The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Ninth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday, in our account of human evolution, we reached the point where, following the period characterized by the seven trumpet blasts, the Earth, along with all its beings, transitions into a different state—one in which, so to speak, the physical dissolves and is transformed into the spiritual, initially into the astral. An astral Earth comes into being, and all those beings who have become ripe for it—that is, who have become capable of overcoming their own material nature and using it in the service of the spiritual—enter this astral Earth. In contrast, everything that is incapable of transforming the physical, the material, into the spiritual—everything that clings to the material—will be cast out and form a kind of “second Earth,” the observation of which is quite instructive for understanding the fate of future humanity. To this end, however, it is above all useful for us to clarify what has become of those human beings—in the process of our Earth’s astralization—who have attained the necessary level of maturity, who have taken the Christ principle into themselves and allowed it to take effect. What a human being can become is what we should now consider.

[ 2 ] We can best understand what a human being can become if we have the patience to look at the human being once more—to see how he has come to be and what possibilities for future development lie within him. When we look at the human being today, he stands before us as a fourfold being. The first thing we recognize in a human being is the so-called physical body. This is the aspect that humans share with all present-day creatures of the mineral kingdom—the part of the human being that can be seen with the eyes and touched with the hands. It is the lowest aspect of the human being, the part that alone remains as a corpse after death. But this physical body would suffer the same fate as a corpse at every moment—it would decay—if it were not permeated by what we call the etheric or life body. Human beings no longer share this etheric body with the creatures of the mineral kingdom; they share it with the beings of the plant kingdom on Earth. The etheric body is a warrior against death within every human being; between birth and death, it holds together the parts of the physical body that are constantly striving to separate. What, in truth, is the human physical body? It is what it becomes after some time, once death has destroyed the form: ashes, a small heap of ashes, arranged so artificially in their parts within the life body that the whole human being makes the impression it exerts on the observer today. The second component, then, is the etheric or life body. The third, which human beings share with all animals, is the so-called astral body—the bearer of all instincts, passions, desires, thoughts, and ideas, and so on—that which is commonly referred to as the “soul” in human beings. Then, as the fourth, we have that aspect of the human being that makes humanity the crown of earthly creation—the aspect that causes humanity to rise above all other beings in earthly creation and that uniquely enables human beings to develop as an “I,” as an individual, self-conscious being of earthly existence.

[ 3 ] In the future, human development will proceed in such a way that the human being will gradually work through and transform, from the perspective of the “I,” the lower parts that lie beneath the “I,” making the “I” the master of the other parts. When the “I” has worked through the astral body and made it its own, so that nothing of unconscious and unchecked drives, instincts, and passions remains in this astral body, then it has developed what we call the spiritual self or Manas. This is nothing other than what the astral body itself is; it is simply the third member prior to its transformation by the “I.” When the “I” then transforms the etheric body as well, Buddhi or the spirit of life arises; and when, in the distant future, the “I” transforms the physical body so that it is entirely spiritualized by the “I” itself—and this is the most difficult task, because the physical body is the densest—then the physical

[ 4 ] Thus, when we imagine this human being in his sevenfold nature, we have the physical body, the etheric or life body, the astral body, the “I,” and furthermore that which the human being will develop in the future: the mental self or Manas, the life spirit or Buddhi, and the spiritual human being or Atma. This is the sevenfold human being. However, human beings will not develop these higher aspects until in the distant future. On our Earth, it is not yet destined for human beings to work upon themselves to such an extent that they bring all these higher spiritual aspects to full development.

[ 5 ] If we look at the human being in this sevenfold way, however, we still have not fully grasped the human being standing before us today. It is true that, when we consider the human being as a whole, we can speak of these seven members. But if we want to understand the human being of today, we must speak in even greater detail.

