The Rudolf Steiner Archive

61. Seven Rounds on the Beginning of the Bible — Genesis

[ 1 ] If one wants to understand the beginning of the Bible, one must know what things refer to. We have spoken of the Hyperboreans. They were not a race so dense that one could not penetrate them. - Air beings. Therefore, we shouldn’t be surprised that they left behind no traces, bones, and so on. Only that which possessed physical substance could leave remains. What takes place in the first chapter of Genesis lies far higher than the Hyperborean era. Merely up to the astral plane, above all that is physical /gap in the transcript].

[ 2 ] Let us review the seven rounds: Human beings such as those of the present day were first brought forth in the fourth round; the archetype of such a human being was created, one who could realize himself within the mineral kingdom. Before that, he had passed through the elemental kingdoms.

Round 5: Plant Kingdom
Round 6: Animal Kingdom
Round 7: Human Kingdom

[ 3 ] Thus, regarding the current cycle, one cannot yet say that human beings are the image of the Divine. Only in the seventh cycle will they become godlike in their human nature. Only the physical body has attained its perfection. Further development involves reaching earlier stages again, but in a higher form. Human beings became as physical as they are today when they acquired warm blood.

[ 4 ] We must make a clear distinction between warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals. Fish have no passions. Human beings also went through a cold-blooded stage. The Lemurian race was cold-blooded until the emergence of sexuality. We must attain this state again in a higher form. Christianity is striving once more toward the development of cold-bloodedness. It seeks to curb and refine the passions. The esotericist says that Christians are fish who overcome everything that stems from warm-bloodedness.

[ 5 ] The astral body will not be complete until the next round. When our fourth round has passed, the mineral will no longer be there. Human beings will not be bound to the earth; they have also evolved beyond the form of air movement—hence the name “eagle.” During the sixth round, they will absorb the plant kingdom. Humans and animals will share in the absorption of the plant kingdom. Animals will process the vines; humans, the seed force.

[ 6 ] In the seventh round, human beings appear as the image of God.

[ 7 ] So in the first round, only the first elemental realm exists; the mineral realm begins.

[ 8 ] What makes an object perceptible is the mineral kingdom; humans need higher faculties to see beyond the physical realm; they must develop new senses. During the first four rounds, the world was visible because it gradually developed the mineral aspect. The moment the mineral kingdom flashes into being, the world glows. Before that, it would have been completely devoid of light. At first, this light was dark red; everything that was to develop later was still present in the darkness. Light was everything that was about to become mineral earth. Darkness was everything else that had come over from the Moon, with the exception of the mineral. Everything that is light is now the Sun; everything that is darkness is the Moon.

[ 9 ] Heaven is everything spiritual. Water is that from which the Earth was formed—its astral seed. When we consider the mineral kingdom, it was impossible to distinguish one stone from another; nothing was separate. It was not until the second cycle that individual beings were carved out; this is indicated by the separation of the spiritual from the physical. If the image of the spiritual did not remain, a plant could not be recreated. The stone remains; it needs no separation. The

[ 10 ] Plants need them; this is the task of the second round. “Waters are the essence, the unified whole. The separation lies in the division of the spiritual from the physical.

[ 11 ] These were plants that we would today classify as sponges and algae; not what we now call herbs. They have a different nature, but they are plant-like beings. Especially those that do not yet have a true green color.

[ 12 ] During the third round, everything comes into being that not only draws life from the ground but also carries life forward. The difference between seed-bearing plants and sponges. The sponge still draws life from general nature. When we consider the astral body of the animal during the third round, it is something entirely unfinished; it is merely the mineral foundation that is being completed. The animal has a plant nature—it reproduces—and an astral nature of sensation—it feels. But what concerns us here is only the mineral imprint. Thus, what is created during the third round is the mineral imprint, and it consists in having a plant-like body that bears seed. The author of Genesis describes only what remains of plants and animals—the solid shell—omitting the etheric and astral aspects. —Take the snail in its shell as an example. He describes the seed-bearing aspect.

