The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] Last time, we discussed in broad terms the evolution of humankind in connection with the evolution and development of the cosmos. One can view these matters from a wide variety of perspectives. For when we let our spiritually sharpened gaze sweep back to times of the distant past, we are presented with a diversity of events no less rich than that of our immediate present; and one must not believe that, once one has characterized the events and the development with a few concepts and ideas, one has already fully understood and fully described the matter. Rather, it is necessary to characterize even these times of the distant past, extending into our present, from the most diverse perspectives. One then gains an ever clearer understanding of it. One must simply not allow oneself to be misled by apparent contradictions that one might find here and there. These apparent contradictions stem from the fact that, intellectually as well, one can view a matter from the most diverse perspectives. For example, one can walk around a tree and form an image of the tree from a wide variety of angles. Each image is then true. There could be a hundred of them. Of course, this is only a comparison; but in a certain sense, it is entirely correct that we also view the eras of our Earth’s history from a wide variety of perspectives.

[ 2 ] Today we want to examine the evolution of the Earth in connection with the evolution of humanity from a different perspective, and in doing so, we want to focus more on human beings themselves. We will describe the processes that appear to the clairvoyant eye looking backward in what is called the “Akashic Records.”

[ 3 ] We have often repeated that our Earth, before it became the Earth, went through a series of incarnations. First came the Saturn period, then the Sun period, and then the Moon period; only then did our actual Earth period begin.

[ 4 ] If we take just a brief look back at the time of ancient Saturn, we recall that it was said that of the elements and physical states found on Earth today—the solid or earthy, the liquid or watery, the airy, and the fiery—only fire, or heat, was present on ancient Saturn. We can quite accurately picture what this first incarnation of the Earth was like if we consider the following: Saturn did not yet contain any gases, nor any aqueous components, let alone anything earthy. If you had, so to speak, visited ancient Saturn—assuming you could have been a human being back then just as you are today—you would have found, upon approaching ancient Saturn, no hard, liquid, or any other kind of matter, but rather a sphere consisting solely of heat. It would have been as if you had stepped into an oven. You would have sensed it by the fact that you had entered a different region of heat. Thus, ancient Saturn consisted solely of fire or heat.

[ 5 ] The Sun, which was the second incarnation of our Earth, already exhibited heat in such a condensed state that we speak of a gaseous or air-like state. The lunar state then, in its earlier period, exhibited an aqueous state of our substances; and I have also already drawn your attention to the fact that part of the old Moon’s substance—the solar substance—emerged from it, and once it had emerged, a powerful condensation of all lunar beings suddenly occurred.

[ 6 ] For us today, the main thing is to once again bring to mind very clearly that in every later stage of development, the earlier stages must be repeated in a certain way. Thus, when we look back at the evolution of our Earth itself, we see that at the very beginning there was a kind of Saturn phase—namely, a repetition of the Saturn state; then there was a kind of Sun phase, a repetition of the Sun state; then a kind of Moon phase, a repetition of the Moon state; and only then does the present incarnation of our Earth’s evolution truly begin. When our Earth emerged from the Pralaya state—the twilight state—through which it had passed after having been the Moon, our Earth, too, was once again merely a ball of fire. I have already described to you how the other planets broke away. Let us first hold fast to the fact that the Earth was merely a fiery sphere, containing nothing but a substance of heat. Within this sphere of heat, which consisted of fire, the human being was already predisposed. Just as the first predisposition for the human being existed on Saturn, so too is the human being present again on Earth during the repetition of the Saturn state. There were no other kingdoms; humanity is the firstborn of the Earth’s state. No plant kingdom, no animal kingdom, and no mineral kingdom existed at the beginning of our Earth’s development, so that, in essence, our Earth at the beginning of its development was composed solely of human bodies.

[ 7 ] Yes, but what, then, is the difference between the ancient Saturn state and the present Earth state, which repeats the ancient Saturn state? There is, in fact, a significant difference! It lies in the fact that human bodies—which are now emerging, just as fresh plants unfold from their seeds—have undergone the three earlier stages of development. They are considerably more diverse and complex in structure; for all the forces that were at work on Saturn are present in this first Earth state. The old Sun and the old Moon are also present within it. They united at the beginning of Earth’s evolution and have all become one body once more. The forces of Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon act together within it. Therefore, this first human being at the beginning of Earth’s evolution is already much, much more complex than the old Saturn human being. On Saturn, everything was undifferentiated; there, everything was still a Saturnian human. Now, on the newly formed Earth, Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon work together; the Earth human emerged in its first, highly complex form.