[ 6 ] You will recall that the physical body was developed on Saturn, the etheric body on the Sun, the astral body on the Moon, and that the “I” is to develop on Earth and has already developed to a certain high degree. Now, however, we must examine this earthly evolution of the human being in somewhat greater detail. What is called the spiritual self—the transformed astral body—and the fact that the human being acts and works with complete consciousness within this spiritual self, his astral body—this will be achieved by the vast majority of people only at the end of earthly evolution. In contrast, during our earthly evolution, human beings had to undergo a kind of preparation that made it possible, even in the course of earthly evolution, to work on their three lower members, so to speak, half-consciously and half-unconsciously.

[ 7 ] This half-conscious, half-unconscious work began in the Lemurian era, which we have already mentioned. At that time, the “I” began to work within a very dim consciousness, initially on the astral body. So if you trace the development of the Earth from the Lemurian era into the early Atlantean era, you will find that the “I” first worked on its astral body in a semi-unconscious, only dimly conscious manner. What first appeared on Earth at that time as a product of the transformation of the astral body is what we call the sensory soul. Then, during the Atlantean epoch—when the air was permeated by masses of mist and water—the “I,” in a dull state of consciousness, worked on the etheric body and developed what is called the intellectual or emotional soul. And from the time when the great impulse arose from the region near present-day Ireland—the impulse that drove the peoples from the West to the East and led them across the great Atlantic flood to our new culture—from the beginning of the last third of the Atlantean era onward, the “I” worked unconsciously on the physical body, and it imbued it with what is called the soul of consciousness, which gave human beings the capacity to develop a more or less self-aware “I” out of the state of group-soul attachment—an “I” that only attained the great impulse of complete individuality with the appearance of Christ Jesus. It was only then that human beings actually became capable of what might be called working in the astral body with more or less consciousness. It is only since the establishment of Christianity on Earth that we have actually begun to work consciously on our astral body. So that when we speak of the human being today, we must say: The human being has a developed physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, then a feeling soul—the astral body that was once transformed in a twilight state of consciousness—the intellectual soul—the etheric body that was transformed in a twilight state during the Atlantean primeval era— and the conscious soul—the physical body that was transformed in a twilight state during the final Atlantean period—so that it gradually took shape in order to develop Manas step by step to the extent that can be observed in human beings today.

[ 8 ] The beginnings of Manas are present in every human being today. Some have more of it, others less. Some must still go through many incarnations before their Manas is developed to the point where they become aware of what they are working on within their human being. But when the Earth has reached its goal—that is, when the seventh trumpet begins to sound—the following will occur: What remains of the physical body will be dissolved like salt in warm water. The human Manas, the spiritual self, will be highly developed, so that human beings will repeatedly say to themselves the words of Paul: “It is not I, but Christ in me who does everything.” — This is how human beings will live. Through this, they will dissolve the physical aspect of their being and transform the ethereally refined part into a being capable of living within the astralized Earth. Thus, human beings will live on as new beings in this Earth that has become spiritual.

[ 9 ] We may say that this great moment of passing over into the Earth that has become spiritual is expressed to us in the Bible in a wonderful way, in that we are told that everything a person now works out for himself in his physical body during his time on Earth is like a seed that will sprout as fruit when the Earth has become spiritual. 1 Corinthians 15:37: “And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a mere grain—wheat or some other kind. But God gives it a body as He wills, and to each kind of seed its own body,” that is, the body that is the expression of the soul, of individuality. “Now there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies. But the heavenly bodies have one kind of glory, and the earthly bodies another.” The earthly bodies will be dissolved; the heavenly bodies will appear as the luminous expression of what the soul is. “It is sown perishable and will be raised imperishable.” The imperishable body—that is what will then be raised. “It is sown a natural body and will be raised a spiritual body.” Paul calls the “spiritual body” the etheric or life body, after the physical body has dissolved and the etheric body has moved into the astral realm. There Paul foresees the imperishable, spiritual body, as he calls it.

