface, during this time, the red and the ego have flown together. And it is the same with the astral organism of man.

So, the first thing we have to look at, where we are seeing, are processes in the ego and the astral organism. With the eye, there comes into consideration (just see for once the complicated way in which the eye comes into consideration) that man has a kidney system,—I design it here schematically (diagram, dark blue). This kidney system belongs first of all to the physical organism of man and has in itself parts that are solid. You know, I have told you quite often: man does not have so extraordinarily much of the solid, the mineral, in himself: 90% of him is a column of water. Nevertheless, he has firm parts in himself. These solid parts really swim continuously in a liquid; in something watery. Therefore we have to look at the kidney system as the starting point of the watery, which is not only there in excretion of the kidney system, but goes through the whole organism; among others, it also goes up to the eye.




But this liquid that, as it were, radiates from the kidney system into the whole organism and also radiates into the eye, is by all means not a dead watery substance, but a living water. You would get a totally wrong idea of what the water (the watery) is in man, if you had the picture that within the living human organism, one might find water, as it runs in a brook (see diagram, blue). This is not the case. In the brook, we have dead water, in the human organism we have a living liquid. Not only the plasma-liquid is living, all that is liquid in the human body is living. And in this liquid there are finely dissolved those solid parts, mentioned before, which are carried forth as it were, on the waves of the watery, also up into the eyes. Two different things meet now in the eye, the etheric organism of man (blue) fills out the eye, which is the optic nerve of the eye; and what is streaming now into this liquid which is filled by the etheric organism,—that is the astral picture which arises in the human astral body (red). And this (yellow) is what arises through the ego. That is what streams into here, and also streams further on.

Therefore, there are coming together on one side in the human eye and also in the human optic nerve, the impression from outside, which had at first really been in the ego—and the astral body and then from inside the physical and etheric body—the physical born from the mineral parts of human nature and the etheric body on the liquid parts of the human body.

Now, it is so, that this does not stay with the eye. Instead, what the eye is mediating, radiates into the remaining organism. In seeing, we have to deal altogether with an encounter of those processes, which occur in an extraordinarily complicated way in the ego and astral body and those which come to meet these as physical and etheric bodies but as physical body in the mineral constituents and as etheric body on the waves of the living liquid.

What I have shown you here for the act of seeing, continuously occurs in the human organism. Continuously in the human organism the etheric body—I would like to say—under the impulse of the physical body and on the waves of the living water, meets the astral body with all that which outer impressions are under the impulse of the ego. On the ways and means, how these two currents meet our whole human constitution, our-whole inner situation depends, because they have to meet in the right way. What does that mean: to meet in the right way? Well, we have to deal again with something extraordinarily complicated. The head-organization of man is, at first so (see diagram 1) that the head is a plastic image of the forces which man had as a soul-spiritual being in pre-earthly life. The head is formed by plastic forces, it is also developed very early during embryonic life, and it retains really only the power to give form. If the human head did not have this power to give form (zu gestalten) it would be indeed only a dead body. This human head is a marvelous creation (Gebilde). It is a faithful impression of the physical, etheric, even of the astral and even of the ego; it is an image of their descent from super earthly worlds into earthly existence. The head forms itself truly as an image of those cosmic experiences, which man went through in pre-earthly existence and retains only the plastic formative forces. If we look at the child we see that all plastic formative forces start from the head. Man receives from his head radiating into the remaining organism that which gives the plastic configuration to his organs during his growth correspondingly.




Then, it is throughout only the plastic forming force, which goes out from the head. If something enters the head, as it happens in seeing, it is right away received in a way that a force is forming which wants to give shape. What is entering there the eye wants to take shape inside of man. Most of all it wants to form the nerves,'the nervous system, in a way that in the inner organism there will be, so to say, a copy of that which had been the outer impression (diagram). One can say in this direction (arrows from above downward) from the senses going inside, goes a forming force. This force wants to make man, as it were, into a statue. It is really so: everything we see, wants to make us into a statue in a certain fine way. Against this force—for example, from the kidney system (arrows from below to above) another force comes forth, which continuously dissolves. What wants to be formed there? Imagine, how that is. If I wanted to trace this down for you I would have to say: Coming from the eye a very fine picture wants to form; up to a physical shaping of forms this wants to go. There is always a tendency like that taking place, that salty substances which otherwise are dissolved stick together, that is, they want to become salt. So that we continuously have a tendency for form shaping. Now, from below there always arises a tendency to dissolve that again. So we have continuously a tendency in the human organism from without towards the inner that should become a statue, and from the inside continuously it is dissolved again.

This process that takes place through the encounter of the astral with the etheric, that comes to meet the astral on the waves of the watery, is of immense importance for human life, basically it really means the whole of human life.

Imagine, someone tells you something tonight. It is also an impression. It occurs differently in the way of the senses, than when you see a red plane, but it also is an impression. What has been communicated to you there, again wants to take form in you. If it can take on form, then it stays in you as remembrance. And if you happen to have a head which is very much inclined to salt (to pickle) right away all impressions, then you will have a marvelous memory. Like an automaton, you can always repeat everything that someone communicates to you. But with most people it is not that way, because with most people there is the strong tendency to dissolve this in turn; what, as radiation of the watery element in connection with the etheric body comes to meet the plastic formative forces, dissolves this again. In reality it is a warm current which continuously is dissolving. If one looks at this matter, something extraordinarily interesting will result.

If one wants to remember things as a human being—not as a human automaton—then one must not get such a rigid inner salt-formation right away, when someone tells us something, so one can always repeat (abtratschen—like a parakeet) the matter right away. There are such people, but they become dependent, they are not themselves any more, who remember things, but the things take hold of them, one becomes an automaton. If one wants to be an independent human being, the following procedures have to happen:

What someone is telling you, or what one reads is, at first, in the ego and the astral body and wants to penetrate now through the organization of the brain, of the head, first into the liquid, and then wants to consolidate,—to call forth a sort of mineral salt-like formation. But it is good when the inner current comes and extinguishes this presently, so that, at most, the impression penetrates the liquid (but it dissolves) and at present no rigid form can come about. Since, at present, it cannot become a firm shape, the matter remains in the astral body. Now one is asleep, the next night. There it goes out with the astral body and the ego. There it reinforces itself somewhat during the state of sleep. (See diagram 3, right) Then it comes back in again with awakening (left), and will possibly be extinguished again; and this happens as a rule three to four times. Only after the fourth, having been asleep, the extinguishing force will not be strong enough anymore, and then this is fixed so firmly, that this plastic formation (Gebilde), which cannot be dissolved in there anymore, becomes the basis for memory-representation, for recollection.

