The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Ninth Lecture

[ 1 ] The easiest way to understand humanity’s journey through the three incarnations that took place before Earth—Saturn, Sun, and Moon—is to consider, for the sake of completeness, the human being once again while asleep, in a dream. When a person sleeps, we see, as a veil, the astral body and the “I” enclosed within it, as if floating above the physical body. This astral body is then outside the physical and etheric bodies, yet remains connected to them. It sends out, as it were, threads—or rather, currents—into the general body of the cosmos and is, as it were, immersed in it. Thus, in the sleeping human being, we have the physical, the etheric, and the astral bodies, but the latter extends sensory threads toward the great astral body.

[ 2 ] If we constantly imagine this state—if here on the physical plane there were only human beings who had interwoven their physical body with their etheric body, and above them, hovering, an astral soul with the “I”—then we would have the state in which humanity once existed on the Moon. Except that on the Moon, this astral body was not strongly separated from the physical body; rather, just as strongly as it extended out into the cosmos, it sank just as deeply into the physical body. But if you imagine the state exactly as it is today during sleep—yet such that not even dreaming is possible—then you have the state in which humanity was on the Sun. And if you now imagine that a human being has died, that their etheric body—connected to the astral body and the “I”—has also left the physical body, but in such a way that the connection is not yet completely severed; that what has left the body—what is embedded in the surrounding cosmic mass—sends down its rays and works upon the physical body, then you have the state in which humanity existed on Saturn. Down on the globe of Saturn, there was only what is found in our purely physical body; it was, as it were, surrounded by an etheric-astral atmosphere in which the I’s were embedded.

[ 3 ] Human beings were indeed already present on Saturn, but in a dull, dim state of consciousness. These souls had the task of maintaining, through activity and effort, something that belonged to them down below. They worked on their physical bodies from above. Just as a snail shapes its shell, so too do they work from the outside—like an instrument—on the physical organs. Let us describe what it looked like, that which the souls were working on up there. We must describe this physical Saturn—Saturn itself—a little.

[ 4 ] I have already said that what was formed there in terms of physical corporeality were the rudiments of the sense organs. The souls worked externally on the surface of Saturn on what existed within human beings as the rudiments of the senses. They were truly in the cosmic space surrounding Saturn; their workshop was below. There they developed the archetypes for the eyes and ears and for the other sense organs.

[ 5 ] What, then, was the fundamental characteristic of this Saturn mass? It is difficult to describe because we have hardly any words in our language that fit the description; after all, our words are themselves entirely materialized; they apply only to the physical plane. There is, however, one word that can express this subtle work that was accomplished there. It can be described with the expression: to reflect. The Saturn mass had the quality, in all its parts, of reflecting whatever approached from the outside as light, sound, smell, or taste. Everything was cast back; one perceived it in the cosmos, as it were, as a reflection in the mirror of Saturn. One can only compare it to looking into the eyes of a fellow human being and seeing one’s own little image gazing back at us. This is how all human souls perceived one another—but not merely as images in colors; rather, they tasted one another, they smelled one another, and they perceived one another through a certain sensation of warmth. Thus Saturn was a reflecting planet. The human beings living in the atmosphere projected their beings into it, and from these images that arose there, the predispositions for the sense organs took shape, for these were images that had a creative effect. Imagine standing in front of a mirror from which your own image confronts you, and this image begins to create—it is not a lifeless image as with today’s inanimate mirrors: there you have the creative activity of Saturn; there you have the way in which people themselves lived on Saturn and carried out their work.

[ 6 ] This took place down on Saturn’s sphere. Up above, the souls were in the deep trance-like state of consciousness I spoke of yesterday. They knew nothing of this reflection; they simply acted. In this subdued trance-like state, they contained the entire cosmos within themselves, and so the entire cosmos was reflected from within their very being. They themselves, however, were embedded in a fundamental substance of a spiritual nature. They were not independent, but merely a part of the spirituality surrounding Saturn. Therefore, they could not perceive spiritually. Higher spirits perceived with their help. They were the organs of the spirits who perceived at that time.

[ 7 ] Saturn was surrounded by a whole host of higher spirits. Everything that Christian esotericism has called messengers of the deity—angels, archangels, primal forces, revelatory powers—all of that was contained within this Saturnian atmosphere. Just as the hand belongs to the organism, so did the souls belong to these beings; and just as the hand has no independent consciousness, so too did they have no consciousness of their own at that time. They worked out of the consciousness of higher spirits, out of the higher world-consciousness, and in this way shaped the images of their sense organs—which then became creative—and they also shaped the Saturn mass. You must not imagine this Saturn mass to be as dense as today’s human flesh. The densest state Saturn could ever attain was not even as dense as our present-day physical air. Saturn also became physical, but it only attained the density known as the density of fire, of heat—the heat in which modern physics no longer perceives any substance at all. For the occultist, however, heat is a finer substance than gases; it has the property of expanding ever further. And because Saturn consisted of this substance, it had the ability to expand from within, to radiate everything, to reflect everything. Such a body radiates everything; it has no need to keep anything within itself.

