The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. The First Chapters of Genesis

[ 1 ] In the past few hours, we have spoken of various myths and legends, and in doing so, we have described how these myths and legends of different peoples reveal what we have also come to know through the theosophical worldview—namely, what we refer to as the manifestations of the astral and spiritual worlds. We have also spoken of various signs and symbols, and we have repeatedly emphasized that in these various signs and symbols there is nothing about which one could speculate, philosophize, or reflect in any arbitrary way—nothing that could be interpreted this way or that—but rather one must say of them that they are true representations of processes in the higher worlds. Now I ask you again and again to bear in mind that, through the broad spiritual currents of Earth’s evolution, we have symbols, fairy tales, and legends that express nothing other than what the seer—the one acquainted with the supersensible phenomena—can experience in the higher worlds. I need only refer to the simple symbol of the so-called swastika, the hooked cross—that symbol you all know, and about which you are familiar with so many more or less witty explanations. Most explanations are nonsense, no matter how witty they may be. One can be very clever, think deeply, and yet utter a tremendous folly if one does not know what really matters. This swastika is nothing other than the representation of what are called astral sense organs—they are also called lotus flowers—which begin to stir when a person performs certain exercises; they begin to stir when he undergoes a specific development. I have said time and again that one should think of a flower just as little in this context as one thinks of wings when hearing the word “lung.” It is a word; and the lotus flowers are nothing more than a pictorial designation of what develops in the seer as he gradually draws the astral sense organs out of his astral organism. If we take this principle of explanation to heart, we will never be tempted to apply any speculations or the like to what we find in religious and other texts. Rather, we will strive to consult true esoteric science or occult wisdom, so that in each case it may tell us what one thing or another means. Much about Persian and Germanic mythology has already become clear to us in the recent Monday lectures.

[ 2 ] Today I would like to draw your attention to certain things that you can find in a text much closer to you: the Bible. I would like to draw your attention to the Bible today precisely so that you may see how, from the standpoint of Spiritual Science, the Bible corresponds in so many ways to the most diverse legends and myths of the peoples, and how deeply we can look into the biblical text when we simply ask occult wisdom for insight into it. Today we will bring some passages from the opening chapters of the Bible before our souls.

[ 3 ] As you know, it tells the story of the creation of the Earth—and indeed the world itself—in connection with humankind. You will find a wide variety of explanations regarding this so-called Genesis, regarding the mysteries hidden within the first, introductory chapters of the Bible. Let us remember, above all, that when human beings first became inhabitants of the Earth in their present form, conditions on our planet were quite different from those that came later, which modern humans are familiar with. We know that after the Earth had passed through earlier stages of development—a Saturn stage, a Sun stage, and a Moon stage—it then emerged again, initially in connection with the Sun and the Moon. What today looks down upon us as the Sun and the Moon formed a single body with our Earth at that time. We know that the Sun then separated with all its beings, that the Moon then separated, also with certain substances and beings, and that our Earth remained behind in a period we are accustomed to calling the Lemurian period. At that time, the Earth consisted of fiery-liquid substances, which were essentially the same as today’s substances, only the Earth was a fiery, fiery-misty celestial body in which all the metals and minerals that are solid today were dissolved, and in which beings such as those found on Earth today could not live. In contrast, beings of a completely different nature and character could live there, and this already included human beings at that time, whose existence has always been linked to the evolution of our planet.