[ 8 ] Back then, when the Earth emerged—rising, so to speak, out of the darkness of outer space as a space glowing with heat—the first human forms lived within that heat-glowing space as beings of heat themselves. If you look back with the clairvoyant eye at what existed of humanity at that time, you will first find this earliest human form as if the entire sphere of heat contained many, many currents within it. These currents flow toward the surface of the Earth—that is, the newly emerged Earth—sink into this surface, and form masses there that are warmer than the surrounding environment. The human being differs from its surroundings solely in that one senses: certain areas are warmer. Now I can most easily explain to you what existed of the human being at that time if I depict for you, among the human organs, what had formed in that first prototype.

[ 9 ] Imagine a newborn child who still has a very soft spot on the top of its head. Imagine this spot as completely open, and imagine a stream of warmth flowing into this opening from the outside. Imagine this stream of warmth not as a dense, material flow of blood, but as a flow of energy—flowing downward and forming a kind of center where your own heart is now, and branching out into individual veins—but veins of energy, not veins of blood. There you have the first rudimentary structure of the human being based on warmth. From this heat-human structure, the human heart with its blood vessels—that is, the blood circulation—later emerged in the course of further development. And the organ that existed for a long time in human evolution but then disappeared was a luminous heat organ that was also present in that original structure. Much later in the Earth’s evolution, human beings still possessed such an organ. The spot on a child’s head where the skull remains soft marks, so to speak, the place where a kind of heat organ extended from the human being at a time when the human being could not yet see into its surroundings. When humans were still sea-dwellers, when they could not yet perceive in the way they do today, when they were still swimming about in the sea, they had to know, above all else, what the temperature conditions were like—whether they could move in a certain direction or not. With this lantern-like organ, he could perceive whether he was permitted to go here or there. Human beings still possessed this organ during the third epoch, the Lemurian epoch. I have already hinted to you that the legend of the Cyclopes—the one-eyed people—goes back to this shape of the human eye. It is not an eye in the strict sense, and when it is described as an eye, that is not correct. It is a kind of thermal organ, and it indicates where the person is permitted to go. Thus, we would have something like a cup-shaped organ that widens downward toward the first rudiment of the heart, and which was surrounded by a sort of tentacles, so that at the top there was a kind of blossom. Such was this organ in the earliest times.

[ 10 ] Now, in the course of Earth’s history, something very important occurred: matter began to differentiate. The uniform thermal matter differentiated, resulting in the formation of air matter, while a portion of the former thermal matter remained as thermal matter. However, you must keep one law in mind, and it is essential that you understand it clearly if you wish to observe these human elements in the course of evolution: wherever thermal matter condenses to become air, light arises simultaneously. Thermal matter is still dark matter; it is not permeated by light. But when, in such a world sphere, a portion of this heat condenses into gas or air, then a portion of this matter can allow light to pass through. And so it was.

[ 11 ] Now we have the Earth in the second stage of its development. All other aspects are progressing in parallel with this. We now have an Earth that consists partly of heat, partly of air, and that glows from within. And indeed, all of this is now also expressed in human development, in human formation. What was formerly merely a potential as a heat-generating organ is in fact beginning to glow. The human being is like a kind of lantern; he glows. A few decades ago, one might still have been surprised to learn that there are luminous beings. Today, there is no longer any need for surprise; for today, natural science already knows that deep on the ocean floor, where no rays of light can penetrate, there are beings that glow, that radiate their own light. This is how human beings began to shine back then.

[ 12 ] Now something highly peculiar became apparent in this human formation: the first rudimentary structure began to take shape—and gradually developed further—to utilize the air that was present; the beginnings of a respiratory process emerged. So we see that a kind of respiratory process is added to the preceding thermal process. It is very important that we realize that with the incorporation of air into the earth, the respiratory process begins—which consists of nothing other than air attaching itself to the thermal substance, so that it becomes permeated by air bubbles. That is the effect of the air. But this is also linked to something else; for the effect of light is present as well, and this manifests itself in the formation of the first rudiments of the nervous system—specifically, the inner nervous system. Mind you, this is not a physically developed nervous system, but rather a series of force lines that have developed to the point of condensation. You must imagine that the whole is gaseous, and that only very fine air currents, like force lines, can exist within it.

