The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Beginning of the Present Earth: The Extrusion of the Sun

[ 1 ] We shall now trace the Akashic Records back to the distant past, when the present Earth first came into being. By “Earth,” we mean the state of our planet in which it serves as the habitat for minerals, plants, animals, and humans in their present forms. For this state was preceded by others in which the aforementioned kingdoms of nature existed in fundamentally different forms. What is now called “Earth” underwent many transformations before it could become the habitat for our present world of minerals, plants, animals, and human beings. Minerals, for example, were also present during such earlier states; however, they looked quite different from those we have today. These past states will be discussed further here. For now, attention should be drawn only to how the immediately preceding state transformed into the present one. — One can gain some understanding of such a transformation by comparing it to a plant’s passage through the seed stage. Imagine a plant with a root, stem, leaves, flower, and fruit. It takes in substances from its surroundings and excretes them again. Yet everything in it—substance, form, and process—disappears, except for the small seed. Through this, life develops, only to re-emerge in the same form in the new year. Thus, everything that existed on our Earth in the preceding state has vanished, only to re-emerge in the present one. What one might call a mineral, plant, or animal in the previous state has passed away, just as the root, stem, and so on have passed away in the case of the plant. And there, as here, a seed-like state has remained, from which the old form is recreated anew. Hidden within the seed are the forces that bring forth the new form.

[ 2 ] At the point in time we are about to discuss, we are dealing with a kind of Earth germ. This germ contained within itself the forces that led to the Earth as we know it today. These forces were acquired through earlier states. However, this Earth germ should not be imagined as a dense, material substance like that of a plant. Rather, it was of a spiritual nature. It consisted of that fine, malleable, and mobile substance which is called the “astral” in occult literature. — In this astral germ of the Earth, there are initially only human potentials. These are the predispositions toward the future human souls. Everything else that had already existed in earlier states in mineral, plant, and animal forms has been absorbed into these human predispositions and fused with them. Thus, before the human being sets foot on the physical Earth, he is a soul, an astral being. As such, he arrives on the physical Earth. This exists in an extremely fine material form, which is referred to in occult literature as the finest ether. — The origin of this etheric earth will be discussed in the following essays. The astral human beings connect with this ether. They imprint their being upon this ether, as it were, so that it becomes a reflection of the astral human being. In this initial state, therefore, we are dealing with an etheric Earth that actually consists solely of these etheric human beings; it is merely a conglomerate of them. The astral body—or the soul of the human being—is, in fact, still for the most part au)'er separate from the etheric body and organizes it from the outside. To the esoteric researcher, this Earth appears roughly as follows. It is a sphere composed, in turn, of countless small etheric spheres—the etheric human beings—and is surrounded by an astral envelope, just as the present Earth is surrounded by an atmosphere. Within this astral envelope (atmosphere), the astral human beings live and act from there upon their etheric images. The astral human souls create organs within the etheric images and bring about a human etheric life within them. Within the entire Earth, there is only one state of matter—namely, the fine, living ether. In theosophical books, this first humanity is called the first (polar) root race.

[ 3 ] The Earth’s further development now proceeds in such a way that one state of matter gives rise to two. A denser substance, as it were, separates out, leaving behind a thinner substance. The denser substance is similar to our present-day air; the thinner is like that which causes chemical elements to form from the earlier undivided substance. In addition, a remnant of the earlier substance—the animate ether—remains. Only a portion of it divides into the two states of matter mentioned. We are thus now dealing with three substances within the physical Earth. Whereas previously the astral human beings acted upon only one form of matter within the Earth’s shell, they must now act upon three. And they act upon them in the following manner. That which has become air-like initially resists the work of the astral human beings. It does not accept everything that is contained in the potentials of the perfect astral human beings. The consequence of this is that astral humanity must divide into two groups. One group is one that works with the air-like substance and creates an image of itself within it. The other group is capable of more. It can work with the other two substances; it can create an image of itself such that this image consists of the living ether and —the type of ether that brings about the chemical elemental substances. This type of ether shall be called here the chemical ether. However, this second group of astral beings has acquired this higher ability only by separating a part—the first group—of the astral entity from itself and condemning it to lower work. Had it retained within itself the forces that performed this lower work, it would not have been able to rise higher itself. We are thus dealing here with a process in which something higher develops at the expense of something else that it expels from itself.