[ 10 ] And now let us consider what a person brings to it as an expression of his own Christ-capacity. It is the same thing that Paul has in mind in the Spirit and which he calls the “last Adam,” while he calls the first human being who came into existence in a physically visible body the “first Adam.” In the Lemurian period, at the threshold of the Lemurian age, we already find various animals below, but the human being is not yet visible to the outer eye; he is still etheric. He condenses, absorbs mineral constituents, and appears in his first form. Just as water condenses into ice, so the physical human being emerges. Then physical development progresses to the point where what is earthly can dissolve, and thus the earthly vanishes. Therefore, the human being who possesses the etheric body appears as the “last Adam.” The “first Adam” has the ability to perceive the earth through the physical senses in the physical body; the last Adam, who takes on a spiritual body, is a manifestation of the inner Christ-capacity. Christ is therefore also called the “last Adam” by Paul. Thus, the entirety of what the Incarnation encompasses comes together. We see, in the spirit, what the human being will one day become, whereas previously we saw how the human being descended to our Earth.

[ 11 ] In order to understand what follows, we must delve a little deeper into the mysteries of the Incarnation. If you could trace the human being back to before his physical incarnation—that is, to the time when he was not yet visible to physical eyes, when he, so to speak, first descended from the etheric realm, first becoming an airy-watery form, then a cartilaginous one—if you could trace him that far, you would see how our Earth, too, was quite different. In that time, before the human being descended, there was actually no mineral kingdom yet. The Earth had only just inherited the Moon’s legacy. The lowest kingdom was, so to speak, the plant kingdom. The Earth was much softer. The distribution of liquid and gaseous substances was entirely different. So if you had looked at the Earth in that time, before humankind had descended from its atmospheric sphere to solid ground, it would not have appeared to you as what is abstractly described in modern geology and the like; rather, our Earth as a whole was much closer then—one might say—to an organism.

[ 12 ] The Earth was permeated by all manner of regular currents. The Earth resembled a living being more than it does today. And human beings—who existed in those ancient times as beings that were more spiritual-etheric—were not born then as they are today, but were, so to speak, born forth from Mother Earth herself. It was Mother Earth herself who brought these human beings—these still spiritual-etheric human beings—into being, and before they separated from the entire Earth, human beings were beings who were truly connected to the whole Earth. Just imagine how hardened areas can form within any soft body; that would give you a picture of how human beings were once born from Mother Earth herself. Yes, human beings were connected to the Earth through all manner of currents and remained connected to it. Human life was therefore quite different back then. What you today, for example, recognize as the human blood circulation—enclosed within the skin—had its continuation—it existed in the form of natural forces—extending out everywhere into the surrounding Earth. If we were to form a picture of what it was like back then, we would have to say: Not visible to the physical eye, but perceptible to the clairvoyant gaze, a place arose within the Earth that stood out and could be distinguished from the rest of its surroundings; but the forces that reigned there were connected by numerous threads to the rest of the Earth. — That was the beginning of a physical human being.

[ 13 ] There was a time when human beings were connected to the rest of the Earth by threads. As I said, we are touching upon a significant and profound mystery—the mystery that has left its final traces in the fact that when a human being enters the world today, the connection to the mother’s organism is severed via the umbilical cord. This connection to the mother’s organism is the last remnant of the connection that the human being once had with Mother Earth. And just as human beings today are sons of man, born of human beings, so were human beings once sons of the Earth, born of the Earth, when the Earth was still a living being. And thus human beings became independent when the umbilical cord connecting them to the entire Earth was, so to speak, cut off for them. Through this, they became beings born of their own kind.

[ 14 ] We must be clear that the blood vessels in human beings today are nothing other than the continuations of currents that permeated the entire Earth in the ancient Earth state. The same applies to the nerve pathways: everything you have as nerves found its continuation out into Mother Earth. This has, as it were, now been cut off from what once flowed through the entire Earth as nerves. And the same is true of the other parts of the human being. Humanity was born from Mother Earth. What is now enclosed within the human being by his skin has been drawn into him from the entire Earth. The human being’s essence was taken from the Earth and drawn into him. Before becoming the Son of Man, the human being was a Son of the Earth. And “Son of the Earth” actually means “Adam.” All these ancient names point to significant mysteries. But if we are aware of this, we will understand that the Earth, before the visible human being arose upon it, already contained within itself all the forces of this visible human being. Before the human being became a human being, the Earth was the bearer of all human forces. The Earth is thus the mother of the human race. Just as you cannot imagine that human beings could ever spring from today’s stony Earth, so too could human beings have sprung from the Earth when it was still a living being. What we have briefly alluded to took place during the Lemurian era.