[ 13 ] So we now have a human embryo that, in all its subtlety, is entirely ethereal—still a being of warmth, a being of air—and a being in which the first signs of the nervous system are beginning to appear. If you think about this for a moment, it will become clear to you that this is the stage of Earth’s evolution when the Sun is still inside the Earth. Of course the Sun is still inside! Imagine how this world body would appear in outer space if someone were to look at it from the outside. All these beings, whom we have just described as the first human beings, radiate light individually, and this light becomes the collective light that streams out into outer space. You see that you are truly dealing with a sun that shines out into outer space. If you had been able to examine the Saturn state, you would have found that you could have approached it without seeing it; it made its presence known only through heat. Now, however, you are dealing with a solar body that is warmed from within but sends its light outward into outer space.

[ 14 ] Now, little by little, the time is coming that I have described to you as the sun’s descent. All the higher beings who were connected to the sun and who gave human beings the abilities we have just discussed—all these beings, along with the finer substances—separated themselves. The sun went out. It was not yet shining; it was not yet spreading light; it went out from the Earth.

[ 15 ] Now we have a celestial body in this stage of our Earth’s development, consisting of the Earth and the Moon, for the Moon as we know it today was still inside the Earth at that time. Now something most remarkable is happening. Because all the finer forces have departed with the Sun, a—relatively speaking—very rapid densification is taking place. What were once merely lines of force now already take on a very dense form. And as the finer substances depart, we see how the gaseous state condenses into water. The whole now consists not only of fire and air, but also of water. The luminous power has departed with the receding Sun. It has grown dark again on Earth; the beings have retained only a portion of the luminous power within themselves.

[ 16 ] This is an interesting stage in the development of humanity. I have told you that the potential for the nervous system arose through light. This nervous system is a creation of light. In all your nerves, you have nothing other than the original rays of light. Now the light—the sun—is moving out into outer space. As a result, the mass is densifying very rapidly. It does not yet become a nervous mass such as it is today, but it becomes denser than before; it is no longer merely a fine, ethereal mass. And what is essential is this: formerly it shone outward; now it shines inward. This means that this first human nervous system has the ability to produce inner images of light: visions and clairvoyant consciousness emerge. Thus the sun departs from the Earth, leaving the Earth, so to speak, without light. But the beings generate an inner light for themselves. Previously, they were such that they shone light upon one another from the outside. Now they have lost the ability to shine. The Earth was no longer the sun, but internally, the space of consciousness was illuminated, just as you today illuminate your space of consciousness in sleep with the entire world of dreams. Only this entire space of consciousness was illuminated in a far more significant and much more vivid way during that time.

[ 17 ] And now we come once again to an important point. Just as light came into being with the formation of air, so now, with the condensation of air into water, a counterpart came into being. For just as air relates to light, so water relates to sound, to tone. Of course, sound can travel through the air and causes the air to vibrate; this is what makes it audible. But sound—as a sound in its own right—arose and appeared on Earth alongside the formation of water. And just as the air was permeated by the effect of light, so now the entire body of water into which the air has condensed—for we now have the Earth consisting of warmth, air, and water—is completely permeated by sound rays. Our Earth is now most permeated—precisely in those parts where it has become watery—by spherical harmonies, by sounds that flow into our Earth from outer space in all manner of tonal harmonies; and the result of these sound effects in the water is a very, very important one. Of course, you must imagine that this primordial water—this liquid Earth water—contained all the substances that are now separated out as metals, minerals, and so on. It is particularly interesting to turn one’s spiritual gaze toward this ancient time, to see how the most diverse forms emerge from the water as sound creates shapes within it. Sound creates shapes in the water. It is a truly wonderful period in the Earth’s evolution. At that time, something akin to the following occurred on a grand scale in the Earth’s evolution: imagine sprinkling fine dust onto a metal plate and stroking the plate with a violin bow; this produces the Chladni figures. You know, of course, what regular patterns are created there. In this way, through the music streaming in from outer space, the most diverse forms and figures took shape, and the substances dissolved in the water—which were themselves aqueous—obeyed the music of the universe and arranged themselves according to it. And the most important formation resulting from the dance of the substances to the music of the universe is protein, the protoplasm, which is the foundation of all living formation. Let the materialists ponder as much as they like the mechanical combination of protein from oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and so on. The original protoplasm—protein—was formed from the cosmic substance, which itself was formed from the harmonies of the music of the universe. And so the substances within living beings are arranged in accordance with the music of the universe. Thus, that protein-like substance—that protoplasm—which permeates everything, now organizes itself around the subtle structures and, in particular, within them. Along those lines, which I have described to you as heat lines, the water—coagulated into protein by the tone of the world—flows and gradually gives way to the formation of blood. In the nerve pathways, the coagulated water settles as a protein formation. And at first, the protein formed as a kind of sheath—one might say, a cartilaginous, gelatinous substance—to provide protection against the outside world. All of this truly took shape according to the dance of the elements in harmony with the music of the spheres.