[ 4 ] Now let us consider human beings themselves. If you were to form a mental image of the people of that time—that is, the time when the Sun and Moon had just separated from the Earth—as being like people today, who hear with their ears and see with their eyes, you would be forming a mental image of them completely wrong. Rather, you must create a mental image of the situation in the early stages of the Earth, when human beings possessed a consciousness quite different from that of people today. Our present-day waking consciousness, which perceives through the instruments of the external senses, did not yet exist. What kinds of consciousness do we know besides waking consciousness? You know the consciousness that for most people today is unconsciousness—the consciousness of deep sleep. You know that this consciousness is possessed not only by human beings but also by the plants living around them. Plants possess this consciousness continuously; human beings have it only when they sleep. Modern humans who observe plants must therefore say to themselves: The plant represents for them the very consciousness they themselves possess when they sleep. — One could say that humans are also plant-like beings when they sleep. The plant has only a physical body and an etheric body. Humans, too, have a physical body and an etheric body, which lie in bed. Now comes the difference: the human lying in bed has an astral body belonging to them, along with the ego; these are, in a certain sense, separated from the physical body and the etheric body; but a single astral body belongs to the physical and etheric bodies lying in bed. However, no single astral body belongs to the individual plant; rather, the entire Earth has an astral body, and you must regard the individual plants as embedded, as integrated into this collective astral body of the Earth. It is certainly true that when you harm an individual plant or do anything to it, the plant does not feel it, but the Earth as a whole feels it within the collective astral body. I have already pointed out that the seer knows: When you pick a flower, when you take the seeds of the plants in the fall, or even when you harvest the grain, it is as if you were taking the milk from the cow for my sake, or as if the calf were suckling the cow’s milk. It is a feeling of well-being for the Earth’s astral body. A feeling of pain arises only when you uproot the plant by its roots; then it is similar to tearing a piece of flesh from the body of an individual animal. You must also be clear that there is a state similar to that of sleeping and waking for the Earth as well, not for the individual plant. The individual plant knows only the state of consciousness that you have when you lie in bed with your etheric body and physical body. Between these two states of sleeping and waking lies another state of consciousness that is little known to modern humans; it is the state of which, so to speak, the dream-filled sleep remains as a final memory, like an atavism, an heirloom, where the sleeping consciousness is filled with the most manifold symbolic images, which we have often described. Most of the animal world possesses such a consciousness. Anyone familiar with these conditions can tell you that most of the animal world has a kind of dream-consciousness; and it is utter nonsense to raise the question of whether animals might not have a sense of self similar to that of human beings. One experiences that when one describes to people in great detail how a human being must pass through the time between death and a new birth, someone then comes along and asks: Could a human being not spend this time on a completely different planet? — or that someone asks: Couldn’t this or that be the case? — “Could be” applies to all sorts of things in the world. It is never a matter of what could be, but of what is. One must keep this in mind above all else. Some people today fall for this when, for example, a love life is attributed to a plant. The wildest nonsense is peddled with such things; and when the matter is even called “science,” then everything that otherwise has no standing is accepted.

[ 5 ] The third state of consciousness is a kind of visual consciousness that exists only as a faint shadow in dreams, and this consciousness is present in humans with increasing clarity at the beginning of their earthly existence. When human beings began their journey as inhabitants of the Earth, they did not yet have eyes to see, nor could they have used ears as we do today to perceive the external world through the senses, although the potential for all of this was already present. Such physical forms and colors, as they are experienced today through the senses, were not experienced by humans at that time; their consciousness was an image-consciousness through which, above all, spiritual states were perceived. Certainly, there could also be objects in a person’s surroundings similar to this rose. When a person approached these objects, they did not perceive the red color, not these forms, not these green leaves—none of that in this way. But when they approached the object, an image arose within them that initially showed them, at the spot where the green is now, a red form, and where the red is now, a greenish-bluish form; it appeared in colors that do not occur at all in the physical world in this way, but which merely expressed that this was a form that was spiritually and emotionally sympathetic to the person. If, for example, a person approached a creature from the animal world that was well-disposed toward them, certain colors arose before them that expressed the sympathy the animal felt for them. If he approached an animal that wanted to eat him, this was expressed in a different color formation. The friendship between two beings was expressed through colors and forms. Now imagine that back then, human beings were by no means able to see their own physicality, for that too belongs to all that requires sensory instruments to be perceived. Human beings could see their own souls; they saw the colors flowing out from within them. What the seer sees today, they could see in a primal, dim, twilight-like clairvoyant consciousness. But there was no question of them being able to see their own physical forms; those were completely hidden from them.

