The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Hyperborean and Polarean Epochs

[ 1 ] The following passages from the “Akasha Chronicle” take us back to the times preceding the events described in the previous chapters. The risk undertaken with these accounts is perhaps even greater in the face of the materialistic mindset of our time than that associated with what has already been described in the preceding sections. In the present day, the accusation of fancifulness and baseless speculation is all too easy to level at such matters. When one realizes how far removed those educated in the natural sciences in the modern sense may be from even taking these matters seriously, the only thing that can lead to their communication is the awareness that one is reporting faithfully in accordance with spiritual experience. Nothing is stated here that has not been carefully examined using the methods of spiritual science. May the natural scientist be just as tolerant toward spiritual science as the latter is toward the natural-scientific way of thinking. (Compare my “Worldviews and Lifestyles in the Nineteenth Century,” where I believe I have shown that I know how to appreciate the materialistic-scientific worldview.) ^{1In 1914, a new edition of the work was published, supplemented by a “Prelude on Western Philosophy and Continued to the Present,” under the title The Riddles of Philosophy Presented in Outline Through Their History; complete edition 1968.} However, for those who are inclined toward these spiritual-scientific matters, I would like to make a special remark regarding the present discussion. Particularly important matters will be addressed in what follows. And all of this pertains to times long past. Deciphering the Akashic Records in this area is not exactly easy. The author of this text in no way claims any authority. He merely wishes to convey what has been researched to the best of his ability. He would welcome any corrections based on expert knowledge. He feels obliged to share these events in human evolution because the signs of the times compel him to do so. Moreover, this time a broad period had to be outlined in order to provide an overview. More detailed information about many things that are now merely hinted at will follow later. — The entries in the “Akasha Records” are difficult to translate into our everyday language. It is easier to convey them in the symbolic sign language customary in secret schools, but the disclosure of this language is not yet permitted. Therefore, may the reader accept some of the obscure and difficult-to-understand passages and strive to grasp their meaning, just as the author has striven to find a manner of presentation that is generally understandable. One will find that the difficulties of reading are rewarded when one contemplates the profound mysteries and the significant human enigmas that are alluded to. True self-knowledge of the human being does, after all, spring from these “Akasha Records,” which are as certain realities for the esoteric researcher as mountains and rivers are for the physical eye. Of course, errors of perception are possible in both cases. — It should simply be noted that this section has so far dealt only with the development of the human being. Alongside this, naturally, runs the development of the other kingdoms of nature: the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. The following sections will deal with these. Many other points will then also be addressed that will cast the debates concerning human beings in a more comprehensible light. Conversely, however, in the spiritual-scientific sense, one cannot speak of the development of the other earthly kingdoms until the gradual progression of the human being has been described.

[ 2 ] If one goes back even further in the Earth’s evolution than has been done in the preceding essays, one encounters increasingly subtle material states of our celestial body. The substances that later became solid were previously in liquid form, even earlier in gaseous and vaporous forms, and in the more distant past in the finest (ethereal) states. It was only the decreasing heat that caused the substances to solidify. Here we shall now go back to the finest ethereal state of the substances of our earthly home. When the Earth was in such a stage of development, humankind entered it. Previously, humankind belonged to other worlds, which will be discussed later. — We shall comment only on the one immediately preceding it. It was a so-called astral or soul world. The beings of this world did not lead an external (physical), corporeal existence. Nor did human beings. They had already developed the pictorial consciousness mentioned in the previous essay. They had feelings and desires. Yet all of this was contained within a soul form. Only to the clairvoyant gaze would such a human being have been perceptible. — And indeed, all the more highly developed human beings of that time possessed such clairvoyance, although it was quite dim and dreamlike. It was not self-conscious clairvoyance. — These astral beings are, in a certain sense, the ancestors of humankind. What we call “human” today already bears within itself the self-conscious spirit. This spirit united with the being that had emerged from that ancestor in the middle of the Lemurian epoch. (This union has already been alluded to in earlier essays. When the course of human ancestors’ development up to this time is presented here, the matter will be discussed in greater detail.) — The soul or astral ancestors of humankind were transferred into the fine or etheric earth. They absorbed the fine substance, as it were—like a sponge, to put it crudely—into themselves. As they thus permeated themselves with this substance, they formed etheric bodies. These had an elongated elliptical shape, yet the subtle shades of the substance already indicated the presence of limbs and other organs that would later develop. The entire process within this mass, however, was a purely physical-chemical one; it was merely regulated and governed by the soul. — Once such a mass of substance had reached a certain size, it split into two, each of which resembled the form from which it had arisen, and within which the same processes took place as in the original. — Each of these new forms was endowed with a soul just as the parent entity had been. This stemmed from the fact that it was not merely a specific number of human souls that entered the earthly stage, but, as it were, a “tree of souls” capable of producing countless individual souls from its common root. Just as a plant continually sprouts anew from innumerable seeds, so did spiritual life emerge in the countless shoots resulting from the ongoing divisions. (However, from the very beginning, there was a strictly limited number of soul types, which will be discussed later. Yet within these types, development proceeded in the manner described. Each soul type produced countless shoots.)