[ 13 ] During the fourth cycle, the mineral realm continues to develop to the point where it can become a shell for plants, animals, and humans. In the third cycle, animals could not see the moon and stars, because these had not yet become mineral; now they do.

[ 14 ] What has come over from the lunar realm condenses into the body of the Moon; the Sun is condensed light.

[ 15 ] We have not yet fully concluded the fourth day, for the cycle has not yet run its course. What happens next? The birds are the future astral bodies of human beings; winged creatures are cherubim and angels. This multiplication is not a sexual one.

[ 16 ] The sixth round: One must conceive of this process as being elevated into the mental realm, where everything becomes pure. God gives plants to humans as food: absorption of the plant kingdom. Everything that is now an animal will then, as it were, be summoned into its astral body. The lion first strives toward its kind; it is not yet of its kind. Only in the sixth round will every animal be of its kind; then their earthly development will cease and a higher one will begin. Only now is man the ruler: He must be able to rule magically. Then man will once again be both male and female. All herbs and vines belong to the animals.

[ 17 ] Heaven, the highest spiritual realm, is also brought to completion. God cannot rest until humankind, too, is perfected. Later states are always repetitions of earlier ones. For our fourth state, we can also imagine that we find hints of the future in the present. A derived meaning is possible because each subsequent stage, at a higher level, repeats what came before: the first three days of creation correspond to the first three cycles; the last four days of creation correspond to the Arupa, Rupa, astral, and etheric-physical phases of the Earth up to the time of the Lemurian race.

[ 18 ] The true original meaning: seven rounds, taken in the most spiritual sense. But then a derived [gap in the transcript]

[ 19 ] Because each subsequent stage repeats what came before it at a higher level.

[ 20 ] Very few people knew what the Genesis meant; the time when this was first recorded in literature coincides with the beginnings of Christianity. Philo of Alexandria was the first to present something similar to what we have discussed today. The time when an esoteric teaching was first entrusted to the written word coincides with the time when the mystery was overcome. The initiate experienced the sacrificial death of the god in the mysteries; when he was initiated to a higher degree, he experienced his own sacrificial death. What had formerly been experienced by the individual in the crypt was brought out onto the world stage. What had previously been the preserve of those who beheld it was now to be shared with those who believed. While Philo, to the extent possible, published the esoteric teachings for the first time, Christianity presents them as a mystical reality. What was once experienced solely within the Mysteries becomes history.

[ 21 ] Herein lies the central, cosmic significance of Christianity and its founder. Everything that came before points toward it; everything that came after points back to it. What took place earlier in the mysteries was like a prophecy. Therefore, Christianity is a fulfillment. “I have not come to abolish, but to fulfill.”

[ 22 ] The second chapter of Genesis begins where, in our current cycle of evolution, the physical state begins. In the etheric state, there were not yet any animals or plants, for in truth, humankind is the first to emerge. The polar race is still etheric, but already physical. As human beings evolve from the etheric human—who is still both male and female—animals and plants emerge as byproducts. In the beginning, human beings possessed all the characteristics that are now distributed among the remaining plants and animals: the ferocity of the lion, the cunning of the fox. Thus, the middle of the Lemurian epoch is a crucial point in time for all beings. Warm-blooded beings did not exist in earlier times.

[ 23 ] Well, the seven days of creation are the seven cycles; the states that preceded our physical existence can also /gap in the transcript]

[ 24 ] The fourth round begins /gap in the transcript]

[ 25 ] In the Egyptian mysteries, it was held that the seven days represent seven cycles. Our own history of physical development is described in the second chapter. Here, the seventh day refers solely to mineral-physical development.

[ 26 ] The etheric realm was there, and within it, human beings emerged like misty figures—etheric double bodies.