You will say: But I can remember those things also, that I have heard yesterday, when I did not sleep a couple of times afterwards. That is right, but this is not the question now. That you can remember those things which you have heard yesterday has its cause from the fact that the matter is still in the astral body, and perhaps makes, an impression into the ether body; but one does not forget really after one day, not after the second or the third. If the matter really is forgotten, then the inner dissolving force is still so strong after the fourth day, that the whole matter will be dissolved; then it is dissolved. Because, if it is, then there is so much strength existing, that it comes in a fourth time and can still be dissolved, then we forget the matter unrefutably.




You see, this is a very interesting fact. And this fact, which one can observe by the way of imagination, if one simply sees how things are remembered, leads us to something else. It leads us to the realization that the head of man is altogether a much slower fellow than the rest of man. When we talk about the threefoldness of man, and keep at first the rhythmic organization in the middle, on one side his nerve-sense organization, that is the organization of the head,—on the other side the metabolic-limb organism, then we can say: the head-organism in its whole development, in all its being and becoming takes up a much slower pace than the metabolic-limb organism. And it is so, that while this inner consolidating (diagram), this shape-giving, would take a second for any impression (it is not so, but I say it as an example) there would have been already four impacts of dissolving from the side of the kidney-system. This can be seen in the fact that our pulse beats four times, while we inhale once. The respiratory system works upward From the rhythmical system towards the head and imparts to it the four times slower beat. That which comes to expression through the four times faster beat of the blood circulation which brings about the dissolving factor. What expresses itself in the four times slower pace of the head has in its working all that which tends to solidify, which makes man into a statue.

It is indeed interesting that this encounter which I have described to you, that is, the surging upward of the thrusts coming from the kidney system and the downward beat of the thrusts, which derive from outer influence that indeed while the impression is happening, four times an attack of dissolving is made on one. And that is the reason that we have to sleep four times over it, so that the act of striking from outside will be sufficiently fastened.

All these things fit (gliedern sich) together in a marvelous way if one can enter truly into the inner configuration of the human organism. But this is still connected also with something else.

You see, in going upwards in man and coming to the head, we find a pace of life (lebenstempe) which is four times slower than the one we find when we go, for example, to the organs of digestion, or, let us say, to the kidney-system. The kidney system works very fast and brings its inner working to the etheric, which swims on the waves of the living water. If man closes his eyes and subdues his brain consciously and then looks through that which flows out from the kidney; these are the imaginations, which swim on the living water—in such a way that his own inner life presents itself to him in imaginations. This is an extraordinarily interesting formation (Gebilde). If there is here (see diagram 4) the kidney system, then from the kidney system the living water flows towards the whole organism. What is excreted there, is only the superfluous, which goes to the outside through the relatively solid influx; but at the same time, this living water, which is permeated by the etheric organism goes also towards the whole organism. But, when the kidney is sick, and because of the sick kidney a radiation which is too strong takes place, then all kinds of images will form in there and the well-known subjective phenomena will come about, that people with sick kidneys will show. What is working there, what basically is a thrust pulsated through by inner body warmth, what then meets with that which comes from the outside wanting to become a form, this works four times faster than what comes from the outside towards the inner. This shows itself again in certain periods of our life in so far as these periods are regarded as coming about from the etheric organism, which I have drawn here this way. We must speak of seven year periods as you know; of the change of teeth, of puberty and so on. But against these periodical rhythmic processes, which go on from seven to seven years, something coming from the head is working, that wants to slow down these processes, because the head is going at a much slower pace. The head arrives at the end of the 28th year only where the main organism of man is at the end of the seventh year. This is a very important secret of human individual development.

On the outside, it expresses itself only through the fact that we can call ourselves completely grown up inwardly and outwardly in the late twenties. Everything that comes from the head completes itself really only at this time. The head is in reality only seven years old at 28. So, this is something, which one has therefore in the entire being of man. As one has on one side respiration and blood circulation—how blood circulation is in relation to respiration—the same way in life, in the whole becoming of life, the processes of the head are in relation to the processes, which proceed from the digestive system, altogether form the metabolic limb system. That also has one to the other the beat, of one to four. This is of great importance for life. It means, for example, that everything we bring to a child in education or instruction between the seventh and 14th years lives only in the head very slowly and has come to an end there, so that it is caught up in the head up to the 35th year; only up to the 35th year of life its vibrations in the head have completely come to an end. Four times seven years come into consideration. (The four times seven year periods are repeated from the seventh year on). Then at 35 only, the head has really caught up.

This throws an extraordinarily important light on a right method of education and teaching. It shows you, that teaching and education must be arranged in a way that it lasts long enough. You can, if you look only out for that which the child takes up from the seventh year to the 14th year, and which occupies him and what he comprehends, teach the child what he wants to grasp at the present moment. But these processes in the metabolic-limb system of man which are first the physical carrier of what has been grasped, leave after seven years. Now something must remain, even when matter has left; must be taken up by the head, must last up to the 21st year. Then again, the physical matter is gone, it must last up to the 28th year, then again matter is gone and it still must last until the 35th year. Now it finally is entirely in the ether body and from there it is not so easily ousted because the ether body is not always excreted in the same way.

You see how in life things work into each other, that we truly have to know that, being 28 years old, we would be only seven years in reality, if we were a head being only. If we are 35 years old, we would be in fact only 14 years if we were only head. We are continuously attacked in our quiet development by the metabolic limb system in regard to what the head of man really wants. Therefore, if one wants to understand man one must not regard the substantial constitution of the rest of the body. Instead one has to see the interplay between the metabolic? limb system and the head organism in their rhythm. But this enters into every single organ.





Take the eye. On one side you have the optic nerve, on the other side are blood vessels (diagram 5, red). Since the blood vessels spread,you have the metabolic-limb system in the eye. Through the optic nerve being there, you have the sense? nerve organism in the eye. Now look into the eye. There exists a relation of one to four among the processes in the optic nerve, the retina and the thrust of, the blood beat. Inside the eye things are continuously vibrating into each other, whose rhythms are related as one to four. On this vibrating into each other of two different rhythms the inner processes of the eye are based. What takes place in the arterial skin of the eye wants to dissolve; already in the eye, what wants to consolidate in the nerve of the eye. The nerve of the eye wants to create continuously forms with contours in the eye. The arterial skin with the blood flowing there wants to dissolve this continuously.