[ 3 ] However, upon entering earthly materiality, a significant change had taken place within the souls themselves. As long as the souls themselves were not material in nature, no external material process could affect them. Every effect upon them was purely spiritual, clairvoyant in nature. In this way, they experienced the spiritual aspects of their surroundings. Everything that existed at that time was experienced in this manner. The effects of stones, plants, and animals—which, after all, existed at that time only as astral (spiritual) forms—were perceived as inner spiritual experiences. — Then, upon entering the Earth, something entirely new came into play. External material processes exerted an influence on the soul, which itself appeared clothed in a material form. At first, it was only the movements of this material external world that evoked movements within the etheric body itself. Just as we today perceive the vibration of the air as sound, so did these etheric beings perceive the vibrations of the etheric substance surrounding them. Such a being was, in essence, a single organ of hearing. This sense developed first. But it is evident from this that the separate organ of hearing did not form until later.

[ 4 ] As earthly matter became increasingly dense, the soul gradually lost the ability to shape it. Only bodies that had already been formed could still produce others like themselves. A new form of reproduction emerges. The offspring appears as a considerably smaller form than the mother and only gradually grows to her size. Whereas previously there were no reproductive organs, such organs now appear. — But now, too, the process taking place within the form is no longer merely a physical-chemical one. Such a physical-chemical process could no longer bring about reproduction. Precisely because of its densification, the outer substance is no longer in a state where the soul can directly impart life to it. A special part is therefore set apart within the entity. This part is shielded from the direct influences of the outer substance. Only the body located outside this set-apart part remains exposed to these influences. It is still in the same condition as the entire body was before. Within the separated part, the soul continues to act. Here, the soul becomes the bearer of the life principle (called prana in theosophical literature). Thus, the physical human ancestor now appears endowed with two components. One is the physical body (the physical shell). It is subject to the chemical and physical laws of the surrounding world. The second is the sum of organs subject to the special life principle. — But as a result, a part of the soul’s activity has been set free. It no longer has power over the physical part of the body. This part of the soul’s activity now turns inward and transforms a portion of the body into special organs. And thus an inner life of the body begins. The body no longer merely experiences the vibrations of the external world; rather, it begins to perceive them internally as specific experiences. Here lies the starting point of sensation. At first, this sensation appears as a kind of sense of touch. The being feels the movements of the external world, the pressure exerted by materials, and so on. The beginnings of sensations of warmth and cold also emerge.

[ 5 ] This marks the attainment of an important stage in human development. The physical body is deprived of the soul’s direct influence. It is entirely subject to the physical and chemical world of matter. It disintegrates the moment the soul, through its activity emanating from the other parts, can no longer control it. And it is only then that what is called “death” actually occurs. With regard to the states that preceded this, there can be no question of death. During division, the parent organism lives on entirely within the daughter organisms. For within them, the entire transformed soul force acts just as it did previously in the parent organism. Nothing remains after division that does not contain the soul. Now things are different. As soon as the soul no longer has power over the physical body, the body becomes subject to the chemical and physical laws of the external world—that is, it dies. The only remnant of the soul’s activity is that which is at work in reproduction and in the developed inner life. This means that offspring arise through the power of reproduction, and at the same time, these offspring are endowed with a surplus of organ-forming power. In this excess, the soul being is continually reborn. Just as the entire body was once filled with soul activity during cell division, so now are the reproductive and sensory organs. We are thus dealing with a reincarnation of soul life in the newly emerging daughter organism.

[ 6 ] In Theosophical literature, these two stages of human evolution are described as the first two root races of our Earth. The first is called the Polar race, and the second the Hyperborean race.

[ 7 ] One must imagine that the sensory world of these human ancestors was still a very general, indeterminate one. Only two of our present-day senses had already been distinguished: hearing and touch. However, due to changes in both the body and the physical environment, the human form as a whole was no longer suited to functioning as an “ear,” so to speak. A specific part of the body remained capable of perceiving these subtle vibrations from then on. It provided the material from which our organ of hearing gradually developed. Yet the organ of touch remained, for the most part, the rest of the body.

