The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Lecture VI

[ 1 ] Today we want to examine the hierarchy of beings to which human beings belong. Human beings, just as they are now, are beings that have come into being; they have not always been as they are now. They have not only other stages behind and ahead of them, but also beside them—just as a child today has an elderly person beside them as another stage of development. Today we will examine seven stages of beings. To do this, we must first clarify the difference between receptive and creative beings.

[ 2 ] With our eyes, for example, we perceive a color—red or green. In this respect, we are receiving beings. However, the color must first be produced in order for us to perceive it; thus, there is a being opposite us that produces the color—red, for example. Through this, one recognizes the hierarchical sequence of beings. If one summarizes everything that meets our senses, the soul must be present so that it can be received; but its opposite must also be present so that it can be presented to us. There are beings that are capable of revealing. These have a more divine or deva-like character. Beings that are more suited to receiving have a more elemental character. Divine beings are of a revealing nature. Elemental beings are of a receiving nature.

[ 3 ] Here, in this realm, we have the creative wisdom that creates outwardly, and the wisdom that is received by the human soul. Wisdom is in the light, and it reveals itself in all sensory perceptions. Behind what is revealed, one must assume the existence of the Revealers—beings of a volitional nature; wisdom is that which reveals itself.

[ 4 ] Human beings are beings that occupy an intermediate position. On the one hand—for example, with regard to all sensory impressions—they are receptive beings; with regard to thinking, however, they are creative beings. Nothing gives him a thought unless he creates it in addition to perceiving it. Thus, on the one hand, he is a receiving being, and on the other, a creative being. This is an important distinction. Let us imagine that human beings were capable of creating everything they perceive—sounds, colors, and so on—just as they create thoughts today. Today, humans are creative in only one realm—that of thinking—and require creative beings around them in order to have sensory perceptions. In the realm of bringing forth their own being, humans were creative at the beginning of this development. At that time, they created their own organism. Now they need other beings for this. Human beings must now incarnate in a physical form that is determined from the outside. In this respect, they are even more inclined toward the elemental beings than in the realms of perception and thought.

[ 5 ] Let us now imagine that human beings could also produce sounds, colors, and other sensory perceptions, as well as their own essence. Then we have the human being who existed before the Lemurian race and who is called the “pure” human. Human beings become “impure” because they do not generate their entire being on their own, but rather incorporate other elements into their essence. This pure human being has been called Adam Kadmon. When the Bible speaks of human beings at the beginning, it is referring to this pure human being. This pure human being had nothing “kamic” within him yet. Desire arose only after he had incorporated something else into himself. Thus arose the second stage of humanity, the Kamarupic human. The higher animal is merely a subcategory of this stage. Without warm blood, there is no independent Kamarupa in beings. Non-warm-blooded animals are directed by other beings. All warm-blooded animals are descended from humans.

[ 6 ] So first we have the pure human being, who actually led a supersensible existence up until the Lemurian epoch and brought forth from within himself everything that is and lives within him.

[ 7 ] Today’s cold-blooded animals and plants have evolved differently from warm-blooded animals. Those that exist today are remnants of powerful, gigantic, and strange beings. Science can verify the existence of some of these. They are decadent, degenerate animals descended from those that the pure human being used to incarnate within, so that he might have a body for the kamic principle. At first, the pure human had not yet found a physical form on Earth. He still hovered above the physical forms. Of these great, mighty beings (animals), the human used the most perfect ones to incarnate within them. He attached himself to these beings, and through this he was able to infuse his own Kama into them. Some of these beings continued to evolve and became the Atlanteans and present-day humanity. However, not all of them succeeded in adapting. These became the lower vertebrates; for example, kangaroo-like beings are such failed formations on the path [to humanity], like pottery that is left behind.

[ 8 ] Humans have now attempted to introduce Kama into animal forms. Kama is actually present only in the current human form—specifically in the heart, in the warmth of the blood, and in the bloodstream. Attempts were made time and again, and so the process advanced higher and higher, step by step. We see failed attempts, for example, in sloths, kangaroos, predators, monkeys, and prosimians. All of these fell by the wayside. Warm-blooded animals are failed attempts at human Kama formation. Everything that is Kama in them, human beings could also possess within themselves; but they have offloaded it into these creatures, for they had no use for this kind of Kama.

[ 9 ] There is an important occult principle: Every quality has two opposing poles. Thus we see how positive and negative electricity complement each other, or heat and cold, day and night, light and darkness, and so on. Likewise, every Kama quality has two opposing sides. For example, in the Lion, a person has projected anger outward; on the other hand, when refined, this anger becomes the force that can elevate him toward his higher self. Passion is not to be destroyed, but purified. The negative pole must be elevated to a higher level. The Pythagoreans called this purification of passion—this elevation of its negative pole—catharsis. At first, man possessed within himself the rage of the lion and the cunning of the fox. This fury was then, so to speak, fixed within him in the lion, and the cunning in the fox. Thus, the warm-blooded animal kingdom is a collection of images representing the qualities of Kama. Today, the view is widely held that “Tat tvam asi,” “That is you,” should be understood as something vague and general; but one must conceive of something specific when considering it. For example, in the case of the lion, one must say to oneself: That is you! — Thus, in the warm-blooded animal kingdom, we have laid out before us the Kamarupic human being. Before that, only the pure human being existed: Adam Kadmon.

