The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Theosophy and Rosicrucianism XI

[ 1 ] Yesterday, in our account of the evolution of our various Earth states, we reached the point where we came to understand how the three united celestial bodies—the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth—separated one after the other. On the one hand, we began with this and paused at the point where the Moon separated from the Earth; on the other hand, we also sought to reach that point by starting from our present time and moving backward through the Atlantean era to arrive at that very same point. Let us now clarify the state in which the Earth itself finds itself at that point. One must keep in mind very long, long periods of time—spanning millions of years—and then one will no longer be so surprised by the great changes taking place both in the universe and on Earth.

[ 2 ] Let us now take a closer look at the separated Earth. It was still enveloped in a mass of air, though this air looked quite different from the air we have today. You must not imagine that this air was something like a glowing furnace at its core, even though the temperature was much higher than it is today. Many of the substances that are solid today were also present in liquid form on Earth. An atmosphere densely filled with vapors of the most varied substances enveloped the Earth—something that might be described as “fire air,” a state reminiscent of the Moon’s earlier condition. When the Earth became independent after separating from what is now the Moon, it was surrounded by a peculiar atmosphere that could be described as “fire air.” Because the Earth had freed itself from the atmosphere that had departed with the Moon, the beings were able to reach certain higher stages. Within this atmosphere, the most advanced animal-men had reached a higher stage than they had on the Moon, but only those who later became human. A large number of these animal-men remained at the lunar stage. And the consequence of this was that they did not merely remain there, but—because entirely new conditions now arose (for animal-men could exist only on the Moon)—they descended half a stage and became animals that had not yet existed on the Moon at that time. Thus we have two kingdoms: humans, and the lagging behind animal-human kingdom, which gradually descended to the level of animals.

[ 3 ] The same was true of the plant-animals. A certain number had evolved further into animals; others had stopped evolving and became plants. And the plant-mineral kingdom has divided itself in such a way that some have become heavy minerals, while others have evolved into plants. Not everything arose according to a single pattern; what we know today as animals, for example, arose in part because human-like animals devolved, and in part because plant-like animals evolved upward. Similarly, in the plant kingdom we find plant-minerals in ascent and plant-animals in descent existing side by side. The plants that today primarily form our aesthetic plant cover are those that arose through the upward evolution of the plant-minerals of the Moon—the violet, for example. In contrast, everything that strikes us as musty is in a state of downward evolution, while our green leafy plants will reach higher stages in the future.

[ 4 ] Our minerals developed entirely on Earth. On the Moon, there were no minerals as we know them today. This is the sunken plant-mineral kingdom, which became embedded in the Earth as a solid crust. At the time when the Earth ejected the Moon, what remained behind—and later became minerals, solid metals, and so on—was itself still an entirely liquid mass. Whatever was already solid at that time was simply hurled out into space, because the Earth could not have evolved further if it had retained these substances. Then inclusions formed of those metals that were most likely to solidify. Some of them had peculiar shapes. What you encounter today as granite or gneiss in the mountains still clearly showed back then that it was formed when plant beings degenerated and became stones.

[ 5 ] Essentially, you can conclude from this that on the Sun and the Moon, the entire mineral kingdom was once the plant kingdom. It was not the plant kingdom that evolved from the mineral kingdom, but rather the rocks that evolved from the plant kingdom! What you excavate today as coal is, after all, merely a collection of fossilized plants—plants that perished, decayed, and turned into stones, so that today they can be excavated as plants that have turned to stone. If you were to go back even further, you would see that even the densest stones were once plants and only came into being from the plant through a process of degeneration into the mineral kingdom. For the seer, the following becomes apparent. When you examine gneiss, the mineralogist tells you that it consists of feldspar, hornblende, and mica. Then the mineralogist must stop. The seer says: What is found in gneiss as feldspar still appears clearly to the spiritual eye as the solidified form of the plant’s stem and green leaves, from which the plant was built up; and the mica structure has something to do with what is still formed today in the sepals and corollas of plants. So when an occultist looks at a piece of gneiss today, he will say: This is a fossilized plant, and just as plants today have leaves and flowers and so on, so the mica structure originates from ancient sepals and petals. — And so we can say of all minerals how they were formed from ancient plants. For it was plants that came over from the Moon, and only within the liquid earth did they become condensed. Just as when you have a vessel of water in front of you and the water begins to solidify, forming ice, more and more solid inclusions formed there. And in this way, the solid Earth’s crust gradually formed from the liquid Earth. The further we go, the higher and purer the beings become; those that could not ascend became fossilized. The same was true of animals and humans. Human beings advanced to the point where they could transform their bodies to an even higher degree.