[ 8 ] Saturn was not a uniform mass, but rather such that one could have perceived a differentiation, a configuration within it. Later, the organs even took on the shape of cell-like spheres—except that cells are small; at that time, however, they were large spheres, like a mulberry or a blackberry. You would not yet have been able to see on Saturn, for every reflection cast back outward all the light that fell upon it. Inside this Saturnian mass, everything was dark. Only toward the end of its development did Saturn begin to glow slightly. In the vicinity of this Saturnian mass’s atmosphere, there were a number of beings. It was not only you yourselves who prepared your sense organs, for the human soul was not yet developed enough to function on its own. It worked together with other spiritual beings—to put it simply—under their guidance.

[ 9 ] Just as independently as people work today, so did certain beings on Saturn who were at the human level at that time. They could not have been formed like modern humans, since heat was the only substance on Saturn. However, in terms of their intelligence and their sense of self, they were on the same level as modern humans; yet they were unable to form a physical body or a brain. Let us examine them more closely. Modern humans consist of a fourfold constitution: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the “I,” within which are prefigured the spiritual self, the life spirit, and the spiritual human—Manas, Buddhi, Atma. The lowest—though in its own way the most perfect—member on the Earth plane is the physical body; the next higher is the etheric body, followed by the astral body and the ego. There are also beings who do not have a physical body, whose lowest member is the etheric body. They do not need the physical body to act in our sensory world; instead, they have a member that is higher than our seventh. Other beings have the astral body as their lowest member and, in place of it, a ninth; and still others, who have the “I” as their lowest member, have a tenth member in its place. When we consider the beings who have the “I” as their lowest member, we must say that they consist of the “I,” the spiritual self, the life spirit, and the spiritual human. Then come the eighth, ninth, and tenth members—what Christian esotericism calls the Holy Trinity: the Holy Spirit, the Son or Word, and the Father. In Theosophical literature, it is customary to refer to them as the three Logoi.

[ 10 ] These beings, whose lowest link is the “I,” were precisely those who are of particular interest to us in the context of Saturn’s evolution. They were at the stage where human beings stand today. They were able to exercise their “I” under the entirely different conditions I have described. These were the ancestors of our present-day humanity, the people of Saturn. They radiated their “I,” their outermost essence, onto the surface of Saturn. They were the ones who implanted the “I” into the physical body that was forming on the surface of Saturn. In this way, they ensured that the physical body was prepared so that it could later become the bearer of the “I.” Only a physical body such as the one you have today—with feet, hands, and a head, and the integrated sense organs—could become a bearer of the “I” on the fourth stage, Earth. For this to happen, the seed had to be implanted in it on Saturn. These “I”-beings of Saturn are also called the spirits of egoism.

[ 11 ] Egoism is something that has two sides: one admirable and one reprehensible. If the essence of egoism had not been implanted again and again on Saturn and the subsequent planets, then human beings would never have become independent beings capable of saying “I” to themselves. Already from the time of Saturn, the totality of the force that stamps you as an independent being—separating you from all other beings—has been instilled in your physical body. For this to happen, the spirits of egoism, the Asuras, had to be at work. There are two types among them, apart from minor nuances. One type is that which has developed egoism in a noble, independent manner, rising ever higher and higher in the cultivation of the sense of freedom: this is the excellent independence of egoism. These spirits have guided humanity through all the subsequent planets. They have become humanity’s educators in independence.

[ 12 ] Now, on every planet there are also spirits who have fallen behind in their development. They have remained stagnant; they did not want to go any further. From this you will recognize a law: When the most excellent falls—when it commits the “great sin” of not keeping pace with development—it becomes precisely the worst. The noble sense of freedom has been perverted into its opposite through depravity. These are the spirits of temptation that must be taken very seriously; they lead people into reprehensible selfishness. Even today, these evil spirits of Saturn are still among us. Everything that is evil derives its power from these spirits.

