The Rudolf Steiner Archive

13. The Beginning and End of the Earth

[ 1 ] What distinguishes human beings from the other creatures that surround them here on Earth consists, among other things—which we need not dwell on today—in the fact that human beings organize their lives not merely according to dull, instinctive impulses, but according to clear ideas and thoughts; that their work gives them strength, strength, and security for their work when they are able not only to look at the present but also to determine their own future based on ideas or ideals. Human beings can achieve this only if they are able to take a broader view of life, looking beyond what the present moment encompasses, into the past and the future. We learn from the past; we work best toward the future by anticipating in our ideas and ideals what we want to do in the future.

[ 2 ] It might easily seem that today’s topic, “The Beginning and End of the Earth,” reaches too far into the past and the future, as if we were trying to grapple with ideas that hover far above our everyday existence. But Germany’s great philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte once spoke a word of truth against those people who, based on an apparent practical approach to life, turn away from ideas and ideals because they believe that those who live life practically have no use for ideals and ideas after all. As has already been mentioned here in another context, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, when speaking to his students in Jena about the great ideals and the purpose of humanity, coined the following beautiful phrase in response to them: We idealists know just as well as the so-called pragmatists—perhaps even better—that ideals are not directly applicable in real life. But when these so-called practical people claim that life, if it is to be truly practical, must not be organized according to ideas and ideals, they merely demonstrate that they are not accounted for in the course of life. May a benevolent deity therefore grant them, at the right time, rain and sunshine, the necessary food, and—for my sake—if possible, wise thoughts as well.

[ 3 ] However, we are not concerned today with ideals and ideas and their justification; let us touch on just one point: Some may think that ideals and ideas, which span such vast periods of time as the beginning and end of the Earth, perhaps lead too far afield, blurring into the nebulous and the impractical. But this is precisely what a spiritual worldview makes people increasingly aware of: that the higher the ideals are drawn from, the more directly they can be applied in life; and the further we advance with our ideas and ideals, the greater the power they develop—not only for the broader aspects of life, but also for every moment of everyday life, from morning to night. Small ideals give us little strength for this or that occasion; great ideals always fulfill us, strengthen us, and invigorate us. It is not a matter of immersing ourselves theoretically in such ideas and ideals in our thoughts, but rather of something flowing from them, something pouring forth. When ideals are grand, more vivid and powerful sensations flow from them than from small ideals. And these more vivid and powerful sensations and feelings strengthen us mentally, emotionally, and physically; imperceptibly, they find their way into what we do in everyday life and make it possible for us to live life in the way we desire.

[ 4 ] When we look back today on the formation of our Earth, our earthly home, people today naturally think first of the marvelous, monumental achievements of scientific thought. As on other occasions, it should be emphasized here as well that it can never, under any circumstances, be the task of spiritual science—if it understands itself correctly—to raise even the slightest objection to the well-founded findings and results of modern natural science. Therefore, before we tackle this comprehensive “topic” from the perspective of spiritual science, let us first—as we have done in other discussions—preface our remarks with a few preliminary remarks.

[ 5 ] Let us offer a brief and sketchy answer to the question: What does modern science have to say about the topic at hand? — The natural sciences reveal the Earth’s past with great, comprehensive insight. From what the Earth is today, and from the remains preserved from vanished worlds and vanished beings, our natural sciences are able to deduce what our Earth may have looked like millions of years ago, and what beings once walked upon it. As you know, history and historical records take us back only a short time in the Earth’s development—merely a few millennia. Then, so to speak, it becomes a dark period if one relies solely on historical records. We are taken further back in time by what could not be entrusted to written records—nor to any other documents—namely, the cultural artifacts that our ancestors placed in the graves of their dead, objects they themselves crafted and which have remained as relics. But natural science goes even further back. Through the skeletal remains and other remnants of prehistoric plants and animals contained in the layers of our Earth, it shows us which creatures lived on our Earth one after another. It is easy to see that what lies in the upper layers of our Earth must have been buried most recently, and that what lies in the deeper layers—which have been covered by later ones—must contain the documentary remains of older, earlier times. Of course, it is not so simple to conduct scientific research in this manner. Geology—the study of rock strata—presents many difficulties. For what was originally deposited within the Earth’s surface has, for the most part, not remained as it was originally deposited. Overlays, overthrusts, and all manner of disturbances have taken place, so that sometimes what originally lay at the very bottom has ended up on top as a result of these faults. It sometimes requires great insight to form a picture of how our Earth has developed from what is enclosed within its layers.