[ 6 ] These moon people moved about in the primordial ocean, floating and swimming; they were predisposed to this kind of swimming. This may seem highly strange to people today, but it is nevertheless true. And let me say this without reservation: I have no desire whatsoever to tone down some of these descriptions, which may seem grotesque. People always laugh at truths when they first appear.

[ 7 ] The human being who swam about in the primordial sea did not yet have eyes that could see as they do today; the potential for them had already been established on Saturn, but down there in the primordial sea, the human being did not yet need to see; he had to orient himself in other ways. The primordial ocean also contained everything he consumed to sustain his existence. There were animals there that were friendly toward him, and others that were not. And the primordial ocean was warm in some places and cold in others. Man could tolerate some of these places, but not others. At that time, man still had an organ that is now located inside the head, the size of a cherry pit—the pineal gland; yet it is not a gland in the strict sense. This organ was once highly developed; it was an organ that enabled man to orient himself in the primordial sea: there it protruded from the head like a kind of lantern. Humans moved in such a way that they used this lantern-like structure located at the front; it was a highly sensitive organ, a heat-sensing organ, through which they could perceive heat that was beneficial or harmful to them. It was an organ of orientation, but not an organ of sight. It served him well as he swam about. Later, humans no longer needed it; so it shrank.

[ 8 ] At that time, there was still no question of a disposition toward the “I.” In everything he did, human beings were still guided by higher spiritual powers. We can compare them, for example, to animals today. From a spiritual scientific perspective, we view today’s animals in roughly the following way: Human beings differ from animals in that they possess an individual soul; every human being has their own individual soul, their own individual “I.” This is not the case with animals; there, entire groups of animals share a single soul. For example, all animals belonging to the lion species have one soul, and that soul lives in the astral world. Similarly, all animals belonging to the tiger species share a single soul. That is why we speak of group souls in the case of animals. All horses together have a group soul; they belong together. Just as the individual fingers belong to the hand, so do the animals belong to their group soul. Therefore, we cannot speak of individual responsibility. Only when an individual soul is present do we speak of a soul being good or evil. Human beings of that time still possessed a kind of group soul that was still nestled within the bosom of the Divine. So we must be clear about this: what lives within us today already existed back then, but not within the human body. Human beings have their origin in two currents: what had come over from the Moon and had developed further was the animal-man down below; but what lives within you today as an individual soul was up above, with the Deity—only your body was down below, in the primeval sea. Later, the two united; then the soul descended and spiritualized your body as an individual soul.

[ 9 ] Imagine a vessel filled with water; inside it are many, many drops of water, but you cannot distinguish them from one another. If you now take many hundreds of little sponges and dip them into the water, you have individualized the drops that were previously part of the mass of water inside. So imagine your spirituality hovering above the primordial ocean. Now compare the soul resting in the bosom of the Deity to the drop of water: the bodies receive the souls just as the sponges receive the drops of water; thereby the souls became independent, just as the water was individualized by the sponges. Below lies the primordial sea with the bodies floating and swimming; above are the souls. This could not be better described than by saying: “And the Spirit of God hovered over the waters”—that is, it worked upon what was below to such an extent that the drops of soul could be absorbed.