[ 6 ] Let us now vividly imagine this moment. The human being descends from the bosom of the Divine to immerse themselves in the Earth, which has just separated from the Sun and the Moon. There the human being descends. They have not the slightest ability to perceive the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth itself as physical bodies. But the moment has come for him when the I, which dwells within all of you today and was formerly united with the divine substance, descended into the three bodies. Since the Earth’s Saturn phase, the physical body has existed; since the Sun phase, the etheric body; and since the Moon phase, the astral body. The astral body, the etheric body, and the physical body had come over from the Moon phase. When the Earth was Saturn, the I was in the sphere of divinity. Even when the Earth was the Sun, even when it was the Moon, the I was in the sphere of divinity. Let us now clearly imagine the state of the Earth as it has just come into being. We have the human being consisting of a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body, and, one might say, a cavity in the astral body, a constriction. The I literally drips into this and first connects with the astral body, and in this astral body it attains an image-consciousness, as I have just described. Through this, the human being has become a fourfold being. The I has united with that which had prepared itself through the three stages of Saturn, Sun, and Moon, when the human I was above in the bosom of the Godhead. During the Saturn, Sun, and Moon stages of the Earth, the I that now dwells within all of you was united with the Deity above, and below your bodies were formed in preparation: your physical body on Saturn, your etheric body on the Sun, and your astral body on the Moon. This was taking place below. One could say that the Deity looked down as the bodies prepared themselves so that, when the Deity sent down these drops of egohood, they would be ready to receive the egohood. What dwells within you today dwelt within the Deity back then and looked down upon the three bodies. Had your soul, your I, been able to perceive their existence back then as they do today, they would have perceived it by calling the “heavens” their home. For they were “in the heavens”; they had only a dim, twilight consciousness, but they were in the heavens.

[ 7 ] And now the crucial moment had arrived when the previously uniform state split into two. At the beginning of earthly existence, there was a state for human beings in which they were still, as beings of true consciousness, as “I-ness,” “in the heavens.” Now the “I” trickled down into the bodies. Thus the distinction was created between where human beings used to be and where they are now: heaven and earth. This is the experience of your I as it descends. What, then, stands at the beginning of Genesis?

In the beginning—or: in the very beginning—God created the heavens and the earth.

[ 8 ] When it was still in the bosom of the Divine, its ego could see nothing. Now, on Earth, it is destined to see for the first time, though initially only with a dim, image-like awareness. Before that, it saw nothing; it first had to become attuned to the astral body in order to learn to see.

And the earth was formless and empty.

[ 9 ] This, in turn, is a subjective experience of your soul. What it experienced is described here. The Earth itself was still “desolate and chaotic,” and everything was liquid, for the Earth was in a fiery, molten state.

And the Spirit of the Godhead

[ 10 ] which your ego had just left,

hovered over the waters.

[ 11 ] You see, what is described in Genesis are the real experiences of your ego. And what now came into play? Now comes the moment when the ego begins to see astral reality; it became aware that there are other beings all around it. Astral light springs forth from the darkness on all sides.

And God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light.

[ 12 ] This does not refer to physical light, but to astral light. Here, too, facts are described that pertain to the human

I went through it. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness.

[ 13 ] What does this mean? As the lectures progress, you will learn in greater detail that wherever an astral body exists, fatigue is bound to set in. The life of an astral body cannot proceed without fatigue eventually occurring. Therefore, there must also be a way to compensate for this fatigue. A being that becomes fatigued must pass through states in which this fatigue is compensated for. Do not imagine any external mental images now, but only the experiences of the I. The I is lowered into the astral body; it becomes fatigued by unfolding its pictorial consciousness. It must again enter a state in which it can compensate for the fatigue. We have two states of consciousness into which the I enters: one state where the I lives in images, where spiritual experiences are represented in images, and another where everything sinks back into the darkness from which the I was born, and where the fatigue is removed, but also where the state of light surrounding the I is interrupted. The Deity had divided the life of the “I” into two parts, one where there was light, and another where there was darkness. Imagine the life of the beings of light on Earth in this way.

And God separated the light from the darkness, and He called the light “day,” and the darkness He called “night.”

[ 14 ] This has nothing to do with the revolution of the sun or the moon; it has to do solely with the spiritual difference between the astral illumination of consciousness and the dark state in which there is no illumination. You must fully realize that what is being described here are inner realities, experiences of the I. Imagine quite vividly how the sleeping person lies in bed with their physical and etheric bodies; outside the physical and etheric bodies are the astral body and the I. This was the constant state in the early days of the Earth. The astral body was never as completely within the physical and etheric bodies as it is today; not at all, but only in such a way that it filled a part of the etheric body. Much as it is with modern humans in sleep, where the astral body has emerged from the physical body but not yet entirely from the etheric body, so must you create a mental image of this I, which has just descended from the bosom of the Deity, as belonging—with its astral body—to a physical body and an etheric body, yet not yet fully permeating them. A modern natural scientist would say that such a life is not possible at all. But, subject to different laws, it was entirely possible.