[ 18 ] All of this existed before there was a single cell. The cell is not the origin of the organism; rather, what I have just described to you—the spiritual—is the origin of the organism, first existing as a being of warmth, then indicated more in lines of force, and then, embedded within these lines of force, that which arose from the harmony of the spheres through the arrangement of substances; and relatively late, as the last of the formations, the cell finally came into being. The cell, as the final differentiation, had to be born from a living being. It has never been the case that organisms developed from cells; rather, the cell first arose from the living. The anatomical is always merely a consequence of the composite.

[ 19 ] All of this took place at the beginning of that state, when the Moon was still inside the Earth and the Sun was already outside. But as long as the Moon remained inside the Earth, this protein formation became increasingly hardened, and it would eventually have reached the stage I described to you as mummification, had the coarsest substances and the coarsest beings not left the Earth. The last things to emerge from the human being during this period were the nerves leading to the sense organs. But the sense organs had not yet opened. They had been formed from within, but they had not yet opened. And now the Moon, together with the coarsest substances, leaves. The result of this stage of development is that human beings can gradually transition to a higher state through the opening of their senses, as the two bodies—which are now outside—balance each other from the outside, so to speak. Whereas, as long as they were connected to the Earth, they built up the human being, they now act from the outside, opening his senses and making him the seeing and hearing being as he appears to us today.

[ 20 ] This “going out” of the Moon occurs around the middle of the ancient Lemurian epoch. There we have a human being whose sensory organs are not yet open, but who possesses a powerful clairvoyant gift. I have described this to you: he can fill his field of consciousness from within with the most varied color and heat phenomena, all of which have real significance and meaning; but he does not yet perceive the objects in space. This only begins after the Moon has left the Earth.

[ 21 ] If you consider this brief outline I have just given you of the Earth’s ancient evolution, you will see that human beings, as they are today as earthly beings, actually originated from the heart. Of course, the heart did not exist as an organ such as it is today. That developed much later; but the potential for the heart arose from fire. Then came the respiratory system, born out of air, and the nervous system, born out of light. Then came what integrated itself into the organs as a mass of protoplasm, which transformed the whole into living matter by causing the world tones to coagulate the aqueous substances. In the final phase of the Earth’s development, when the Earth was still united with the substance of the Moon, the condensation into the earthly state took place; and only shortly before the Moon separated did what is commonly called today the mineral kingdom come into being—that is when the earthly emerged from the liquid. Protein, after all, is a state between the solid and the liquid, right in the middle. But the earthy, the solid, actually arose only in the most recent period. How? It arose because, under the influence of condensation—for everything was, after all, a continuous process of condensation—the elements themselves became more and more material. Think back to the beginning of Earth’s development. What did the heat-matter do there? It gave you, for your physical body, what now pulses in your blood. That was not the same heat as before. When we speak of the Earth’s initial state of heat, you must not imagine that we are referring to the kind of heat that arises when you strike a match. That is mineral fire and mineral heat. We are speaking of that fire, of that warmth that pulses in your blood; that is living warmth. In fact, there is not only the mineral warmth that arises out there in space, but there is a completely different kind—a living warmth—that you possess within yourselves. It was present at the beginning of the Earth, and from it the first human constitution took shape. But with the ongoing process of densification, even this living warmth has gradually become lifeless warmth. This was also connected to the process of densification that took place when the Sun emerged and the Moon was still connected to the Earth. And this warmth, which was mineral warmth, first manifests as a process of combustion.

