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Post-Atlantean epoch must strive to become conscious in the spiritual world, so to expand
his consciousness that it reaches into the spiritual world.
Spiritual Science is thus a fundamental factor in the evolution of the Fifth Post-Atlantean
epoch.
The Balance in the World and Man, Lucifer and Ahriman
Lecture II
IN the lecture on the Kalevala (see Note 1), I made a statement which you will probably
not have found easy to understand. You will remember, I spoke of a "being" that
stretches across Europe from west to east; and I spoke of it as having three limbs that
reach out in an easterly direction. I said that for the ancient Finnish folk these three limbs
were known as Wainamoinen, Ilmarinen, and Lemminkainen, and that they were what we
today, in our more materialistic language, call the gulfs of Riga, Finland and Bothnia.
You will probably have wondered how I could say that these gulfs had anything to do
with a being, when they are obviously nothing else than extensions of the surface of the
sea. There is no body; how then can it be possible to speak of a being?
I can well imagine that this difficulty might arise in your minds, and it is typical. For
again and again you will find that truths which come from the spiritual world lay
themselves open to the charge of being contradictory. The very fact that they do so is
significant and is quite as it should be; and the only way to arrive at a satisfactory
solution of the contradiction is in every case to make a still deeper study of the matter in
question. And this I want to do today in respect of certain problems in spiritual
knowledge. But first let me preface what I have to say with a few introductory words.
We will glance, to begin with, at some of the prejudices concerning the nature of man
that are prevalent in the materialistic thought of our time. Let us take one example.
Various physical processes are to be found in man, among others processes of the brain
and nervous system; and it is common knowledge that when these processes take place,
processes take place also in the soul. The conclusion is drawn that the processes in the
soul are no more than the expression of the physical processes. The materialist studies
what goes on in the body of the human being, finds there - or rather pre-supposes
hypothetically - delicate nerve-processes, and says: The thinking, feeling and willing
processes are in reality only accompanying phenomena of what is going on all the time as
physical processes. This view is quite commonly held today and it will undoubtedly
strike deeper and deeper root into the materialistic thinking of the near future. From the
point of view of logic it is about as clever as the following would be. - Suppose someone
walking along a road discovers tracks on it - here, parallel ruts, and here again, marks like
the soles of human feet. He thinks this over and says to himself: "The material of which
the road is made has undergone certain changes and influences, with the result that it has
in some places become packed together so as to form ruts, whilst at other places it has
been sucked downwards and we see on the surface what looks like the impress of a
human foot."
Such a conclusion is of course a crudely mistaken one, the truth being that a wagon has
passed and made the two ruts with the wheels, and a man has also been walking on the
road and made the other impressions with his feet. Not the nature of the soil, but the man
and the wagon are responsible for the tracks.
The case is no different with the processes that go on in our nervous system! Whenever
we think or feel or will, we are setting up processes that are of the nature of soul-and-
spirit. And so long as we live in the physical world, these processes are united with the
physical body, they leave their tracks in it - just as the wagon and the man leave their
tracks behind in the road. But these tracks in the body have no more to do with the
material of which the body is made than have the tracks in the road to do with the
materials of which the road is constructed. In reality, the processes that take place in the
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