The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Twelfth Lecture

[ 1 ] Externally, the process I described to you as the origin of sexual dimorphism unfolded in such a way that you must still conceive of both sexes as united in that human-animal being of the Moon, and even in its descendants on the Moon’s repetition of the Earth. Then a kind of division of the human body actually took place. This division came about through a kind of condensation. Only through the separation of a mineral kingdom, such as the one we have today, could the modern human body—which represents a single sex—come into being. The Earth and the human body first had to solidify to the point of today’s mineral nature. In the soft human bodies of the Moon and the early Earth, hermaphroditic humans were beings of both male and female nature.

[ 2 ] Now we must remember the fact that, in a certain sense, human beings have retained a remnant of the ancient dual gender system insofar as, in modern humans, the physical body of a man is male and his etheric body is female, and in a woman the opposite is true; that is, the physically female body has a male etheric body. These facts offer us interesting insights into the inner life of the sexes. A woman’s capacity for self-sacrifice—for example, in the service of love—is connected to the masculinity of her etheric body, while a man’s ambition is explained when we recognize the feminine nature of his etheric body.

[ 3 ] I have already said that what constitutes the distinctive feature of the human race arose from the intermingling of the forces sent to us by the Sun and the Moon. Now you must understand that in men, the moon exerts a stronger influence on the etheric body, while the sun exerts a stronger influence on the physical body. In women, however, it is the opposite: the physical body is influenced by the forces of the moon, and the etheric body by those of the sun.

[ 4 ] The ongoing exchange of mineral substances in the human body as we know it today could only begin once the minerals we know today had formed. Before that, there was an entirely different form of nutrition. During the Earth’s solar era, all plants were permeated with milky sap. Nutrition was indeed provided in such a way that humans drew the milky sap from plants just as a child does from its mother today. The plants that still contain milky sap today are the last remnants of that era when all plants provided these sap in abundance. It was only later that nutrition took on its present form.

[ 5 ] To understand the meaning of gender separation, we must realize that, both on the Moon and during the Moon’s cycle of recurrence on Earth, all beings looked very much alike. Just as a cow has the same appearance as her offspring—as do all cows—because the group soul underlies this, so, too, did human beings look so much like their ancestors that they were indistinguishable, and this continued well into the Atlantean era.

[ 6 ] Where, then, does the fact that human beings are no longer similar to one another come from? It stems from the emergence of the two sexes. From the earlier state of having two sexes, the tendency to shape offspring in a similar manner has been preserved in the female being. In the male being, the influence works differently; within him, there is a tendency to bring about diversity and individualization, and as the male force flowed into the female, ever greater dissimilarity was produced. Thus, through male influence, the possibility arises for individuality to take hold.

[ 7 ] The ancient two-gendered system had yet another peculiarity. If you had asked an ancient lunar human about his experiences, they would have seemed to him exactly the same as those of his most ancient ancestors; everything lived on through the generations. The groundwork for the gradual development of that consciousness—which extends only from birth to death—lies in the individualization of the human race, and with it came the possibility of birth and death as we know them today. For those ancient lunar beings, who moved as if floating or swimming, hung down from the environment into which they sent their blood strands. When such a being died, it was not the death of the soul; it was merely a withering away, like that of a limb; consciousness remained above, as if, for example, your hand were to wither away from your body and a new hand were to grow in its place. Thus, in their twilight state of consciousness, these people perceived dying merely as a gradual withering away of their bodies. The same bodies withered away, and new ones continually sprouted forth; but consciousness was preserved through the consciousness of the group soul, so that a kind of immortality truly existed.

[ 8 ] Then the present form of blood came into being, which is now produced within the human body itself; this went hand in hand with the emergence of the two sexes. With this came the necessity for a remarkable process. Blood generates a constant struggle between life and death, and a being that produces red blood within itself also carries within that very being the theater of a ceaseless struggle between life and death, for red blood is continually consumed and transformed into blue blood—a substance of death. With the transformation of blood within the human being came that darkening of consciousness that extends beyond birth and death. It was only then, with the enlightenment of present-moment consciousness, that human beings lost the old immortality that existed in the twilight realm, so that the inability to see beyond birth and death is intimately connected with sexuality. And there is yet another aspect connected with this.

[ 9 ] When human beings had a group soul, existence continued from generation to generation; there was no interruption caused by birth and death. Now this interruption occurred, and with it the possibility of reincarnation. In the past, the son was merely a direct continuation of the father, and the father of the grandfather; there was no break in consciousness. Now came a time when darkness fell beyond birth and death, and only then did the possibility of a sojourn in Kamaloka and Devachan arise. This transition—this sojourn in higher worlds—became possible only after individualization, after the separation from the Sun and the Moon. Only then did what we today call incarnation arise, and with it, this intermediate state, which will one day come to an end.

