Awareness - Life - Form
GA 89
1903/04
Translated by Steiner Online Library
A Draft Outline of Spiritual Scientific Cosmology
[ 1 ] The existence of modern human beings unfolds not merely in one, but in several states of consciousness. The ordinary [state] is the one in which a person finds themselves from the moment they wake up until they fall asleep. In this state, they perceive things through their senses and form ideas based on these sensory perceptions. Through this, the physical world exists for them. And it is to this world that the powers of their soul—their thinking, feeling, willing, and acting—are directed.
[ 2 ] This state of consciousness is now alternated with two others: dream-filled sleep and deep, dreamless sleep. These states are often referred to as “unconscious.” However, this term obscures the reality of the situation at hand. In truth, they are merely different types of consciousness. One could call them more subdued forms of the same.
[ 3 ] Dream-filled sleep does not present objects as waking daytime consciousness does, but rather images that arise and vanish within the soul. However bewildering these images may seem to ordinary consciousness, the illumination of their essence is capable of leading one deeper into the nature of the world. What they appear to be in the soul’s nightly life cannot serve as a proper foundation for their understanding. Such a foundation exists only for those who, through the kind of training described in this book, develop their higher powers of insight, which lead them to an understanding of the supersensible worlds. This chapter aims to provide a description of the facts that apply to these higher worlds. Anyone who embarks on the path of knowledge into these realms for themselves will then also find these facts to be true.
[ 4 ] What must first strike one about the world of dreams is the symbolic character of its images. If one pays even moderately subtle attention to the colorful diversity of dream experiences, this character becomes clear. From simple symbols to dramatic events, all intermediate stages can be found in this world that flits through the soul. — One dreams of a conflagration; one wakes up and realizes that one had fallen asleep next to the lamp. One perceived the light of the lamp in the dream, but not as it presents itself to the senses in the ordinary world, but symbolically, as a conflagration. Or one dreams of a troop of horsemen that one hears trampling past; one wakes up, and the trampling of horses immediately continues as the striking of the clock, which has been symbolized in this way. — One dreams of an animal scratching one’s face; upon waking, it becomes apparent that one feels pain at the spot in question, which has found its symbolic expression in the dream in the manner described. — A more elaborate dream might be something like the following. Someone dreams that he is walking through a forest. He hears a noise. As he continues walking, a person emerges from some bushes and approaches him. The person attacks. A fight breaks out; the attacker fires a shot. At that very moment, the dreamer wakes up and realizes that he has just knocked over the chair next to his bed. The sound of the chair falling has been transformed, through the dreamer’s awareness, into the symbolic action described above. In this way, external events or even internal states—as in the example given above of the scratching animal—can be perceived as symbols through the dream. Emotions and moods can also manifest themselves in this way. For example, someone suffers from the oppressive feeling that an unpleasant event will occur for them in the coming days. In the dream, this feeling manifests itself in such a way that the person finds themselves in danger of drowning.
[ 5 ] The examples described above highlight two characteristics of dream consciousness: first, its pictorial, symbolic nature; and second, a creative element within it. — This creative aspect is not inherent in waking consciousness. Waking consciousness presents the things in the environment exactly as they are in the physical external world. Dream consciousness adds something from another source.
[ 6 ] What opens up this source? Nothing other than the fact that the sensory activity on which waking consciousness depends has ceased during sleep. The silence of this sensory activity is expressed by the fact that a person’s self-consciousness vanishes. This self-consciousness is precisely bound to the activity of the external senses; when they fall silent, it sinks into an abyss. In so-called esoteric science, this fact is described by saying: the human soul has withdrawn from the physical world. Anyone who does not wish to claim that a person ceases to exist upon falling asleep and comes into being anew upon waking will have no difficulty recognizing that during sleep, a person exists in a world other than the physical one. This world is called the astral world. For now, the reader should accept this term as a designation for that world of which a person gains a glimpse through their dreams. The validity of this term will become clear in other chapters of this book.
[ 7 ] During sleep, a person dwells in the astral world. The realities and beings of this world appear as images. Consciousness perceives these images; but the person’s sense of self is absent. — A comparison with everyday life can give an idea of what is actually happening here. A person perceives the external world only to the extent that they possess the organs to do so. Without ears, there would be no world of sound for them; without eyes, no world of light and color, and so on. If a person were to develop a new organ in their body, something entirely new would appear in their environment, just as light and color appear as something entirely new to someone born blind after undergoing surgery.
[ 8 ] Just as the human physical body perceives the physical world through its organs, so too, during sleep, another body—a spiritual one—perceives the other world, the astral world, through its own organs. However, this body is not associated with any sense of self. In this state, the sense of self lies outside the realm of the human being.
[ 9 ] If it were impossible for a person’s self-consciousness to emerge even in this state, he would never be able to comprehend the circumstances under consideration here. This, however, is made possible by the higher training mentioned above and described in this book, which is also called initiation. Through it, a person learns, while in the dream state, to develop organs in their astral body similar to those in their physical body for perceiving the physical world. And once these organs are developed, a sense of self-consciousness arises during the dream that is also similar to the one they have during waking life. — Once such a stage of existence has been reached, the entire dream world is indeed transformed to a considerable degree. It loses the bewildering diversity of colors that it possesses for the ordinary sleeper, and in its place there arises an inner order and harmony that not only is not inferior to the ordinary physical world but, in fact, far surpasses it in these qualities. The person becomes aware that there has always been another world around him, in the same sense that the world of light and colors exists around the blind person. He could not see it only because of a lack of sensory organs, just as the blind person cannot see the world of light and colors before his operation. The significant moment when the astral organs of perception begin to function in a human being is called “awakening” or “rebirth” in esoteric science.
[ 10 ] At this moment of awakening, a person realizes that he is surrounded by a higher world in which not only do the things of the sensory world previously known to him possess different qualities, but there are also facts and essences that were previously unknown to him. — And now it also becomes clear to them that in this other world there exist the images from which the things of the physical world take shape. It is not an inaccurate analogy to compare the way the physical world arises from the astral world to the formation of ice from water. Just as ice is water in a transformed state, so the physical world is the astral world in a transformed state. And just as water is a flowing element, so the astral world stands in the background of the physical world as a constantly changing world of images. Nothing fixed or self-contained is found in its forms, as in the ordinary world. Everything flows into one another and takes on new forms. And a physical object or a physical being comes into being only as if such a flowing image were to freeze in an instant. Anyone who were to apply the concepts of the physical world, with its fixed boundaries, to the realm of the astral would thereby only reveal that they lack a true insight into this entirely different world.
[ 11 ] Just as the beings of the physical world are embodied in the physical body, so the astral images are the expression of beings who do not enter the physical world. They find this expression in a substance different from that of the human being living in the physical world, who finds his own in flesh and blood.
[ 12 ] What, then, is this astral substance? It is none other than that which human beings actually possess within themselves. It is merely obscured within them during their waking, everyday life by sensory perceptions, as it were. — Human desires, wishes, and aversions—as well as sympathies and antipathies—are linked to these sensory perceptions. A person desires one object and rejects another. The source from which the dream consciousness also draws when it transforms things into symbols is to be found in nothing other than these desires, wishes, and aversions. The self-consciousness of waking life, through external perceptions, provides desires and wishes with the nourishment they require. When the activities of the external senses fall silent, another creative force steps in and shapes images from the substance of desires and wishes. Esoteric science teaches that the dreaming person finds himself in the astral body woven from desires and longings, and that the physical body has been abandoned by self-consciousness. In the case of the initiate or the awakened one, the situation is such that he, too, has left his physical body, but his self-consciousness dwells within his astral body. Just as the physical body can convey the perception of physical things—because its organs are formed of the same substance as the physical world—so too can the initiate perceive the beings of the astral world, because he possesses organs made of the substance of wishes and desires, in which they find their expression.
[ 13 ] The difference between the uninitiated and the initiated person is that the astral world is not visible to the former as an external world, whereas it is for the latter. For the uninitiated, this astral world remains merely an inner world; they experience it in their wishes and desires, but they do not see it. The initiate not only feels his desire; he perceives it as an object of the external world, just as the uninitiated perceives tables and chairs.