[ 6 ] We do not wish to go into further detail beyond what the spiritual researcher is able to justify; nor do we wish to elaborate in detail on what we would have to say about this from the standpoint of spiritual science. There are still some things that need to be corrected. However, we do not wish to get into that. On the contrary, we would rather gratefully accept what diligent natural science has observed and what scientific acumen has achieved in this field as a great accomplishment for humanity. We are happy to use natural science to transport ourselves back to an earlier state of the Earth, when our planet, for the most part, looked vastly different from today, and when the simplest life forms must have lived on our Earth, of which no remains have been preserved for us. Together with the naturalist, we trace the history of our Earth from the layers at the very bottom to the layers and remains found at the very top. There we find simple animals that belong to the vertebrates—those with a skeletal structure. We continue on and see how, little by little, the various classes of animals and plants develop, just as they seem to have appeared gradually on the changing Earth. Together with the naturalist, we go back to the time when fish first appeared in Earth’s evolution. Many had forms quite different from those of today. If we go further back, we come to a remarkable phase in Earth’s evolution, when it was inhabited by those monstrous, wondrous animals, some of which belonged to the amphibian and reptile classes. These were enormous animals, some of whose single eyes were perhaps as large as a child’s head; they were equipped with gigantic feeding appendages—animals known as ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and so on, whose remains are excavated in various regions of the Earth from the strata known as the Cretaceous and Jurassic periods. This brings us to the era when more advanced plant forms emerged—a relatively recent period, though one spanning thousands of years. We arrive at the point where, according to scientific understanding, human beings first appeared; where, so to speak, based on the evidence contained in the relevant strata, they first appeared on our Earth, following in the footsteps of the higher mammals closely related to them. In short, if we were to apply that image—which we were recently able to use on another occasion when we considered the sun, moon, and stars from a spiritual-scientific perspective—if we were to apply that image again and imagine that someone, from a vantage point in outer space, could observe over millions of years how the Earth’s surface gradually takes shape, how the distribution of land and water heat and cold changes, and how the most diverse classes and forms of animals and living beings emerge—then the physical picture for such a hypothetical observer, sitting somewhere in outer space, would essentially be exactly as described by natural science. But it must be emphasized once again that spiritual science cannot go any further than, so to speak, the point at which natural science itself will be compelled to correct these matters in the future.

[ 7 ] Where, then, is the conflict between the natural sciences and the humanities? Time and again, the natural sciences claim that the humanities do not stand on scientific ground. Is it possible to stand more firmly on scientific ground than by acknowledging that everything the natural sciences know and are capable of discovering is also recognized by us?