[ 27 ] The lower-level Indian yogi attempts to attain psychic experiences by altering the breathing process. A body in which carbon dioxide is active is incapable of harboring the spiritual, but it can harbor the psychic. Anyone who retains carbon dioxide within themselves longer than is the case in the normal process thereby becomes more plant-like. The psyches, the souls, have crossed over and now take possession of the etheric body they find there, shaped by the gods of form; union of the soul with the dust of the earth, a physically mineral etheric body. In the etheric sea, all matter is united that is today separated into two celestial spheres. At the center between today’s Earth and the Moon was the etheric sphere; within it was united what later separated—these are daughter spheres of the mother sphere, which is called “Paradiso.” It was only through this that the Earth became ready to attain the physical density through which humanity has come to be as it is. Thus, paradise did indeed exist, from which humanity was expelled.

[ 28 ] Only now, after the separation, do plants come into being; human beings could not have evolved to a higher level if they had not relinquished certain parts that became plants. “Had they not chosen a lower form of existence, I would not have evolved to a higher level,” is what human beings must tell themselves.

[ 29 ] The entire process of evolution arises from giving and taking. This is also the source of evil, which exists only temporarily and must be balanced out later. In due course, the corresponding good is created to counteract the evil; this is what drives development.

[ 30 ] Now, everything that human beings need was available on Earth. All the life force that human beings do not need is in the plants; in the center of the Tree of Life lies what they need: the life force. It is humanity’s own prana, purified for them through the fact that they have given up certain things.

[ 31 ] The sympathetic nervous system spreads throughout his body like a tree. Nothing can come into being in the universe without its counterpart appearing. Man must now find his complement in the other tree, the polar tree: the spinal cord and the brain. Alongside mere prana, his organs of cognition develop. Human spirits were able to connect with it and take their place in the Tree of Knowledge. — We will skip the four streams this time.

[ 32 ] [Gap in the transcript] you will die. All life that has existed up to now did not know what we today call birth and death. That which was physical was immortal. In order to create an organ for the spirit, [gap in the transcript] a duality was created. The fullness of the human spirit was like a great quantity of liquid in a vessel that could not contain it; the succession of lives are the various vessels. It is natural that man should be faced with the choice of either retaining his immortality in the lower realms or earning it through many lives.

[ 33 ] For human beings to turn toward the spiritual, birth and death must occur. Because the spirit has many facets, it was necessary for human beings to find themselves in various situations. Diversity in characteristics would not be achieved, nor would different destinies arise, if the mother were to give birth to her daughter without the medium of sexuality; only now did the mixture come about, and with it diversity: the variety among human beings and, through this, the possibility of creating the most diverse destinies. Sexual reproduction is a necessary counterpart to birth and death.

[ 34 ] In hermaphrodites, only the characteristics of the ancestors can be inherited; for entirely new characteristics to arise, the mixing of two had to occur. Amphimixis is the necessary counterpart to birth and death. At the time when humans acquired bones—that is, a mineral skeletal framework—humanity divided into male and female; this meaning is still well preserved in the Persian Genesis.

[ 35 ] "At this moment, as humans physically became poets, all warm-blooded creatures came into being—‘hm accordingly’ means ‘of the same nature.’ Animals came into being in the wake of humans.

[ 36 ] The sleep into which Adam falls: Before, human beings were physical beings into which the spirit was driven from the outside; now what must sprout from within—what must burst forth—is what formerly came from the outside. Consciousness from the outside can only become internal when a person crosses a threshold. He sleeps his way across it.

[ 37 ] As human beings develop into males and females, their work on the physical plane begins at the same time. Now they are on their own. Previously, they were connected to higher matter and the spirit.

[ 38 ] And now they realize that they are naked. What has now come into being is matter, for previously it was a finer form of matter in which the sense organs had not yet been fully formed. Seeing was only possible once eyes had been formed. The moment when the spiritual organs of prehistory became sensory organs was the moment when human beings became distinct beings. They saw themselves in their individuality.