[ 13 ] Every planet, once it has completed its evolution, becomes spiritual again; it ceases to exist, so to speak, and enters a state of slumber, only to emerge from it once more. So it is with Saturn. Its next incarnation is the Sun—the Sun you would obtain if you were to mix together everything that exists on the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth, along with all earthly and spiritual beings, as if in a cauldron. The Sun’s evolution is characterized by the fact that the etheric body entered the physical human body prepared below. The Sun already has a denser physicality than Saturn; it can be compared to the density of today’s air. The human physical body—the body you formed for yourselves—you see on the Sun as being permeated by the etheric body. You yourselves belonged to an air body, just as on Saturn you belonged to a heat body. Your etheric body was already down below, but in the atmosphere of the Sun, your astral body—together with your I—was integrated into the great, general astral body of the Sun; and from there you worked down into the physical and etheric bodies, much as you do today during sleep, when your astral body is outside and works on the physical and etheric bodies. At that time, you developed the first rudiments of all that are today the organs of growth, digestion, and reproduction. You transformed the rudiments of the sensory organs from Saturn; some retained their character, while others were transformed into glands and organs of growth. All growth and reproductive organs are transformed sensory organs that have been taken over by the etheric body.

[ 14 ] If you compare the body of the Sun with that of Saturn, you will find a certain difference. Saturn was still like a reflective surface; it reflected back everything it received—taste, smell, all sensory perceptions. This was not the case with the Sun. While Saturn reflected everything back directly without taking possession of it, the Sun permeated itself with it and only then reflected it back. This was because it had an etheric body. Its body, which was permeated by the etheric body, acted in the same way that a plant does today with sunlight: it absorbs the sunlight, permeates itself with it, and then reflects it back. If you place it in any dark place, it loses its color and withers. Without light, there would be no green pigment. So it was with the Sun’s own body: it permeated itself with light, but also with other elements, and just as the plant sends the light back after it has drawn strength from it, so the Sun once radiated the light back after it had processed it within itself. But it imbued itself not only with light, but also with taste, smell, and warmth—with everything—and radiated it back out again.

[ 15 ] Therefore, your own body was also in a plant-like state on the Sun. It did not look like a plant in the modern sense, for plants only developed on Earth. What you carry within you today—the glands, the organs known as growth and reproductive organs—were on the Sun, just as mountains and rocks are on Earth today. You worked on them just as one tends and cultivates a small garden today. The Sun reflected back the elements of outer space. It shone in the most magnificent colors. A wonderful sound went forth, and a delightful aroma flowed from it. The ancient Sun was a wondrous being in outer space. Thus, the people of that time worked on their own physicality on the Sun, just as certain beings—such as corals—work on their structures from the outside. This took place under the guidance of higher beings, for there were higher entities in the Sun’s atmosphere.

[ 16 ] We must pay particular attention to one category of these beings, which at that time stood at the same level as humans do today. On Saturn, we have the spirits of egoism, who instilled the sense of freedom and independence and stood at the human level. On the Sun, there were other beings whose lowest member was not the “I” but the astral body. They consisted of the astral body, the “I,” the spiritual self, the life spirit, the spiritual human, and the eighth member—what Christian esotericism calls the Holy Spirit—and finally, as the ninth member, the Son, the “Word” in the sense of the Gospel of John. They did not yet possess the tenth member; instead, they had placed the astral body at the bottom. These were the spirits active on the Sun; they directed all astral work. They differ from modern human beings in that humans breathe air—because air is present in the Earth’s atmosphere—while those spirits breathe warmth or fire.

[ 17 ] The sun itself was a kind of air mass. What surrounded it was the very substance that had formerly formed Saturn itself: fire and heat. The part that had condensed had formed the gaseous Sun, and what could not condense was a surging sea of fire. These beings were thus able to live on the Sun in such a way that they inhaled and exhaled heat and fire. That is why these spirits are called fire spirits. On the Sun, they stood at the level of humanity, and they worked in the service of humanity. These beings are called sun spirits or fire spirits. At that time, human beings were at the stage of sleep consciousness. These sun-fire spirits already possessed ego-consciousness. Since then, they have continued to evolve and have ascended to higher levels of consciousness. In Christian esotericism, they are called archangels. And the most highly developed spirit, who was on the Sun as a fire spirit and who is still active on Earth today with the most highly developed consciousness—this Sun or fire spirit—is Christ, just as the most highly developed Saturn spirit is the Father God. For Christian esotericism, therefore, such a Solar-Fire Spirit was incarnated in the physical body of Christ Jesus—namely, the highest of them all, the ruler of the Solar Spirits. In order for him to come to Earth, he had to use a physical body. He had to be subject to the same earthly conditions as human beings in order to be able to act here.