[ 10 ] The bodies themselves had to remain afloat, and to do so, these beings needed an organ. At that time, humans did not yet have lungs, but they did have a kind of swim bladder; this enabled them to float in the primordial ocean. Fish, which have remained at this stage of development, still have swim bladders today and no lungs. Gradually, as the air became purified from the waters and humans were able to rise above the waters and become air-breathers, their lungs developed. This was a long process, spanning millions of years, during which humans gradually began to breathe air through their lungs. This provided the physical form capable of receiving the soul within itself. The more humans became lung-breathers, the more capable they became of receiving the soul. There is no better way to express this than with the words: “And God breathed the breath of life into the human being, and he became an individual soul.”—With this, humans simultaneously became capable of producing something they could never have produced before: they became capable of producing red blood. In the past, all human beings were naturally predisposed to have the same temperature as their surroundings; if they were surrounded by more heat, they adapted to that heat. In the past, there was no red blood at all; the animals that stand above the amphibians are human bodies that remained behind at a much later time. It was only after humans had evolved into beings capable of producing red blood that animals also evolved into creatures with red blood. Just as no plant has ever evolved from a stone—but rather the stone formed from the plant—so, too, did the animal evolve from the human. Everything lower has evolved from what is higher; that is the theory of evolution. First, human beings had to transform themselves into red-blooded beings; only then could they leave the animals behind. In animals, you see, in the literal sense, the stages spread out before you that we have left behind. In every animal, human beings see, to a greater or lesser extent, a part of themselves that has been left behind. Paracelsus expressed this so beautifully: When we look around us, we see, as it were, the letters of an alphabet; only in human beings are they united into a word; therefore, the meaning of what is spread out around them lies within them. Then there is one thing you must take into consideration. A process that seems insignificant but is extraordinarily important for spiritual science took place back then; it essentially began with the very first appearance of the Earth, when it was still united with the Moon: this is a certain interaction between Mars and Earth. Throughout the entire first half of the Earth’s existence, forces from Mars streamed into the Earth; hence, the first half is literally referred to as the Earth’s “Mars state.” And linked to this passage through Mars is iron, which from that point on plays an entirely new role in the Earth’s development.

[ 11 ] In plants, iron plays a much more external role. But you can see how things are interconnected: cosmically, the Earth passes through Mars, and Mars provides it with iron. There, the iron was stimulated to take on the functions it now has. There, the iron appears in the blood. And the aggressive nature in human beings is connected to this iron-rich blood—that which makes them warriors on Earth. The Greek myth sensed this, and that is why it designates Mars as the god of war.

[ 12 ] This enables the human body to accommodate an “I”; for without warm, red blood, no body can become a bearer of the “I”—this is of extraordinary importance. Lung respiration is the prerequisite for warm, red blood. And then the necessary processes arose on Earth that became integrated into the blood. Thus, human beings gradually developed into lung-breathing, red-blooded beings, leaving behind the other creatures—the lower warm-blooded animals. In occultism, animals are not merely distinguished in the usual way; we also identify another characteristic. We distinguish them into those that sound internally—those that can express their own pain and joy through sounds—and those that do not. If you look at lower animals, you do hear sounds, but these are only external sounds resulting from the rubbing of organs against one another or from external climatic influences; it is their exterior that makes the sounds. It was only the animals that branched off at the time when humans evolved into warm-blooded beings that were capable of expressing their own pain and joy through sound. At that time, the human larynx was also transformed into a sound-producing organ. As the liquid earth on the outside transformed into a crust, an internal process took place within humans: Parallel to the external solidification, a skeleton of bone and cartilage formed internally from the soft tissues. Bone structures did not exist in earlier times. The external minerals are the counterpart to the bones. The Earth has preserved this epoch in its rock masses; humanity has preserved it in its bones. Human beings are now increasingly transforming from creatures that walk in a horizontal posture to those that walk upright. They reorient themselves so that their front limbs become working organs, and only their other limbs serve for locomotion. These two aspects are interconnected. No being that lacks a vocal larynx and an upright gait can be a self-aware being.

[ 13 ] Animals had the potential for this, but it has regressed. Therefore, they have not been able to evolve into beings capable of language, since language is linked to an upright larynx. We can gauge this from a very basic fact. Certainly, some dogs are more teachable than a parrot; but the parrot learns more because its larynx is positioned more upright. Parrots and starlings learn to speak somewhat because they have an upright larynx.

[ 14 ] This is how you can see the Earth and humankind advancing to ever higher stages of development. At the same time, the atmosphere also changes; a state develops in which the Earth is surrounded only by a misty atmosphere. This was during the time when the Lemurians saw their continent disintegrate and migrated to Atlantis; as a result, they became Atlanteans. During this phase of progress, in which humankind acquired the first elements of language—which were, admittedly, only sounds of sensation—the soul also came increasingly to the fore. The Atlantean had essentially retained a dim form of clairvoyance. By this time, his eyes had developed to the extent that, as he emerged from the subterranean sea, he began to partake of the sunlight that appeared to him through the masses of mist. Physically, he became increasingly able to see and perceive; in return, however, his ancient clairvoyance gradually diminished within him. It was not until the last third of the Atlantean era that the most advanced race among the Atlanteans had emerged at a specific point on the Earth’s surface. This marked a significant conclusion to that epoch.