[ 10 ] Thus we have arrived at the age in which we see the ancient bisexual organism—which represents a kind of group soul—dividing into the masculine and the feminine, so that what is the same and similar continues through the feminine, while what is different continues through the masculine. Indeed, within humanity we perceive in the feminine that principle which still preserves the ancient tribal races and ethnic bonds, and in the masculine that which continually breaks through these bonds, cleaves them asunder, and thus individualizes humanity. An ancient feminine principle indeed acts within the human being as a group soul, and a new masculine principle as an individualizing element. The time will come when all racial and tribal bonds will truly cease to exist. Human beings will become increasingly distinct from one another. A sense of belonging will no longer be based on shared blood, but on what binds soul to soul. This is the course of human development.

[ 11 ] Among the early Atlantic races, there was still a strong bond of unity, so that the first subraces were also classified by color, and we still see this element of group soul in people of different skin colors. These differences will disappear more and more as the individual element gains the upper hand. A time will come when there will no longer be races of different skin colors. Racial differences will have ceased to exist, whereas the greatest differences will persist on an individual level. The further back we go in ancient times, the more we encounter the overlap of the racial element. The principle of true individualization does not begin until the later Atlantean period. Among the ancient Atlanteans, members of one race truly still felt a deep antipathy toward members of another race. Shared blood fostered a sense of belonging and love. It was considered immoral to marry a member of another tribe.

[ 12 ] If, as a seer, you were to examine the relationship between the etheric body and the physical body in the ancient Atlantean, you would make a remarkable discovery. While in modern humans the etheric head of the etheric body corresponds fairly closely to the physical part of the head and extends only slightly beyond it, in the ancient Atlantean the etheric head extended far beyond the physical head. It protruded most prominently in the forehead region. Now we must imagine a point in the physical brain at the spot between the eyebrows, just about one centimeter deeper, and a second point in the etheric head that would correspond to this point. In the Atlanteans, these two points were still far apart, and the process of evolution consisted precisely in their drawing ever closer together. In the fifth Atlantean epoch, the point in the etheric head moved into the physical brain, and as these two points came together, what is now characteristic of us developed: calculation, counting, the ability to judge, and, in general, conceptual ability and intelligence. Previously, the Atlanteans had only a highly developed memory, but not yet a reasoning mind. Here we have the starting point for the emergence of the “I.” The Atlanteans did not possess an independent sense of self until these two points came together; on the other hand, they were able to live in much closer contact with nature. Their dwellings were constructed from what nature provided them. They reshaped stones and incorporated them into the growing trees. Their dwellings were shaped from the emerging natural world; they were, in fact, transformed natural objects. They lived in small communities that were still held together by blood ties, within which strong authority was exercised by the strongest individual—the chieftain. Everything depended on this authority, though it was exercised in a different manner.

[ 13 ] When humankind entered the Atlantean era, it was not yet capable of speaking an articulated language; this developed only during the Atlantean era. A chieftain would not have been able to express commands in a language. On the other hand, these people had the ability to understand the language of nature. Modern humans have no concept of this; they must learn it anew. Imagine, for example, a spring that reflects your image back to you. As an occultist, a peculiar feeling arises in your soul. You say: My image is coming toward me from this spring; this is a final sign to me of how everything was reflected out into space on ancient Saturn. — The memory of ancient Saturn surfaces in the occultist when he beholds his reflection in the spring. And in the echo that returns the spoken sound, the memory surfaces of how, on Saturn, everything that resounded into outer space came back as an echo. Or you see a mirage, a reflection in the air, in which the air, as it were, has absorbed the images conveyed to it and then reflects them back to you. As an occultist, you see in this a memory of the solar era, when the gaseous Sun absorbed everything that came toward it from outer space, processed it within itself, then radiated it back, imbuing it with its own nature. On the solar planet, you would have seen how things were prepared within the gases of the solar state as a Fata Morgana, as a kind of light image. In this way, one learns to perceive the world in its manifold forms without resorting to fantasy, and this is an important means of ascending into the higher worlds.

[ 14 ] In ancient times, humankind had a profound understanding of nature. There is a great difference between living in an atmosphere like today’s and one like that of the Atlantean era. Back then, the air was permeated by massive mists; the sun and moon were surrounded by a gigantic rainbow halo. There was a time when the mists were so dense that no eye could have seen the stars, when the sun and moon were still eclipsed; they only gradually became visible to humankind. This emergence of the sun, moon, and stars is magnificently described in the account of creation. What is described there truly took place, and even more than that occurred.