[ 15 ] Let us use an image to create a mental image of what that was like. Let us imagine our Earth once again, but now engulfed in a fiery mist, this fiery mist in constant motion, with the astral bodies and the I’s floating above it like spiritual beings. Imagine that you were all suddenly to fall asleep. Then your astral bodies would emerge. Only the physical bodies are inert; when the astral bodies emerge, the physical bodies retain their form. Back then, when the Earth was in the fiery mist, it was different—everything was in lively motion. It was similar to standing in a mountain valley today and watching the masses of fog drift back and forth, taking on the most varied shapes. Now your physical body remains inert in its fixed form. Back then, everything was in motion. The physical body of that time dissolved and reassembled itself. All of this was conditioned by the forces emanating from above. Thus, existence back then differed from that of today. When the Earth was still liquid, all form depended on the spiritual forces, of which you yourselves were a part. Just imagine what was happening down there. The solid gradually prepared itself. From a completely liquid, watery state, these solid bodies gradually took shape. More and more rigid forms began to emerge. Just as the drifting mists in the mountains take on solid forms and crystallize, so too did the first human figures gradually emerge from the swirling masses of fiery mist.

And God said, “Let there be an expanse—or: a division—in the midst of the waters, and let the waters be separated from the waters.”

[ 16 ] If you have a correct mental image of the process I just described, you'll understand it.

And God separated the waters, and made a distinction between the waters under the expanse and the waters above the expanse. And He called the expanse “heaven.” That was the second day.

[ 17 ] Herein lies profound wisdom once again. What are these two “extensions”? They refer to the two parts of human nature that are always intertwined: the lower nature of man and the spiritual nature of man. The spiritual nature, which finds its expression in that which is inclined toward the sun, and the lower nature, which is inclined toward the center of the earth. These are the two natures that all religious texts describe as governed by two entirely different powers: the heavenly powers and the powers of the underworld. The heavenly realm and the earthly realm—God separated them from one another. What was not yet visible on the Moon became visible here on Earth. An immensely profound wisdom, corresponding to a complete truth, is also expressed in this. On the ancient Moon, individual human forms did not yet walk about as they do now on Earth; that did not exist on the Moon. The human ancestors, the ancestral bodies of humans on the ancient Moon, consisted of a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body; they had only one extension—the extension toward the planet, not toward the heavens. They were animal-like; no “I” dwelt within them yet. The animal has remained at this earlier stage of development. This is still clearly evident to you today in the fact that it cannot raise its face toward the sun, and that its front limbs lack free working organs to realize the intentions and ideas of the spirit. The animal is like a beam standing on four columns. The human being has raised this beam from a horizontal to a vertical position. Through its face turned upward, it is not merely an earthling but a citizen of the world. The two front supports, the two front limbs, have become tools of the spirit. This is expressed in the separation of the part of the human form that belongs to the earth from the part that belongs to the cosmos.

And God made a firmament between the lower waters and the upper waters.

[ 18 ] This refers to the diversity of the human form; it is, once again, an experience of the original human nature.

[ 19 ] Now, the part of the human form that was to serve the ego had to have a focal point, a center. And indeed, it did. The first center of this still-malleable human body came into being because all the currents converged in the upward-pointing part. The most diverse currents pass through there, which you must create as the beginnings of nerve and blood currents. These all gathered at the top in mighty tongues of fire, which formerly—when the body was still completely soft—flared out from the human being at the top of the head. That organ which the human being possessed there—and of which the last remnant is the pineal gland—was the first organ with which the human being began to perceive physically. If he came near something dangerous to him, this organ perceived it, and through this the human being sensed that he must not go there. Through this organ, they found their way. You must not imagine this organ as a primitive eye—all manner of errors arise from such a mental image—but you must imagine that it was a kind of heat organ through which human beings could distinguish, even at great distances, between cold and warm states, and those that were harmful or beneficial to them. This organ was at the same time connected in a certain way to those organs we call the lymphatic organs, which are related to the currents in the human body associated with the white blood cells. The well-being and suffering of human beings, who at that time still predominantly had white blood cells, depended on what this organ perceived. It was thus a focal point in which everything that existed as form within the expanse of the heavens was gathered.