[ 14 ] However, the ordinary world of dreams is merely a faint echo of this world of the initiate. Indeed, it can be nothing more than that, because self-consciousness does not participate in it. But where is this self-consciousness during the dream? It has withdrawn into a higher world in which the human being is initially not present as such. A comparison can help clarify the relationship the human being has to this world. Consider a human hand and a tool held by it. As long as the hand holds the tool, the two form, as it were, a single whole. The tool carries out the actions determined by the hand. But as soon as the hand sets the tool aside, the tool is left to its own devices; and the movements of the hand are merely expressions of the will within the human being to whom it belongs. Thus, during waking daily life, the physical body must be regarded as a tool of a limb of a higher being. When this higher being, as it were, extends a limb into the physical body, sensory activity—and with it, self-consciousness—arises within it. When this limb leaves the body, self-consciousness ceases. Thus, the innermost essence of the human being—which is capable of self-consciousness—is a limb of a higher being, from which it is, so to speak, temporarily extended and clothed in the physical body. However, one can form an even better conception of this if one regards this “projection” at the same time as a “separation,” as if, during wakefulness, a drop were to detach itself from the higher being in question, only to be reabsorbed during sleep. For during wakefulness, the human being is not conscious of his connection to a higher being; he is thus effectively cut off from it. During sleep, self-consciousness must be absent, for it withdraws into the higher being; the latter absorbs it, and thus the person rests enclosed within it.
[ 15 ] When dreamless sleep sets in, the world of images disappears. The physical body appears to lie there completely unconscious; in reality, however, its state of consciousness is merely even more dull than during dream-filled sleep. The image-producing power has also departed from the physical body. Therefore, only the insights of the awakened can shed light on this state. The unawakened lack any perception of it. For the awakened, however, the image-producing body—which was previously loosely connected to the physical body—appears to have been lifted out of it. And he is not now idle; rather, he has the task of restoring the forces of the physical body—which appear exhausted due to fatigue—to their proper strength. This explains the restorative nature of healthy sleep. Exhausted, the physical body sinks into sleep. At that moment, it surrenders its self-consciousness to higher beings. In the intermediate state of dream sleep, the soul remains in a loose connection with the physical body. The defining characteristic of this soul is its creative nature. From the moment of waking, it begins to direct its creative power toward processing the perceptions conveyed by the senses into the human inner life. At the moment of falling asleep, external sensory perceptions cease. In the intermediate state of dreaming, the creative power still shapes itself into the symbols described; then these symbols, too, fade away; the soul directs its entire creative power toward the body, which it now works on from the outside. — Anyone who wished to disregard the teachings of esoteric science entirely could infer from the very fact of feeling refreshed upon waking in the morning what characterizes the soul’s nocturnal activity. Daily life has something disharmonious and chaotic about it. Things in the physical environment act upon the human being from all sides. Now one thing, now another finds its way into the person’s inner being. This throws the inner formative forces out of the order that is inherent in their original nature. At night, this is restored to balance. The soul restores order and harmony. As a result of daily life, the physical body gradually comes to resemble a mass of air that is permeated on all sides by wind currents, with its parts moving about in an irregular manner. Upon awakening, however, it can be compared to such a mass of air that has been set into regular vibrations by the rhythm and harmony of a piece of music. And indeed, to the initiate, the soul’s work on the body during sleep appears as a resonating of the body itself. During sleep, the human being immerses himself in the harmony of soul life. And this is the very same harmony from which he was formed. Before the physical body first opened itself to the external world through the sense organs, it was entirely under the influence of this harmony, which gave it its structure. This harmony pervades the entire world as soul harmony, as tones of the soul. Human beings are surrounded by its sounds just as they are surrounded by the images described earlier. Just as this world of images becomes perceptible to the awakened person through training as a “real environment,” so too, on an even higher level, does this third world. Sounds and tones begin to resound all around him. And in these tones, the meaning of the world reveals itself to him. Just as the form of the physical world arose from the images, so these forms derived their inner meaning and essence from the tones described. From this point of view, all things are tones made manifest.
[ 16 ] While awake, therefore, human beings are beings composed of three parts: the physical body, which perceives the physical world through the organs implanted in it from the external world and encompasses self-consciousness; a body that has the character of a moving image within itself; its images are at the same time the archetypes of the physical body, whose clearly defined forms have, as it were, emerged from the ever-changing images of the second body through a process of solidification; and furthermore, both the physical body and the body of images are permeated by a harmony of sound—a third body. — During dream sleep, the soul withdraws from the physical body; it remains connected to the other two bodies, resonating through the body of sound and imbuing the body of images with images. These images act upon the physical body and convey the shadowy dream images to it. In dreamless sleep, the soul is connected only to the tonal body; what was part of the physical body while awake is now outside it and acts upon it from the outside. This activity flowing from the soul into the body produces in it only such a dull consciousness that it is not perceived by the person.
[ 17 ] In fact, this presents three states of consciousness of the physical body: waking daytime consciousness, dream consciousness, and dreamless sleep consciousness. For the initiate, the dullness of the latter two states of consciousness is dispelled; through this enlightenment, he lives in higher worlds just as the unawakened person lives in the physical external world during waking life. This gives us five states of consciousness, which are arranged in the following sequence according to their increasing brightness:
1. Dreamless sleep consciousness
2. Dream sleep
3. Waking daytime consciousness
4. The visual consciousness of the initiate
5. The auditory consciousness of the initiate.
[ 18 ] When one considers that, through training in esoteric science, the initiate attains the last two states of consciousness as a higher stage of human development, it will readily become clear that waking daytime consciousness also represents a higher stage than the two subordinate states of consciousness—that is, it has developed from them. This is what esoteric science sets forth. It explains that in the distant past, human beings passed through a stage of development in which they possessed only a dull sleep consciousness, unadulterated by any dream images; then they ascended to a dull dream consciousness, finally arriving at the waking daytime consciousness of today. The initiate continues along this line of development. He cultivates these two higher forms of consciousness.
[ 19 ] However, an even higher state of consciousness is attainable for this initiate. For it is evident from what has been said above that even in tonal consciousness, the soul is still connected to the human body. This connection can cease entirely. The soul can leave the body entirely. The initiate learns this. And then, if he wishes to perceive anything at all, he must have developed organs of an even higher order than before. If this is the case, then the meaning of the world expresses itself directly in his surroundings, without the mediation of “tone.” This initially highest level of consciousness is called spiritual or purely spiritual consciousness. In accordance with the preceding list of levels of consciousness, this would correspond in modern human beings to a state that represents an even more dulled consciousness than that of dreamless sleep. In principle, this is indeed the case. Yet modern human beings cannot actually experience this state. Their soul would then have to be entirely outside the body; dreamless sleep would have to be interrupted by a state entirely devoid of the soul. This would in fact amount to a temporary abandonment of the physical body to itself—that is, a temporary death. The physical body must not be subjected to this if it is not to run the risk of becoming incapable of receiving the soul.
[ 20 ] In terms of development, however, this state did in fact precede dreamless sleep consciousness, so that the complete sequence of stages of human consciousness is as follows:
1. a low, dull, and fixed state of consciousness
2. a dreamless sleep consciousness
3. a dream consciousness
4. bright daytime consciousness
5. visual consciousness
6. auditory consciousness
7. spiritual consciousness.
[ 21 ] The human body has advanced only as far as the fourth level of consciousness in the present. The initiate can attain the higher forms of consciousness. However, these also lead him into higher worlds. Human development, however, should be understood in such a way that the physical body itself has formed through the first three stages and has now assumed a form such that, during sleep, it still exhibits two other forms of consciousness as remnants of previous stages. The first stage has been completely obliterated by evolution. — The three higher stages of consciousness of the initiate cannot yet find expression in the physical human body, because the body cannot develop the organs necessary for them. They are prophetic foreshadowings of forms that this physical body will yet assume.
[ 22 ] If, based on these discussions, one wishes to correctly conceive of the present world, it presents itself as a fourfold reality: first, the physical world of the bodily senses; then, enveloping and permeating this, a world of images; furthermore, a world of sound that interweaves with both; and finally, a spiritual world that underlies them all.
[ 23 ] This world was preceded by another, in which human beings lived like dreaming beings. At that time, their physical bodies were in the same state as they are now during dream-filled sleep. Their surroundings resembled a panorama of shifting images. There were no fixed outlines to things. This state was then interrupted by another, which resembles the present dreamless sleep. And this, in turn, was interrupted by a state that can no longer be realized today and that was filled by the first of the forms of consciousness characterized above.
[ 24 ] In an even earlier world, human beings were also unable to rise to the level of experiencing dream images. Their highest state of consciousness was that of dreamless sleep, and this state was interrupted by a lower, dull consciousness—which has now already faded—which in turn was interrupted by a state that has lost all significance for present-day development.
[ 25 ] In the first world, to which the secret science refers, human beings lack even the dull consciousness of sleep; the first of the states described is their highest; two others, which are not relevant today, alternated with it.