[ 15 ] If you are now asking yourself: “Didn’t this Earth have tremendous importance for humankind?” — then we must say: Yes, because in its primordial structure it contained everything that humankind later absorbed into itself. Somewhere the heart was preformed, somewhere the brain; every nerve tract was prepared within our Earth. But just as our inner being was prepared within the Earth, so too will we carry within what we have developed as our new physical form—when the Earth has reached its goal—the form that the future planet, the future embodiment of our Earth, must assume. Today, human beings are working on their souls; through this, they are making their bodies more and more like their souls. When the Earth has reached the end of its course, of its mission, they will have shaped their bodies so that they are an outward reflection of the soul that has taken Christ within itself. These human beings will live on and will implant the powers they have thus formed into the next incarnation of our Earth. Jupiter will look the way human beings can make it look by composing it from their own bodies. This Jupiter will initially derive its form from what human beings have fashioned out of themselves. Imagine that all the bodies that have been formed in this way come together to form a single world sphere: that will be Jupiter. You have within your soul the seed of what will become the form of Jupiter—the forces it will contain. And from Jupiter, the Jupiter beings will be born. This is how humanity today is preparing for the birth of the Jupiter bodies.

[ 16 ] What, then, must a person do to give a worthy form to the future embodiment of our Earth? They must ensure that the work they are now able to perform consciously is carried out in a Christ-like manner, so that the etheric body—which will be a reflection of this work—may integrate itself in a worthy manner into the spiritualized Earth. All parts of this body will be as human beings have made them. Whatever humanity has made of its physical body, it will bring into this spiritual Earth, and whatever takes shape from this will be the foundation for its further development. Just as your present soul develops within your present body—which you have inherited from the Moon—so will the future soul develop within whatever you yourselves make of your body. That is why the body—that which clothes and envelops the soul, the “I,” and which is inhabited by this “I”—is called the temple of the inner “I,” the temple of the divinity living within the human being, the temple of God. Thus, as you shape this body, you are building a future temple—that is, the new embodiment of the Earth. You build Jupiter in the correct proportions by shaping the human body in the right way. What, then, must come to light when the Earth has reached its destination? A temple of the soul that is harmonious in every respect. Therefore, the initiate is given the task of examining this temple, which humanity will then have built. The fact that the soul has done what is right will become evident when this temple of God is measured. “And a reed was given to me, like a measuring rod, and he said: ‘Arise and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there. But cast out the outer court outside the temple!’” (Chapter 11, 1.) This means: Everything that was there for preparation must be cast out of the temple. Human beings first had to possess a physical body and an etheric body before they could work within it. This physical body and the etheric body—these are the outer court: they must fall away; cast them out. —That which human beings have created on their own, they retain. This is the temple in which new beings are to dwell during the age of Jupiter.

[ 17 ] So we are living on a Earth that has become spiritual. We see how this Jupiter era is already being prepared in an exemplary way. We see, as a foreshadowing, how human beings bring with them the fruits of their earthly existence. And now we must be clear that, within this spiritual state of the Earth at a higher stage of development, everything that was there before reappears. Above all, the bearers of the spiritual currents upon which the Earth rests—and from which it emerged—reappear. The bearers of these currents reappear as living beings. In Elijah and Moses—if we follow the Christian tradition—we see the personal representatives of what appeared to us yesterday in the two pillars. Those who impart the teachings of the two pillars are regarded in Christian esotericism as Elijah and Moses. Elijah was the one who brought humanity the message from the one pillar, the pillar of strength; Moses was the one who brought it from the pillar of wisdom. “Moses” means wisdom or truth, and “Elijah” means—well, it is difficult to express the word in German—the guiding force, that which provides direction and impulse. Thus we see these two appearing in the world that has become spiritual, specifically at the stage of development they will have reached by then. For just as Christ appeared between Moses and Elijah during the “Transfiguration” according to Christian tradition, so the entire process at the end of Earth’s evolution appears in such a way that the Sun—the spiritual Sun of Love, the revelation of love’s mission on Earth—appears, supported by the Sun-Mars and Moon-Mercury, by Elijah and Moses. Just as we saw yesterday the two pillars that first appear before the initiate as symbols of strength and wisdom, with the Sun of Love above them, so can we now imagine the Earth’s evolution a step further; and in its liveliness, in its personal character, what constitutes one pillar will appear to us as Elijah, the other as Moses, and what lies above them as the actual Christ principle.

