Awareness - Life - Form
GA 89
2 November 1904
Translated by Steiner Online Library
Planetary Development VIII
[ 1 ] In the middle of the Lemurian era, the human body had been developed to the point where it was capable of thought. The Dhyanic beings had reached that degree of perfection which enabled them to endow the physical body with the power of thought. As a result of the physical body now being endowed with the power of thought, the previously unified human sex divided into the two sexes. Previously, a being was capable of producing offspring from itself without the influence of a second being. The power of physical productivity was therefore twice as great in these beings as it is now in individual humans. Thus, in the middle of the Lemurian period, the power of productivity in humans was divided into two parts, and the second half of this power was used for the development of the faculty of thought.
[ 2 ] Up to that point, humankind had continually developed at the expense of other realms that had been separated from it. Now it had to divide itself into two halves: the lower productive power and the higher productive power (the power of thought); the latter was developed at the expense of the former. Our physical power of reason is thus the transformed regenerative power of the past.
[ 3 ] Up until that point, there were no warm-blooded beings on Earth—that is, beings with blood generated from within by the fire of Kama. All beings, including humans, were cold-blooded at that time. All cold-blooded creatures of today are the stunted descendants of the cold-blooded creatures of that time. Everything that exists today as warm-blooded creatures was still united with humans back then and only gradually split off.
[ 4 ] Step by step, humankind has always left behind what was inferior in order to evolve upward. Reptiles, birds, and mammals branched off first; primates did so relatively late. The warm-blooded animals are also stages that have been left behind; humans have shed them just as they previously shed the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the cold-blooded animal kingdom. Since no warm-blooded animals existed up to that point, one actually gains an additional kingdom. In esotericism, the following are also counted: the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, cold-blooded animals, and warm-blooded animals.
[ 5 ] The differentiation of warm-blooded animals did not occur until the Lemurian epoch, when Kama entered the bodies and took hold of the lower part of the divided productivity. Kama, acting from within, produces what is known as heat in warm-blooded beings.
[ 6 ] The Dhyanic entities were now able to create a human form in which half of the productive power was converted into intellectual power. The Lunar Pitris then gradually took possession of the created human bodies.
[ 7 ] Even Dhyanic beings can lag behind in their development. Thus, some Dhyanis of the same class as the creators of humankind on the Moon had fallen behind in their development. They had not yet reached the point where they could play a creative role in the emergence of the two sexes. However, they had attained the ability to wisely develop and shape the kama body. They were able to bring the kama aspect in human beings to its highest peak. These beings were still engaged in this work during the Lemurian epoch; that was their intention. But since the kama body on the Moon had not yet been shaped in a sexual manner, they could not participate in the development of kama in the sexual realm.
[ 8 ] While the Dhyanis, who had advanced ahead of them, had developed the human body to the point where the spirit could enter the two bodies of different sexes, these lagging entities sought only to use their highest wisdom to shape a humanity that would bring to fruition what had been strived for on the Moon, but without sexual differentiation. To this end, they also found in human beings wisdom as something akin to their own nature. They now took hold of humanity and sought to mold it into a form that excluded all lower kamic elements; they wanted to bring it to perfection directly, without passing through the stage of sexuality. They wanted to shape them into beings of wisdom; they wanted to guide them further and to disregard what they had to go through in “their physical nature.” These are the beings who refused to participate in creation within physical nature.
[ 9 ] If human beings had developed solely in accordance with the intentions of the first Dhyanis, the lower kamic nature would not have developed, and the Dhyanis would have guided them through their thoughts. Who, then, would actually have been thinking within human beings? After all, what had entered them were God’s thoughts. Human beings would always have been under God’s guidance; God would have thought within them, but they themselves would never have thought. Then, although human beings would have been true children of God, they would never have been able to become like God. As thinking automatons, they would never have been able to grasp the inner spark of wisdom as their own; it would always have remained a foreign light.
[ 10 ] Then came these more advanced beings, who were at just the right stage to intervene and offer help here. They had developed the wisdom-filled kama body on the Moon and had come to understand how wisdom permeates kama. They were the beings to whom humanity owes its freedom. In order for the spark of the spirit to become its own, humankind had to be coupled with Kama. Through this, they learned to love the light of the other Dhyanic beings. In esotericism, they are called the great ascetics, the Kumaras. For in the beginning, they refused to create; they did not understand dual sexuality; they became unruly. They were humanity’s guides where Kama is led upward toward wisdom.