It is not as coarse as one generally presents it; instead it is so that the arteries of the blood have their own course and the veins join in again (diagram red), so that not one also loins the other. In the eye especially, the artery runs so that the blood flows out so to say, and is there only then absorbed in turn by the vein, so that a slight flowing off and a reabsorbtion comes about in the eye.

It is an entirely false and coarse view, if one believes that arterial blood immediately goes over there into the veinous blood. It is not so. A fine flowing out and again an absorbtion takes place. In what takes place as the outflowing vibrates the rhythm of circulation and in the nerve adjacent to it, the rhythm of the respiration vibrates really in these two rhythms which hit into each other. Imagine these two rhythms were alike, then we would not see.

Imagine you run along next to a wagon. If you run just as fast as the wagon, you will not notice the wagon. But when you walk four times slower and yet hold the wagon, then you will notice the pull. The wagon will go on and you will have to hold back if you want to slow it down. And so it is inside the eye. That is the function of the optic nerve which wants to hold back the rhythm which is four times faster. In the arresting is formed what then is perception, which appears as perception of sight, just as you notice the wagon if you run times slower; if you run in the same speed you will not feel it.

And you yourself, how do you experience yourself as an ego? You experience yourself because your head runs four times slower than the rest of your organism. That is the inner sensing of one's self, the inner perception of one's self, the running after the tempo of the limb-metabolic organism with what is function of the head.

Numberless cases of illnesses in people are based on the following; a certain measure of balance exists for every organism between four and one. One can always say: according to the way a person is orgainized a certain measure of balance is there. Of course, it never is exactly one to four, but there are all kinds of possible conditions; in this way people are individualized. But for every human individuality a certain relationship exists. If that is disturbed and if conditions would arise, by which the relation is then not one to four, but one to 4 1/7 the dissolving force then works too strongly, then the person cannot become a statue sufficiently. You only have to remember certain forms of illness, where man dissolves too much in himself, and you have the type of such kind of illness.

The other condition can come about just as well. Then those phenomena appear, which present cramp-like conditions. When the astral forces vibrate too fast through the etheric and physical organism, when the astral forces quiver through too fast and do not approach slowly enough, the cramp-like phenomena come about.

For example, take the ordinary children's cramps. These common cramps are based on nothing else than on the necessity that with the child the astral organism and the ego have to permeate first the etheric and physical organism in the right way. Now imagine, the astral organism and the ego which vibrate then into the limb-metabolic man, are vibrating too fast. The other part of man cannot take that right away. If it vibrates in the right way then you have, for example a part of physical and etheric man, which have to be permeated by astral and ego-man so that it gets slowly permeated. I would like to say:: every current of the astral force seizes always in the right way a droplet of living water, through which the etheric flows. It adapts to each other, if the right tempo is in it. But if that vibrates in too fast (see drawing 6, red, light), then the astral bursts through the etheric and with that also through the living water, cramp-like conditions come about as can especially appear in children's cramps, because here the right rhythm must assert itself first in the entering of this streaming in. (red, blue drawing 7)

This has a far reaching meaning. It has for example, the meaning that a very bad form of illness, which causes much headache today, finds its explanation here at least: namely that the right beat together is disturbed in a special way. Such an illness for example, is the bitterly bad illness of polio, which can be explained this way, though the healing is not found at the same time, because conditions lying farther back have caused that things are not tuned in together.

Altogether it is possible only to look into the human organism if one can take into consideration such conditions seriously if one knows that in that, which is outside at night of one's physical and ether body, the impulses are lying for a much slower activity of life than in that part which remains back at night, if one knows that man sleeps not only in an abstract way with his ego and astral body outside of his physical and etheric body. At sleep man is nearly all limb-metabolic man up into the brain, because everything proceeds then under the influence of metabolic-man.

Now, inwardly man is in regard to what underlies the slow rhythm exposed to a high degree to the ahrimanic forces, in regard to all, that corresponds to the fast rhythm his exposure very strong to the luciferic forces. Therefore, you could also say if you might look once at the wooden carved group; here everything ahrimanic has the tendency towards the slow rhythm, which hardens the forms and makes them pointed and rigid. In all that is luciferic, everything is worked towards the fast rhythms which makes everything round, because it runs off faster and therefore rounds off everything; it does not make things rigid, but wave-like. You can see it at the plastic forms there, that one deals with a beating together in the relation of three or four to one.

These matters are important as well for the understanding of the healthy human organism as they are important for the understanding of the sick human organism. One will see how one will have need in science of this completion which can come only from the side of what is called here anthroposophical spiritual science. I will continue these considerations intending to close them off in a way that on one side out of man history, and on the other hand out of history man will come to meet us.






Hermes [Thoth]

  



Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, February 16, 1911:

