The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] A seer such as the author of the Book of Revelation is already able to glimpse the future of human evolution in the astral world. What will come to pass after the war of all against all is already taking shape. Those who are called upon to carry humanity’s future development beyond the war of all against all are already being prepared through the theosophical teachings of wisdom. The spiritual current of wisdom will increasingly assert itself in a comprehensive manner.

[ 2 ] When a clairvoyant gaze observes people today, it sees the etheric body extending slightly beyond the upper part of the physical body. Indeed, a man’s etheric body is feminine, and a woman’s etheric body is masculine. The astral body, on the other hand, is a fluid entity, highly variable in color and form, changing according to the person’s inner life. When we raise a hand, the impulse for this must come from the astral body; when we walk, when we cry or laugh, these are the impulses of the astral body that influence the physical body in this way. However, what has the most significant influence on a person is their ego. The ego works entirely indirectly through the astral body.

[ 3 ] In the ancient Atlantean era and the Lemurian era, human beings were not only able to extend their limbs, but they could also stretch and swell them. At that time, the physical body was only a very small container; the etheric body and the astral body, on the other hand, were enormous. The astral body sometimes took the form of one animal, sometimes another. Human beings constantly changed their physical form, depending on the desires and impulses they harbored within themselves. The air at that time was filled with dense mists, much denser and more watery than the mountain mists we experience today. The human physical body took on the most varied colors and forms, and one could already discern in its gelatinous substance the outlines of its physical organization, such as the circulatory and skeletal systems. Toward the end of the Atlantean era, the air cleared of these dense, watery masses. Only then could human beings become the creatures of air and earth that they are today. In the time of Atlantis, people did not yet see the sun as we do today, but rather as a mighty ring of light. Since the air was never free of water back then, there were no rainbows either. Only when water and air became separated did the rainbow become possible. The entire process of the Atlantean flood is depicted for us in the story of Noah and the rainbow. (Genesis 9:12–17)

[ 4 ] It was also necessary for the beings on Earth to develop in such a way that they passed through their respective stages of development at very different times. Had a portion of humanity not waited during the first Atlantean period to descend into the condensed physical body, the human form would have remained as it was then, with everything that was still expressed in the physical form as the drives, desires, and passions of its astral body. There were beings at that time who had solidified and hardened. The animal groups are, after all, nothing other than beings that entered a state of hardening too early. What human beings today carry in their astral bodies as desires and passions has found expression in the physical bodies of various animals. Each of these animal groups has developed a particular instinct and has become fixed in it. During the Lemurian period, it was the mammals; they are human passions that have become rigid. What we carry within us is symbolically represented in the various animals. In us humans, the instincts are gradually refined, and we can conceal them within our hearts. Thus, in the earliest times, during the wild outbursts of Lemurian natural forces, the lowest instincts of the human being were the first to burst forth into the physical realm. Monkeys are, so to speak, the representatives of the last lower instincts that shot into physical matter before human beings themselves solidified their soul life within matter. In some animals, such as the horse, we still find today, as a peculiarity, the etheric body of the head protruding beyond the physical head. This was also the case with Atlantean human beings. It was not until the last third of the Atlantean era that a specific point in the human etheric body moved into the corresponding location in the physical head. Only then did human beings become capable of developing a form in keeping with their spirit.

[ 5 ] There are sixteen groups of human instincts and passions, and there are likewise sixteen groups of animals. Zoology, too, will one day come to understand how all of this gradually came about. We can easily explain how the various branches of mammalian nature must have diverged. The formation of hooves, for example, occurred because the nature of the animal isolated itself from the outside world in a very particular way. The claws or paws developed as a result of aggression. The nature of the claw expresses an entirely different stage of development than that of the hoofed animal. We also see such a contrast expressed in the figures of the centaur and the sphinx.

[ 6 ] In the second part of Faust, a book of great occult significance, the sphinxes encounter Mephistopheles and mock him for his horse’s hoof—a symbol of a nature hardened within the hoof, a nature that has selfishly shut itself off from the world.

[ 7 ] When we cut our finger, we feel it through the pain; this is conveyed to us by the bearer of sensations, the astral body. Hair growth used to be permeated by astral forces as well, back when the entire human nature was still soft. We are told of Esau that he had thick hair; he was simply still lagging behind in his development and in his power of judgment. Jacob was able to outwit him because he had already progressed further in the development of his power of judgment, of his “I.” Even today, forces are at work within human beings that are once again acting more outwardly. The more the “I” gains mastery over the astral body, the more the physical body will also be able to be reshaped. Today, human beings carry their karma within themselves as a “life account”—the balance sheet of everything they have prepared in their various incarnations. But because the human physique expresses the “I” only to a very limited extent, people experience their karma inwardly and directly; later, however, it will be expressed on their faces. In the future, humanity will develop to the point where it will bear its karma on its face. It will no longer be the fact of being born into a particular race or in a particular climate that will be the determining factor for one’s outward appearance; rather, there will be a class of good people and a class of evil people. Do we understand Paul correctly when he says: “I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me”? (See Gal. 2:20) What is called the assimilation of the Yahweh-Christ nature will later manifest itself externally in human beings. Today it is still possible for a person to be a scoundrel and hide it, but in the future, people will bear the mark of their inner being on their foreheads.

[ 8 ] Let us consider the human being after the war of all against all. We can imagine him as a person with radiant, noble features and a noble, benevolent expression. This will be the lot of those who have absorbed the spiritual impulses at the right time. All moral, intellectual, and spiritual powers will in the future be visibly manifested in the human form. What is absorbed today is sealed within the souls; but it will be unsealed in the seventh epoch, after the war of all against all.

[ 9 ] This is what the apocalyptic writer sees in the seven seals, which are gradually broken. The “Book with the Seven Seals” is not meant in the same sense as our books or ancient scrolls. It refers to a sequence of events. The sequence of epochs is the concept behind the apocalyptic “book,” just as, for example, the evangelist Matthew speaks of the sequence of generations and the genealogy of Jesus of Nazareth. This is how sequences take shape. This is depicted in the book that can be unsealed by the power of the Lamb.

[ 10 ] This gives us an idea of what the seven seals mean.