[ 26 ] Thus, one looks back into the distant past of evolution; one surveys the four stages through which the physical human body has passed. But one also looks toward the future, in which the three forms of consciousness—accessible today to initiates in higher worlds—will find their realization in the physical world. Our world will be succeeded by a future one in which physical human bodies will possess organs through which a self-conscious human being will perceive an eternally changing world of images, and indeed will view themselves as such. — And one looks further toward a world in which these images will be permeated by harmonious sounds that will express their inner essence. Finally, toward a world of a spiritual nature, which will, however, have poured its spirit into physical nature.
[ 27 ] This is how Esoteric Science depicts the evolution of the world, through which humanity passes in successive stages. And it designates these stages of evolution with names that have since come to be used to refer to the planets surrounding the Earth. The stage of evolution in which humanity existed with a consciousness that was still dull and sluggish is called the Saturn stage; the second, in which humanity lived with a dreamless, sleep-like consciousness, is called the Sun stage; the third, in which a dream consciousness emerged, is called the Moon stage; the fourth, the present stage, in which human beings have struggled their way to clear daytime consciousness, is called the Earth stage. And the stages of the future, in which the levels of consciousness currently attainable by initiates in higher worlds will find their physical expression, are successively named the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan stages.
[ 28 ] What distinguishes the types of consciousness of the initiate from the states of consciousness of human beings during the future Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolutions is that the former must ascend to higher worlds in order to live in the corresponding states of consciousness, whereas future human beings will possess them in the physical world. This stems from the fact that, in the present, the initiate’s corresponding organs of perception are formed from the forces of the higher worlds; in the future, their equivalents will arise in the physical human body from the physical environment. Human beings can perceive as their environment precisely that world which provides the material for their organs. In the future, the physical environment will possess formative forces that currently belong solely to the higher worlds. One can thus describe the development of the world as a succession of ever-higher worlds becoming physically embodied. The Earth is the fourth embodiment. In its physical structure, it has the capacity to imprint upon the human body the organs necessary for clear, waking consciousness. In the sense of esoteric science, it developed from another physical state in which it could only imprint upon the body the organs for dream consciousness. This state is designated by the name “Moon.” The Earth thus forms out of this “Moon” by acquiring a new capacity: namely, to develop the organs for waking daytime consciousness. The “Moon” arose from the “Sun.” What has now become the “Earth” was therefore the “Sun” at that time. Esoteric science refers to the “Solar State” as the stage in which the world body within it can produce, in a human body, only the organs for dreamless sleep consciousness. And before the Earth was a “Sun” in this sense, it was at the “Saturn” stage.
[ 29 ] How, then, does such a celestial body acquire the power to form the corresponding organs in the human body? It could never do so if these organs were not preformed in relation to higher worlds by human beings who have gone ahead. By preforming the Jupiter organs in higher worlds at present, the initiates create the possibility for the surrounding world of images to take on a physical character. The solidification into the physical body is brought about by the fact that the forms it is to take on must first exist in a spiritual sense. Thus, the initiates become the transformers of the world body they inhabit. From them, as it were, radiate the formative forces that subsequently bring into being the things of the physical human environment.
[ 30 ] Thus, the initiates of the Lunar Stage spiritually prefigured the physical form of the Earth. The Earth’s environment as humans experience it today constituted the content of their soul experiences. They perceived the Earth as the object of a higher world.
[ 31 ] In this sense, the Esoteric Science recognizes seven great world cycles or world periods through which that being passes, which, on its fourth stage, represents the Earth. Each such period is linked to a higher form of the human body. — Based on this insight, this science sees in the “Fourfold” that which characterizes the present stage of world development. What, for example, Pythagoras and his school referred to as the “Fourfold” is characterized by this. The “Four” is the number of the “great world,” that is, the world in which humanity currently dwells. It has raised humanity to the fourth stage of its consciousness.
[ 32 ] Esoteric science contrasts the human being himself with the “small world” of this “great world.” He already possesses within his nature, as soul, that which the “great world” is to become physically. He is thus on the path to expanding his inner “small world” into the “great world.” Within him lies the creative womb of the latter. In this sense, Esoteric Science sees in the soul a creative seed for the future, an “inner being” that strives to realize itself in an outer form.
[ 33 ] But in order to be creative in the external world, this soul must first come of age. It must first experience inwardly what it is later to shape in the external world. For example, before the soul possessed the ability to endow the physical body with organs for waking daytime consciousness, it first had to pass through a series of stages of development during which it gradually acquired this ability. Thus, the soul first had to experience the initial state of consciousness within itself before it could create it; and the same applies to the other forms of consciousness. These stages of the soul’s development, which precede the creation of the various types of consciousness within it, are called “stages of life” in esoteric science. There are, therefore, just as many stages of life as there are stages of consciousness. Life differs from consciousness in that the former is of an inner nature, while the latter is based on a relationship to the external world.
[ 34 ] Applied to the Earth, one can say: before the human body’s bright state of daytime consciousness emerged on it, this celestial body had to pass through four states, which are to be understood as four stages of life.
[ 35 ] The stages of soul experience arise when one internalizes what is perceived as the external world in the various states of consciousness. First, there is that dull, heavy state of consciousness that precedes dreamless sleep. In the latter, the soul works to harmonize the body; its corresponding state of life is the harmonization of its own inner being. It thus permeates itself with a world of resonant movement. Previously, in the dull, heavy state of experience, it was in its own motionless inner realm. It felt this inner realm in all directions with undifferentiated indifference. This lowest state of life is referred to as the first elemental realm. It is an experience of matter in its original nature. Matter comes into excitation and movement in a wide variety of directions. And its self-experience of this mobility, as the first stage of life, is the first elemental realm. — The second stage is reached when rhythm and harmony emerge from these movements. The corresponding stage of life is the inner awareness of rhythm as sound. This is the second elemental realm. — The third stage develops as the movements transform into images. Then the soul lives within itself as in a world of images that take shape and dissolve again. This is the third elemental realm. — At the fourth stage, the images take on fixed forms; individual elements emerge from the ever-changing panorama. As a result, they can no longer be experienced merely inwardly but can be perceived outwardly. This realm is the realm of the outer bodies.
[ 36 ] In this realm, one must distinguish between the form it takes for human consciousness in the light of day and the form it experiences within itself. The body actually experiences its own form within itself—that is, the substance taking shape in regular forms. — At the next stage, this mere experience of form is overcome; in its place comes the experience of the transformation of form. The form shapes itself and reshapes itself. One can say that at this stage, the third elemental kingdom appears in a higher form. In the third elemental kingdom, the movement from form to form can only be experienced as an image; in this fifth realm, the image progresses to the point of solidification in the external object, but this external object does not cease to exist in its form; rather, it retains its capacity for transformation. This realm is that of growing and reproducing bodies. And its capacity for transformation is precisely manifested in growth and reproduction. — In the next realm, the ability to experience the external in its effect on the internal is added. It is the realm of sentient beings. — The final realm to be considered is that which not only experiences the effect of external things within itself but also shares in their inner life. This is the realm of compassionate beings. Thus, the sequence of stages of life is structured as follows:
1. Dull, material existence
2. Experience of inner movement
3. Experience of inner formation
4. Experience of a fixed boundary
5. Experience of transformation
6. Experience of the effects of the external world as sensation
7. Shared experience of the external world.
[ 37 ] The inner experience of the soul must first be preceded by the creative work of this life. For nothing can be experienced that has not first come into being. While esoteric science refers to inner experience as “soul,” it designates the creative as “spirit.” The [physical body] perceives through the organs; the soul experiences itself inwardly; the spirit creates outwardly. Just as the seven levels of consciousness are preceded by seven soul experiences, so too are these soul experiences preceded by seven corresponding types of creative activity. In the realm of the creative, the dull experience of matter corresponds to the bringing forth of that matter. There, matter flows into the world in an indifferent manner. This realm is referred to as that of formlessness. At the next stage, matter becomes structured, and its parts enter into relationship with one another. We are thus dealing here with various forms of matter that combine and separate. This realm is referred to as that of form. At the third stage, matter no longer needs to enter into a relationship with matter itself; rather, forces emanate from the matter, causing matter to attract and repel one another, and so on. We are dealing with the astral realm. At the fourth stage, a material form appears, shaped by the forces of the environment, which at the third stage merely regulated external relationships and now work their way into the inner being of living beings. This is the realm of the physical. A being at this stage is a mirror of its environment; the forces of the latter work to structure it. Further progress consists in the fact that the being not only structures itself internally in accordance with the forces of its environment, but also acquires an external physiognomy that bears the imprint of that environment. While a being on the fourth level represents a mirror of its environment, one on the fifth level expresses that environment physiognomically. This stage is therefore called the physiognomic stage in esoteric science. At the sixth stage, the physiognomy becomes a radiating expression of itself. A being at this stage shapes the things of its environment in the same way that it has first shaped itself. This is the stage of shaping. And at the seventh stage, shaping gives way to creation. The being that has reached this stage creates forms in its environment that, on a small scale, replicate what its environment is on a large scale. It is the stage of the creative.
