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An Outline of Occult Science by Rudolf Steiner

IV. THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORLD AND MAN

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In the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries after Christ, the era in which we are still living was being prepared in Europe. It was gradually to replace the fourth, or Greco-Roman civilization. It is the fifth post-Atlantean period. The races which, after many wanderings and varied fortunes, became the vehicles of this new civilization were descendants of those Atlanteans who had remained less affected than others by what had been going on meanwhile during the four preceding periods of civilization. They had not penetrated into the countries in which those respective civilizations took root. On the contrary, they had, in their way, handed on Atlantean forms of civilization. There were many among them who had retained in a high degree the inheritance of the ancient dim clairvoyance, the state described above as intermediate between sleeping and waking. Such people knew the spiritual world from their own experience, and could reveal to their fellow-men what takes place there. Thus there sprang up a great number of narratives of spiritual beings and events, and the national treasures of legends and sagas had their origin in spiritual experiences of this kind. For the dim clairvoyance lasted on, in many people, into times not far removed from the present. There were other people who, although they had lost clairvoyance, nevertheless developed the faculties they acquired for use in the physical sense-world in accordance with feelings and emotions which corresponded to clairvoyant experiences. And even the Atlantean oracles had their successors in the new civilization.

There were everywhere Mysteries, but in them that Mystery of Initiation was most cultivated, which leads to the unveiling of that part of the spirit-world which Ahriman keeps hidden. The spiritual powers existing behind the forces of nature were here revealed. In the mythologies of European nations are contained the remnants of what the Initiates of these Mysteries were able to disclose to men. It is true that these mythologies also contain the other kind of mystery, although in a more imperfect form than that possessed by the Southern and Eastern Mysteries. Superhuman beings were also known in Europe, but they were seen to be in perpetual conflict with the associates of Lucifer. And the Light-God too was proclaimed, but in such a form that it was doubtful whether he would overcome Lucifer. On the other hand, these Mysteries were illuminated by the figure of the coming Christ. It was announced of Him that His kingdom would replace that of the other Light-God.(25)

From such influences as these, there came about a cleavage in the soul of the people of the fifth epoch of civilization which still continues, and is manifest in most diverse phenomena. The soul had not retained, from ancient times a sufficiently strong attraction for spiritual things to enable it to hold fast the connection between the worlds of spirit and sense. The attraction existed only as a training of feeling and emotion, not as direct vision of the spiritual world. On the other hand, man's attention was more and more directed toward the world of the senses and its conquest; and the intellectual powers which had been awakened in the latter part of the Atlantean period, all those human powers of which the physical brain is the instrument, were concentrated upon the sense-world, and upon gaining knowledge of and mastery over it. Two worlds, so to speak, were developed within man: the one directed toward the life of physical sense; the other susceptible to the revelation of the spirit in such a way as to permeate with feeling and emotion even though lacking clairvoyant vision. The tendency to this cleavage of soul already existed when the teaching concerning the Christ was introduced into Europe.