physical luminescence of the
How do we get our most significant
ideas of the environment? Just by means of the visual percepts. You
would nearly lose nine tenths of that what you know if you cancel the
visual percepts. Because we have visual ideas today, wisdom can pour
somewhat in us. With our lunar ancestors this was different. From them
the light was emitted. The same was emitted from them that pours in
us as light effects today. One calls our earth the universe of love
in the mystic mythology because it is connected with forces of love.
The universe of wisdom on which the light played the same role as today
the warmth preceded this universe of love. The earth followed as a universe
of love the universe of wisdom. The inner light is connected with the
human will. The human being, who has certain desires, passions, sensations,
and emotions, provides his aura, his astral body with particular colour
shapes. These are subjected to the will in a broader sense. In those
days, in the lunar period, the whole human being was an expression of
will. The will flowed outwardly and came to the fore as that which shines.
Hence, our ancestors are
the sons of will if we call these human beings of the universe of wisdom
human beings. The children of love descended from the sons of will.
The light played a similar role in those days as today the heat on the
earth. One calls these luminous human beings within the luminous environment
also the sons of the twilight. It was an especially luminous human being
within the surrounding luminosity, an exchange of light took place as
we have an exchange of warmth today. As we have a feeling of cold if
it is cold one approximately had a feeling if it was darker all around
than in the own inside. The will was the basis of that because the will
basically found its expression in the whole surroundings. As today the
human being is creative by love, he was creative in those days using
his will. His will had an immediate influence on all surroundings. As
powerless the creating human being is before the physical things of
the outside world today because he has got to clearness in his consciousness
and thereby the other soul forces have become more imperfect , as powerful
the will was in those days. The human will had influence on the whole
physical surroundings. Because it strives and is the upward trend in
the development, this will strove for the higher. Thus that was caused,
immediately from the living nature, what separated the centre of the
heavenly body in two, so that at that time already a kind of invagination
took place. One centre became two centres in a more mental way. We see
this separation of the centres achieved in the later development in
the separation of the earth and the moon.
These are sketchy indications
I could give you. However, you will see that the matters coincide. Who
tries to think consistently and strictly can admit this from the start.
I myself might give a rebuttal as I have indicated it in the outset
concerning Eduard von Hartmann. Habitual ways of thinking are something
temporary. Who studies history of the Middle Ages, for example, not
only the external one, because it is a wrong picture which is given
to us, finds my explanations verified.
Goethe also says that it
is basically only the historians' own spirit, in which the times
are reflected. It is the task of theosophy to show the development in
the past to receive an idea of the great human future. I have quoted
Goethe, because he deeply looked into these mystic, mysterious connections
of the world development. He used a strange figure, the “old man
with the lamp” in his Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the
Beautiful Lily. The lamp can only shine where another light shines.
I have shown that as the incarnation of ancient wisdom. Now we come
to an even more profound significance. It becomes clear to us what Goethe
means with the light which spreads its light only where light is. Where
the gift of clairvoyance is developed again, the lamp develops its whole
magic force. There we get to that time when the human being bec