The development of the spiritual realm is thus divided into the following series of stages:
1. Formlessness
2. Shaping
3. The incorporation of power
4. Shaping in accordance with the forces of the environment
5. Physiognomic expressiveness
6. The power to shape
7. Creative ability.
[ 38 ] When the Saturn evolution began, the human body was at the stage of formlessness. It first had to struggle its way to the point of creative ability before a soul could experience its first material life within it. This means that the body first had to develop through the seven stages of creative activity before its soul could live through it. This soul must now once again reach the point where it can impart its inner movement to each of the body’s seven forms. The first time the body passes through its seven forms, the soul itself is still completely lifeless. Only at the seventh stage, when the body becomes creative, does its life awaken. And it must awaken now, for the body expends matter in its creative activity. The soul must replace this matter for it. And now a second cycle begins. The matter that flows into the body as a replacement itself passes through the seven stages, from formlessness to creative capacity. Once it has reached this stage, the soul is no longer limited to the experiences brought about by the movement of the inflowing substance, but begins a new stage of life. Because the inflowing substance has itself become creative, it begins to fill the body from within. Previously, it had merely served as a replacement for what was lost; now it becomes embedded in the body. And once again, it passes through all forms, from formlessness to creative capacity. First, it is deposited formlessly within the body; then it gradually transitions to forms, develops powers, shapes structures, gives them a physiognomic expression, and so on. Throughout this entire cycle, the soul passes through its third stage of life. It harmonizes this inner structure and restores balance to what has been thrown into disorder by the inner processes. — Once the substance has been formative within, it proceeds, in a fourth stage, to allow the external world to act upon it. It is able to do this because the soul inhabiting it has now matured to the point of experiencing the impressions of its surroundings in a subdued manner, thereby repeatedly restoring order to the disruptions caused by the external world. In the next cycle, the body no longer remains confined to structuring itself; it reshapes itself under the influence of the external world. The soul has matured to the point where it can regulate this transformation. Then a cycle begins for the body in which it perceives the effects of the external world as sensations. The soul once again serves as the regulator of this stage of existence. Finally, the body has reached its final stage; it can experience the external world directly. The soul is now ready to experience the next stage in advance—namely, the next stage of consciousness in a world higher than the Saturn existence. Through this, it undergoes a dreamless state of sleep during this final Saturn cycle. And it now transfers this state to the physical body during the first Solar cycle.
[ 39 ] It is evident that the physical human body passed through seven physical stages during the Saturn period. Each time it reached such a stage, the soul attained a higher level of experience. At the seventh stage, it moved beyond Saturn’s development and, in its experience, pointed toward the Solar stage.
[ 40 ] When the solar cycle begins, the physical body is ready to assume its own form. Whereas the soul used to be the regulator of this form, the body now has its own formative power within itself. This is called the etheric body. The soul is no longer in direct connection with the physical body; the etheric body stands between them as a mediator. The soul’s experiences are transferred to this etheric body, just as they were previously transferred to the physical body. Now, the seven states of form must first be passed through again, starting with this etheric body—from formlessness to creative activity. As the etheric body exerts a formative influence on the physical body, it continuously loses its tension. And this tension is continually regulated by the soul. In this way, the solar evolution also passes through seven physical stages. And in each of these stages, the soul appears at a higher level; in the seventh, it manifests a new state of consciousness. While it is still witnessing how the etheric body becomes the creator of new forms that replicate the entire solar world, it already senses within itself a world of images that surges and ebbs within it.
[ 41 ] During the first lunar cycle, she transfers this world of images to the etheric body, which now shapes the physical body in accordance with these soul images. Just as, on the solar stage, the formative etheric body interposed itself between the physical body and the soul, so now the characterized image body interposes itself between the physical body and the soul. In esoteric science, it is called the sensory body. For just as human sensations flow, as it were, from the outer world into the inner world, thereby making the content of the outer world the property of the inner world, so the images of the image body work from the inside out and imprint their content upon the etheric body, which in turn transmits it to the physical body.
[ 42 ] Once again, during the lunar phase of development, human beings pass through all stages of form seven times in order to allow the soul to mature to a higher level in each of them. During the seventh stage, the soul has the ability to give its images the most perfect form; it can experience everything that takes place on the world body around it, so that its world of images is an expression of the entire lunar world. At the same time, it has a foretaste of the heightened state of consciousness of the next stage; it begins to perceive fixed forms within its ever-changing world of images. Through this, it matures to the point of influencing the etheric body in such a way that the latter develops organs within itself that possess a lasting quality. — And with this, the transition can be made to the first earthly cycle. Within this cycle, the physical body incorporates the solid forms of the images; these become its organs. Thus, a fourth member begins to develop in the human being. Perceptions of external objects interpose themselves between the body of images and the soul. The body has now, in a certain sense, outgrown the soul; it has become independent. What previously occurred within it were the results of those images that the soul had appropriated from the external world. Now the external world directly brings about perceptions within it. And the inner life of the soul unfolds as a shared experience of these perceptions. The expression of this independent activity of the body is self-consciousness. Yet self-consciousness matures only gradually. First, the human being must pass through a cycle of forms in which only a dull material life is sensed in the organs; in a second cycle, the influence of matter brings about an inner movement; through this, the etheric body experiences the external world and transforms the organs into living instruments of the physical organism. In a third cycle, the image body also becomes capable of reproducing the external world. It now stimulates the organs in such a way that they themselves produce images that live within them, but are not yet representations of external things. Only in the fourth cycle does the soul itself become capable of permeating the bodily organs; in doing so, it detaches the images from these bodily organs and superimposes them onto external things. Thus an external world stands before it, to which it stands in contrast as an inner, independent being. — But it is also at this point that, from time to time, the bodily organs it makes use of fall into exhaustion. Then the possibility of being in connection with the external world ceases. Sleep sets in, during which the soul once again exerts a balancing influence on the physical body in its former manner through the image body and the etheric body. Thus, for esoteric science, sleep appears as a remnant of earlier stages of development. At present, humanity has gone a little beyond the midpoint of the fourth Earth cycle. This is expressed in the fact that human beings perceive not only external objects in bright daytime consciousness, but also the laws underlying them. The soul has begun to experience the inner transformation of things.
[ 43 ] During the Saturn evolution, the human body was at the stage of a dull, sluggish consciousness. However, one must not assume from this that other stages of consciousness did not exist among beings who, at that time, existed in connection with this earlier incarnation of the Earth. In particular, there was a being at that time whose consciousness was equivalent to the present-day waking consciousness of human beings. However, since the conditions of the Saturn environment were quite different from those on Earth, this stage of consciousness also had to manifest itself in a fundamentally different way.
[ 44 ] The human being on Earth has minerals, plants, and animals around him as objects of perception. He regards these beings as inferior to himself and sees himself as a higher being in relation to them. With that Saturnian being, the opposite was true. It had three groups of beings above it and had to regard itself as the lowest link within the realm of what was perceptible to it. These three higher groups of beings were designated in esoteric science by various names, depending on the language of the people and the era to which the esoteric teachers belonged. The terms used in Christian esoteric science, listed from top to bottom, are: Dominions (Kyriotetes), Powers (Dynamis), and Authorities (Exusiai). That characterized being ranks as the fourth and lowest link, just as the human being on Earth ranks as the highest link in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. — In keeping with these entirely different conditions, the nature of perception itself was also different. The initiate knows this nature from experience. For it corresponds to what he attains as his third stage, beyond waking daytime consciousness: spiritual consciousness. It is as if the impressions did not come to the senses from external objects, but rather as if they surged from within toward the senses, flowed outward from them, and there outside met the objects and beings, reflecting off them and then appearing to consciousness in their reflection. — Such was the case with that Saturnian being. It poured its life force onto the things of the planet, and from all sides the reflection was cast back to it in the most manifold ways. It perceived its own life reflected from all sides. And the things that reflected this essence back to it were the beginnings of the physical human body. For the planet consisted of them. Whatever else was perceived did not appear on the planet itself, but in its vicinity. The beings called Exusiai (powers) appeared as radiant beings that illuminated the celestial body from all sides. Saturn itself was a body that was dark in and of itself; it did not receive its light from dead light sources, but from these beings who inhabited its surroundings and illuminated it as luminous beings. Their light revealed itself to the perception of the Saturn being, just as the animal body currently makes itself perceptible to human beings. The beings called Dynamis (Powers) revealed themselves in a similar manner from the periphery through spiritual sounds, and the Kyriotetes (Dominions) through what is called in esoteric science the “world aroma”—a kind of impression that can be compared to the sense of smell.