[ 8 ] But there are people who claim to stand firmly on the ground of scientific facts. They demand that the humanities scholar know nothing other than what they themselves know. They demand not only that others agree with what they themselves say, but also that others submit to the dogma that one cannot say more than they do. Yet these people fail to realize that such inner intolerance has, in fact, never existed throughout the entire course of human development—not even in times when outward intolerance went to such extremes. Certainly, as we were able to say last time when considering the sun, moon, and stars: The external sensory image gives no cause for conflict between spiritual science and natural science. — But does it follow from this external sensory perception that no supersensory, superphysical forces are at work behind the sensory, behind the physical? We were already able to cite Plateau’s famous experiment last time, in which it is shown how, in a liquid, a drop of oil, through the turning of a crank, gives rise to a miniature universe. In doing so, however, the good man completely forgot that he himself had turned the crank! No consideration is given to the fact that this is entirely impossible without the thoughts of the one turning the crank. What one sees with the physical eyes is the outward expression, the outward process, of what is taking place inwardly and spiritually—and this is something a person can never come to know by merely perceiving the world through their eyes and their auxiliary instruments, that is, solely through external physical tools. But if we wish to look back to the physical beginning of the world and not merely consider the physical, then we must first bring the true nature of the human being before our soul. For anyone who views this true nature of the human being from the standpoint of spiritual science, as I have often emphasized, the human being breaks down into a series of components. Above all, spiritual science shows us that the true reason for those changing states that a person experiences every day within a twenty-four-hour period—between waking and sleeping—lies in the fact that one part of the human being’s constituent elements separates from the other part during sleep. Every night, when a person falls asleep, we see what has been ebbing and flowing in the soul throughout the day in the most varied images and impressions sink down into dreamless sleep, into an indeterminate darkness. We see everything that a person experiences inwardly—instincts, drives, desires, and passions; pleasure and suffering; joy and pain—sink down into that indeterminate darkness. All these inner soul experiences that flood through a person’s soul throughout the day sink down into an indeterminate darkness as they fall asleep. For anyone grounded in spiritual science—and, of course, for anyone guided by common sense—it would naturally be sheer folly to claim that, upon falling asleep, the bearer of pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, of drives, desires, and passions would vanish only to reemerge upon waking in the morning. Spiritual science shows that when a person lies in dreamless sleep, lying in bed is that part of the human being which the person shares with all inanimate, with all mineral beings around them—and which we call the physical body—and that during sleep, connected to the physical body is the etheric or life body, which the human being shares with plants, but no longer with the minerals, the inanimate entities around them. During dreamless sleep, two other aspects of the human being are set apart from the person. Pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, instincts, desires, and passions—all the sensations and feelings that ebb and flow—everything that lies silent during the night—is carried by the astral body, and during dreamless sleep, this astral body is separated from the physical and etheric bodies, which remain in bed. The astral body and the “I” are thus separated.

[ 9 ] How does the existence of this astral body at night differ from its existence during the day? We can understand how the existence of the astral body during the day differs from its existence at night if we bring to mind—as I have done in other series of these lectures—that the astral body has its reality out there in another world that surrounds it. What determines whether we perceive something? There may be countless worlds around you—the world of sounds, the world of light, the world of smells, the world of tastes, and so on—but if you did not have the sensory organs to perceive them, these worlds would not exist for you. It is the most illogical thing one can do—though the majority of people today do it, mind you—to claim that a world one does not perceive does not exist. Spiritual science shows that at night, during dreamless sleep, the human astral body is lifted out of the physical and etheric bodies and enters another world—not an otherworldly realm hidden somewhere, but a world that permeates us, just as light and air permeate space. From the perspective of spiritual science, that world differs from the physical-sensory world only in that it requires different organs through which it can be perceived. This astral body of the human being is in a spiritual world that exists within our environment, just like the air around us. Someone who has no inkling that air surrounds them says there is nothing around them. Similarly, someone who has no inkling that they are constantly living in the spirit says there is no spirit in our surroundings, that there is no spiritual world, no spiritual realities, and no spiritual beings. The astral body, the bearer of pleasure and pain, is in this spiritual world at night. It does not perceive it because, in the current stage of evolution—in humanity’s present cycle of development—it does not yet possess organs or tools of perception for this world in which it exists.

[ 10 ] Now, it might seem like a hypothesis to say that there is an astral body and that, during dreamless sleep, a person exists in a spiritual world apart from their physical and etheric bodies. But apart from the fact that those whose spiritual eyes have been opened through the initiation we have discussed know the astral body through a separation from the physical body, through their own observation and experience—apart from that, it can be demonstrated, so to speak, experimentally that such an astral body exists, even if not through ordinary instruments. For the only instrument that truly leads a person into the spiritual world and reveals to them the mysteries of the higher, supersensible world is the person themselves, in their full and complete being. This instrument—the human being—is capable of infinite perfection and infinitely subtle development, and it is precisely initiation itself that perfects the human being. It provides those who wish to apply it to themselves with, so to speak, experimental proof that there is an astral body of the human being that can become independent of the physical body.