[ 11 ] The Elohim, namely Yahweh-Elohim, created humankind, but they did not want humans to become “like us.” Now, following the intervention of the Dhyanis who had remained behind, the aim was at least to prevent humans from becoming spiritual while completely excluding all that is base. Lucifer’s original intention was to eliminate sexuality and allow humanity to be completely absorbed in the spiritual. Jehovah, on the other hand, tends to emphasize physical life. He does not want humanity to become spiritual too soon, but rather to pass through the phases of Earth’s evolution. Together, they bring about the free human being.
[ 12 ] The rebellion of the lower Dhyanis—that is the work of Lucifer; the intervention of the beings who liberate humanity is the so-called mystery of Lucifer. In all esoteric schools, Lucifer has been venerated in the same way as the other Dhyanic beings. Whenever there was a desire to lead the way upward to the Spirit with full clarity of insight, Lucifer was invoked. An understanding of the mystery of Lucifer still existed in the earliest Christian mystery schools and was recorded in the early days of Christianity. This text is carefully guarded by the Catholic Church. It has good reasons for doing so, for it has branded Lucifer as the enemy of humanity, whereas in truth he transformed the automatic human into a free human being. The text is located in the Vatican; the Count of $t. Germain possesses a copy of the original.
[ 13 ] We have now examined the interplay of the celestial beings (Dhyanis), the earthly beings (the earthly-physical human being and the lunar-soul aspect of the Pitris), and the Luciferic beings during the Lemurian epoch. Let us now consider a specific line of development within the human being. Every cycle is first descending and then ascending: evolution—involution. The same is true of our sensory development. We have not always had the same senses. In the Polar Age, human beings were enveloped in a thin, almost shadowy substance. They had been formed in the manner of the Pitris—ethereal. These etheric human beings, who actually looked oval like an egg, moved within a completely ethereal element. Today’s senses would have been useless back then. A single sense was sufficient to orient oneself within the etheric matter, and that was the sense of hearing. They had only this one sense to perceive the movement of the etheric matter, just as humanity would later, in the sixth root race, hear the “trumpets” (Revelation of John)—that is, the tones of the spheres.
[ 14 ] As matter condensed, what must be described as temperature differences within the matter began to form. Air moving uniformly is sound. The movements were no longer uniform, which is why denser and warmer areas arose. The Hyperboreans were formed from air matter. They moved within a kind of air matter. They were able to distinguish between different temperature levels by developing a sense of touch. As the Earth continued to condense, bodies first became more solid and then eventually incandescent. Externally, this could appear as a flame. The sense of sight developed, specifically as the head’s heat organ—which protruded from the top of the head like a lantern—very slowly transformed into a visual organ. This is the later pineal gland, which has now atrophied; in the past, it was glowing and protruding: the single eye of the Cyclops. As the Earth continued to condense, this eye began to regress, and instead of one eye, two eyes emerged, though they did not fully develop until the Atlantean era.
[ 15 ] Up until the third sub-race of the Atlantic epoch, there were still people who had developed a single eye (the eye of the Cyclops) and used it for clairvoyance. After that, a new ability emerged: the ability to perceive condensed matter through another sense—the sense of taste (the tongue). The matter had to be concentrated so intensely that it became like salt. Last of all, the sense of smell developed, which would only attain its true significance in the rounds to follow.
[ 16 ] Now the development continues, and we are called upon to cultivate two new senses in this cycle. In fact, we have already begun to actively start the cycle where we had previously begun it passively. What was previously passive is now becoming active within us. The foundation for this was laid by the Atlanteans. Previously, humans had no language; it first developed among the Atlanteans. Through language, humans express what they have heard with their ears. Evolution was once involution. Speaking is the opposite of hearing. Speaking must continue to develop. It will come to fulfill its purpose—to become a sense—when mystical development has refined human beings from within to such an extent that the spiritual can flow directly into them. Only when the spiritual unites with the larynx will human beings be able to speak in the higher sense (before the Masters).
[ 17 ] For the first time, a human Manu—who will be a “Master” as a human being—will complete his training at the end of the fifth root race. In the sixth root race, he will be a fellow human being. Those who have advanced their mystical development of the astral sense to the point where they are able to recognize the Master have achieved this through the training of this sense. “Before the voice can speak before the Masters, the wounding must be unlearned.” But within our cycle, a seventh sense must also be developed. In the same way that the sense of hearing actively manifests itself in language that no longer wounds, the sense of feeling will undergo a reversal. Human beings will no longer merely perceive what comes from the outside as a feeling, but will also learn to direct it outward. They will be able to freely unfold their hearts outward and now wrap their deepest feelings around other people. What today lies within the heart as the spiritual soul will flow outward. They will lay their souls openly at the feet of others. As long as a person does not consciously strive to face their fellow human beings and the whole world without concealment, they will not be able to develop this sense: “And before the soul can stand before them, the blood of their heart must wet their feet.” The astral body organizes these senses when one lives in accordance with these two sayings.