[ 45 ] Just as the earthly human being rises beyond the perceptions of external things to concepts that exist only within, so that Saturn being recognized, in addition to the aforementioned entities that revealed themselves to it as if from within, other entities that it perceived from without; in Christian esoteric science, they are called Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones. There is nothing within the sphere of the earthly human’s experience that can be compared to the sublime characteristics in which they appeared at that time. — Finally, this Saturnian being was also aware of a third kind of co-inhabitant. They populated the interior of the planet. After all, the planet consisted solely of a composite of human bodies, to the extent that they had developed at that time. If one wishes to form a conception of these bodies, one can do so by comparing them, for the periods in which they appeared in physical form, to automatons composed of the finest ethereal substance. As such, they reflected the life of that Saturnian being; but they themselves were entirely without life and without any sensation. However, they were inhabited by two kinds of beings who developed their life and capacity for sensation within them. To do this, these beings needed a certain foundation, for they lacked a physical body of their own, and yet they were so constituted that they could develop their higher faculties only within such a body. They therefore made use of the human physical body.
[ 46 ] Thus, on Saturn, the physical, soul, and spiritual elements were present in a manner similar to how they exist on Earth. However, on Earth, these elements constitute the threefold nature of the human being: his body, his soul, and his spirit. Each of these aspects of the human being, in turn, consists of three sub-aspects: the body consists of the physical body, the etheric body, and the sensory body; the soul consists of the sensory soul, the intellectual soul, and the conscious soul; the spirit consists of the spiritual self, the life spirit, and the spiritual human. On Saturn, the physical, the soul, and the spirit exist not as parts of a single being but as independent beings; the physical body as the first foundation of the human body and the actual material basis of the planet itself; the etheric body as an angel, the sensory body as an archangel; the Sensitive Soul is represented by that characterized Saturnian being itself, the Intellectual Soul by the Dominions, the Conscious Soul by the Powers, the Spiritual Self by the Principalities, the Life Spirit by the Thrones, and the Spiritual Man by the Cherubim; above them all stand the Seraphim.
[ 47 ] Thus, during the periods when Saturn was at its physical stage, it constituted a segmented body consisting of subtle etheric bodies; within these, the angels and archangels reigned just as the life and nervous forces do in the human body today. And just as the human body has sensory organs on the outside, so Saturn itself was, on its surface, as if covered with nothing but senses; only these senses were not receptive, but reflective. They reflected everything that made an impression from the surroundings of the celestial body. Then the luminous powers radiated upon Saturn’s surface, and their light was reflected back in manifold ways from that surface. Sounds emanated from the powers, and these sounds in turn radiated out into space as manifold echoes; finally, the surface of Saturn was bathed in the fragrance of the realms, and it returned this in many varied forms. And the soul life of that distinctive Saturnian being consisted in the perception of all these reflections. — One may call this being the actual planetary spirit of Saturn. For in fact, there was only one of its kind, just as in the earthly human there is a multiplicity of limbs, senses, and so on, but only one self-consciousness. The entire Saturn was the body of this planetary spirit.
[ 48 ] The evolution of Saturn consisted of seven cycles, which represent the unfolding of the soul’s life. In each of these seven cycles, the planet passes through the seven forms, from formlessness to creative capacity. — In the first cycle, the Thrones constitute the guiding soul element; in the second, the Dominions; in the third, the Powers; in the fourth, the Virtues; and in the fifth, the planetary spirit of Saturn itself. This spirit did not possess full, clear consciousness from the very beginning of Saturn’s development, but acquired it only in the fourth cycle. It was only then that it attained a true soul experience of the planetary processes. Thus, in the fifth cycle, it can act as a soul in its own right. During the fifth cycle, the archangels now develop into an inner soul life whose content is drawn from the Saturn processes. They are able to do this by making use of human bodies that have developed into suitable instruments for them by that time. As a result, in the sixth cycle they become capable of guiding it as independent souls. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to the seventh cycle with the angels.
[ 49 ] In the fifth cycle, the planetary spirit of Saturn could not act as a soul in the manner described if it remained within the body of Saturn. For the nature of that body does not permit such a thing. The spirit of Saturn must therefore step out of the body of Saturn and act upon it from the outside. Thus, in this cycle, Saturn is divided into two world bodies. Of these, however, the one that has stepped out is to be designated as the soul of Saturn. It is, as it were, the prophetic foreshadowing of the next planetary incarnation: the Sun. Thus, during its fifth, sixth, and seventh cycles, Saturn is orbited by a kind of Sun, just as the Earth is currently orbited by its Moon.
[ 50 ] Something similar must occur in the sixth cycle for the archangels. They leave the mass of Saturn and orbit it as a new planet, which is referred to in esoteric science as Jupiter. And in the seventh cycle, something similar happens with regard to the angels. They draw their mass out of that of Saturn and orbit it as an independent planet. In esoteric science, this is called Mars. — These are processes similar to those that already took place during the preceding Saturn cycles. In the third cycle, the forces guided the development of the soul. During the fourth cycle, they left the planet and orbited it as a brightly shining, independent planet, which in esoteric science bears the name Mercury. In the third cycle, the same had happened with the forces that became independent as the planet Venus.
[ 51 ] As part of the Sun’s evolution, the human body—which was previously automatic—comes to life within itself. This occurs because the light that previously radiated from the circle of luminous beings onto Saturn is now absorbed by the constituents of the Sun’s body itself. The Sun becomes a luminous planet. The perfected human bodies develop a luminous life. Sounds now resound from the surrounding sphere, and the world-aroma flows from the corresponding beings.
[ 52 ] A transformation has taken place with the planetary spirit of Saturn. It has multiplied. One has become seven. Just as a single seed contains many grains in the ear of grain that forms from it—all of which are of the same essence as that one seed—so, too, seven shoots sprout from the one Saturn planetary spirit during the transition to the solar stage. And its life now takes on a different form. It acquires the ability to perceive phenomena from a realm that lies one stage lower than itself. This is made possible by the fact that a number of human bodies have lagged behind in their development and remained at the Saturn stage. As a result, they are unable to receive the radiant life of the Sun. They form dark spots within the radiant solar planet. They perceive the seven Solar Spirits, which arose from the planetary spirit of Saturn, as a natural kingdom standing below them. Thus, these seven beings live on the surface of the Sun; beneath them, they behold a kingdom whose beings possess bodies that stand only one level lower than the human bodies of the Sun. These bodies themselves, however, provide them with the nourishment they need through the light they radiate. While the Saturn bodies were merely reflectors of the Saturn spirit’s essence, the solar bodies occupy, in relation to the solar spirits, the position that the Sun currently occupies with its light in relation to the beings of the plant kingdom. In terms of bodily organization, the human being stands at the level of a plant being during the solar evolution. It would not be correct to say that human beings themselves passed through the plant kingdom at that time. For a plant kingdom such as exists today can develop only under the unique conditions of the Earth. If one wishes to use a comparison in this regard, one would have to imagine the solar human body as a plant being that develops organs similar to those that plants currently develop as flowers, turning them toward its own planet. And just as the present-day plant receives its light from an external sun, so the solar human plant received its light from its own planet, which was, after all, a sun. What the plant today sends into the earth as a root was, in the solar body, turned toward the incoming sounds and scents; it absorbed them and processed them within itself. One could call the present-day plant a human body that has remained at the solar stage and has turned itself completely around. It therefore stretches the organs of growth and reproduction—which the human being has concealed and turned downward—chastely upward toward the sun.
