The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Lecture Fifteen

[ 1 ] When attempting to convey an idea of planetary evolution, one must resort not to abstractions but to images. For images possess a vitalizing, creative power that is not inherent in mere concepts. What appears symbolically in one world corresponds to a reality in a higher world.

[ 2 ] We know that before our Earth reached its present state, it went through a phase known as “lunar” or simply “the Moon.” But this ancient Moon—the state that preceded our Earth—refers to something entirely different from our present-day satellite or any other planet that astronomy might ever discover. The celestial bodies that humans see today are those that have become mineralized. Our eyes can see only objects that contain mineral substance and reflect light—that is, those that possess a physical body. When the occultist speaks of the mineral kingdom, he is not referring to stones, but to the sphere in which human consciousness develops today. Many scholars regard a living being as a simple machine and reject the idea of a life force. This way of thinking stems from the fact that our organism cannot perceive life directly. In contrast, the occultist states that human beings today live in the mineral world.

[ 3 ] Let us consider the eye. It is a complex physical apparatus, a kind of darkroom with the pupil as its window and the lens as its magnifying glass. The entire body is composed of a collection of physical apparatuses that are as delicate as they are complex. The ear is like a spinet with a keyboard, and the fibers serve as the strings. And the same is true of every sense organ.

[ 4 ] The consciousness of modern human beings is awake only in relation to their physical or mineral body. But once it has awakened on this level of existence, it must nevertheless gradually manifest itself in the other realms of the human being as well: in the realm determined by the life forces—the plant nature of the human being—in the realm determined primarily by the powers of sensation—the animal nature of the human being—and finally in the truly human nature.

[ 5 ] At present, human beings are aware only of what is of a mineral nature in the universe. They do not understand the instincts and emotional life of animals, or the growth force of plants, according to the laws inherent in them, but only according to their physical appearance. Imagine if a plant existed only in its supersensible substance—that is, if it lost its mineral substance—it would be invisible to us.

[ 6 ] But even if humans know only minerals, they at least have them under their control. They work with them, shape them, melt them, and calculate their properties. They reshape the face of the Earth. Yet they are still only capable of shaping this face with the aid of mechanical means. If we go back to prehistoric times, when no human hand had yet touched the Earth, we find it as it emerged from the hands of the gods. But ever since humans have taken possession of the mineral kingdom, the Earth has been changing, and we can foresee the time when its face will be entirely shaped by the human hand and no longer by the hand of the gods.

[ 7 ] From the very beginning, the gods prescribed a specific form for every thing. In the case of minerals, this ability to shape form was transferred by the gods to human beings. Ancient traditions taught that humankind was to carry out this work of transforming the earth with the threefold goal of realizing wisdom, beauty, and virtue. On this threefold basis, humankind is to erect a temple from the earth. Then the beings who appeared later in the course of evolution—after humankind—will regard the work of humankind just as we regard the mineral kingdom, which emerged from the hand of the gods. The cathedrals, the machines—they were not created in vain. The crystal we extract from the earth today—the gods shaped it just as we erect our monuments and construct our machines. Just as they created the mineral world from a chaotic mass in the past, so too are our cathedrals, our inventions, indeed our institutions in general, seeds from which a future world will emerge.

[ 8 ] After transforming the mineral world, humankind will learn to transform the plant world. This represents a higher level of skill. Just as humankind builds structures today, humankind will be able to create and shape plants by working on plant matter. Indeed, in the time to come, humankind will rise even higher by forming not only living beings but even conscious beings, and will extend this ability to the animal kingdom. When humankind is able to recreate itself through its conscious will, it will realize on a higher level what it accomplishes today in the mineral sensory world.

[ 9 ] The seed of this reproduction of himself, freed from all sensuality, is the Word. The first consciousness was bestowed upon humankind with the first breath. Consciousness will reach its fulfillment when he is able to infuse his word with the same creative power with which his life of thought is endowed today. At present, he entrusts his words only to the air. When he has risen to a higher creative consciousness, he will be able to communicate images to the air. The word will then be, in the fullest sense, a living imagination. By endowing these images with physicality, he will make the word the physical vehicle of the image. When we no longer simply embody our thoughts in objects—as, for example, in the manufacture of a watch—we will endow the images with physical substance. The watch, for example, will be alive like a plant.

[ 10 ] And when human beings come to understand how to project life onto the highest aspect within themselves, these images will acquire a life of their own, comparable to animal existence. Then, ultimately, human beings will be able to reproduce themselves. At the end of the Earth’s transformation, the entire atmosphere will resound with the power of the Word. Thus must humanity develop until it has become capable of shaping its environment in the image of its inner being. The initiate merely precedes humanity on this path. It is evident that even today the Earth cannot yet produce such human bodies as it will be able to at the end of its evolution. At that point, the bodies will be so advanced that they can be regarded as an expression of what is called the Logos. The great missionary who alone, in a human body like our own, revealed this power of the Logos—this “The Word became flesh”—is the Christ. He appears in the midst of our evolution to show us its goal.