[ 18 ] Thus, on the Sun, we have to do with a solar body—as it were, the body of the solar planet—with “I”-spirits, who are fire spirits, and with a ruler of this Sun, the most highly developed solar spirit, the Christ. While the Earth was a Sun, this spirit was the central spirit of the Sun. When the Earth was the Moon, he was more highly developed, but he remained with the Moon. When the Earth became the Earth, he was at the height of his development and remained with the Earth after uniting with it following the Mystery of Golgotha. He thus constitutes the highest planetary spirit of the Earth. The Earth is his body today, just as the Sun was his body in the past. Therefore, you must take the words of John literally: “Whoever eats my bread tramples me underfoot.” For the Earth is the body of Christ, and when people who eat the bread taken from the body of the Earth walk upon the Earth, they trample the body of Christ underfoot. Take this saying quite literally, just as all religious texts must be taken literally. One must first, however, understand the letter in its true meaning and then seek the spirit.

[ 19 ] Now one more thing: Not all beings within this solar mass reached the stage of development I have spoken to you about. Some remained at the stage of Saturn existence. They were unable to absorb what radiated into outer space and then send it back after absorption. They had to send it back directly; they could not permeate themselves with it. These beings therefore appeared on the Sun as a kind of dark inclusion, as something that could not emit its own light. And because they were enclosed within the solar mass, surrounded by a mass that emitted its own light, they appeared as dark spots. We must therefore distinguish between those parts of the Sun that radiated out into outer space what they had received, and those that could radiate nothing. Thus they appeared as dark inclusions within the solar mass; they had not acquired anything new on Saturn. Just as you do not find glands and growth organs everywhere in the human body—but rather it is permeated by dead, incorporated matter—so, too, was the Sun permeated by these dark inclusions.

[ 20 ] Our present-day Sun is the descendant of the ancient Earth’s solar mass. It ejected the Moon and the Earth and retained the very best. That which was present in the solar mass of that time as remnants of Saturn retains its rudiments in the present-day Sun in the so-called sunspots. They are the last vestiges of Saturn that remain as dark inclusions within the luminous solar mass. Our occult wisdom reveals the hidden spiritual sources of physical phenomena. Physical science identifies the physical causes of sunspots through astronomy and astrophysics; the spiritual causes, however, lie in those residual remnants of Saturn.

[ 21 ] We now ask ourselves: What kingdoms existed on Saturn? Only one kingdom, the last vestiges of which are preserved in today’s minerals. When we speak of humanity’s passage through the mineral kingdom, we must not think of today’s minerals. Rather, you must see the last descendants of the Saturn mineral in your eyes, ears, and other sense organs. That is the most physical, the most mineral aspect of you. The eye’s apparatus is like a physical instrument and remains unchanged for some time after death.

[ 22 ] The Saturn realm evolves on the Sun into a kind of plant-like existence. Human beings’ own bodies grow there toward us like plants. What remained behind as the Saturn realm was a kind of mineral realm of the Sun. This took the form of stunted sense organs that could not fulfill their purpose. But all these entities on the Sun, which were human bodies in the making, did not yet possess a nervous system; this was only incorporated from the astral body on the Moon. Plants, too, have no nervous system and therefore no sensation. It is a misunderstanding to attribute sensation to them.

[ 23 ] But these astral bodies—particularly those that emanated from the fire spirits—sent a kind of current into the physical realm, which existed down below as physical and etheric bodies. These streams of light spread out like the branches of a tree. The last vestiges of these inflows on the Sun—which later condensed and took on an external form—are the organ known as the solar plexus. It is the final condensed echo of ancient inflows on the Sun that have condensed into substantiality. Hence the name plexus solaris, solar plexus. You must imagine the bodies you had on the Sun as if rays were penetrating them from above, intertwining in a tree-like pattern. This is how the Sun appears in the numerous branches found in your solar plexus. In Germanic mythology, these branches are represented by the World Ash, which, of course, also symbolizes many other things.

[ 24 ] Then the Sun entered a state of slumber and transformed into what we call the Moon in the occult sense. Here we are dealing with a third embodiment of the Earth, which in turn will represent a ruling central spirit to us. Just as the highest ruler of Saturn, the I-Spirit, appears to us as the Father God, and the highest ruler, the highest God of the Sun—the Sun God—appears as Christ, so too will the ruler of the Earth’s lunar form appear to us as the Holy Spirit with his hosts, who in Christian esotericism are called the messengers of the deity—the angels.

[ 25 ] Thus, we have completed two days of creation, which in esoteric terminology are called Dies Saturni and Dies Solis. Added to these is Dies Lunae, the day of the Moon. People have always been aware that they were dealing with a ruling deity of Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon.

[ 26 ] The word “Dies” = day and “Deus” = God have the same origin, so that “Dies” can just as easily be translated as “day” as it can as “deity.” One can therefore just as easily interpret “Dies Solis” as “day of the sun” or “sun god,” while at the same time referring to the Spirit of Christ.