[ 53 ] It was not until the fourth solar cycle that the human body was fully developed. The three preceding cycles served as a preparation for this. The first cycle is, in fact, merely a repetition of the Saturn existence. And its seven stages of form are seven repetitions of the stages of life in the Saturn cycle. But it is not until the second solar cycle that life begins to spark within the human body. This life is not yet fully developed enough for the archangels—who, on the Sun, assume the position that the planetary spirit had occupied on Saturn—to find fulfillment in this life. Rather, the forces now draw upon the power that can flow from this life; during the third cycle, the seven beings arising from the Saturn spirit take their place; and during the fourth solar cycle, the archangels live within the lives of the earthly bodies, just as the planetary spirit was reflected in the bodies of Saturn. During the fifth solar cycle, the archangels ascend to a higher stage of existence, and the angels take their place on the planet. During the sixth solar cycle, the angels, too, have developed to such a high degree that they no longer require the physical part of the human body; they make use only of the light flowing in and out for their own purposes, in order to live within it. The physical human body has become an independent entity, the prototype of the present-day physical body of human beings. And at this stage, it behaves entirely like a physical apparatus—only one whose parts are alive. It is, so to speak, a living sensory instrument, though its perceptions are not received by the body itself. It lacks the necessary level of consciousness for this. It is in a plant-like sleep, which constitutes its highest level of consciousness. What takes shape within it as perceptions passes into the consciousness of the angels, archangels, and so on, depending on the sequence of the various solar cycles. These higher beings watch over the sleeping human body.
[ 54 ] What, then, are the causes under whose influence the Sun developed from Saturn? One can recognize them by taking a look at the final stages of Saturn’s development. Let us assume that the seventh cycle has reached the fourth stage of form, the physical stage. At this stage, the human body has reached a point where it can serve the angels as sensory organs that reflect their nature. At this stage, the angels possess a kind of human consciousness, which, however, is granted to them only through the senses of the human body. Higher beings act upon the planet from its orbit. They successively develop the higher stages of consciousness. The moment the angels, too, evolve into such higher forms of consciousness, they can no longer make use of the human body. The consequence of this is that they leave it. It must die. But this means nothing other than that the physical Saturn body disintegrates before the physiognomic form of the seventh orbit develops. This physiognomic stage is therefore no longer physical at all. The planet exists only as a soul planet. The physical form sinks into the abyss. On the soul planet, the angels live in a superphysical pictorial consciousness. And the higher beings are active there with corresponding higher forms of consciousness. At the point when the angels, too, have outgrown pictorial consciousness, the soul planet must also disintegrate. It is replaced by another, on which the formative principle is developed. However, it hovers only in that world in which the earthly initiate finds himself when he dwells in the higher tone consciousness. For the same reasons, another planet develops from this one, one that belongs to an even higher world at the end of the seventh Saturn cycle. In this world, the creative form of existence is realized. — It has been shown that as higher beings ascend into corresponding forms of consciousness, satellite planets of Saturn always separate off; these must float in higher worlds because Saturn’s main form cannot accommodate such types of consciousness. Now, however, Saturn itself ascends to such higher worlds. As a result, every time it arrives in such a higher world, it unites with the satellite that is present in that same world. At the end of the seventh Saturn cycle, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, and the Sun are thus reunited with Saturn. Everything once again forms a single world. — Within this single world, however, lies the creative form of Saturn’s life force. Through it, the world that has become spiritualized in the manner described is led back to the lower stages of existence. This occurs precisely with the evolution of the Sun. In the course of its cycles, the planets that formed from Saturn re-emerge. Each one now appears just one step closer to physical existence.
[ 55 ] If a human observer with senses were to observe the planet described at its present stage of development, he would see the celestial body emerge from the darkness only during certain periods; during the long intervals in between, when it exists only in higher worlds, it would vanish from such an observer’s view. It would remain visible only to an observer whose consciousness can dwell in higher worlds. A distinction is therefore made between the physical states of planetary existence: twilight or night states. However, one must not imagine that during such intervening periods the planet and its beings fall into inactivity. This [activity] merely takes place in higher worlds and is thus expressed in a much more real existence than the mere physical one.
[ 56 ] Once the Sun has completed its seven cycles, a new era begins in which the human body is ready not only to receive the inflow of light and thereby be enlivened, but also to allow the world of sound surrounding it—formed by the “powers”—to continue working within it and to reproduce it as sounds itself. At this stage of existence, known as the lunar stage, the human body becomes a sounding being. Whereas on the Saturn stage the sound reflected back from the planet into the environment was merely an echo of the surroundings, it now resounds out into that environment in a transformed way. It is transformed in such a way that it reproduces in the most varied manner what is taking place within the human bodies. These human bodies have thus incorporated a third member into their being: the emotional body. For it is their inner nature—their world of feelings—that resounds outward. — But the seven beings that developed from the Saturn spirit during the Sun’s evolution have become seven times seven. Their environment has now become such that they experience their own world of feelings within the feeling bodies that have formed. These feeling bodies are the bearers of their bright daytime consciousness. They now feel surrounded by two realms that lie below them and one that lies above them. This realm hovering above them makes itself felt to them from outer space as the world aroma; they experience themselves as resonant beings, and the two realms that lie below them have come into being because one group of human bodies has remained at the Saturn stage and a second at the Sun stage. Thus, these lunar beings are surrounded by automaton-like beings who continue their Saturn maturity on the Moon under conditions entirely different from those that existed on Saturn itself, and furthermore by plant-like solar bodies that are in a similar situation. Thus, three kinds of beings are present within the actual mass of the Moon. There are those automaton-like beings, which are dark within themselves and which have retained from Saturn the ability to radiate life around them. They are not lifeless beings in the sense of present-day minerals. A mineral foundation, such as that of the Earth, did not yet exist on the Moon at all. In its place was a foundation consisting of the beings described above. One can form a conception of it by imagining it endowed with a life that permeates it entirely, so that on the Moon, for example, instead of the mineral topsoil of our planet, there is a living, paste-like mass; embedded within this are woody parts, much like the rock masses embedded in the softer rock of our Earth. In this living foundation—whose components might be called plant-minerals—the described solar beings took root, standing at a stage between the present-day animal and the present-day plant. And the mobile beings that inhabited the Moon were human bodies, standing midway between animal and human in terms of their development. They were the hosts of the descendants of the planetary spirit of Saturn. Yet this spirit could not have developed a waking daytime consciousness within them. In order to live in such a state, these beings had to step out of the body each time. When they were within the body—that is, when they were living its life—they were imbued only with a consciousness filled with dream images. In this state of consciousness, they perceived nothing of their physical surroundings; but they radiated their inner experiences out into the environment. What played out there in sounds during the sleep of the lunar beings were their passions and desires. To highlight just one aspect of this experience, it should be noted that, for example, what we now call “love life”—and which underlies procreation—took place on the Moon during dream-filled sleep. Waking life during the day was devoid of desire and, indeed, of love, devoted entirely to the observation of the surroundings. The human ancestor on the Moon knew nothing yet of sexual relations in his waking life. What humans today feel in sexual love was represented on the Moon by dream images that expressed, only in symbolic form, what is now concrete reality. — It was not, then, the human ancestor who experienced the world of images in a waking state on the Moon; rather, it was the beings who initially stood above humanity—the angels—who lived within it. For them, the dream world of humanity unfolded, as it were, as a bright, waking reality. They watched over the dreaming human world, just as the archangels watched over the solar world, which lived in a plant-like sleep.
[ 57 ] The first two lunar cycles were merely repetitions of earlier stages of development. The seven forms of the first cycle repeated the seven Saturn cycles, and the seven forms of the second cycle repeated the seven Sun cycles.
[ 58 ] In the third lunar cycle, the human body has developed to the point where beings at the archangelic level experience its dream images as their surroundings; in the fourth cycle, this is the case for the angels. In this cycle, the descendants of the planetary spirit of Saturn can use the human body to such an extent that, when they envelop it from the outside and make use of it, they attain a clear, waking consciousness through it. In the fifth cycle, these beings have ascended to such a height that they no longer require the physical human body; the human being now perceives his surroundings on his own, but he attains only a lower level of consciousness in relation to these perceptions. At this stage, these beings require only the etheric body and the feeling body. In the sixth cycle, they relinquish the etheric body as well; in the seventh, they relinquish the feeling body.
[ 59 ] The Moon is a reincarnation of the Solar Planet. Now, during the period in which the stage of solar development is repeated on the Moon—that is, during the second cycle—the Solar Body emerges from its mass. Within this emerged solar body then live those beings who have attained a stage of consciousness and life for which no conditions exist on the Moon itself. During the second cycle, these are the forces; during the solar life, they shared in the life of the physical human body. Now, on the Moon, this solar stage leads only a stunted, underdeveloped existence within the animal-plants described above. The Powers cannot live within them. Rather, they animate these beings from the outside by sending them the light they need from their Sun. During the third lunar cycle, the descendants of the planetary spirit of Saturn have also risen to a level where they can no longer find a place of existence on the Moon. And accordingly, during the fourth cycle, the archangels leave the Moon, which in this period of its existence is just as much the dwelling place of the angels as the Earth later becomes that of human beings in its fourth cycle.