WHILE it is of vital importance in spiritual science to study the whole spiritual life of humanity as it advances from one epoch to another, rising slowly to the surface from hidden depths, it is perhaps of still greater significance to study the culture and civilization of ancient Egypt. We realize this the more strongly when we try to penetrate deeply into this ancient Egyptian spiritual life.
The echoes sounding to us across the ages seem at first to be as full of mystery as the Sphinx itself, standing there as a memorial of the civilization of ancient Egypt. The mystery grows deeper still when we find that even external research has recently been compelled to go back to ages more and more remote in order to explain the culture of later Egyptian times of which certain physical evidence is still available. According to external research the prime of Egyptian culture must be dated at least seven thousand years before our era, perhaps even earlier still. This may be one reason for the great interest evinced today in Egyptian culture, but another is that man of the present day feels, whether he likes it or not, that there is a mysterious connection between this ancient civilization and his own aims and purposes. It is not without significance that Kepler, at the very dawn of the development of modern natural science, should have spoken of the achievements of science up to that time and his own contributions to knowledge, in words like these: “When I have endeavored to unravel some of the mysteries of the course of the planets around the Sun, I have tried to peer into the secrets of cosmic space. And it has often seemed to me as though I have actually penetrated to the mysterious sanctuaries of the Egyptians and brought their holy vessels into our modern age. I have felt then that the significance of my message to the world will only be understood in the future.” So strongly did one of the greatest minds of modern times feel himself related to ancient Egyptian culture that he could only express the keynote of his knowledge by speaking of it as a renewal of the wisdom given to the disciples in the secret sanctuaries and places of learning in ancient Egypt, although it was clothed, naturally, in different words. It must therefore be of great interest to us to understand how these ancient Egyptians themselves conceived of their whole culture, of their whole nature as human beings.
A certain very significant incident has been preserved by Greek tradition. It indicates not only what the Egyptians themselves felt but the way in which Egyptian culture was regarded by the civilized world in general in olden times. An Egyptian sage once said to Solon: “You Greeks are still children. All you know is the outcome of your own contemplation and vision; you have no ancient traditions, no wisdom hoary with age, and children you will remain.” Wisdom hoary with age— the significance of this expression only dawns upon us when the light of spiritual science is cast upon the whole mode and nature of Egyptian thought and feeling.
In the successive epochs different forms of consciousness have unfolded in humanity. Our consciousness today, the way in which we grasp the outer world by means of our senses and the combining of intellect and reason, in short, our scientific mode of thought, has not always been in existence; consciousness has ever been subject to the laws of evolution. Not only is the external world of form subject to these laws but man's qualities of soul and consciousness also. This is an indication of the fact that we can only understand ancient centers of culture if we begin by admitting what spiritual science tells us, namely, that in olden times, in the place of our present intellectual consciousness, men possessed a clairvoyant consciousness unlike our waking consciousness and yet unlike the complete absence of consciousness during sleep. Traces of this consciousness of prehistoric man are now only retained atavistically as a waning heritage, in the picture world of dreams. But whereas our dreams are chaotic and meaningless in ordinary life, the picture consciousness of the ancients was “clairvoyant,” although, indeed, of a hazy, dreamlike nature. The pictures referred not to the physical world but to the spiritual world behind. In reality, all clairvoyant consciousness, that of prehistoric man as well as the clairvoyance acquired by true discipline in this age, works in pictures and not in the concepts and ideas of outer physical consciousness. The pictures must be related to the spiritual realities lying behind the sense-realities of the physical world.
The marvelous pictures that have come down to us in the mythologies are not merely fantastic concepts of Nature, as materialistic consciousness imagines today. On the contrary, these pictures indicate an actual vision of the spiritual world. If we study the old mythologies and legends — not with the materialistic consciousness of today, but with a true feeling for man's spiritual achievements — the strange stories related in the mythologies will reveal a wonderful connection with cosmic laws higher than our laws of physics, chemistry, and biology. A note of spiritual reality permeates the old mythologies and religious systems.
Now, it must be clearly understood that the several peoples built up this world of pictures in different ways, according to their own nature, temperament, and race. These picture-worlds represented, to the several peoples, the higher forces underlying the purely external forces of Nature. We must also realize that in the course of evolution there have been many transitional stages between the old clairvoyant consciousness and the objective consciousness of modern man. The ancient clairvoyance grew dim and gradually faded away. Clairvoyant powers decreased little by little in the different peoples, and the pictures arising before the souls of those still able to gaze into the spiritual world contained less and less of spiritual force. The higher worlds gradually closed their doors until only the lowest stages of spiritual activity were perceptible to lower clairvoyance. Then, so far as humanity in general was concerned, the old clairvoyance died out entirely. Waking consciousness was limited to the physical world around and to ideas and conceptions of physical phenomena. Thus arose our modern science. The old clairvoyant powers gradually faded as the development of present-day consciousness proceeded — although of course the process varied in the different peoples.
All that we know from olden times, even what external documents have told us in recent Egyptian research (if we understand aright), proves the truth of what spiritual science asserts, namely, that the mission of the ancient Egyptian people was to look back to still earlier times when their leading individualities were able, with their wonderful powers of clairvoyance, to gaze into the spiritual worlds. In the people of Egypt a somewhat feebler clairvoyant power was preserved on into relatively late times. The later Egyptians — down to the last millennia before the Christian era — knew from actual experience of another mode of vision besides that of ordinary daily life, a vision enabling man to see into the spiritual world. But they only knew the lowest images of the realm of which this vision made them aware, and they looked back to olden times when their priest-sages were able, in the golden prime of Egyptian civilization, to gaze into the very depths of the spiritual world.
The mysteries of the spiritual worlds were preserved, more especially by the earlier Egyptians, with great piety and reverence for thousands of years. Those who lived in the later Egyptian epoch could say: “Even now we can still perceive a lower spiritual world; vision of the spiritual world is possible and to doubt it would be as senseless as to doubt that our eyes can behold the external world.” These later Egyptians had, it is true, only a dim perception of the spiritual worlds, but they felt that there had once been an age when their predecessors had gazed more deeply into all that lies behind the physical world. And this old wisdom-teaching — of which the Egyptian sage spoke to Solon — was preserved in wonderful scripts in the temples and on the columns, bearing witness to deep and all-embracing clairvoyant powers in days of hoary antiquity. The being to whom the Egyptians looked up as the embodiment of the primal glory of that old clairvoyant wisdom was called by the name of HERMES. And when in later times a man came forth with a message which was to renew the ancient wisdom, he also (according to the custom of Egyptian sages) called himself “Hermes,” and his disciples, believing that he had revived the primeval wisdom of the old Hermes, called this first being, “the Thrice-Greatest,” “Hermes Trismegistos.” (It was of course, only the Greeks who called him Hermes; among the Egyptians he was known as Thoth). We can only understand this primeval being if we realize what the Egyptians, under the influence of the later teachings of Hermes or Thoth, took to be the true Mysteries of the Cosmos.