[ 10 ] The natural philosopher Oken, who was a professor in Jena during the first half of the 19th century, recognized all these ideas and expressed them in a grotesque manner to provoke people. He provides an example that points to an even earlier stage of human development, before humans had separated themselves from the cold-blooded animal kingdom. Oken drew a connection between the octopus and the human tongue. If one considers the analogy between the tongue and the octopus, it has an occult significance. Now we also have entities that are only just beginning to be generated, as it were, as byproducts. Humanity has separated the cunning of the fox from itself and retains its opposite pole. But within the fox’s cunning, a seed of something else also begins to take shape; for example, much like the black shadow of an object has a penumbra due to light entering from the outside. We separated the cunning from within ourselves and assigned it to the fox. Now spirit is being supplied to it from the periphery. The beings that act in this way from the periphery within the fox’s kamic nature are the elemental beings. What the fox has received from us is the animal within it; what is attached to it from the outside by the spirit is the elemental being. It has come into being, on the one hand, through the spirit of humanity, and on the other hand, through an elemental being.

[ 11 ] We thus distinguish: first, elemental beings; second, the Kamarupic human; third, the pure human; and fourth, the human who, in a certain sense, has transcended the pure human—who has absorbed what surrounds him and is creatively active. He has touched and absorbed everything that exists around him in earthly life. This provides him with the plans, the guidelines, and the laws that create life. Once, humankind was perfect, and it will be so again. But there is a great difference between what it was and what it will be. What exists outside of it will later become its spiritual possession. What has been acquired by it on Earth will later become humankind’s capacity for creative activity. This will then have become its innermost essence. One who has absorbed all earthly experiences, so that he knows how every single thing can be put to use and has thus become a creator, is called a Bodhisattva—that is, a human being who has sufficiently absorbed Bodhi, the Buddhi of the Earth, within himself. Then he is ready to act from his innermost impulses. The sages of the earth are not yet Bodhisattvas. Even for a sage, there are still things in which he is not yet able to find his way. Only when one has absorbed the entire knowledge of the earth within oneself in order to be able to create is one a Bodhisattva. Buddha and Zarathustra, for example, were Bodhisattvas.

[ 12 ] If a human being evolves even further, so that he is not only a creator on Earth but also possesses powers that extend beyond Earth, then he is free to use these higher powers or to continue working on Earth. He can then bring something from other worlds onto Earth. Such a time existed before human beings began to incarnate, during the last third of the Lemurian epoch. Human beings had developed the physical, etheric, and astral bodies. They had brought these parts of their being with them from earlier stages of Earth’s evolution. They could not have found the next two impulses, Kama and Manas, on Earth; they do not lie within Earth’s chain of evolution. The first new impulse (Kama) could be found only as a force on Mars. It was added shortly before human beings began to incarnate. The second impulse (Manas) came from Mercury during the fifth subrace of the Atlanteans, among the Proto-Semites. These new impulses had to be brought to Earth by even higher beings—the Nirmanakayas—from other planets. They brought Kama from Mars and Manas from Mercury. The Nirmanakayas are one level higher than the Bodhisattvas. The Bodhisattvas can regulate ongoing evolution; however, they cannot introduce anything foreign—only the Nirmanakayas can do that. One level higher still than the Nirmanakayas are those beings called Pitris. Pitris = Fathers. For while the Nirmanakayas can indeed introduce something foreign into the process of evolution, they cannot sacrifice themselves—sacrifice themselves as substance—so as to bring about a new cycle on the next planet. The Pitris—the beings who had evolved on the Moon and had now come over—are capable of doing this; they became the impetus for Earth’s evolution. Once a human being has gone through everything, he is capable of becoming a Pitri. The next, even higher level—which can only be described as such—is that of the actual gods.

[ 13 ] So we have seven levels of beings: first, the gods; second, the Pitris; third, the Nirmanakayas; fourth, the Bodhisattvas; fifth, pure human beings; sixth, human beings; and seventh, elemental beings. This is the order described by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.

[ 14 ] Here we can also ask what kind of organ it is that has made humans “kamarupic.” It is the heart, with its veins and the blood that pulses through the body. The heart has a physical part, an etheric part—Aristotle speaks of this, since in the past only the etheric human was considered important—and an astral part. The etheric heart is connected to the two-petaled lotus flower. Not all physical organs have astral parts as well; for example, the gallbladder is only physical and etheric—the astral aspect is missing.