[ 8 ] It is evident that the entire process of human evolution to date is linked to a change in the Earth’s thermal state. It was, in fact, the heat present in the human environment that brought humankind to the stage described. However, the external heat had now reached a point at which further progress of the human form would no longer have been possible. A counteracting force now arises within the human constitution against the Earth’s further cooling. Human beings become the generators of their own source of heat. Until now, they had relied on the temperature of their environment. Now organs appear within him that enable him to generate for himself the level of heat necessary for his life. Until then, his inner being had been permeated by circulating substances that were dependent on the environment in this respect. Now he was able to generate his own heat for these substances. The bodily fluids became warm blood. As a physical being, humans had thus attained a far higher degree of independence than they had previously. Their entire inner life was heightened. Sensation still depended entirely on the effects of the external world. The filling with its own heat gave the body an independent physical inner life. Now the soul had a stage within the body on which it could develop a life that was no longer merely a participation in the external world.

[ 9 ] Through this process, the life of the soul has been drawn into the realm of the earthly and material. Previously, the soul’s desires, wishes, passions, pleasures, and sufferings could arise only through other spiritual forces. What emanated from another spiritual being aroused in a particular soul attraction, aversion, stirred up passions, and so on. No external physical object could have had such an effect. Only now did the possibility arise that such external objects could have any significance for the soul. For the soul perceived the stimulation of its inner life—awakened by its own warmth—as a feeling of well-being, and the disturbance of this inner life as discomfort. An external object capable of contributing to physical well-being could be desired, wished for. What is called “Kama”—the body of desire—in theosophical literature was connected to the earthly human being. The objects of the senses became objects of the faculty of desire. Through his body of desire, the human being became bound to earthly existence.

[ 10 ] This fact coincides with a major world event to which it is causally linked. Until then, there had been no material separation between the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon. In their effect on human beings, these three were a single body. Now the separation took place; the finer substance, which encompasses everything that had previously enabled the soul to exert a direct, life-giving influence, separated itself as the Sun; the coarsest part emerged as the Moon; and the Earth, with its substance, held the middle ground between the two. Of course, this separation was not sudden; rather, the entire process took place gradually, as human beings progressed from the state of reproduction by division to the stage described above. Indeed, it was precisely through the aforementioned cosmic processes that this further development of human beings was brought about. First, the Sun drew its substance out of the common celestial body. As a result, the soul was deprived of the ability to directly animate the remaining earthly matter. Then the Moon began to take shape. This brought the Earth into a state that allowed for the characteristic faculty of sensation. — And in conjunction with this progression, a new sense also developed. The Earth’s thermal conditions became such that bodies gradually took on the solid boundaries that separated the transparent from the opaque. The Sun, having emerged from the Earth’s mass, assumed its role as a source of light. The sense of sight arose in the human body. At first, this sight was not as we know it today. Light and darkness acted upon human beings as indefinite sensations. For example, under certain conditions, a person perceived light as pleasant, as something that fostered physical life, and sought it out, striving toward it. At the same time, the actual life of the soul still unfolded in dreamlike images. In this life, images of color rose and fell that did not relate directly to external things. Human beings still associated these images of color with psychological effects. Bright images of color appeared to them when they experienced pleasant psychological effects, and dark images when they were affected by unpleasant psychological influences. — What has been described thus far as the “inner life” is what was brought about by the emergence of endogenous heat. However, it is clear that this is not yet an inner life in the sense of humanity’s later development. Everything proceeds step by step, including the development of the inner life. In the sense intended in the previous essay, this true inner life does not emerge until the fertilization by the spirit occurs, when human beings begin to think about what affects them from the outside. — But everything described here shows how the human being grows into the state depicted in the previous section. — And one is actually already moving into the period characterized there when describing the following: The soul increasingly learns to apply to its external physical existence what it previously experienced within itself and related only to the soul. This now occurs with color images. Just as a sympathetic impression of a soul experience was formerly linked to a bright color image within one’s own soul, so now a bright impression of light from the outside is linked to it. The soul began to see the objects around it in color. This was linked to the development of new organs of sight. In earlier states, when there was only a vague sense of light and darkness, the body possessed an eye that no longer exists today. (The legend of the Cyclopes with their single eye is a remnant of these conditions.) The two eyes developed as the soul began to connect external impressions of light more intimately with its own life. With this, the ability to perceive the spiritual in the surroundings was lost. The soul became more and more a mirror of the external world. This external world is repeated within the soul as representation. — Hand in hand with this came the separation of the sexes. On the one hand, the human body became receptive only to fertilization by another human being; on the other, the physical “organs of the soul” (the nervous system) developed, through which the sensory impressions of the external world were reflected in the soul. — And thus the way was prepared for the thinking spirit to enter the human body.