Such beliefs as have been handed down to us from Egyptian times by external evidence seem very strange. Various gods, of whom the most important are Osiris and Isis, are represented in forms not wholly human; we often find human bodies and animals heads, or an amalgamation of human and animal forms. Wonderful legends of this world of gods have come down to us and there is something very remarkable in the Egyptian animal-worship, the worship of the cat and so forth. Certain animals were even recognized as being sacred animals; deep veneration was paid to them, for they were regarded as the embodiment of higher beings. It is even said that cries of lamentations were uttered at the death of cats. Again, we are told that if an Egyptian saw a dead animal, he dared not approach for fear of being accused of having killed it, in which case he would have been severely punished. It is said too that in the age when Egypt was subject to Rome, any Roman who had killed a cat was in danger of death, because his act aroused such fury among the Egyptians. This animal-worship is an enigma in the sphere of Egyptian thought and feeling. And again — what a curious impression is made on modern man by the pyramids, standing on their four-cornered bases, with their triangular sides! Strange indeed are the Sphinxes and everything that is being continually excavated and brought to our knowledge from the depths of Egyptian civilization. And now we will ask ourselves: of what nature was the life of feeling and ideas among the ancient Egyptians? What had Hermes taught them? How did they acquire all these strange conceptions?
We must realize that all these legends, especially the more significant, contained a deeper wisdom, and their purpose was to convey, in picture form, knowledge of definite laws of spiritual life, laws higher than those of external Nature. The Egyptian legend of the god Osiris and the goddess Isis is a case in point. According to the legend, Osiris was a being who lived in dim primeval times in regions later inhabited by human beings. Osiris is represented in the legend as the benefactor of humanity under whose wise guidance Hermes or Thoth gave the Egyptians their ancient culture. Osiris had an enemy, for whom the Greek name was Typhon. Typhon pursued Osiris, killed him, dismembered the body, hid it in a coffin, and threw it into the sea. Isis, the sister and spouse of Osiris, sought unceasingly for him who had been torn from her by Typhon or Seth, and when at length she found the fragments of his dismembered body, she buried them in different places in the land where temples were then erected. Then, after the death of Osiris, Isis gave birth to Horus. A spiritual ray descended upon Isis from Osiris, who had meanwhile passed into another world. The mission of Horus was to conquer Typhon and, in a certain sense, to re-establish the dominion of a life which, proceeding from Osiris himself, was again to stream into mankind.
Such a legend must not be analyzed merely in the sense of allegory or symbol. It should be used as a means whereby we are led into the whole world of feeling and perception of the old Egyptians; for only so can our understanding of such figures as Osiris and Isis become really living. It is not right to state crudely that Osiris is the Sun, Isis the Moon, and so forth. An astronomical interpretation of this kind leads men to believe that the legend only contains symbolical images of certain occurrences in the heavens. This is not the case. Rather must we go back to the feelings living in the ancient Egyptians and envisage the nature of their upturned gaze to supersensible, invisible powers underlying the world of sense, and typified in the figures of Osiris and Isis.
Let us try to conceive what the names of Osiris and Isis conveyed to the ancient Egyptian. He said to himself: “Behind man there is a higher spiritual essence, which does not proceed from his material existence. This spiritual essence has ‘condensed' into material, human existence. The real evolution of man has proceeded from a more spiritual existence. When I look into my own soul I realize that I have a longing for the spiritual, a yearning toward the spiritual wellsprings of being from which I myself have descended. The forces from which I came forth are still living within me. My highest powers are inwardly related to these primordial Osiris-powers within me, bearing witness that I was once a supersensible being dwelling in other worlds, in worlds of spirit. And although this being of spirit has but a dim and instinctive life, although it had perforce to be clothed with the physical body and its organs in order to perceive the physical world, yet in days gone by this being lived a purely spiritual existence.”
According to the ancient Egyptian conception, human evolution must be regarded as a duality, consisting of the Osiris-forces and the Isis-forces. “Osiris-Isis” — this was the duality. Let us consider our own being, as we now exist. The idea of a triangle, for instance, must have been preceded by active thinking. After having been active in soul, we may then be passive as regards the result of our thinking and conceptual activity. Ultimately we perceive in our soul the form that has been built up by our active thinking. Now, the act of thinking bears the same relation to the final thought, the conceptual act to the final concept, the active principle to the product of the active principle there before us, as Osiris to Isis. In short, activity per se is a Father-Principle, a masculine principle. The Osiris-Principle is male, active — filling the soul with thoughts and feelings. The old Egyptian said to himself: “Man as he stands here today has within him substances living in his blood or forming his bones, but these substances were not always within his blood or bones, they were spread over cosmic space. This physical body is a combination of substances which have now passed into the human form, whereas they once filled the cosmos. The same is true of the powers of thought. The active principle of thought has become the power of ideation in man. Just as the substances in the blood now live in the human form but were formerly spread over cosmic space — so the Osiris-power now living within us as the active principle of thought was once spread over the spiritual universe as the Osiris-power that permeates and weaves in the cosmos, pouring into human beings, just as in the case of the substances composing blood and bones in the bodily nature of man. Into the thoughts and ideas there flow, from out of the cosmos, the living and weaving Isis-Powers.” — This is how we must envisage the attitude of soul in the ancient Egyptians toward Osiris and Isis.
This old consciousness could find no expression for such ideas in the world surrounding physical existence on Earth; for everything here was known to be of the world of space and it could offer no outer image of the supersensible world. And so, in search of some form of language, some kind of script in which to clothe such conceptions as “the Osiris-Power is active within me” — men reached out to the script placed by heavenly bodies in cosmic space. They said: “The supersensible power of Osiris may be envisaged as the active power of light proceeding from the Sun, living and moving through space. Isis may be seen in the sunlight reflected by the dark Moon — just as the soul is dark when the active principle of thought does not enter. The Moon awaits the light of the Sun in order to reflect it, even as the soul awaits the Osiris-Power to reflect it back as Isis-Power.” But when the old Egyptian said — “The Sun and Moon out there show me how I can best picture the activities of my soul” — he knew at the same time: there is no mere chance connection between the Sun with its outpouring light and the reflecting Moon, but this radiating and reflected light has some inner connection with the supersensible forces I feel within my soul.
