The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Seventh Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday it became clear to us how differentiation—the emergence of distinctions—occurs in evolution in general, and in human evolution in particular, because human beings and other entities, so to speak, cannot wait for the right moment in evolution; they remain stuck in a certain state of rigidity, and that other beings, until the right moment—if we are to speak in broad terms—retain their necessary suppleness and malleability and can thereby also begin the corresponding transformation. We have also clearly identified the point in time when the actual human form came into being. That was in the middle of the Atlantean epoch, and we have pointed out how, in earlier times—namely, in much earlier times—the outer human form possessed great mobility. We have pointed out how the human being could not only move his limbs but also enlarge them through inner forces, and so on. Now, as was already mentioned yesterday, it will be something of an abomination to the ordinary modern consciousness when such things are said about the early Earth and humanity. You can see, even here among students of spiritual science, that the lectures are based on the effort to unfold certain truths very gently, little by little, in small doses: they are then easier to digest.

[ 2 ] We will now look back once more at this earlier development. In doing so, we will recall that even the period we call the Atlantean era had a definite beginning. It came to an end through great, violent water catastrophes of a very complex nature; prior to that, the Atlantean development had continued over long periods of time—more specific details regarding these time frames will be provided in the following sessions—; and then we go back to the very beginning of this development, and as we go further back, we come to other catastrophes in Earth’s history that we might call volcanic, in which landmasses that lay south of present-day Asia, east of Africa, and north of Australia were destroyed. These were landmasses on which pre-humanity lived, and which, using a term borrowed from the natural sciences, are called the Lemurian continent. But humanity at that time had a very soft, malleable physical constitution. We are in an era when human beings could take on all manner of transformations. The forms would appear very grotesque to a modern consciousness if we were to describe them. We are right on the threshold of the period before any kind of sense of personality—a sense of “I,” albeit precocious—had even begun to take root in human beings. Because the sense of “I” was not yet present, and because the human form was still so malleable and had not yet reached its final form, something else was also at play. This form, which a person presented outwardly and which was changeable—sometimes one way and sometimes another, depending on their inner state—this outward form thus became a kind of betrayer of their inner self; depending on whether they had good or bad passions or thoughts, their outward form took shape. Back then, it was absolutely impossible to harbor an evil thought in secret, for the outward physical form immediately took on an expression of it, and so human beings appeared in all manner of forms. It was a time when there were still few of the higher animal species on Earth; the Earth was populated by lower animals and human beings.

[ 3 ] Back then, if you were a fellow human being—and, after all, we all were—you could find your fellow human beings by recognizing the way they expressed this or that passion, this or that thought. And all these expressions of this or that passion and thought—what are they, really? What are the physiognomic expressions of these human passions and thoughts? They are animal forms. Anyone who observes our animal forms today sees in the higher animal kingdom nothing other than all manner of qualities and thoughts laid out, as if woven into a great tapestry. Everything that can reign as a passion in the human astral body today and remains hidden was, back then, still such a powerful force that it immediately gave the soft body—which was, in fact, formed only from a mist of fire—the very form that was the expression of that passion. And a large portion of our higher animals today are nothing other than such human beings who have become so entangled in their passions that they have hardened, that they have come to a standstill: the animals arose precisely because human passions hardened, becoming fixed and rigid. A person who views their surroundings with true occult reason lives, in a sense, with such feelings. They say to themselves: In the course of my human evolution, I have passed through what I encounter today in lions and snakes; I have lived in all these forms because my own inner being has undergone the qualities that are developed in these animal forms. Those human beings who have become capable of rising above all this to ever higher levels—those who have preserved their inner center—have found a balance, so that within them lie only the potentials for these passions; these passions exist only as a soul-being and do not take on an outer form. This is what the higher development of the human being means. In animals we see our own past—though not in the same form that the animals took back then, for millions of years have passed since then. Let us suppose that the passions you find in the lion today manifested themselves back then in the outer form of this human being, in the form of a lion; then this form solidified, and the lion species came into being. But these lion lineages have, of course, also undergone evolution since then; that is why today’s lion no longer has the same form as back then—it is the descendant of a lineage that branched off long ago. In a certain sense, we see our degenerated descendants in the various animals. Thus, we look upon the world around us with understanding.

