If
anyone who has a background of Spiritual
Science, and has absorbed something of its teaching about the
evolution of the world, then goes on to study those tremendous
opening words of our Bible, an entirely new world should dawn upon
him.
There is probably no
account of human evolution so open to misinterpretation as this
record known as Genesis, the description of the creation of the world
in six or seven days. When the man of today calls to life in his
soul, in any language familiar to him, the words In the beginning
God created the heaven and the earth, they convey to him
scarcely a faint reflection of what lived in the soul of an ancient
Hebrew who allowed the words to work upon him. It is not in the least
a question of being able to replace the old words by modern ones; it
is much more important that we should have been prepared by
Anthroposophy to feel at least something of the mood which lived in
the heart and mind of the Hebrew pupil of old when he brought to life
within himself the words: B'reschit tiara elohim et haschamayim
w'et ha'arets.
[ 1 ]
A whole world lived while
such words were vibrating through his soul.
What was it like
— this inner world which lived in the soul of the pupil? We can
only compare it with what can take place in the soul of a man to whom
a seer has described the pictures he experienced on looking into the
spiritual world. For what in the last resort is Spiritual Science but
the outcome of seership, of the living intuitions which the seer
receives when, having freed himself from the conditions of
sense-perception and of the intellect bound up with the physical
body, he looks with spiritual organs into the spiritual worlds? If he
wishes to translate what he sees there into the language of the
physical world, he can only do so in pictures, but if his descriptive
powers suffice, he will do it in pictures which are able to awaken in
his hearers a mental image corresponding with what he himself sees in
the spiritual worlds. Thereby something comes into existence which
must not be mistaken for a description of things and events in the
physical sense-world; something comes into existence which we must
never forget belongs to an entirely different world — a world
which does indeed underlie and maintain the ordinary sense-world of
our ideas, impressions and perceptions, yet in no way coincides with
that world.
If we want to portray
the origin of this our sense-world, including the origin of man
himself, our ideas cannot be confined to that world itself. No
science equipped only with ideas borrowed from the world of the
senses can reach the origin of sense-existence. For sense-existence
is rooted in the supersensible, and although we can go a long way
back historically, or geologically, we must realise that, if we are
to reach to actual origins, there is a certain point in the far
distant past at which we must leave the field of the
sense-perceptible and penetrate into regions that can only be grasped
supersensibly. What we call Genesis does not begin with the
description of anything perceptible by the senses, anything which the
eye could see in the physical world. In the course of these lectures
we shall become thoroughly convinced that it would be quite wrong to
take the opening words of Genesis as referring to events which can be
seen with the outward eye. So long as one connects the words
“heaven and earth” with any residue of the sensuously
visible one has not reached the stage to which the first part of the
Genesis account points us back. Today there is practically no way of
obtaining light upon the world it describes except through Spiritual
Science. Through Spiritual Science we may indeed hope to approach the
mystery of the archetypal words with which the Bible opens, and to
get some inkling of their content.
Wherein lies their
peculiar secret? It lies in the fact that they are written in the
Hebrew tongue, a language which works upon the soul quite differently
from any modern language. Although the Hebrew of these early chapters
may not perhaps have the same effect today, at one time it did work
in such a way that when a letter was sounded it called up in the soul
a picture. Pictures arose in the soul of anyone who entered with
lively sympathy into the words, and allowed them to work upon him
— pictures harmoniously arranged, organic pictures, pictures
which may be compared with what the seer can still see today when he
rises from the sensible to the supersensible. The Hebrew language,
or, better said, the language of the first chapters of the Bible,
enabled the soul to call up imaginal pictures which were not wholly
unlike those that are presented to the seer when, freed from his
body, he is able to look into supersensible regions of existence.
In order to realise
in some measure the power of these archetypal words we must disregard
the pale and shadowy impressions which any modern language makes upon
the soul, and try to get some idea of the creative power inherent in
sound-sequences in this ancient tongue. It is of immense importance
that in the course of these lectures we too should seek to place
before our souls the very pictures which arose in the Hebrew pupil of
old when these sounds worked creatively in him. In fact we must find
a method of penetrating the primeval record entirely different from
those used by modern research.
I have now given you
an indication of our line of approach. We shall only slowly and
gradually learn to comprehend what lived in the ancient Hebrew sage
when he allowed those most powerful words to work upon him, words
which we do at least still possess. So our next task will be to free
ourselves as far as possible from the familiar, and from the ideas
and images of “heaven and earth,” of “Gods,”
of “creation,” of “in the beginning,” which
we have hitherto held. The more thoroughly we can do this the better
we shall be able to penetrate into the spirit of a document which
arose out of psychic conditions quite different from those of
today.