Although we would not describe a clock as something that drives its hands with the help of little demons, but as a mechanical contrivance, we realize, nevertheless, that the thought of the inventor, the thought proceeding from the soul of a human being, is at the back of the construction of the clock. Something spiritual, therefore, is responsible for its mechanism. Just as the hands of a clock are interrelated and dependent upon each other, so did the Sun and Moon appear to the Egyptians as the expressions of a mighty cosmic clock. When we gaze at this mighty clock in space, it seems at first sight to be subject to mechanical laws, yet in the last resort it is subject to those laws which a man felt in his soul when he spoke of the powers of Osiris and Isis. The old Egyptian did not merely say: “Sun and Moon are images of the relation between Osiris and Isis.” He also felt: All that lives in my being was once subject to the mysterious relationship between light and the Sun and Moon.
Again, a relation similar to that between Osiris and Isis and the Sun and Moon was seen to exist between the stars and planets and the other gods. The Egyptians saw in the positions of the heavenly bodies images of their own supersensible life, or of traditional experiences of ancient seers, but in these expressions of the mighty cosmic clock they saw a portrayal of forces within their own souls. Thus the great cosmic clock, with the movements of its stars and the relation of its moving stars to the fixed stars, was a revelation of underlying spiritual, supersensible forces — forces which had determined the positions of all the stars and had created, in a cosmic script, an expression of supersensible activities.
Such were the feelings in regard to this higher world, feelings which had been handed down to the Egyptians by their traditions of ancient clairvoyance. They knew of the existence of this spiritual world because they themselves still possessed the last remnants of ancient clairvoyance. But now they said: “We have descended from this spiritual world and we are now placed in a world of matter manifesting in physical phenomena, physical processes. We come from the world of Osiris and Isis: the highest qualities within us, the qualities which make us strive toward higher perfection, came forth from Osiris and Isis. These qualities live invisibly within us as energy and power. The physical part of man's being is derived from external circumstances, is taken from the outer world. This physical part of man is but the vesture of Osiris-Isis.”
Now, this conception of primeval wisdom was the one dominating feeling in the soul of the old Egyptian; it filled his whole life of soul. A man may imbue his soul with abstract ideas and yet remain untouched in his moral and ethical life; his sense of destiny or his happiness may be quite unaffected. Abstract and mathematical concepts of natural science may be so deeply absorbed that a man can discuss electricity and other forces of a similar nature without feeling any need to concern himself at the same time with problems of destiny. Now, the feeling of kinship with Osiris and Isis, the vision of the spiritual world existing in ancient Egypt — these things could not be conceived of apart from thoughts of destiny, happiness, and moral impulses. For the ancient Egyptian said to himself: “I bear a higher Self within me, but since I have entered into a physical body this higher Self withdraws to the background and is at first not wholly manifest. Osiris and Isis are the primal source of my being; but Osiris and Isis belong to the archetypal worlds, to the golden, holy ages of long ago. The Osiris-Isis nature is now subject to the forces which have condensed outer physical substances into man's body. Osiris and Isis are fettered within the corruptible body, and this body is subject to decay, even as the outer forces of Nature.”
The legend of Osiris and Isis must thus be interpreted in terms of the inner life. Osiris, the higher power in man, spread over cosmic space, is overcome by forces which are subject to destruction in the realm of human nature. The Osiris-power living in man is fettered by Typhon — fettered within a form that is the “coffin” of the spiritual nature of man. Into this coffin the Osiris-nature in man disappears and is invisible to the outer world. The mysterious Isis-nature remains, in order that in future ages, after it has been permeated by the power of the intellect, it may again reach the wellsprings of man's being. Thus there lives in man a hidden quality which strives to bring Osiris to life again. The Isis-power lives in the human soul in order gradually to lead man back again to Osiris. So long as man remains a physical being he cannot of course be separated from the world of matter, yet it is the Isis-power which enables him, while he remains a physical being in the outer physical world, to maintain in his inner being a striving toward a higher ego. And according to every true thinker, this higher ego is there, deeply concealed in all the powers of man. This being — who is not the outer physical man but the man who has an unceasing urge to rise to the light of spirit, who is ever impelled by the hidden Isis-forces — appears as the earthly son of one who did not arise in the earthly world. He is the earthly son of Osiris, who remained in the spiritual worlds. This invisible being — the being who strives to reach the Higher Self  was known by the name of Horus, the posthumous son of Osiris.
Thus the old Egyptians looked up with a certain sadness to the Osiris-origin of man, but at the same time they gazed into their innermost being, saying: “The soul has retained something of the Isis-power, and this Isis-power gives birth to Horus, who has the urge to strive toward spiritual heights. In these heights man finds Osiris.” Man can attain to Osiris in a twofold way. The Egyptian said: “I came forth from Osiris, and to Osiris I shall again return. Osiris, my spiritual origin, is within me: Horus will lead me back to Osiris, his Father; but Osiris can only be attained in the spiritual world. He could not enter into the physical nature of man. In the physical nature of man he was vanquished by the Typhon-forces, which are subject to decay because they are forces of external Nature.”
Osiris can therefore only be reached along two paths. One is the path leading through the Portal of Death; the other is the path through the Portal leading not to physical death but to initiation. The Egyptian therefore said: When man passes through the Portal of Death and has passed the stages of preparation, he comes to Osiris. When he is freed from the sheaths of his earthly body in the spiritual world, the consciousness of his kinship with Osiris awakens within him. The dead man feels that in the spiritual world he may himself be called “Osiris.” And so, after death, everyone was an “Osiris.”
The other path to Osiris — the other path into the spiritual world — is through initiation. To the Egyptian this path was a means whereby man could learn to know the invisible, the supersensible, in human nature: Isis, or rather the Isis-power. In the knowledge gleaned from everyday life man does not penetrate to the depths of his soul, he does not reach the Isis-power. Yet there is a means whereby he can pierce through to this Isis-power, whereby he reaches the true ego and realizes that it is enveloped in physical matter. If we follow this path we reach the spiritual home of the ego. This, then, was the teaching of ancient Egypt: Man must descend into his own innermost being; there he first understands his physical nature — the expression of his ego. He must force his way through this physical nature. He beholds the outer world, the creation of spiritual, supersensible powers, in the three kingdoms of Nature: in the stones with their forms based on mathematical laws, in the plants with their life-filled forms which are the dwelling place of Divine Powers, and in the animals. But when he beholds Man he must penetrate through the outer form to the Isis-powers of the soul.
Part of the initiation into the Isis Mysteries, therefore, consisted in showing man how he was clothed in matter. The processes enacted when a man thus plunged into his own nature were practically the same as occur at death, but they were enacted in a different way. The aspirant had to pass in actual life through the Portal of Death, to learn of the transition from physical to super-physical vision, from the physical to the spiritual world — in short, the transition experienced in actual death. He had to follow this path of descent into his own inner being, to learn what can be experienced only there. And in this region he learned, in the first place, how the blood, the physical instrument of the ego, is formed from Nature. Now, the system of nerves is the physical instrument for the soul-activities of feeling, willing, and thinking, and the instrument of the ego is the blood. If a man would descend into his instruments — so thought the old Egyptians — he must descend into his physical-etheric sheaths, into the etheric qualities of soul. He must learn to be independent of the forces in his blood, upon which he otherwise depends, and, after having first freed himself from these forces, he must then enter into the marvelous processes of his blood. He must learn to know his higher nature in its physical aspect. This he can only do when he is able to contemplate himself as he contemplates an outer object. Now, man can only know an object as object if he himself is outside it; thus if he wishes to perceive himself, he must stand outside his own being. That is why initiation develops forces which enable the soul-powers to have real experiences without making use of physical instruments. The physical instruments are there objectively before man, just as after death his spiritual being looks down at his physical body.