[ 18 ] If we now turn our gaze away from the Earth itself—from what is on it—and consider it in the context of the entire celestial sphere, we arrive at a very important point precisely at the moment we are now discussing. The Earth and the Sun were a single body. The Earth developed out of the Sun, and the Moon broke away. We have said that this had to happen in order to ensure the proper pace of development. But now that human beings have passed through these stages of development—having become spiritualized—they are ready to reunite with the forces present on the Sun. They can keep pace with the Sun. An important cosmic process is now taking place: the Earth is reuniting with the Sun. While what we have discussed is unfolding, the Earth is uniting with the Sun. We have said that the solar spirits descended to Earth at the event of Golgotha. We have said that this Christ principle will bring things as far as we have been able to describe. Now the Earth is ripening to unite with the Sun. And what was necessary to ensure that evolution does not proceed too rapidly—the Moon—will be overcome; humanity no longer needs it. The Moon’s powers will be overcome. In this age, humanity can unite with the Sun. Humanity will live within the spiritualized Earth and at the same time be connected to the power of the Sun, and humanity will be the conqueror of the Moon. This is depicted, as it is perceived, by the symbolic figure of the fifth seal: the woman who bears the Sun within her and has the Moon at her feet. We have arrived at the point where humanity is spiritualized, where humanity once again unites with the forces of the Sun, where the Earth and the Sun are one body, and where the forces of the Moon will be overcome. (See the image of the fifth seal.)

[ 19 ] And now we must remember that only the more advanced portion of the beings—the portion imbued with the Christ principle—has undergone this development. They have come this far; but those who have become hardened in matter have fallen away, forming, so to speak, a kind of satellite planet of hardened, materialized matter. Now let us recall how, from an astral perspective, the human being appeared to the clairvoyant before descending to Earth as a physical being. Let us recall that we have specifically pointed out that the human being appeared in the four types of his group soul: in the form of the lion, the eagle, the ox, and the human. These four types of the group soul, so to speak, appear before us before the human being descends into the physical realm, before he becomes individualized. These four typical forms that the human being possessed before entering the physical body are not visible in today’s physical human being; they are under the control of the soul. Like rubber, they have been pressed into the human form. In fact, it is true that when a human being is not in control of themselves—when their soul is silent, either because they are asleep or otherwise in a more or less unconscious state—one can still see today how the corresponding animal type emerges. But fundamentally, by descending onto the physical plane, the human being has overcome this animal type. When was human beings given the ability to overcome the animal type in the astral realm?