[ 4 ] However, we must not imagine that all these animal forms that surround us and represent certain states of hardening were therefore evil human passions. They were necessary passions; human beings had to pass through them so that they could absorb everything that was useful from them into their present-day being. So that when we look back to those times in the Earth’s development, we would find animal forms undergoing material metamorphosis in our surroundings. They are the expression of passions, and working within them are those divine beings whom we have come to know in the previous lectures. We must therefore imagine that the Earth was still composed of a soft substance, and spiritual beings were shaping this matter, as it were, giving form to the various animal figures. And now let us recall that we have said the Egyptian religion, as a worldview and religious creed, repeated the facts of this third Earth epoch. What had been experienced on Earth at that time was embodied as insight in the Egyptian religious form. And so we should not be surprised that so many animal and animal-headed figures appear in the artistic representations of the Egyptians. This is a spiritual reenactment of what once truly existed on the surface of our Earth. Indeed, this era has repeated exactly what took place out there during a specific Earth epoch, and it is more than a mere comparison; it is, in a certain sense, literally true when we say: In the souls that were incarnated primarily in the Egyptians, the memory of the Lemurian epoch has come to life, and their religion is a memory of that time reborn in the spirit. Thus, from one Earth epoch to the next, it is reborn in the soul through various worldviews.

[ 5 ] Even later on, the environment in which humans lived was quite different from what it is today; naturally, states of consciousness were also significantly different. Above all, we must be clear that during the period just discussed, extending into the middle of the Atlantean epoch, the human form as we know it today only gradually took shape; as we have seen, it was not until the middle of the Atlantean epoch that the human form attained a certain completion through Jehovah and the Spirits of Form. If we grasp this in all seriousness, we will understand that everything we find in human beings today only developed in the course of this epoch, from the Lemurian epoch through the Atlantean epoch. This Lemurian human—if you could perceive him clairvoyantly—would present you with quite different mysteries to solve; for he still possessed functions that are now separate, yet were united in a certain way. For example, at the time when Lemurian development was at its peak, there was not yet the kind of respiration or nutrition that exists today. The substances were, after all, quite different; respiration and nutrition were, in a certain sense, interconnected—a single process that was only later divided. Humans ingested a kind of watery—roughly speaking—milk-like substance, and this provided them simultaneously with what they now have as separate processes in respiration and nutrition. And something else, too, had not yet been separated. As you know, during the very period we are now describing, the senses only began to open outward. Previously, they were not open. The senses we possess today did not yet perceive external objects at that time. Human beings were limited to pictorial consciousness; vivid dream images arose, but there was no consciousness of external objects. In contrast, as the first indication of external life—as it were, the first trace of external sensory perception—human beings acquired the ability to distinguish between warm and cold in their surroundings. This is, in fact, the very beginning of external sensory perception on Earth for human beings, who were still moving within the liquid elements of that time: they sensed whether they were approaching a warm or cold spot. This ability was mediated at that time by an organ that has since atrophied. You have probably heard that the pineal gland is located inside the human brain; today it has atrophied, but in the past it opened outward; it was, so to speak, a force organ that sent out its rays. And human beings moved through the watery element with a kind of lantern that emitted a certain luminosity. This lantern—which would protrude from the head if the pineal gland were to grow again—enabled human beings to perceive differences in temperature; it was, so to speak, the first general sensory organ. In natural science, it is today called a degenerated eye; it was never an eye, but a thermal organ—and not only for the immediate surroundings, but it could even perceive at a distance. But it had another function as well. This organ, which closed as the other sense organs began to open, served in certain ancient times as a reproductive organ, so that sensory perception and reproduction coincided for a certain time. Through this organ, human beings absorbed from their environment those forces that enabled them to produce their own kind. And at a certain time—namely, when the Moon had not yet separated from the Earth—the Earth’s atmosphere became particularly capable, when the Sun was in a specific position, of emitting the substance that caused this organ to glow with a special light. There truly were such times—and certain marine animals that occasionally emit a luminous glow still remind us of this today—when general fertilization occurred; times when, due to a particular position of the sun, human beings—who were then still completely asexual—underwent fertilization, enabling them to bring forth their own kind. Sensory perception and fertilization, nutrition and respiration were intimately connected in the distant past.