And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together in one place, so that the dry land may appear.” And it was so. And God called the dry land “earth,” and the gathering of the waters He called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

[ 20 ] Here you see a reference to another set of forces; these are found in the lower, earthly nature of the human being. They relate to human reproduction, to procreation. But procreation in those ancient times—and this is very important—was entirely shrouded in the most absolute unconsciousness. This is a profound mystery of the becoming of the world. One could say it is the original divine commandment that the Deity gave to earthly beings: You shall not know how you procreate on Earth. — The entire business of procreation was shrouded in deep unconsciousness. During the times when consciousness emerged on Earth, no procreation took place. Imagine, then, that the essence of the human being in this regard consisted in the fact that he proceeded from a state of complete innocence or unconsciousness regarding this process on Earth. What, then, did the human being know at the beginning of his earthly existence? He knew only his spiritual descent; he knew that he had descended as an “I” from the bosom of the Deity. Where they came from in a physical sense, where their bodies came from—this was completely hidden from them; they knew nothing of it; it was shrouded in a state of complete innocence. Let us imagine very precisely what was happening at that time.

[ 21 ] Human beings came into being in the manner we have just described. Human beings who had developed their physical body, their etheric and astral bodies on the Moon now received their I; human beings who were completely innocent of everything that was taking place in the physical world. They could not see that, of course; they did not even see their own physical body. They perceived spiritual states; they knew they were descended from the Godhead. But there were other beings—not humans, but beings who had remained behind on the old Moon, who had not been able to become gods. What had reached a higher stage on the Moon now had its setting on the Sun, where the Elohim dwell, living on the Sun just as humans live on Earth. Now there was a parallel development of beings on the Sun and on the Earth. After the Sun and the Moon had emerged from the Earth, the Earth was placed between the Sun on one side and the Moon on the other. The highest being that developed on Earth was a being with a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and an I: the human being. On the Sun, the highest being had a physical body, but in a form entirely different from the human one—an etheric body, an astral body, an ego, a Spirit-Self (Manas), a Life-Spirit (Budhi), a Spirit-Man (Atma), and in addition an eighth part, beyond Atma. Thus, the higher beings who had already developed an eighth member are the Elohim, the Sun Spirits, who, when the Earth and the Sun had separated, took a different path. Human beings had taken the Earthly path. The Sun Spirits had already developed their Atma on the Moon; they had gone to the Sun to develop themselves further there. Now, however, there were beings on the ancient Moon who could not go with the Sun because they had, so to speak, “failed to advance.” They were, of course, far more highly developed than human beings; they possessed something that human beings were yet to attain—they already possessed a consciousness through which one perceives external physical objects. They were already able to make use of tools that human beings could not yet use. Human beings still had blind eyes and deaf ears. Their eyes and ears were only rudimentarily formed; they were to become sighted and hearing later. But lower animals of that time had retained forms from the Moon that, in a certain sense, they could already use more readily than humans could use their bodies. And it was in these that those beings who had come over from the Moon—and who were not yet ready to follow the Sun, though they were further along than humans—first incarnated on Earth. They incarnated in forms that have long since perished, in beings that enabled them to look out into the physical environment. These beings, who stood between humans and gods, animated and spiritualized such lower forms, for the higher human bodies were still too clumsy—just as a child is far clumsier than a young chick when it is born. These lower beings were dragons or serpents, which at that time were provisionally inhabited by these beings standing between the gods and humans. These forms were intimately related to that part of the human being that belongs to the Earth; they possessed nothing of that part of the human being directed toward the Sun. But they had one advantage over the humans who still lived in a dull, pictorial consciousness: they were already able to perceive the physical objects that existed on Earth. Humanity lived in complete innocence regarding the physical process of sexuality; this was shrouded in darkness for them. These beings saw humanity as the gods saw them; therefore, they could approach humanity and say: “You can become like the gods; you need only do one thing: you need only extend your desire down into the lower regions; as soon as your desire extends into the deepest regions, you will see as the gods do; if you do this, then you will see your own form.”

[ 22 ] In a certain sense, humanity was thus deprived of its state of innocence. That is one side of the matter. The other side is the freedom that humanity thereby attained. [Gap in the postscript.] Beings who stood between the inhabitants of the Sun and the inhabitants of the Earth, who had not been able to earn the right to the Sun, wanted to open people’s eyes; they approached people as tempters and said:

Your eyes will be opened, and you will know what is good and what is evil.

[ 23 ] You will see what is around you, and you will come to know the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life.

[ 24 ] Thus, the religious texts are literally true. We need only learn to understand them literally once again. Today’s discussion will surely have shown you that one must not speculate about these matters. One must consult the true esoteric science; then light will be shed on the religious texts in a wondrous way.