[ 11 ] Let us now ask ourselves: In what form did the human spirit exist before it entered us through respiration? — The Earth is the reincarnation of a previous planet, which in occultism is called the Moon. On this Moon, there were no pure minerals yet. It still consisted of a wood-like substance, a hybrid between a mineral and a plant. Its surface did not have the hardness of a mineral; at most, it could be compared to peat. Half-plant-like, half-mollusk-like beings grew on this globe, and a third kingdom inhabited it—an intermediate kingdom between humans and present-day animals. These were precisely the beings endowed with a dreamlike, imaginative consciousness. One can imagine the matter of which they were composed by comparing it to that which today constitutes the nervous tissue of crustaceans—or nerves in general. In fact, it is the condensation of this matter from which the present-day brain tissue has emerged. But whereas it could exist in a gelatinous state back then, on the Moon, it must now, on Earth, be enclosed within a protective bony shell: the shell of crustaceans or the cranial cavity. Thus, all the substances of which we are composed have emerged from the macrocosm. And this universal preparation was necessary so that the “I” could descend into human beings.

[ 12 ] But we have seen that human beings were not able to receive the seed of their “I” on Earth until they could breathe the air surrounding them. What, then, did they breathe on the Moon?

[ 13 ] The further back we go in evolution, the higher the temperature becomes. On Atlantis, everything was shrouded in hot vapors. In these ancient conditions, the air first becomes hot, then fiery: fire takes the place of air. The Lemurians still breathed fire. That is why the occult writings state that humans were first instructed by the fire spirits. When physical man took root on Earth, air became his life element. But man spoils this air by transforming it into carbon dioxide, and thus the process of respiration lowers the density of our globe by yet another degree. The activity of plants restores the balance. After all, the physical body—which needs to absorb oxygen from the air—causes carbon dioxide to accumulate on the Earth’s surface, and as a result, human bodies become anemic. A time will come when the physical body will have disappeared, and both humanity and the Earth will be of an astral nature. For physical nature destroys itself through its own forces. But before this transformation is complete, a cosmic night will intervene, similar to the one that marked the transition from the ancient Moon to our present Earth.

[ 14 ] The Moon’s atmosphere contained nitrogen, just as Earth’s atmosphere today contains oxygen, and it was the predominance of nitrogen that brought about the end of the Lunar Period and the beginning of the Cosmic Night. On Earth, nitrogen compounds serve as a reminder of the Moon’s final conditions of existence. This gives rise to a destructive effect on Earth, for these nitrogen compounds do not belong here. They are harmful residues from the conditions of life in another world age. The compound of carbon and nitrogen had approximately the same effect on the Moon as that of carbon and oxygen has on Earth (see note).

[ 15 ] The animal-man who lived on the Moon is thus the ancestor of the physical human being on Earth, just as the fire spirits of that lunar epoch are the progenitors of the present human spirit. That which incarnated in fire on the Moon incarnates in air on Earth.

[ 16 ] But where do we find, in modern humans, any remnant of the activity of these fire spirits? — On the Moon, living beings did not have warm blood. What caused the warmth of the blood and, consequently, the awakening of the passions? It is the fire that the beings on the Moon inhaled and that now regains life in their blood here on Earth. And today, the spirit of the air surrounds this body—which preserves the legacy of the lunar state—with a light garment of the senses: the warmth of the blood, the brain, the spinal cord, and the nerves.

[ 17 ] These examples show us that we must study the transformation of substances very carefully in order to understand a transformation such as the one that took place during the evolutionary phases that preceded the Earth. If we were to go back even further, we would see that in earlier states our planet had a body consisting purely of gas, and, going back even further, a body of pure sound substance. Human evolution takes its starting point from this sound—which is the World Word itself—and subsequently progresses toward light, fire, and air. It is not until the fourth state that the human spirit becomes conscious. From this point on, the guidance that had previously been given to it through the Word comes from within, and its consciousness becomes its own guide. Its very essence is realized in the “I.” The awakening of the “I” signifies the realization of the Christ principle in the human being.

[ 18 ] If we were to go back to the first elemental form, we would be enveloped by the word, by the flowing sound. With the second elemental stage, we would transition to the flowing light. The third elemental stage would permeate us with warmth. Finally, at the fourth elemental stage—in the Earth’s atmosphere—we would see the emergence of self-consciousness, which allows a human being to say “I” to himself. (See the schematic diagram on p. 104.)