The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. On the Process of Evolution of the Human Races

[ 1 ] Today I will speak about the evolutionary process of the three human races, going back to their earliest stages. Let us first focus on our cycle and our race. We are living in the fourth cycle and the fifth race. I will describe the development of our current race. [The Atlantean] race preceded it. This race lived on a continent between America and Africa. Parts of Africa still belong to it, as did Egypt at certain times—although Egypt has been submerged repeatedly—and also Greenland. The Lemurian race preceded this one. In this race, human beings absorbed the Manas from Kama. Two other human races preceded this one. It is an exaggeration to call these preceding races “human races.”

[ 2 ] The individualities that make up our causal body—this was before the middle of the third race—were not actually incarnated; rather, they were at that time in a state of spiritual-cosmic descent. Try to visualize this correctly first. I will use an image to make this completely clear.

[ 3 ] Just imagine: A child is learning to write, and you start by taking a specific book—let's say a book on physics—and having the child copy sentences from it. But the point isn’t to have them write the letters a, e, i, u, because the content of the physics book, so to speak, hovers over the whole process. The teacher serves as the mediator. Let’s suppose I have the child write out the sentences from the physics book so that the child becomes accustomed to recognizing the content. At first, the content will still remain outside the child. But the time will come when the content has sunk into the child, and the child will then write from within the content that has been imposed on them from without. Now imagine that the content of the physics textbook is the living content of all causal bodies that have been continuously incarnating since the third human race. Imagine, too, that they will continue to incarnate. This content had not yet incarnated back then; as a virgin individuality, it [hovered] above what is now taking place down here.

[ 4 ] First, we must imagine that everything that would later incarnate existed as a complete unity. It was, as it were, all the World Soul, which still contained within itself everything that would later develop into the causal body. An idea proposed by Giordano Bruno will make this clear to us in a truly wonderful way. This concept is not found in the book, but we must form it in our minds. We compare the world to the individual human soul, and then, instead of the human soul with its thoughts, we imagine the World Soul with its thoughts. These are living beings. Human thoughts must be expanded into living entities. They would then experience the causal bodies as the entities of thought.

[ 5 ] Everything that lives within us once existed in the third human race, which was filled with the thoughts of the World Soul. Then the cosmic descent took place. It was all like countless streams flowing forth from the divine center. Christian esotericism says: The angels proclaim the glory of God. Every thought proclaims the glory of God. It is, so to speak, the mouthpiece of God. This now descends into the rupic region of the mental world. It takes on forms in the most diverse ways. Only now can we speak of the individuality being formed. Now the human being begins to feel itself. It is in the rupic region. Now it descends further into the astral region. The beings have then become astral entities.

[ 6 ] Now there is a law in the spiritual cosmos which states that the lower unites with the higher when the lower and the higher have become of the same nature. The Upper has become astral. Just as human thoughts surround themselves with astral matter, so do the world-thoughts surround themselves with material and astral entities.

[ 7 ] Beings had come from the Moon who had once been truly physical—beings who were crude entities, not merely resembling animal forms. They were gigantic figures, beings who could not think, in whom only chemical forces had taken shape. What was manasic acted like a thread from the outside, just as the individual bee is guided by the bee soul. What guides here is the same as that which later descends. It is already doing the work now. Just as Kama develops, the reaching down occurs from above. They have become astral from their physical form; they have returned to the embryonic state.

[ 8 ] The beings we call Pitris pass over into Pralaya and are fertilized by that which once hovered above them. Everything within us that is chemical passes over. The lunar Pitris had no brain; after all, they had no intellect. They were governed solely by what has now receded into the background as the sympathetic nervous system and which now carries out the unconscious functions.

[ 9 ] First, that which is Kama-Manas splits off from the overflowing essence of the World Soul. This then passes through three elemental realms. It develops into the arupic, rupic, and astral realms. And the moment the intellect becomes astral, that is when our cycle begins. From the planet come the Lunar Pitris like seeds. The first sphere is an arupic sphere. There, the seed-bodies float at first. There, the arupic intellect takes shape. Then comes a small Pralaya. The second sphere follows. They interweave in such a way that strange formations now arise—formations that are somewhat more finely shaped on one side. The outer, coarse entities of the Moon Pitris remain intact. These contract during the time when the second sphere is forming. In the third sphere, the intellect becomes astral, and the former Kama nature also becomes astral again. Now they are united, and now the fourth sphere—the actual human race—begins as well.

[ 10 ] Now human beings are evolving into the etheric form. In the first race, beings—or human beings—were entirely etheric, until, in the third race, the “I” sank into them, at which point what is worked into them can connect with Manas and work together with Manas, the intellect. Externally, Kama-Manas appears. Human beings recognize good and evil. Now they begin to incarnate again and again. In the second race, the next stage is prepared. We begin to form incarnations only in the middle of the third race, the Lemurian race.

[ 11 ] What I need now is a clear picture. We first exist within the World Soul, as it were, like in a cornucopia. Then we descend deeper and deeper, and as this descent takes place, a mysterious connection exists with some body down there. Because I am now Atma, there is a physical body below that belongs to me in an occult sense. Then I descend into Prana; then comes Kama, which develops upward toward Manas. Together: The egos in Atma are distributed among the beings developing upward in Kama.

[ 12 ] When the Lemurian race was developing, there were not yet animals as we know them today; rather, they were beings of a completely different nature. What had already come into being was the entire mineral kingdom. These were not individual minerals, but a realm in a state of constant flux. The mineral kingdom, too, had solidified into fixed forms. Internally, Kama-Manas developed within the human being; externally, the mineral kingdom. Now, dissolved within the generally floating mineral kingdom was the principle of the plant kingdom. They were not yet individual plants—as in the “Opodeldok,” where the ethereal plant forms permeate the substance—for the plant principle lives within it. Likewise, what would become animals did not yet exist in physical forms, but was a surging, soft mass, although individualized to a certain degree.

[ 13 ] The Spirit hovered over the waters. The World Spirit had not yet descended into individual beings. First, the mineral kingdom took shape; then the plant kingdom; and then the animal kingdom. The formation of the human kingdom took place simultaneously. One must not assume that humans evolved from the animals we call apes. Apes are beings who, at that time, missed the connection—that is, who did not incarnate with Manas. The egos of apes are received by decadent bodies. Within the mental kingdom, there are still countless other animal souls that would incarnate if animal bodies were to be offered to them within the present era. We must not conceive of this in moral terms, but rather in cosmic terms, as pertaining to the world soul.

[ 14 ] Let us assume that our Theosophical Society is not successful at this time; in that case, American and European development would fall into decadence. But if we prevail, then [gap in the transcript]

[ 15 ] A civilization was established in the Gobi Desert, and from there, the entire course of development at that time radiated outward. Now, the aim is not to create a geographical separation, but rather a moral one; a core is to be formed that will serve as the foundation for the next race. If the right egos are not found, failure would ensue, and a delay would occur. In normal development, Nirmanakayas can only evolve once the physical body has dissolved back into the mental.

[ 16 ] Plato is what is known as a “fifth-rounder.” This state has been achieved artificially. But then you will all have astral bodies. The Buddha or Christ natures are not merely fifth-rounders or sixth-rounders. They operate from within the mental body. These are, in a sense, dual natures that are already developing within the physical body what others will only achieve in much later periods of time.