First of all we must
be quite clear as to the point of time in evolution we are speaking
of, when we deal with the opening words of the Bible. You know of
course that contemporary clairvoyant investigation makes it possible
to describe to some extent the origin and development of our earth
and of human existence. In my book
Occult Science,
I tried to describe the gradual growth of our earth as the planetary
scene of human existence, through the three preliminary stages of
Saturn, Sun and Moon.
[ 2 ]
Today you will have in mind, at least
in broad outline, what I described there. At what point then in the
spiritual scientific account should we place what draws near to our
souls in the mighty word B'reschit? Where does it belong?
If we look back for a
moment to ancient Saturn, we picture it as a cosmic body having as
yet nothing of the material existence to which we are accustomed. Of
all that we find in our own environment it has nothing but heat. No
air or water or solid earth is as yet to be found upon ancient
Saturn; even where it is densest, there is only fire — living,
weaving warmth. Then, to this living, weaving warmth, a kind of air
or gaseous element is added; and we have a true picture of the Sun
existence if we think of it as an interweaving, an interpenetration,
of a gaseous, airy element and a warmth element. Then comes the third
condition, which we call the Moon evolution. There the watery element
is added to the warmth and the air. There is as yet nothing of what
in our present earth we call solid. But the old Moon evolution has a
peculiar characteristic. It divides into two parts. If we look back
upon old Saturn, we see it as a single whole of weaving warmth; and
the old Sun we still see as a mingling of gaseous and warmth
elements. During the Moon existence there takes place this separation
into a part which is Sun and a part which retains the Moon nature. It
is only when we come to the fourth stage of our planetary evolution
that the earth element is added to the earlier warmth, gaseous and
watery elements. In order that this solid element could come into
existence, the division which had taken place previously during the
Moon evolution had first to repeat itself. Once again the sun had to
withdraw. Thus there is a certain moment in the evolution of our
planet when, out of the universal complication of fire and air and
water, the denser, more earthy element separates from the finer,
gaseous element of the sun; and it is only in this earthy element
that what we today call solid is able to form.
Let us concentrate on
this moment, when the sun withdraws from its former state of union
with the rest of the planet and begins to send its forces to the
earth from without. Let us bear in mind that this was what made it
possible, within the earth, for the solid element — what we
today call matter — to begin to condense. If we fix this moment
firmly in our minds we have the point of time at which Genesis, the
creation story, begins. This is what it is describing. We should not
associate with the opening words of Genesis the abstract, shadowy
idea we get when we say “In the beginning,” which is
something unspeakably poverty-stricken compared with what the ancient
Hebrew sage felt. If we would bring the sound B'reschit before our
souls in the right way, there must arise before us — in the
only way it can do so, in mental images — all that happened
through the severance of sun and earth, all that was to be found at
the actual moment when the separation into two had just taken place.
Furthermore we must be aware that throughout the whole of the Saturn,
Sun and Moon evolutions, spiritual Beings were its leaders and its
bearers; and that warmth, air, water are only the outer expressions,
the outer garments of spiritual Beings who are the reality. Thus when
we contemplate the condition which obtained at the moment of
separation of sun and earth, and picture it to ourselves in thoughts
full of material images, we must also be conscious that the
elementary “water,” “air,”
“fire,” which we have in our mind's eye, is still only
the means of expression for moving, weaving spirit which, during the
course of the preceding Saturn, Sun and Moon stages has advanced, has
progressed, and at the time now being described had reached a certain
stage in its evolution.
Let us place before
us the picture of an immense cosmic globe, composed of weaving
elements of water, air or gas and fire, a globe which splits apart
into a solar and a telluric element; but let us conceive too that
this elementary substance is only the expression of a spiritual. Let
us imagine that from this substantial habitation, woven of the
elements of water, air and heat, the countenances of spiritual
Beings, weaving within it, look out upon us, spiritual Beings who
reveal themselves in this element which we have had to represent to
ourselves through material images. Let us imagine that we have before
us spiritual Beings, turning their countenances towards us, as it
were, using their own soul-spiritual forces to organise cosmic bodies
with the help of warmth, air and water. Let us try to imagine this!
There we have a
picture of an elementary sheath, which, to give a very rough sensuous
image of it, we may perhaps liken to a snail-shell, but a shell woven
not of solid matter, like the snail's, but from the forest elements
of water, air and fire. Let us think of spirit, in the form of
countenances, within this sheath, gazing upon us, using this sheath
as a means of manifestation, a force of very revelation which, as it
were, pricks outward into manifestation from what lies hidden in the
supersensible.