[ 20 ] Let us recall that we spoke of the seven periods of Atlantean development. These seven periods consist of the first four and the last three. During the first four, human beings were still entirely group souls. Then, in the fifth period, the first impulse toward the I-soul arose. We thus have four stages of development in Atlantis in which human beings first evolve as group souls, and each of the first four Atlantean races corresponds to one of the typical animal forms—the lion, the eagle, the calf or bull, and the human. This transitions into the human form during the fifth epoch, when these typical forms fade away. Now imagine that human beings in the present age are permeated by the Christ principle and thereby increasingly overcome the animal nature. But if they are not permeated by the Christ principle, then they do not overcome the animal nature. The four typical heads—lion, eagle, bull, and human—remain, so to speak, as something that his form takes on again when it can emerge once more; and to these are added three others, originating from the last three races of Atlantean development, when humanity had already begun to be human. These three also remain if the human being does not work through his soul to ensure that this animal nature disappears. How, then, will the human being who has not embraced the Christ principle during our time appear on the spiritualized Earth? He will appear in material form; he will reappear in the forms from which he came. He has had these animal forms and has passed through three more besides. What could have overcome the animal nature has now been left unused by him. The animal nature will emerge once more, in seven forms. Just as the four heads—the animal-man—once appeared in Atlantis, so too will seven such typical heads emerge from the transformed earth, from the astralized earth, and the spectacle that took place back then will repeat itself. The spiritual human was present in potential, but could not yet develop an individual form; instead, it formed the four animal heads. The spiritual human in its potential is also represented for that time by the woman who gives birth to the human. The human of the future is likewise represented by the woman who gives birth to the spiritual human. But that which has remained in the flesh is represented on the “other earth” by the beast with the seven heads. Just as there were four heads back then, before humanity had the ability to overcome its animal nature, so those who have remained in their animal nature appear as a collective whole—as the beast with the seven heads.

[ 21 ] Thus, in the future, after the Earth has united with the Sun, while the spiritualized Earth is above, everything below that has not absorbed the spiritual principle will emerge, and the animal heads that once existed will appear again—only now they are out of place. Now they are the adversaries; before, during the time of preparation, they were in their proper time. Thus we see that, just as the monster with the seven heads—the seven-headed beast—once rose from the physical sea, so now it rises from the astral sea—for the Sun, too, has become astralized. Everything that is imprinted in the human being through the etheric body—please bear this in mind—is called a “head” in the language of the mysteries, which the apocalyptic writers also use, because it evokes a typical head-like form, such as a lion’s head, when viewed clairvoyantly. The etheric forces must be at work here. If we trace Atlantean development, we see that the etheric body was still outside the head at that time. That which is imprinted in the human being from the etheric is called a “head” in the language of the apocalyptic mysteries. This refers, then, to that which appears to the clairvoyant gaze primarily as a head. But that which is physically brought about in the human being through any limb of the etheric body is called a “horn.” A “horn,” then, is a very mysterious thing in the language of the mysteries. That which, for example, has been physically brought about in a human being by the fact that he once passed through that race of the Atlantean epoch in which the lion was the typical group soul—that is called a horn. Thus, the physical aspect that originates from some part of the etheric body is called a “horn.” A horn is, for example, the organ that serves as the outward physical expression of something etheric.

[ 22 ] Now I would like to speak to you in concrete terms. All of the human physical organs are actually condensed etheric organs; they have emerged from the condensed etheric body. Let us consider the human heart. Today it is a physical organ, but it has been condensed from an etheric organ. This present-day human heart received its blueprint back when humanity passed through the stage of group-soul affinity, which is symbolized by the lion. Thus, the heart is the “horn” of the lion’s head, for when the etheric body had developed to the point where the human being emerged with the group soul—symbolized by the lion’s head—the rudiment formed that later became the physical heart. From this rudiment of the lion-man arose the rudiment of the modern human physical heart. So while we trace the origin of the etheric body back to the transformation of one “head” into another—to the addition of one head to another—we understand the human physical body as the addition of one “horn” to another. In fact, the human etheric body consists of “heads,” and the human physical body of “horns.” This is the language of the mysteries. All of the human organs are formed from the etheric body and are therefore nothing but “horns.”

[ 23 ] And now we must reflect on everything we have heard, for this is something about which even the apocalyptic writer says: “Here is wisdom.” — We will only understand this wisdom, which the author of the Book of Revelation has embedded in the vision of the seven-headed beast that has ten horns, when we carefully consider what “horn” actually is in relation to “head” in the language of the Mysteries. We will see that those beings who have retained these seven heads—because they have stagnated in their development—have in fact taken on a physical body in the Abyss consisting of ten hardened physical limbs.