[ 11 ] Let’s recall some of the points we discussed during the initiation. We said there that a person can perform certain exercises—exercises in meditation, that is, in inner contemplation—according to very specific methodological guidelines, through which they can strengthen their world of thoughts, feelings, and will from within, making it stronger and more powerful than thoughts, feelings, and will can ever be strengthened through any form of external sensory observation. There are indeed such instructions, as we saw in the lecture on initiation, through which a person can gain more than they can through mere external observation of reality. Something quite special becomes evident in a human soul that applies these instructions to itself. It becomes evident that the body we have called the astral body—which is possessed even by those who, like modern human beings, have no spiritual eyes or spiritual ears—is, through the subtle inner work of the individual, plastically integrated to receive these spiritual eyes and these spiritual ears. We can demonstrate how immersion in inner thoughts and feelings, and immersion in impulses of the will, make these feelings and impulses of the will more vigorous. We can show how they affect this astral body: After some time, if the person has patience and perseverance, the astral body reveals—upon the morning return to the physical body and the etheric body—that it has acquired spiritual eyes and ears and can now experience what is called enlightenment. Thus, by working here in waking consciousness through the concentration of thoughts according to specific methodological guidelines—by carrying out certain feelings and certain impulses of the will within oneself—a person can influence their astral body in such a way that it proves capable of exerting a reciprocal influence on us. This demonstrates the reality of the astral body. We act upon it, and it acts upon us. Through the very fact of initiation, it demonstrates its existence.

[ 12 ] Just as the human astral body is separated from the physical body at night, so too is that which we call the human being’s true “I-bearer”—the human being’s true self-consciousness—separated from it. In the current stage of human development, this, too, still vanishes into an indeterminate darkness.

[ 13 ] When a person is asleep, we see before us the physical body in bed—which humans share with all minerals—as well as the etheric body, which they share with all plants. Distinct from the physical body and the etheric body, we have the astral body, which humans share only with animals, and the “I,” which humans—as the crown of creation on Earth—do not share with any other realm of nature within the earthly realm. In the present cycle of development, where no higher senses—no “spiritual eyes” and no “spiritual ears,” to use Goethe’s words—have been developed, the impressions that a human being has during the day sink away upon falling asleep, and no others emerge in the world for which he has no senses. Therefore, at night he is surrounded by darkness, lightlessness, and silence. In the morning upon waking, a person sinks into the physical body and the etheric body. These are equipped with physical eyes and ears. The spiritual human being sinks into the physical-sensory human being, uses the instruments for the physical-sensory world there, and thereby has this world around them. One should understand—and if one wishes, one can—what Fichte said: Do not believe that the eye sees, but rather that the human being sees through the eye; do not believe that the ear hears, but rather that the human being hears through the ear. Just as with the eye and the ear, so it is with the senses of smell and taste. They are all instruments for the inner human being.

[ 14 ] In this spiritual, inner human being—in this “I” and this astral body—spiritual science sees, and must see, the original, the first aspect of the human being. It is not in the physical body nor in the etheric body, but in the astral body and the “I” that we find what existed before the physical body and the etheric body. Certainly, some who are more deeply influenced by the powerful, materialistic ideas of the present day will object: Do you, in your fanciful spiritual science, imagine that this spiritual entity—this bearer of pleasure and suffering, of joy and pain, of drives, desires, passions, and self-consciousness—once floated freely somewhere, unbound to a physical body? —To this, spiritual science replies: Indeed, that is the case! This astral body—the bearer of pleasure and suffering, of joy and pain—preceded all that is physical, and even all that is etheric. The inner life preceded the outer,

[ 15 ] This would transport us directly to the beginning of the Earth. — Can you imagine that anyone, even under the strong influence of materialistic ideas, could completely deny that there might be something—like a spiritual state—underlying what only later condenses and comes into being? It has often been emphasized here that, for spiritual science, matter is condensed spirit. Let us use a comparison we have often employed to show how the spiritual researcher thinks about spirit and matter. Imagine that someone has transparent air in front of them, and clouds begin to form in this transparent air as a result of cooling. What was once transparent becomes clouded by the formation of clouds; what was previously water vapor and invisible becomes water. Perhaps it goes further: the water freezes into ice. The ice falls down in pieces. Let’s suppose someone came along and said: “Nonsense! It’s foolish to think that the water was previously distributed in the air.” I didn’t see any of that! The first thing I saw was what appeared to me as clouds. Then someone comes along who can’t see the clouds yet either; he only sees something when the water freezes, when ice forms. If you tell him, “What is there today as ice was already there earlier as water,” he replies, “I didn’t see anything; there’s ice and nothing else.”