[ 15 ] The Atlanteans who had migrated further west became, due to the conditions of that time, inwardly neutral in nature—cold and indifferent; they became the copper-skinned population of America. The others, who migrated further south, became the black African population, and those who turned more toward the east later formed the yellow, Malay population. These masses of people had concentrated at the most inhospitable points, from which it was impossible to proceed any further. But where Ireland is today, and to the west of it—where there is now sea—humanity had been able to develop the most. There were those mixtures of warmth and cold through which the human body could advance the farthest. From the willpower—which at that time was still magical—an unspoken sense of “I” began to develop in its earliest form. It was precisely at this point that human beings learned for the first time to say “I” to themselves. Then, in their earliest stages, people there learned to count, to calculate, to develop a nascent capacity for judgment, and to think combinatorially. But there were always, among them, advanced beings—the leaders of humanity—who related to people as beings from a higher realm. They had become the teachers and leaders and were the impetus behind the migration toward the East. — From that point near present-day Ireland, further eastward, and across into Asia, there were already settlements of peoples everywhere. Now the most advanced groups of people moved eastward, forming a kind of colony wherever they went. The most powerful of these, possessing the most highly developed culture, was located near what is now the Gobi Desert. From there, individual groups later dispersed to various regions of the world, with some heading toward what is now India; there they encountered peoples with yellowish-brown complexions and, in part, intermingled with them.

[ 16 ] This was after the Atlantic Flood, when this colony migrated south and established there the first civilization of the post-Atlantic era—the first civilization of our epoch. The most advanced teachers who went down there with them—the first great teachers of ancient India—are known as the ancient Indian Rishis. Today’s Indians are the descendants of that ancient population, but we must go far back into times that lie in the darkness before recorded history if we are to find traces of their culture. The Vedas already belong to a later period; for in those days, nothing was yet written down. The ancient Indian people represent the first cultural group after the Atlantean era; therefore, they were also the closest to the Atlanteans. The Atlantean was a kind of dreamer; his consciousness was dull, he lacked any power of judgment or self-awareness; like a dreamer, he wandered about in a semi-unconscious state. The ancient Indians were the first to have overcome this state, though they were still half-rooted in it. Hence, the ancient Indian harbored within himself a longing to experience the ancient spirit realm and that vision which was still characteristic of the Atlanteans. The ancient Indian yoga training still consisted of inducing a kind of dimming of consciousness that transported the person back to the time when people could still see the spirits around them. The Indian longed to return to this era of clairvoyance among the ancient Atlanteans, and the rishis taught him, in their yoga training, the methods—though these were now developed in a different way. The Atlanteans had not yet developed the power of judgment; in India, people already possessed this power, but they were, so to speak, attached to what they had overcome, and they knew how to evoke it again—to dampen their consciousness and recall what they had once seen. Indian culture has preserved this in its highest representatives. The Indian did not seek to elevate his consciousness, but rather to dim it in a dreamlike manner; hence the passivity of the Indian character. And it would be a grave disadvantage, even harmful, if Indian life were to take a stronger hold on today’s culture.

[ 17 ] In the early days, people had never even seen minerals; the Atlantean, in particular, perceived minerals the least clearly. For him, the spirit world was present in his visions; it was this spirit world that lived within everything. He saw people surrounded by colors—pleasant colors, if he found them likable. The Indian sought to conjure up such a world once again. But human progress consists precisely in the fact that human beings must increasingly develop a relationship with what exists here in the material world. The Atlanteans had no need for tools yet; they oriented themselves through their power of clairvoyance; they attached no significance to physical tools. In this respect, the Indian is still lagging behind the Atlanteans; therefore, the physical world is Maya to him—a kind of illusion, a lie. He has no regard for the world of the external senses. He says: “Rise up to the world of the dreamlike spiritual.”