[ 4 ] Within the physical Earth, the following picture now emerges. Two kinds of beings have come into being. First, there are beings that have an air-like body, upon which the astral being associated with it works from the outside. These beings are animal-like. They form the first animal kingdom on Earth. These animals have forms that would seem quite bizarre to people today if they were described here. Their form—it must be noted that this form consists solely of air-like substance—resembles none of the animal forms existing today. At most, they bear a distant resemblance to certain snail or shellfish shells that exist today. Alongside these animal forms, the physical formation of the human being progresses. The astral human, now having ascended to a higher level, creates a physical image of himself consisting of two types of substance: life ether and chemical ether. We are thus dealing with a human being who consists of an astral body and who works into an etheric body, which in turn consists of two types of ether: life ether and chemical ether. Through the life ether, this physical image of a human being has the ability to reproduce, to bring forth beings like itself. Through the chemical ether, it develops certain forces similar to today’s chemical forces of attraction and repulsion. As a result, this human form is able to draw certain substances from its environment toward itself and unite them with itself, only to later expel them again through repulsive forces. Naturally, these substances can only be taken from the animal kingdom described above and from the human kingdom itself. This marks the beginning of nutrition. These earliest human forms were therefore both carnivores and omnivores. — Alongside all these beings, the descendants of the earlier, purely ethereal life-forms also remain; but they wither away, as they must adapt to the new conditions on Earth. From these, after undergoing many transformations, the single-celled animal beings and also the cells that later make up the more complex living beings are formed.

[ 5 ] The process continues as follows. The air-like substance splits into two parts, one of which becomes denser and watery, while the other remains air-like. But the chemical ether, too, splits into two states of matter; one becomes denser and forms what will be called here “light ether.” It endows the beings that contain it with the gift of luminosity. A portion of the chemical ether, however, remains as such. — We are now dealing with a physical earth composed of the following types of matter:

[ 6 ] Water, air, light ether, chemical ether, and life ether. In order for the astral entities to be able to act upon these types of matter once again, a process takes place through which a higher form develops at the expense of a lower one, which is excreted. This gives rise to physical entities of the following kind. First, those whose physical body consists of water and air. Coarse, excreted astral entities now act upon these. This results in a new group of animals composed of coarser matter than their predecessors. — Another new group of physical beings has a body that may consist of air and light ether, mixed with water. These are plant-like beings, though their form is again very different from that of present-day plants. The third new group now represents the humans of that time. Their physical body consists of three types of ether: the light ether, the chemical ether, and the life ether. When one considers that descendants of the older groups also continued to exist, one can appreciate the diversity of living beings that was already present at that stage of Earth’s existence.

[ 7 ] Now an important cosmic event takes place. The Sun separates from the Earth. As a result, certain forces simply depart from the Earth. These forces are composed of a portion of what had previously existed on Earth in the life ether, the chemical ether, and the light ether. These forces were thus, as it were, drawn out of the Earth as it had previously existed. This brought about a radical change in all groups of earthly beings that had previously contained these forces within themselves. They underwent a transformation. What was referred to above as plant beings underwent such a transformation first. A portion of their light-etheric forces was withdrawn from them. They could then develop as living beings only if the light force that had been withdrawn from them acted upon them from the outside. Thus, the plants came under the influence of sunlight. — A similar process also occurred with human bodies. From then on, their light ether, too, had to interact with the sunlight ether in order to be viable. — However, it was not only those beings that directly lost light ether who were affected, but also the others. For in the world, everything works together. Even the animal forms, which did not themselves contain light ether, had previously been irradiated by their fellow beings on Earth and developed under this irradiation. They, too, now came directly under the influence of the external sun. — The human body, however, in particular developed organs that were receptive to sunlight: the first rudiments of human eyes.

[ 8 ] For the Earth, the result of the Sun’s emergence was a further condensation of matter. Solid matter formed from the liquid; likewise, the light ether separated into a different kind of light ether and into an ether that gives bodies the ability to generate heat. Thus, the Earth became an entity that developed heat within itself. All its beings came under the influence of heat. Once again, a process similar to the earlier one had to take place in the astral realm; some beings developed to a higher level at the expense of others. A portion of beings separated out that was suited to working with coarse, solid matter. And thus, the solid skeletal framework of the mineral kingdom came into being on Earth. At first, none of the higher kingdoms of nature were yet active within this solid mineral mass. Consequently, on Earth there is a mineral kingdom that is hard, and a plant kingdom whose densest forms of matter are water and air. In this kingdom, in fact, the air body had condensed into a water body through the processes described. Alongside this, animals existed in the most diverse forms, some with water bodies and others with air bodies. The human body itself had undergone a process of condensation. It had condensed its densest physical form to the point of wateriness. This water body of the human was permeated by the heat ether that had arisen. This gave the body a material quality that one might call gaseous. This material state of the human body is referred to in works of esoteric science as that of the fire mist. In this body, the human was embodied in fire mist.

[ 9 ] Thus, our examination of the Akashic Records has progressed to just before that cosmic catastrophe caused by the Moon's separation from the Earth.