[ 16 ] The answer must be drawn from such thoughts when someone accuses a spiritual researcher of fantasizing for saying that, in the beginning, human beings did not exist in a material form—not even as an etheric body—but that the astral body and the “I” existed first. At the beginning of our earthly existence, the astral body and the “I” were present. Indeed, as we shall soon see, human beings existed on Earth as spiritual beings even before animals, plants, or minerals were present on Earth. Initially, the Earth consisted of a collection of such spiritual human beings, each composed of the “I” and the astral body. That is the beginning of the Earth. Now the spiritual researcher continues: Just as water, which is dissolved and invisible in the air, condenses into clouds, so too did the astral once condense into the etheric. And now, in the further course of Earth’s development, there were human beings who possessed an “I,” an astral body, and an etheric body. Finally, just as ice forms from water, which itself had formed from water vapor, the physical body emerged as the densest part of the human being. Thus we have the course of Earth’s development: First, the human being exists as a spiritual being; then as an etheric being; and only finally does the spiritual crystallize the human physical body.

[ 17 ] Let’s consider the image of condensing water vapor. Suppose you had a lump of water. You would artificially treat this lump of water so that a portion of it freezes in the center. Suppose you had many such lumps of water, in each of which a portion freezes in the center; this would result in the formation of many ice crystals. And now something very peculiar happens: From some of these lumps of water, the ice crystal would fall out and remain on its own, covered only by a thin layer of water, while the parent substance—the water from which the ice formed—withdraws. In the other clumps of water, the ice grains remain inside the clump and continue to freeze. More water turns into ice, forming larger ice nuclei. In some of the structures formed in this way, these larger ice nuclei fall out and retain some water, while the parent substance recedes from them. This process continues. Time and again, such ice clumps ascend to higher levels, meaning they form more ice from the water. And ice levels on Earth are constantly receding, while other clumps continue to convert more and more water into ice, until they finally have ice clumps that have converted all the water into ice and whose parent substance is, so to speak, contained only between the pores of the ice.

[ 18 ] Let this image take shape in your soul as it depicts the course of the Earth’s formation, from its very beginning right up to our time. Imagine, at the beginning of our Earthly existence, humanity as a spiritual being—existing solely as a spiritual being. At first, a small, insignificant part begins to crystallize out, becoming denser. There are certain beings that remain at an early stage, like ice crystals, by separating themselves from their spiritual mother substance. These are the most imperfect animals, which once came into being because only a part of the human mother substance—of the astral human—became material and condensed outward. These are the lowest animals. The other human beings have continued to develop to higher stages. Once again, higher animals have emerged from the spiritual mother substance. And so, just as ice forms from a mass of water, increasingly differentiated creatures—developing with ever greater perfection—have emerged in the course of Earth’s evolution: physical forms, right up to modern humans, who, in their outward physical expression, are a reflection of the spiritual capacities and potentials that were already originally contained in the spirit—that is, in the astral body of humankind—at the very beginning of Earth’s history. And just as the chunks of ice that have broken off represent the stages of the great ice mass’s formation, so do all beings that are less perfect than human beings—the entire animal and plant kingdoms—represent the earlier stages of human evolution on Earth. Humanity is the firstborn of the Earth as a spiritual being, and little by little, as a spiritual being—if I may use that expression—it has crystallized the material out of itself, stage by stage. At each stage, the lower beings have gradually remained behind, so that in the entire series of less perfect earthly beings we must see not the ancestors of humankind, but rather, on the contrary, the descendants of the spiritual human who have not kept pace. They are the brothers who have been left behind, beings who remained on the preliminary stages and who, by continuing their lives right up to our time, have fallen into decadence.