And so the pupil in the Isis Mysteries was first taught the secrets of his own blood. He passed through an experience which may be described as an approach to the Threshold of Death. This was the first stage of initiation into the Isis Mysteries. The pupil had to behold his own blood, to behold himself as object, to plunge down into the sheath that is the instrument of his Isis-nature. In the sanctuaries of initiation he was led to two portals, where he was shown in picture form the processes taking place in his inner being. Two doors stood before him, one open, the other closed. These teachings, echoing down to us across the ages, harmonize most wonderfully with what man believes at the present day, although he now gives a materialistic interpretation to everything. The old seers of Egypt said: “When man is in the underworld he comes to two doors; through two doors he enters into his blood and his inner being.” The modern anatomist would speak of the two entrances lying beside the valves of the heart. If the pupil wished to penetrate into his body he would have to pass through the “open” door, for the “closed” door is there to prevent the bloodstream from taking a wrong path. These anatomical phenomena are material images of what the ancient sages experienced in clairvoyant form. The forms were of course not so exact as the structures confronting the modern anatomist, yet they represented what clairvoyant consciousness perceived when it gazed at the inner being of man from without.
The next stage of the Isis initiation may be described as follows: The pupil was led through the tests of Fire, Air, and Water — that is to say he learned to know the nature of the sheaths around his Isis-nature. He learned to know fire as it courses through his body, using the blood as its instrument; he learned to know how air enters the body in the form of oxygen; he learned to know his watery nature. Fire, Air, and Water — the warmth of the breath, the fluidity of the blood. And his knowledge of the sheaths of Fire, Air, and Water purified him until he finally attained to his Isis-nature. This again may be expressed by saying: Only when the pupil reached this stage did he feel that he had really “come to himself,” realizing his spiritual existence, no longer limited to the human faculties pertaining to the outer world but able to gaze into the spiritual world. In the outer world we can only see the physical Sun by day; at night it is hidden from us by matter. In the spiritual world, however, it is not so; in the spiritual world man beholds the spiritual powers at the very time the physical eyes are not functioning. In the Isis initiation it was said: When a man is purified he beholds the spiritual beings face to face; he can see the Sun at Midnight. That is to say, when darkness prevails, the spiritual life and the primal spiritual powers behind the Sun are visible to those initiated in the Isis Mysteries.
Such was the path of the soul to the Isis-powers, the path which might be traversed by those who while still living sought to energize their deepest forces of soul. There were still higher Mysteries — the true Osiris Mysteries. In these Mysteries man learned how through the Isis-power he might find himself one with the spiritual supersensible power whence he himself had come forth. — He knew Osiris and Osiris arose within his soul.
Now, when the old Egyptian wished to depict the relation between Isis and Osiris, he used a script drawn from the movements of the Sun and Moon in the heavens; he used the relationships of the other starry bodies to express the activities of the other spiritual powers. His script was drawn from the Zodiac in its condition of comparative rest, and from the planets moving across the constellations. In all the mysteries thus revealed, the ancient Egyptian saw a spiritual script. He knew: Nothing that is on the Earth can help me to express what man experiences if he goes forth to seek Osiris with the Isis-power within him. The starry constellations themselves must be the script.
Hermes, or Thoth, the mighty sage of antiquity, was revered by the Egyptians as having had the most profound insight into this relation of man to the cosmos. It was Hermes who expressed with the greatest sublimity the relation of the stars to these spiritual powers and to events in the cosmos. The language of Hermes was the language of the stars themselves. The relation of Osiris to Isis, for instance, could be explained exoterically to the people in the form of legends. Those who were preparing for initiation were taught in greater detail of the light proceeding from the Sun, its reflection by the Moon, and the marvelous processes enacted by the light passing from the new Moon through different phases to the full Moon. The primal forms of writing were derived from processes taking place in the heavens. Man little knows today that the consonants are images of the Zodiacal constellations, of a cosmic element that is at rest; the relations of the vowels to the consonants are images of the connections between the moving planets and the Zodiac. The earlier forms of the letters of the alphabet were in this sense derived from the heavens.
The ancient Egyptians felt that the great Hermes had himself been taught by the Powers of the Heavens and that he expressed, in his own being, the deepest soul life of man. All that was expressed in the deeds of man, even in daily pursuits where mathematical sciences, geometry (which Pythagoras afterwards learned from the Egyptians), land-surveying, and the like, were needed — all these things were traced back to the wisdom of Hermes who had seen the processes and phenomena of Earth to be reflections of heavenly activities as expressed in the stellar script. This script was brought down by Hermes into mathematics and geometry and he taught the Egyptians to find, in the stars, the counterpart of earthly happenings.
Now, we know that the whole life of Egypt was deeply bound up with the floods of the Nile, with the deposits swept down by the Nile from the mountainous lands in the South. And we can realize how necessary it was for the Egyptians to know in advance when these floods would occur. They reckoned time according to the stellar script in the heavens and when Sirius, the Dog Star, was visible in the sign of Cancer, they knew that the Sun would shortly enter this sign and that its rays would charm forth all that the flooding of the Nile bestowed upon the soil. They said: “Sirius is the Watcher; it is he who tell us what is to come.” And they looked up in gratitude to the Dog Star, to Sirius, for it was he who enabled them to cultivate their land aright and provide for the needs of their daily life. They looked back to ages of hoary antiquity when mankind had first been taught that the movement of the stars is the expression of the mighty cosmic timepiece.
Thus did the Egyptians take counsel from the stellar script. Hermes, or Thoth, was the great Spirit who, according to the oldest traditions, had given the original script of the Cosmic Wisdom, and with the inspiration flowing into him from the stars, had built up the alphabet, had taught men the principles of agriculture, geometry, land-surveying — in short all they needed for their physical life. Physical life, however, is but the body of a spiritual life, a cosmic spiritual life whence Hermes drew his inspiration. Thus all culture and civilization came to be bound up with the name of Hermes, and indeed the Egyptians felt themselves connected with him in a still more intimate sense.