[ 22 ] Here we come to an important point that I would like you to pay close attention to. Although we may speak of a state of heat or a state of fire at the beginning, we should not speak of actual combustion. That is not correct. We should speak of nothing other than what we feel pulsing warmly in our own blood today. Heat resulting from an external mineral combustion first arose after the Sun had departed and the Earth was left alone with the Moon. And through this combustion—which did not exist at all in the past—the substances within the Earth’s mass were separated, which in occultism are referred to as “ashes.” When you burn anything, ash is produced. The ash became incorporated into the Earth’s formation when the Earth was left alone with the Moon. We have reached the point where, through the cosmic tone that penetrated and compelled the substances to dance, the protoplasmic masses have become integrated. We have beings in which fine masses of protoplasm were once arranged along the lines of force, similar in their outer structure to the structure found in modern egg white. We also have denser masses that seem to be there for protection, surrounding the beings in question like a kind of gelatinous shell. What is missing in these beings? Hard bone mass! If I may put it in layman’s terms: It is all still a more gelatinous mass, and whatever is mineral in nature is completely absent in these beings up until the time I have just described to you. Now you must imagine how different these beings were. Today, there is nothing in your physical body that is not simultaneously permeated by mineral substance. The human body, as it is today, thus arose relatively late. Today, the human body consists not only of bones, but also of muscles and blood; this mineral mass is integrated into everything. Imagine the mineral mass gone—the entire Earth with its beings still without mineral mass. Then, through a process of combustion, mineral ash—ash from a wide variety of minerals—began to accumulate. Thus, ash components were deposited on all sides within human beings, who had previously only reached a gel-like density. And the beings absorb the ash just as they once absorbed protein, incorporating it in their own way—absorbing the mineral substance from the dense bones to the liquid blood. You can easily imagine what has been incorporated there: everything that remains as ash when the body is burned or decays. What truly remains as ash is that which was formed very last; everything in you that does not remain as ash was there beforehand—this ash has only now been incorporated. A person who looks with a discerning eye at these ashes, which come from a decaying corpse, must say to themselves: This is the mineral substance within me that was absorbed last from what was there before. - The mineral realm, then, came into being last in the course of the Earth’s formation, and the other realms incorporated it after having previously consisted solely of other substances.

[ 23 ] Now we might ask ourselves: What caused these ashes to become integrated? — After all, we constantly carry these ashes with us; they are simply scattered and left behind when our bodies are cremated or decompose. How, then, did the ashes penetrate these lines, which were filled with protein?

[ 24 ] We have seen that fire existed in the beginning; from it, the cardiac system formed; then the respiratory system formed from the air; light became integrated and formed the nervous system; then sound came and, by causing the substances to dance, formed the living substance. What, then, caused the ashen, the mineral to flow into this substance? That which drives the ashen, the mineral into human bodies was now the thought that transforms sound and tone into words. Even in the Atlantean era, when everything around was immersed in masses of fog and mist, what humans spoke was not the only articulated language; rather, humans could understand the language of the rustling trees and the trickling springs. Everything that is today articulated language, and what is expressed within it, formed the dance of the elements; the ‘sound,’ the musicality within it, shaped the elements into a living substance. Meaning—the meaning of words—forces the ashes formed in the process of combustion into this living substance, and as the skeletal system gradually became denser toward the end of the Atlantean epoch, human beings became increasingly permeated by thought and self-consciousness. His intellectualism dawned, and he became more and more a self-conscious being.

[ 25 ] The things within us are created from the outside in: first our constitution, which has found its culminating organ in the heart; then our nervous system along with the respiratory system; and finally the organs that arise from the vital forces as glandular organs. Thus, in the course of Earth’s evolution, the reverse process of what occurred earlier becomes evident. Then the skeletal system—the solid substances permeated by ash—is integrated, and the human being becomes a self-aware being. Such is the course of evolution within our own earthly embodiment. With this, we have already nearly reached the end of the Atlantean era.

[ 26 ] If you compare this with what we discussed earlier, you will see: it is always the case that what acts last was there first; for what penetrates into matter as the “Word” was there first of all. What gave human beings their “I” was there first of all. If you seek to understand what has been said today in the light of truth, you can very easily find here the facts corresponding to the first sentences of the Gospel of John. On one of the coming evenings, we will have to show precisely how our reflections, which extend out into the cosmos, are beautifully reflected in the Gospel of John and also in the first sentences of Genesis. All these things are regained by us when we thus contemplate the course of the evolution of the world. But one thing will emerge clearly for you from this: When we consider the facts, human evolution presents itself to us differently than materialistic fantasy imagines—namely, that human beings emerged from the gross material realm, and that spiritual faculties developed from it.

[ 27 ] Now you see that what constitutes the true mission of Earth’s evolution—that in which love finds expression in human beings—is first instilled in what we call the organ of warmth. This is the first thing to emerge. Before the organic comes the spiritual in the form of lines of force; then, under the wondrous influence of the music of the worlds, the organic takes shape, and only then is the whole, as it were, permeated with mineral substance—with solid matter—through the word or thought. The densest substance arises last. Human beings develop out of the spiritual, even when we consider the course of Earth’s evolution. Humanity has its origin and existence—as every true view of the world has always shown—not in matter, but in the spiritual; and matter was integrated into the human being only after the spiritual forces. This becomes increasingly evident from this line of thought.