[ 19 ] Thus we see that, when we consider the evolutionary series, certain links are missing. If someone were to place a chair in outer space and watch the Hyperborean human, they would—assuming the premises of spiritual science are correct—see, outwardly and physically, the picture presented by the spiritual researcher: how humanity first left behind the imperfect animals and then the increasingly more perfect ones. In fact, outwardly, humankind emerged last in its present form, as the youngest of all creatures; spiritually, however, it is the firstborn, and spiritually it leads all other beings. All other beings have emerged from humankind; they represent, as it were, a “fall” from an imperfect stage of human development—they embody what has been cast off in the course of human evolution. Thus, in the earthly realm, everything imperfect traces back to the higher. The higher, the primordial, is not found in our physical form, but in the spirit. Modern natural science is virtually plagued by the question it asks over and over again—a question so intimately connected to our topic of the Earth’s origins: How could life have developed from the non-living? If there is only non-living matter on our Earth, how could life have developed from it? The only answer to this is that the question is posed incorrectly. Life has never developed from the non-living; rather, all non-living matter has arisen from the living. You can easily understand how the non-living arises from the living if you look at what you still excavate from the earth today in the form of coal. These were once plants—ferns and field horsetails—that grew in certain areas on the Earth’s surface, sank into the ground, and which you are now excavating millions of years later, after they have turned to stone. For the spiritual researcher, not only did coal originate from plant matter, but all mineral soil and all mineral matter can be traced back to an original plant source—even if, as mentioned, today’s materialistic researcher cannot conceive of a plant kingdom existing without a mineral foundation. Such a researcher simply cannot imagine that denser, coarser processes arise from finer processes.

[ 20 ] There is, in fact, an example of how such a materialistic view can fly in the face of all common sense—how materialism haunts some scholars in Europe. Take, for example, William James’s materialist theory of mental phenomena, which even purports to be idealist, yet in which materialist notions permeate his entire line of thought. I have already cited the symptom embodied in the sentence: “A person does not cry because he is sad, but he is sad because he cries.” Here, the person in question assumes that existence has a material effect on the human being: it acts on the tear glands, whereupon the person senses the process and becomes sad. This is the case in our time: The originator of this theory is consistent in his materialism, even when it flies in the face of common sense. In truth, these are processes in the soul-spiritual world, and the material processes are their consequences. The soul-spiritual processes are the original ones. Everything that is solid, everything material and mineral around us, originated from the spiritual, just as coal did. The question, then, is not how the living arose from the non-living, but how the non-living arose from the living. Just as the non-living arises from the living, and just as the living existed before the non-living, so too did the spiritual exist before the living. Thus we return to the beginning of our Earth and see that our Earth itself was a spiritual being at its starting point. It was a spiritual being and formed the material world in a sequential process, such that the living arose from the spiritual and the non-living arose from the living. The non-living is the latest product.

[ 21 ] Thus we look back to the beginning of our Earth and, in our own origin—at the beginning of the Earth as human beings—feel ourselves to be the firstborn of the Earth, spiritually at the starting point of Earth’s evolution. Now, from this vantage point, we let the spirit gaze into the future. The easiest way for us to understand how the spiritual researcher forms a picture of the future perspective is to realize—as has already emerged, albeit fleetingly, from other hints in this lecture series—that in modern human beings, the individual organs have very different values. It is not as it appears to materialistic anatomy when examining the human being. For the materialistic anatomist, everything simply exists as it appears in terms of its physical characteristics. But for those who observe the human organs with spiritual insight, there are some that are in a state of decay, withering, and dying off—just as bark forms on a tree—as well as others that, as they appear today, are at the beginning of their development. Certain lower organs, which today serve the reproduction of humanity, are in the process of dying off. In their place, however, we have an organ that is in the early stages of development and which will attain a much higher level in the future. This organ is the human heart. Not only in its spiritual aspect, but right down to the physical organ itself, the heart offers a wondrous perspective for our future. This heart is a conundrum for the anatomist, because every other organ that is moved voluntarily has striated muscle fibers. The heart is an organ that functions involuntarily, yet its structure is that of a voluntarily moved muscle. Where does this come from? Physical anatomy cannot explain it! It stems from the fact that this heart is destined to become a much higher organ in the future. It is striated because in the future it will be a voluntary muscle, just like our hand muscles are today. In the future, we will voluntarily respond to what the soul perceives as an impulse through a movement of the heart. Human beings will not only perform their work through the tool of the hand; rather, the heart will be a tool of the soul in a way that human beings cannot even begin to imagine today.