[ 18 ] The progress from this Indian stage to a later period consisted in the fact that in the next cultural sphere—the Persian one, which predates Zoroaster—humanity first learned to appreciate what external reality is. This was a second colony that originated in the Gobi and founded a very ancient empire in the Near East, from which the empire of Zarathustra emerged. The Persian becomes aware that there is a world here in which he must act. The divine appears to him as something with which he must connect. Two deities stand before his soul: Ormuzd and Ahriman. Matter still appears to him as something he must overcome, against which he must measure his strength. He still draws from the spiritual world the forces he needs to work here in this world. The world appears to him as something dark that must be transformed with the help of the light of goodness. — The Indian founded a science of the purely spiritual world, but this told him nothing about external reality. For the Persian, external reality is something else entirely, something that must be constantly transformed through work.

[ 19 ] The third colony that set out from the Gobi moved on to the Near East and established the Chaldean-Babylonian-Egyptian cultural sphere. In addition to the earlier science of the spirit, these peoples now also possessed a science of the earthly world. Among the Egyptians, astrology and geometry emerged, through which they learned how to cultivate and work the earth. Science expanded into what the ancient Indian still referred to as the world of illusion. Now the world of illusion is a world of the sharpest reflection—sensory reflection. When the Indian immersed himself in the world of the stars, it was for him merely an expression of the spiritual. The Chaldean, however, had a love for the physical world; for him, it was the limb of the deity into which one works, into which one immerses oneself. And this working from the divine into the sensory—that is what we see in Babylonian-Assyrian culture.

[ 20 ] We now come to the fourth cultural sphere, which we call the Greco-Latin one. Here, the human being has already been won over, even from an external perspective. The Egyptians already knew that the world is not chaos, but has been meaningfully constructed throughout immeasurable ages. The Sphinx and the pyramids express great cosmic truths. The ancient Egyptians encoded their knowledge of these truths into the imagery; they created the Sphinx, which stands before us like a riddle of evolution: the evolution of the higher human from earlier animal states. For the Egyptians, this was the wisdom they expressed to the world in their own way. And in their work you can find a system of measurement that was brought down from heaven. The cities were laid out in such a way that, through their construction, the Egyptians expressed a sacred order that had been prescribed to them; the Egyptians sought to present a reflection of the order of the heavens. But the individual human element was not yet included in this. You see this blossom only in Greek art, where human beings already perceive themselves as immediate reality and seek to create an image of themselves in space.

[ 21 ] Humanity is becoming increasingly familiar with what the Indians called māyā. Humanity confronts itself. It creates a world within what the Indians called illusion, and it is aware that it must create this world without the help of the gods. He becomes increasingly connected to external reality and, through his own efforts, brings the divine into that external reality. But if you study the Greek polis, you will see nothing yet of what constitutes the concept of law. Humanity first had to establish this in the Roman Empire as Roman law, in private coexistence with others, as Roman citizens.

[ 22 ] In this way, human beings come to understand more and more what is taking place here in external reality.

[ 23 ] We ourselves, with our materialistic civilization, constitute the fifth cultural epoch. It is the era in which humanity has descended deepest into the external world. Compare our time with earlier ones: We certainly know how to apply the forces of the spiritual world to our external environment; we bring the spiritual world into everything we do. But from the standpoint of spiritual science, this presents a peculiar perspective. Recall the time when human beings still ground flour between two stones. They expended little spiritual energy on this. But in ancient Egypt and Chaldea, they immersed themselves in the wisdom of the heavens; there, much was still revealed to them about the spiritual meaning of the starry sky and the Earth itself. The Greeks still created the idealized human form within this world of reality.

[ 24 ] And what is the picture of our time? A great deal of mental energy is expended to advance our natural sciences and their technical applications. But how great is the difference between obtaining food from America using primitive means, or with the aid of telephones, machines, and so on—food that serves only to satisfy the same need that animals here satisfy? Try to examine how much of what has been created serves spiritual life, and how much mental energy is expended on material life. What immense mental energy must humanity expend today to satisfy material needs! There is no great difference between an animal going out to graze and a person using all manner of means to bring food over from America and Australia. But this is not a disparaging criticism; it must be so. Humanity had to immerse itself in this world to this extent. The Indian still viewed the world as an illusion; modern man regards this world as the only reality. We have descended to the lowest level and, as a result, have made the greatest progress on the physical plane. But this descent must not be in vain, even in the spiritual sense!