Call up before your
souls this picture which I have just tried to paint for you, this
image of the living weaving of spirit in a kind of matter; imagine
too the inner soul-force which causes it to happen; concentrate for a
moment on this to the exclusion of all else, and you will then have
something approximating to what lived in an ancient Hebrew sage when
the sounds B'reschit penetrated his soul.
Bet
[ 3 ],
the first letter, called forth the weaving of the habitation in substance;
Resch
[ 3 ],
the second sound, summoned up the countenances of the spiritual Beings
who wove within this dwelling, and
Schin
[ 3 ],
the third sound, the prickly, stinging force which worked its way out
from within to manifestation.
Now the underlying
principle behind such a description is dawning upon us. And when we
have grasped that, we are able to appreciate something of the spirit
of this language; it had a creativeness of which the modern man with
his abstract speech has no inkling.
Now let us place
ourselves at the moment immediately preceding the physical
coagulation, the physical densification of our earth. Let us imagine
it as vividly as possible. We shall have to admit that in describing
what was taking place at that moment we cannot make use of any of the
ideas which we use today to describe processes in the external
sense-world. Hence you will see that it is utterly inadequate to
associate any external deed with the second word we meet in Genesis
— bara — however closely that deed might
resemble what we understand today as creation. We do not thus get
near to the meaning of that word. Where can we turn for help? The
word implies something which lies very near the boundary where the
sensible passes over directly into the supersensible, into pure
spirit. And anyone who wishes to grasp the meaning of the word bara,
which is usually translated “created” (In the
beginning God created ...), must in no wise associate it with any
productive activity which can be seen with physical eyes.
Take a look into your
own inner being! Imagine yourselves as having been asleep for a
while, then waking up, and, without opening your eyes to things
around you, calling up in your souls by inner activity certain
images. Bring home vividly to yourselves this inner activity, this
productive meditation, this cogitation, which calls forth a
soul-content from the depths of the soul as if by magic. If you like
you can use the word “excogitate” for this conjuring up
of a soul-content out of the depths into the field of consciousness;
think of this activity, which man can only perform with his mental
images, but think of it now as a real, cosmic, creative activity.
Instead of your own meditation, your own inward experience in
thinking, try to imagine cosmic thinking-then you have the content of
the second word of Genesis, bara. However spiritually you may think
it, you can only liken it to the thought-life you are able to bring
before yourselves in your own musing, you cannot get nearer to it
than that!
And now imagine that
during your musing two kinds of images come before your souls.
Suppose there is a man to whom on awakening two different kinds of
thought occur, a man who muses about two different kinds of thing.
Suppose that one kind of thought is the picture either of some
activity, or of some external thing or of some being; it does not
come about through external sight, through perception, but through
reflection, through the creative activity of his soul in the field of
his consciousness. Suppose that the second complex of ideas which
arises in this awakening man is a desire, something which the man's
whole disposition and constitution of soul can prompt him to will. We
have elements both of thought and of desire coming up in our souls
through inner reflection. Now imagine, instead of the human soul, the
Beings called in Genesis the Elohim, reflecting within themselves.
Instead of one human soul, think of a multiplicity of reflecting
spiritual Beings, who, however, in a similar way — save that
their musing is cosmic — call forth by reflection from within
themselves two complexes which might be compared with what I have
just been describing — a pure thought-element and an element of
desire. Thus instead of thinking of the musing' human soul, we think
of a group of cosmic Beings who awaken in themselves two complexes;
one of the nature of thought or ideation, that is, one which
manifests something, expresses itself outwardly, phenomenally; and
another of the nature of desire, which lives in inner movement, inner
stimulation, which is permeated with inner activity. Let us think of
these cosmic Beings, who are called in Genesis the Elohim, musing in
this way. The word bara, “created,” brings their
musing home to us. Then let us think that through this creative
musing two complexes arise, one tending towards external revelation,
external manifestation, and another consisting of an inward stimulus,
an inward life; then we have the two complexes which arose in the
soul of the ancient Hebrew sage when the words haschamayim
and ha'arets — represented for the modern man by
“heaven” and “earth” — sounded through
his soul. Let us try to forget the modern man's conception of
“heaven and earth.” Let us try to bring the two complexes
before the soul, the one which tends more to disclose itself, tends
to outward manifestation, is disposed to call forth some outside
effect; and the other complex, the complex of inner stimulation, of
something which would experience itself inwardly, something which
quickens itself inwardly; then we have what expresses the meaning of
the two words haschamayim and ha'arets.