[ 22 ] Take another organ—the human vocal organ. What is it capable of today? When I speak to you, what happens? What I say to you—my words—first live in my soul. If I did not speak them, they would not penetrate your soul. I speak them, setting the mechanisms of my larynx in motion. This causes the air in this room to vibrate, and for each of my words, there are waves of vibration in this hall that reach you. What is language? It is the embodiment of thoughts in the air. When I have spoken something, the thought resounds; it is embodied in the air, and anyone who could see the airwaves in this room would see the physical form of my thoughts swirling around here in the room. Spiritual science shows us that in the future, human beings will come to not only produce airy forms through their words, but also to shape denser matter into the image of what lives in their souls. They will learn to shape ever more refined forms in this way, and in the future, human beings will bring forth their own kind through their transformed vocal organs, through their words. As human beings continue to evolve, significant transformations occur in their physical constitution. Certain organs wither away, while others continue to develop. The heart becomes an important instrument for the stirrings of the soul. The vocal organ will become the reproductive organ of the human being of the future, who will bring forth his own kind from his thoughts. Just as he today embodies his thoughts in the air, so will he embody himself through the organ that is today on its way to becoming the reproductive organ of the future. What he is today is like a shadow of what our head will become. The connection between the human vocal organ and the reproductive organ is indicated by the fact that, in males, the voice changes—a change in voice occurs at puberty.

[ 23 ] May people take a closer look at the changes described to us by spiritual science! What spiritual research tells us points to what humanity will have in the future to create its own kind: it will be the Word. A human being will speak the Word, and the Word will be a human being. This will happen when human beings have become increasingly spiritualized. For by bringing their physical instruments—as we have seen with the heart and the larynx—into the service of their spirit, human beings spiritualize themselves and return to the Spirit at the end of the Earth’s existence. In the case of humanity’s predecessors—the creators who began their earthly existence at that time, who stood at the beginning of the Earth where humanity will stand at the end of the Earth—it is evident that this was the case for them. And humanity will one day, at the end, become the Word; humanity will speak the Word at the very end, and the Word will be a human being. Regarding those beings—the divine-spiritual beings—who, already at the beginning of the Earth, stood at the height to which human beings will one day evolve, we are told correctly and appropriately in one of the deepest religious texts, the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.” — Just as in the beginning the Word was, and the Word was God, so at the end of time the Word will be a human being, and the human being will be the Word.

[ 24 ] When we look back to the beginning and see how humankind arose from the Spirit and, in the course of this earthly evolution, became the human beings we are today, and when we look at the transformations of our earthly human beings, the perspective of this earthly evolution toward spiritualization opens up to us. There we have Spirit at the beginning and Spirit at the end. Spirit was the origin, and Spirit is the goal. That is the mystery of Earth’s evolution. And when we see, in the middle, matter becoming denser and denser, we know that this matter is transformed and reshaped Spirit—if we do not view it as an external dream image, but rather delve into its essence. It is nothing other than that which has emerged from the Spirit and which will be transformed back into the Spirit. When we look ahead, we see the Spirit everywhere. According to Jakob Böhme, we originated in the Spirit, and we strive toward the spiritual. Action, as an activity of the Spirit, is the very knowledge of the Spirit that truly elevates human beings, that makes them useful—because they are filled with hope, capable of work, and spiritually and physically healthy—beings; it is the knowledge that everything is rooted in the Spirit and that what we perceive and behold in the unfolding of the world are the deeds of the divine Spirit.