Suppose, for example, that an Egyptian living in the year 1322 before our era were looking up to the Heavens. He would behold a certain constellation. The ancient Egyptians had a convenient method of reckoning time-conditions, convenient, that is to say, for purposes of calculation; twelve months of thirty days each, with five additional days — making three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. They had reckoned thus for centuries, for the method was really a mathematical convenience. After three hundred and sixty-five days a year had run its course. Now, as we know from astronomy, this leaves a quarter of one day unaccounted for; that is to say, the Egyptian year fell a quarter of a day too early. If you reckon it out, you will see that every successive year began a little earlier than the last. So month by month the year receded, until after a lapse of four times three hundred and sixty-five years it returned to the beginning. Thus it always happened after a period of one thousand, four hundred and sixty years that the heavenly relationships were readjusted with the earthly calculation. In the course of one thousand, four hundred and sixty years the year receded through a complete cycle. If you reckon this back three times from the year 1322 before our era, you have the epoch to which the Egyptians ascribed their holy primal Wisdom. They said: “In those ancient times men possessed the very highest clairvoyance. Each of the great Solar Years denoted a stage in the waning of clairvoyant power. We are now living in the fourth stage. Our culture has reached a point where we have only traditions of the teaching of antiquity. But we look back through three great Cosmic Years to an age when the greatest of our sages taught his pupils and successors what we today possess — though in much changed form — in writing, mathematics, geometry, the science of land-surveying, and astronomy.” At the same time the old Egyptians said: “Our human calculations — which adhere to the convenient numbers of twelve times thirty plus five supplementary days — bear witness how the divine-spiritual world must correct our affairs, for our intellect has estranged us from Osiris and Isis. We cannot reckon the year accurately. But we look up to a hidden world where the Powers guiding the stars correct us.”
Thus even in their chronology the old Egyptians looked up, as it were, beyond the feeble quality of the intellect, to spiritual Beings and Powers living in hidden worlds, who in accordance with deeper laws, supervised, protected, and watched over all that man has to experience on Earth. And in Hermes, or Thoth, they revered the being whose inspiration flowed from these watchful Powers of Heaven. Hermes was not only a great teacher, but a being to whom the old Egyptians looked up with feelings of deepest gratitude and reverence, saying: “All that I possess comes from Thee! Thou wert there in days of old and lo! Thy blessings stream into the world for the healing of men through those who have been Thy messengers.” Thus both the original source of Power — Osiris — and Hermes, or Thoth — the Guardian of that Power — were not only known to the wisdom of the ancient Egyptians, but their souls were filled with a deep moral feeling, a feeling of reverence and gratitude. All external evidence shows that the wisdom of the Egyptians (especially in very ancient times, and later to a less and less degree) was permeated with religious feeling. All human knowledge was bound up with feelings of holy awe, all wisdom with piety, all science with religion. In the later Egyptian epoch this no longer appears in its purest form. For just as in the successive epochs it is the mission of the several peoples to express the spiritual in different forms, so do the several civilizations begin to fall into decadence when their prime has been reached. Most of what has been preserved from ancient Egyptian culture belongs to the period of decadence and one can only surmise what lies behind the marvelous pyramids, for instance, and the strange animal cults. The Egyptians knew: The age when wisdom itself was working was preceded by another, when all beings — not only man — descended from divine-spiritual heights. If we would understand the innermost nature of man we must not look at his outer form, but penetrate to his inner being. What we see externally are stages at which primordial creation has remained stationary; such stages are to be seen in the three kingdoms of Nature. The first stage is the world of the minerals and stones — the forms of which are expressed in the pyramids. The second stage is the world of plants, and the inner forces of this world are expressed in the lotus flower. The third stage is represented by the animal forms, strewn, as it were, along the path to man. Divine forces which have not attained to the human stage have poured and crystallized into the different animal forms. Such were the feelings of the old Egyptian when he beheld the retarded forces of the gods. He looked back to primeval ages when all creation sprang from Divine Powers. He felt that Divine Powers had remained at an earlier stage of development in the beings of the three lower kingdoms of Nature and had finally risen to human form in his own being. We must always be mindful of the feelings, the consciousness,of the old Egyptians, for then we shall realize that their wisdom had a moral effect in their souls. Their conception of the Divine world and supersensible forces gave rise to a relation to the animals, which only assumed a grotesque form when Egyptian culture entered upon its period of decline. The imperfections of later Egyptian culture were not there at the beginning when it was filled with spiritual revelation. We must not — as is so often done today — ascribe primitive and simple conditions to the early stages of civilizations. On the contrary, primitive conditions belong to periods of decadence which set in after the original spiritual treasures have been lost. Barbaric conditions are not to be regarded as the original states of civilization; they are in reality the result of the decadence of civilizations which have fallen from their spiritual prime.
Such a statement may be a cause of irritation to the science that describes all civilizations as having originated from old primitive conditions such as survive in savage tribes today. Primitive states of culture still in existence are to be regarded as stages of decadence; at the beginning of human life on Earth the early civilizations were directly inspired from the spiritual world by the Spiritual Beings standing behind external history. This is what we are told by spiritual science.
Again, it may be asked: Does the science of today, representing as it does the heights of modern culture, come into collision with this statement of spiritual science? I should like here to quote from a recent work by Alfred Jeremias, The Influence of Babylon on the Understanding of the Old Testament, which shows that outer research too has found its way back to an ancient culture permeated with sublime and far-reaching conceptions and that the so-called barbaric civilizations must be regarded as the outcome of decadence. This point is clearly made in the book:
The oldest records, as indeed the whole cultural life of the Euphratean civilizations, postulate the existence of scientific and at the same time religious conceptions not only in the secret lore of the temples but according to which the State organization was regulated, justice declared, property administered and protected. The further back we go into ancient times, the more do we find the domination of these conceptions; only when the ancient Euphratean culture enters on its period of decadence do other forces make themselves felt.
External science is here beginning to open up paths which can unite with what spiritual science has to introduce into modern civilization. If it advances along these paths it will gradually abandon the dead image of primitive conditions at the starting-point of human civilizations and will come instead to the Great Individualities. And they appear before us in all sublimity because it was their task to transmit to men who still possessed the power of clairvoyance, the greatest blessings in every branch of culture. And so we look back to mighty figures — to Zarathustra, to Hermes — who appear so sublime because they were the first to give the great spiritual impulses to mankind in those remote ages of which the sage spoke to Solon. Hermes stands there as a great Guide of mankind. As we contemplate these great Individualities, we feel a strengthening of our own powers. We realize that the Spirit not only lives in the cosmos but flows into cosmic deeds, into the evolution of man himself. Our own life is fortified, we have greater confidence in our own actions, our hopes and purposes are strengthened by the contemplation of these great Individualities. We who are born in after ages look up to them, seeking the fulfillment of our own existence in their mighty powers of soul, understanding our own actions in the light of the eternal Spirit pouring into humanity through them.