As for the Elohim
themselves, what kind of Beings are they? In the course of
these lectures we shall learn to know them better, and to describe
them in terms of Spiritual Science; but for the present let us try to
reach in some measure the meaning of this archetypal word
“Elohim.” Whoever wishes to get an idea of what
lived in the soul of the ancient Hebrew sage when he used this word
should clearly understand that in those days there was a lively
comprehension of the fact that our earth evolution had a definite
meaning and a definite goal. What was this meaning and this goal?
Our earth evolution
can only have a meaning, if during its course something arises which
was not there before. A perpetual repetition of what was already
there would be a meaningless existence, and unless the Hebrew sage of
old had known that our earth, after having passed through its
preliminary stages, had to bring something new into existence, he
would have regarded its genesis as meaningless. Through the coming
into existence of the earth something new became possible, it became
possible for man to become man as we know him. In none of the earlier
stages of evolution was man present as the being he is today, the
being that he will more and more become in the future; that was not
possible in earlier stages. And those spiritual Beings who directed
the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions were of a different nature from
man — for the moment we will not enter into the question
whether they were higher or lower. Those Beings who wove in the
fiery, gaseous and watery stages of elementary existence, who wove a
Saturn, Sun and Moon existence, who at the beginning of earth
existence were weaving its fabric — how best do we come to know
them? ... How can we draw near to them?
We should have to go
into very many things to get anywhere near an understanding of these
Beings. To begin with, however, we can come to know one aspect of
them, and that will suffice to bring us at least one step nearer to
the potent meaning of the ancient Bible words. Let us consider those
Beings for a moment — the Beings who stood nearest to man at
the time when he was created from what had developed out of the
Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions. Let us ask those Beings what they
really wanted. Let us ask them what was their will, their purpose.
Then we shall be able to get at least some idea of their nature. They
had great ability; in the course of their evolution they had acquired
capacities in various directions. One of them could do this, another
that. But we understand the nature of these Beings best if we realise
that at the time we are now considering they were working as a group
towards a common goal; they were moved by a common aim. Although at a
higher level, it is as if a group of men, each with his own special
skill, were to co-operate today. Each of them can do something, and
now they say to each other: “You can do this, I can do that,
the third among us can do something else. We will unite our
activities to produce a work in common in which each of our
capacities can be used.” Let us then imagine such a group of
men, a group each of whom practises a different craft, but which is
united by a common aim. What they intend to bring into existence is
not yet there. The unit at which they are working lives to begin with
only as an aim. What is there is a multiplicity. The unit lives, to
begin with, only as an ideal. Now think of a group of spiritual
Beings who have passed through the evolutions of Saturn, Sun and
Moon, each one of whom has a specific ability, and who all at the
moment I have indicated make the decision: “We will combine our
activities for a common end, we will all work in the same
direction.” And the picture of this goal arose before each of
them. What was this goal? It was man, earthly man!
Thus earthly man
lived as the ultimate goal in a group of spiritual Beings who had
resolved to combine their several skills in order to arrive at
something which they themselves did not possess at all, something
which did not belong to them, but which they were able to achieve by
combined effort. If you accept all that I have described to you
— the elementary sheath, the cosmic, meditative spiritual
Beings working within it, the two complexes, one of desire quickening
inwardly, and another manifesting outwardly — and then ascribe
the common purpose I have just mentioned to those spiritual Beings
whose countenances gaze out of the elementary sheath, then you have
what lived in the heart of the Hebrew sage of old in the word
Elohim.
Now we have brought
before us in picture form what lives in these all-powerful archetypal
words. Then let us forget all that a man of today can think and feel
when he utters the words: In the beginning God created the heaven and
the earth. Bearing in mind all that I have told you today, try to put
this picture before you. There is the sphere in which fiery, gaseous
and watery elements weave. Within this active, weaving elementary
sphere a group of pondering spiritual Beings live. They are engaged
in productive pondering, their pondering is penetrated through and
through by their intention to direct their whole operation towards
the form of man. And the first-fruits of their musing is the idea of
something manifesting itself outwardly, announcing itself, and
something else inwardly active, inwardly animated.
“In the
elementary sheath the primeval Spirits pondered the outwardly
manifesting and the inwardly mobile.” Try to bring before
yourselves in these terms what is said in the first lines of the
Bible, then you will have a foundation for all that is to come before
our souls in the next few days as the true meaning of those
all-powerful archetypal words which contain such a sublime revelation
for mankind — the revelation of its own origin.
Notes:
1.
| | 
Diagram 1
|
2.
To avoid any ambiguity, capital letters will be used throughout this
book for the words Sun and Moon, when they refer to the planetary
evolutions preceding that of our earth.
3.
| | 
Diagram 2
|
Continued in the next issue of SCR
Thanks to the Rudolf Steiner Archive, where many more of Rudolf Steiner's works are found.