[ 25 ] A new element has emerged in our time, one that is, as it were, planted right in the first third of the post-Atlantean era: it is the advent of Christianity—the most significant turning point in the history of the Earth. Everything that came before was, for occultism, merely a preparation for Christianity. Buddha, Hermes, and so on are merely prophetic foreshadowings of Christianity, which is precisely intended to lift humanity out of its deepest entanglement with matter. And it will lift humanity out of this entanglement once more. Now the ascent out of matter begins anew. And the task of spiritual science is to assist in this ascent into the spiritual world.

[ 26 ] The next phase of our post-Atlantean culture will indeed bring even more discoveries; but in the outer world, human beings will increasingly see only the letters. True Christianity will speak of the external world just as we speak of what condensed spirit is, and spirit will once again dawn upon us from within matter. We will not say that the external world is an illusion; we will possess it fully and lose nothing, and yet we will ascend to higher spiritual realms. And Christianity will have the greatest contribution to make to this development. As early as the sixth cultural epoch, what is proclaimed today to only a few will be able to captivate great masses of people and sweep them along; and through this, humanity will gain insight into the spiritual world. What is thought today will be a force in the future. In the sixth cultural epoch, many will possess this power of thought. What is today called Theosophical Christianity will spread among vast multitudes. These thoughts will grow ever stronger; they will work creatively to shape the human form. — In the past, the human body looked quite different from what it does today; you would be astonished if I were to describe this earlier body to you. But because the body was still soft, the “I” had a much greater influence on its form. Today, only a very faint remnant of the soul’s will’s influence on the human body remains: When you experience a fright, you turn pale because the inner state of the soul penetrates into the blood; the color of the body changes. But you could see, in other physical states, how little control a person has over their body today. With spiritual ascent, this will change again; the body will become softer and softer, and the human being will regain influence over the body as they allow the thoughts—which today arise only sparingly—to grow ever stronger within themselves; these thoughts will then be able to transform the body itself. The human being will once again be able to shape their own body, though only in a very distant future.

[ 27 ] Sexuality was first imposed on human beings during the Lemurian period; before that, they were hermaphroditic beings, both male and female at the same time. With the integration of the “I,” human beings split into two sexes. We will examine this moment in greater detail when we take a closer look at the course of human blood. Then we will address this issue of the division of the sexes, and also the fact that what is today a separation of the sexes will eventually disappear again.

[ 28 ] Thus, we look toward a future in which humans will once again be able to influence the body in an entirely different way.

[ 29 ] What, for example, happens when a blush of shame rises to a person’s face? What is that? It is a last remnant of what a person once had as influence over their body. People will increasingly be able to consciously work into their bodies again. And then the time will come when a person will be able to turn their heart muscle into a voluntary muscle. Science presents the heart to you as if it were merely a physical apparatus, a pump. But the blood does not flow through the body merely because the heart pumps it; rather, everything in the blood depends on the soul. The blood pulses faster or slower in response to various emotions, and it is the blood that triggers the heart’s movement. But in the future, human beings will gain conscious influence over the heart; therefore, the heart is an organ that is only at the beginning of its development today. The heart is a muscle of spiritual development, an organ through which the spiritually advanced human being expresses himself and thereby exerts a creative influence on the rest of his body.

[ 30 ] The heart is still in the early stages of its development; that is why it poses a problem even for materialistic science. Materialistic science tells you: All the muscles you use to move are striated muscles; all the muscles that are involuntary—for example, those associated with the digestive system—are smooth muscles. The heart, however, is a peculiar organ that turns this entire theory on its head. It is an involuntary muscle, yet it has striated muscle fibers: because it is on the path to a higher stage of development, it already possesses striated fibers today.

[ 31 ] Tomorrow I will show you how certain things become clear when we consider them in the light of spiritual science.

[ 32 ] In this way, Theosophy sheds light on everything around us. We redeem everything that has become matter from its current state of rigidity. This is the concept of redemption understood in its deepest essence! Humanity has continually evolved to higher levels, leaving certain realms behind along the way. Humanity will become powerful, and it will redeem what it has left behind, and it will help redeem the Earth. However, it must not despise the Earth but must unite with it if it wishes to bring redemption to it.