[ 15 ] The Atlanteans, then, still possessed a very strong understanding of the natural world around them. What sounds like an inarticulate noise to you today—in the murmur of a spring or the roar of a windstorm—the Atlanteans heard as an intelligible language. There were no commandments yet at that time, but the Spirit emerged from the water-laden air and spoke to humankind. The Bible expresses this with the words: “And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” Humanity heard the Spirit speaking from within things; from the sun, moon, and stars, the Spirit spoke to them, and in that passage from the Bible you will find a clear expression of what was taking place in the human environment. Then came the time when a particularly advanced branch of the human race—living in a region that is also now the seabed, near present-day Ireland—first experienced that strong integration of the etheric body and thereby underwent an expansion of intelligence. Under the leadership of the most advanced among them, this group began to migrate eastward, while, little by little, mighty masses of water flooded the Atlantic continent. The most advanced segment of these peoples journeyed as far as Asia and established there the center of the cultures we refer to as the post-Atlantic cultures. From there, the culture then radiated outward. It originated from that stream of people who later advanced further eastward and, from Central Asia, founded the first culture in India. This culture still bore strong echoes of the Atlantean culture. The ancient Indian did not yet possess the kind of consciousness we have today, but the potential for it existed when those two points in the brain, of which I have spoken, converged. Before this integration, the Atlantean still possessed a pictorial consciousness; through it, he could still perceive spiritual beings. He not only heard a distinct language in the murmur of the spring, but for him, the Undine—who finds her embodiment in water—rose up from the spring. In the currents of the air he saw sylphs; in the bubbling fire, the salamanders. He saw all of this, and from it arose the myths and legends that have been preserved in their purest form in Europe, where remnants of the Atlanteans remained who did not make it as far as India. The Germanic legends and myths are remnants of what the ancient Atlanteans still saw within the mass of mist. Rivers, such as the Rhine, lived in the consciousness of these ancient Atlanteans as if the wisdom that had been in the mists of ancient Niflheim were embodied within them. That wisdom seemed to them to be present within the rivers; it lived there as the Rhine nymphs or similar beings.

[ 16 ] Thus, echoes of the Atlantean culture lived on here in these regions of Europe; but over in India, another culture arose that still bore traces of that world of imagery. That world itself had vanished, but the longing for what it expressed remained with the Indians. While the Atlantean had heard the wisdom of nature speak, the Indian was left with a longing for this unity with nature; and thus the character of this ancient Indian culture is revealed in its desire to return to the time that was once natural to humankind. The ancient Indian was a dreamer. Although what we call reality lay spread out before him, the world of the senses was Maya in his eyes. What the ancient Atlantean still saw as floating spirits, the ancient Indian sought in his yearning for the spiritual content of the world—for Brahman. And this kind of return to the ancient, dreamlike consciousness of the Atlantean has been preserved in Eastern spiritual training through a revival of this ancient consciousness.

[ 17 ] Further north, we find the Medes and Persians, the original Persian culture. While Indian culture turns away from reality, the Persian becomes aware that he must reckon with it. Here, human beings first appear as workers who are aware that they should not merely strive for knowledge with their spiritual powers, but that they should use them to transform the earth. At first, the earth confronted them as a kind of hostile element. They had to overcome the earth, and this opposition is expressed in Ormuzd and Ahriman, in the good and evil deities, and in the struggle between the two. Humanity sought more and more to allow the spiritual world to flow into the earthly world, but was not yet able to recognize a regularity—a natural law—within the external world. Ancient Indian culture did, in truth, possess knowledge of higher worlds, but not on the basis of natural science, because everything earthly was related to Maya; the Persians came to know nature only as a place of labor.

[ 18 ] We then come to the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, and the Egyptian peoples. There, humankind learned to recognize the laws of nature in nature itself. When he looked up at the stars, he did not merely seek gods behind them, but he examined the laws of the stars, and thus arose that marvelous science we find among the Chaldeans. The Egyptian priest did not view the physical world as something resistant, but rather incorporated the spirituality he found in geometry into his soil, his land. External nature was understood in terms of its laws. In Chaldean-Babylonian-Egyptian wisdom, the study of the stars was intimately linked to the knowledge of the gods who animate the stars. This is the third stage of cultural development.