[ 60 ] Just as the other planets emerged gradually during the Sun’s evolution, so too is this happening with them now during the Moon’s evolution. However, they are once again one step closer to physical existence—at the point in time when the Moon is at the height of its evolution, that is, from the physical form of its fourth cycle onward. During the fifth cycle, Mars—which is then inhabited by the angels—attains a subtle, etheric-physical form in the lunar environment; during the sixth cycle, the same occurs with Jupiter, the dwelling place of the archangels. Finally, during the seventh lunar cycle, the same happens with Mercury. Mars and Jupiter have meanwhile become even denser; the former has a density that enables it to generate heat through the movements of its constituents and to radiate it out into space.
[ 61 ] Earth’s evolution takes in the fruits that have ripened on the Moon. The human body has already passed through three stages of its development. In the first stage, it was capable of serving, like a physical instrument, as an organ of perception for those beings who had already advanced so far on the solar stage that they could dispense with any such apparatus. Thus, even then, they belonged to those beings who, as creators, were able to devote their activity to the solar planet from the outside. The position they had held on Saturn was taken over on the Sun by the archangels. The planetary spirits of Saturn did not have their physical form within the Sun itself, but rather within the creative forces that sustained the life of the Sun. — On the Moon, then, the archangels had become the creative powers. The angels of the Moon, who at that time possessed a clear, daytime consciousness, could admire their physical form when they looked up to their creators.
[ 62 ] These three stages of planetary development were initially repeated during the first three Earth cycles. During these cycles, the human body was to prepare itself to transform the images that had formed during the lunar consciousness into inner experiences. It had to become capable not only of harboring a life body and an image body within itself, but also of inwardly reflecting the external world in its images. On the Moon, it had reached the stage where its images could be contemplated by the angels. The human’s lunar body was the environment of the angels. And in contemplating the lunar human, they themselves had simultaneously advanced; they had struggled through this process so that they could now create on a higher level what they had perceived on the Moon. For there, in addition to the two realms that stood below them, they still had beings of their own kind in their surroundings. Once the lunar evolution had come to an end, they were able to imprint the nature of these beings upon the human body. Earth humans could then see in their physical surroundings, while inhabiting their bodies, what the angels on the Moon could only behold when they ascended to a higher world: their own kind.
[ 63 ] But the human body could only be guided toward such a capacity step by step. And this is precisely what happened during the three Earth cycles. In the first, it was able to perceive itself as it was on Saturn; in the second, as it was on the Sun; and in the third, as it was on the Moon. During the first Earth cycle, fellow human beings were still, in effect, walking automatons to it; during the second, they appeared to it as plant-like beings; and during the third, as beings with animal characteristics.
[ 64 ] When the fourth cycle began, humankind had become capable of perceiving the creations of the angels—its peers—all around itself. The angels, however, stood three levels of consciousness above him. They could create what he perceived. — The human body now acquired four members: the physical [member], which became the mirror of the surroundings; the vital [member], which could transform perceptions of the surroundings into inner movement; the image body, which was able to transform these inner movements into symbolic forms; and finally the body that became the bearer of bright daytime consciousness, which harmonizes the inner images with the impressions of the surroundings and thereby creates the connection between inner experience and the processes of the surroundings. — But clear waking consciousness remains limited to the external physical world; the processes of life and the images of the image-body are animated internally, but are not perceived as the environment. Its image-body remains the object of the next higher level of being, that of the angels, and its life-body even that of the archangels. Everything in the human being that is connected to the life body—the laws of his growth and reproduction—is therefore hidden from him; he is aware of it only in the consciousness present during dreamless sleep. For the archangels, however, these processes are aspects of the external world and their activity, just as a human’s work on a physical machine is present to him. And everything connected with image-consciousness—the laws that are more mysterious to human beings, which give their face a certain expression and facial gestures, and their gait and so on certain forms; in other words, what is expressed in their character, temperament, and so on—is under the dominion of the angels. Only what they bring about in their surroundings is subject to their own laws.
[ 65 ] During the fourth Earth cycle, human beings evolved into beings that can be described in this way. — But the angels, who had developed during the Lunar stage to the consciousness of creators, could no longer find a place for themselves on Earth at the moment when the image body began to belong to human beings themselves—that is, from the point in time when the second cycle had passed its midpoint. They then withdrew into a higher community with new conditions of life; the Sun separated itself from the new Earth and henceforth sent its forces to it from without.
[ 66 ] In the third Earth cycle, those human bodies that had not progressed far enough in the second cycle to have their image-body nourished by the forces gathered on the Sun were forced to descend into a lower form of existence. They sank from the animal-human level down to the animal level. Where, then, could they obtain the forces for their image-body? They were not receptive to the solar forces of the perfected angels. Yet at every stage, some beings lag behind in their development. By the third cycle, there were still angels who had lagged behind in their development and were therefore unable to find a place on the Sun. During the second half of the third Earth cycle, they had not yet found the capacity to ascend to the Sun. Nor, however, were they constituted to continue influencing the image-bodies of the human being in the process of perfection. They possessed only the gift of influencing those image-bodies that had remained at the level of lunar existence. Therefore, they withdrew from the Earth’s mass to form the present Moon. The Moon is thus a celestial body that represents an earlier phase of Earth’s development in a sort of solidified state. It is the dwelling place of those beings who did not wish to become creators of the perfect human body. Their activity can be found in the image-bodies of animals; but they also continue to direct their attacks against the image-body of the human being, which is, after all, the realm they have outgrown. As soon as a human strays even slightly from devotion to his higher nature—which is conveyed to him through the impressions of his senses—and as soon as he succumbs to the forces at work in his image body, these beings gain influence over him. Their activity manifests itself in wild dreams that reflect the animalistic desires arising from his lower nature.
[ 67 ] When the third Earth cycle passes its midpoint—that is, when the Earth has become physical for the third time—the conditions for the existence of the physical human body, capable of receiving external perceptions, no longer exist. The physical dies away. The consequence of this is that the sin of omission committed by the angels who remained behind is no longer felt as painfully by the beings who have ascended to solar existence. The Moon is therefore incorporated into the Earth’s body once more. And as the cycle continues, when the entire Earth has ascended from the world of images into a higher world, it unites with the Sun once again. Through this, the forces within the human body—which in the third cycle were only able to perceive the image-animated body in their surroundings—attain creative ability. This enables them to enter the fourth cycle. There, they are initially still in the world that is perceptible only to spiritual consciousness, but they gradually descend into ever deeper worlds. Finally, the human body is ready to develop organs of perception for its kind in a subtle, ethereal form. The physical body thus acquires the capacities of its earthly form. This is also the point at which the Earth can no longer serve as a stage for the perfected angels; the Sun emerges from the Earth with them and shines upon it from the outside. The physical body continues to advance ever further. The images of the image-body acquire a liveliness that was not previously their own; the organs of the physical body nourish them through the mirror images of external objects. The time has come when the external earthly environment snatches these images away from the angels who have been left behind. They must extract from the Earth that part of it which can serve as their dwelling place. The Moon once again separates from the Earth and orbits it as its satellite.
[ 68 ] How far has the human body developed at this point in time? It has developed its fourfold nature. It is organized in such a way that it can serve as a vehicle for an etheric or life body, and that it can house an image body. Furthermore, its sense organs allow the earthly environment to be reflected in these images. The physical human body has thus now reached an entirely new stage. It reflects inwardly, just as it once reflected outwardly the essence of the planetary spirit of Saturn while on Saturn. As a result, that part of this spirit which was then its lowest link can now live within it. This part therefore separates itself from the planetary spirit of Saturn; it loses the ability to receive the revelations of the higher realms and becomes the bearer of human self-consciousness. Human beings learn to perceive themselves as “I.” From now on, they carry within themselves the nature that the planetary spirit of Saturn once revealed as a sphere surrounding the planet.
[ 69 ] Thus, the human being has reached the stage at which the archangels reveal themselves in his etheric body, the angels in his image body, and the planetary Spirit of Saturn in his self-consciousness. He can now ascend to the stage at which the Saturn Spirit within him becomes capable of having a relationship with the image body similar to that which the Saturn Spirit itself attained when it gradually outgrew its own planetary existence and became a dweller of Jupiter. But since human beings remain inhabitants of the Earth, such “forces” can only act upon them from the outside. This means that the Earth comes under the influence of the forces of Jupiter. At a later stage, something similar occurs with regard to those beings who were at a stage where they could only act upon the etheric body from the outside, from Mars. The human being on Earth comes under the influence of Mars.