[ 19 ] It is not until the fourth stage of post-Atlantean development that human beings reach the point where they incorporate into culture what they experience within themselves as spirituality. This is the case during the Greco-Roman period. There, in works of art and in shaped matter—in sculpture as well as in drama—human beings imprint their own spirituality upon the material. The very beginnings of human urban development can also be found here. This was of a different nature than in the pre-Greek era in Egypt and Babylon. There, the priests looked up at the stars and sought their laws, and they created a reflection of what was happening in the heavens in the structures they built. Thus, their towers represent the seven-stage development that humanity first explored in the celestial bodies, and thus the pyramids depict purely cosmic relationships.

[ 20 ] The transition from priestly wisdom to true human wisdom is wonderfully expressed in early Roman history through the seven kings of Rome. Who were these seven kings? We recall that the prehistory of Rome traces back to ancient Troy. Troy represents the final outcome of ancient priestly societies that organized their states according to the laws of the stars. Now comes the transition to the fourth cultural stage. The ancient priestly wisdom is overcome by human cleverness, symbolized by the cunning Odysseus. We see this even more vividly in an image that can only be truly understood and that depicts the overcoming of priestly wisdom by human judgment. The serpent has always been regarded as a symbol of human wisdom. The Laocoön Group depicts how the priestly wisdom of ancient Troy is overcome by human cleverness and human wisdom, which are expressed in the serpents.

[ 21 ] Then the governing authorities, who have been at work throughout the millennia, outlined the events that were to take place, and history had to unfold accordingly. Those who stood at the cradle of Rome had already predetermined Rome’s seven-part cultural cycle, as it is recorded in the Sibylline Books. Think this through: You will find echoes of the seven principles of the human being in the names of the seven kings. This even goes so far that the fifth Roman king, the Etruscan, comes from outside. He represents the part of Manas, the spiritual self, that connects the three lower members with the three higher ones. The seven Roman kings represent the seven principles of human nature; the spiritual connections are inscribed within them. Republican Rome is nothing other than human wisdom replacing the ancient priestly wisdom. Thus the fourth era grew out of the third. Humanity brought forth from within itself what it already possessed in the soul—in the great works of art, in drama, and in law. Previously, all law had been derived from the stars. The Romans became a people of law because here, humanity created the law—the jus—it needed, according to its own requirements.

[ 22 ] We ourselves are living in the fifth age. How is the meaning of the entire course of development expressed in it? The old authority has vanished; human beings are becoming increasingly inward-looking, and their outward actions are increasingly a reflection of their inner selves. Tribal bonds are disintegrating; human beings are becoming increasingly individualized. Hence the seed of the religion that says: “Whoever does not leave father and mother, brother and sister, cannot be my disciple”—that is to say: All love based on natural kinship must cease; human beings are to face one another, and soul is to find soul.

[ 23 ] Our task is to bring down even further onto the physical plane that which flowed from the soul during the Greco-Roman era. As a result, human beings become beings increasingly immersed in materiality. While the Greeks created an idealized reflection of their inner life in their works of art and cast it into human form, and the Romans created legal codes that already represented more personal needs, our age culminates in machines that are merely a materialistic expression of people’s entirely personal needs. Humanity has descended further and further from heaven, and this fifth age has descended the farthest, becoming the most deeply entangled in matter. Whereas the Greeks, in their creations, still elevated humanity above itself in their depictions—for Zeus represents humanity elevated above itself— and if you can still find in Roman legal codes something of the human being who transcends himself—for the Roman placed even greater value on being a Roman citizen than on being an individual human being—then in our age you find the human being who exploits the spirit to satisfy his material needs. For all machines, steamships, railroads, all complicated inventions—what purpose do they serve? The ancient Chaldeans of old satisfied their nutritional needs in the simplest way; today, a vast amount of wisdom is devoted to this. The crystallized wisdom of humankind is used to satisfy hunger and thirst. We must not delude ourselves: wisdom, applied in this way, has descended from its own realm down into the material world.

[ 24 ] Everything that humankind had previously drawn down from the spiritual realm had to descend below itself in order to be able to ascend again. But this also gives our age its task. Just as the blood that bound the ancient human being to his tribe once flowed within him, so today the love that once flowed in that ancient blood is becoming increasingly fragmented. A love of a spiritual nature must take its place; then we can ascend once more to the spiritual realm. The fact that we have descended from the spiritual realm has its good reason, for human beings must undergo this descent in order to find their way back up to the spiritual realm through their own efforts, and the mission of the spiritual scientific movement is to show humanity this path upward.

[ 25 ] We have traced the course of humanity up to the present day. We must now show how it will continue to develop and how a person undergoing initiation can, even today, anticipate a certain stage of humanity’s development on their path of knowledge and wisdom.