[ 70 ] When the Sun, Earth, and Moon still formed a single body, the human body on this planet was composed of a substance that was in an air-like state. Apart from human bodies, the only other beings present with a physical form in a liquid state were the descendants of the human-like creatures of the Moon. The offspring of those lunar beings who lived there as plant-minerals had attained a solid state. In addition to the liquid human-animals, however, there were also animal-plant-like beings at this [point in time] that had emerged from the plant-animals of the Moon. While the former had a more watery appearance, the animal-plant-like beings consisted of a dense, paste-like mass which, when it became coarser, resembled the substance that currently forms fungi.
[ 71 ] When the Sun drew its matter out of the Earth, leaving the latter with only the mass of the Moon within it, all conditions on the planet changed. The matter of human bodies condensed into a liquid substance comparable to today’s blood. The previously liquid beings took on a solid form, and the solid plant and mineral substances acquired a very dense materiality. Before the sun withdrew, the life of the human body was essentially a kind of respiration—an inhalation and exhalation of air-like substance. Following this, a form of nutrition developed from the liquid environment. And reproduction was also linked to this nutrition. The viscous human body was fertilized by the reproductive substance of its environment and divided under this fertilizing influence. Its development, while the lunar substance was still within the Earth, proceeded in such a way that it formed semi-solid parts within its liquid mass, which condensed to the consistency of cartilage. It was not yet able to form solid, bone-like structural elements during this period, for the Earth’s mass was not suited to this as long as it contained the Moon. Only with the Moon’s departure, when the coarsest material substance had been removed, did a solid skeletal framework emerge within the human body. And this was also the time when the ability to draw fertilizing substances from the environment ceased. With the departure of the lunar mass, the earthly substances also lost their ability to exert a fertilizing effect on the human body. In the period prior to this, there were not two sexes of the human body. Human beings were beings of a feminine nature, to whom the male essence was present within the earthly environment itself. The entire lunar earth had a masculine character.
[ 72 ] As the Moon receded, some human bodies transformed into those of a masculine nature. They thus absorbed the fertilizing forces that had previously been contained, as it were, in the sap of the Earth itself. The feminine nature of the human body underwent such a transformation that it could be fertilized by the newly formed masculine principle. — All this came about through the transition of a kind of hermaphroditic human body into a unisex one. The earlier human body fertilized itself with substances it had absorbed. Now, one form of the human body—the female form—retained only the power to bring the fertilized substance to maturity. This occurred because, within it, the male power lost the ability to prepare the fertilizing substance. This power remains only with the etheric or life body, which is responsible for bringing about maturation. The male form of the human body lost the ability to do anything with the fertilized substance within itself. The feminine remained confined within it to the etheric body. Thus, in present-day human beings, the situation is such that in men the etheric body is feminine, while in women it is masculine. — The acquisition of these abilities coincides chronologically with the formation of a solid skeletal structure.
[ 73 ] However, this was preceded by another important process. As the human body transitioned from gaseous to liquid matter, the capacity to absorb gaseous matter through a special organ developed at the same time. This marked the beginning of separate respiration. One must simply realize that at that time, the Earth did not yet have a separate atmosphere of its own. The substances that later separated from the common mass as liquid and solid were themselves still air-like at that time; they were enclosed within the air. And when the process of liquefaction began, the human body did not live on solid ground, but in the liquid element. Its mode of locomotion was a kind of floating suspension. And the air above the liquid element was considerably denser than the air that would later exist. It contained not only all the water that would later form, but also many other substances in solution. Accordingly, the entire respiratory system of the human body was different.
[ 74 ] Before the Sun’s departure, the entire process of respiration had a different purpose than it did in the period that followed. It consisted of absorbing and releasing heat from and into the environment. One could say that the heat which humans today generate within themselves through their blood circulation was, at that time, inhaled from and exhaled into the environment. It was only after the Sun’s withdrawal that the process transformed such that the air, only after being inhaled, generates heat through its action within the body. — Thus, with air respiration in its present form, the human body had become a heat generator within itself.
[ 75 ] This transformation in the human body is connected to a cosmic event known in esoteric science as the withdrawal of Mars from the Earth. Mars is the planet whose inherent forces, prior to this withdrawal, brought about in the human body what the blood circulation subsequently took over within the human body itself. As the blood on Earth thus took over the activity of Mars, the spiritual beings were able to rise out of the Earth, so that Mars’s influence on human beings then became one that acted from the outside. Physically, this came about because iron became an important component of the blood; and iron is the substance upon which the forces of Mars have a particular effect. Thus, the present form of respiration is connected with this withdrawal of Mars. Through this, however, human beings received what might be called the inner power of their blood. This marked the beginning of the soul’s animation. Indeed, through atmospheric respiration, human beings breathed their living soul into themselves.
[ 76 ] As long as the Earth was connected to the Sun, the power of the Sun was what regulated the other processes in the human body. The power of the Sun contained within it that which acted in the human body as both masculine and feminine. And under its influence, the absorption and release of heat emanating from Mars also took on a regular pattern. When the Sun had withdrawn, certain human bodies began to transform in such a way that they became infertile. These were the precursors of the later male natures. As long as the lunar forces were still linked to the Earth, the other part retained the capacity for self-fertilization. With the Moon’s departure, it lost this ability. From this point on, the Sun exerted its influence—specifically, the beings now inhabiting it, the angels, influenced the capacity for procreation. The male etheric body came under the influence of these solar beings. The female etheric body, which is male in nature, retained its connection to those beings for whom the Moon had become the sphere of activity. Accordingly, the woman’s physical body came under the influence of the solar forces. It had, after all, developed the form now appropriate to it when the Sun was already shining on the Earth from the outside. The male physical body, on the other hand, came under the influence of the Moon, because it had assumed its form—which was infertile in terms of reproduction—under the influence of the planet that was still united with the Earth. Alongside all these processes, the development of the senses takes place simultaneously, bringing the world of images of the sensory body under the influence of the Earth’s environment and thereby placing human beings under the influence of the descendants of the planetary body of Saturn. Furthermore, the pulsating force of the blood develops within, through which the soul forms, and—together with sensory perceptions—an inner life, as well as sympathy and antipathy toward the surroundings, can take shape.
[ 77 ] Humanity had reached the stage described above when the Earth had emerged as an independent physical planet in its fourth cycle and had separated itself from the Sun, the Moon, and Mars.
[ 78 ] Human beings had thus completed the division into two sexes at that time. They perceived their surroundings through their senses. They felt attraction and aversion toward these surroundings. And because they differed from their surroundings, they were endowed with a nascent sense of self. The human body had become a four-part being. And within the fourth part, inner soul life had arisen through the blood, which granted access to the forces of Mars.
[ 79 ] Human beings had thus developed within themselves everything they could possess as the fruit of the first three stages of planetary evolution. And they had a fourth limb, which had come into being because other influences—which could have had nothing to do with their development—had withdrawn from the Earth.
[ 80 ] In esoteric science, this humanity is called the third major race of the Earth. In fact, it is only from this point onward that one can speak of the formation of races. For it was only now that human reproduction began, and with it differences within humanity that were brought about by the interaction of human beings themselves. What can be called heredity and kinship began to emerge. However, the Earth, the fourth planetary form of development, had not yet exerted any influence. Perceptions of the environment had only just taken hold of the images of the sensory body. The etheric body was not yet under the influence of the Earth’s environment. The fourth planet had not yet exerted any influence on hereditary relationships. Only the first three [planetary forms] had done so. That is why the race in which this was the case is designated as the third.
[ 81 ] This was followed by the fourth stage, during which the Earth’s environment itself began to exert an influence on the etheric body. This could only happen if beings exerted an influence on human beings who, in their development, were at such a stage that they lacked the creative ability to act upon the etheric body in the sense of fertilization, but who had nevertheless progressed beyond the point where, like human beings themselves, they could receive only sensory impressions from the physical environment. Such beings were those who, on the Moon—that is, during the Earth’s previous incarnation—had not yet ascended to the level of creative beings capable of inhabiting the Sun, but who had nevertheless progressed beyond the stage at which one can merely lead an inner life through the images of the human body. Within the course of Earth’s evolution, they possess the ability to perceive through human senses, but not the ability to create those senses. These beings can appear to humans there ...
[The manuscript ends here.]