[ 6 ] And so the organs gradually became differentiated, and only little by little did human beings take on the form they have today. As a result, however, they became increasingly capable of becoming their own masters and of developing what we have described as “I-consciousness.” During the period just described, when human beings, guided by their sense of warmth, moved within the Earth’s atmosphere, it was indeed higher beings that influenced them. Primarily, it was the forces of the Sun—which had already emerged from the Earth—that acted upon the Earth’s atmosphere in such a way as to stimulate this organ. In contrast, the forces of the Moon—both before and after the Moon’s departure—particularly stimulated another organ; it is located in a different part of the brain and is commonly called the mucous gland. This is an organ that today has no real function. The mucous gland was formerly the regulator of the lower functions—the processes of nutrition and respiration, which at that time were still one and the same. Everything regulated by this organ was connected to it: the inner forces of the human being, through which he could expand himself and take on the most diverse forms—everything in his form that was subject to his will—was connected to this organ, the mucous gland; that which was less subject to his will depended on the other organ, the pineal gland.

[ 7 ] Thus we see how human beings transform themselves, and how, by acquiring a firm, secure form of their own, they increasingly free themselves from those forces that acted upon them from the outside and made them instinctive beings. All of this gives us an even clearer picture of the processes of human evolution that ultimately brought about that state in the middle of the Atlantean epoch in which human beings were mature enough to allow the external world to act upon them through their sense organs, and in which they became capable of forming judgments about the external world. Previously, judgment had, so to speak, flowed into them. Everything that could be described as a kind of thinking had, as it were, flowed into them, much as it does today with animals. And now we must take into account that human beings progressed unevenly—that some entered this or that state of hardening earlier, others later—and we have already seen what kinds of human forms have developed. We have seen how individuals prepared themselves for atrophy by entering a certain state of hardening too early, by assuming a certain form too early, and how this led to the formation of different races. In fact, the only people who were at a stage of maturity where they became receptive to everything the Earth could offer them in its outward appearance were those who, in the manner hinted at yesterday, set out from that location near present-day Ireland and then journeyed from west to east; who then populated the various regions where remnants of peoples remained who had arrived there by other routes, and with whom they intermingled, so that the various cultures arose from these mixtures. And from those who had lagged furthest behind in their migration, the European cultures arose.

[ 8 ] In order to have everything we need as a prerequisite, we must first take another look at the vast cosmos and then at our Earth itself. It has now become clear to you that human beings have evolved in connection with animals, that they have cast them aside, leaving them behind at an earlier stage of development. Of course, there is a major difference between humans and animals: there are higher and lower forms of animal life. We will see that there is a certain developmental boundary between the higher and lower forms of animals that is of great importance. If we hold fast to the idea that human beings have gradually cast off the animal forms in the course of their development, we can say to ourselves: In a very spiritual, finely ethereal form, human beings already existed when the Sun and Earth were still united. When the Sun and Earth separated, human beings shed the animals that had remained at that stage of development corresponding to the period when the Sun was still within the Earth. From these beings—which developed as animal forms at that time, when the solar beings were still connected to the Earth—entirely different forms naturally emerged over the course of time, for there has been a long period of subsequent development. But if we take the characteristic form that we still have today—which we can roughly compare to those that remained behind when the Earth was cast off from the Sun—we must consider the fish form. It is, so to speak, what remained when the Earth was left to fend for itself, still containing the last echo of the Sun’s forces. Let us hold on to this moment for a moment. They were entirely different beings, above all much more plant-like in nature, but that is not the point here. These beings, who existed back then and who represented the first material form of the human figure when the Sun departed, have undergone manifold destinies. We could say: In the fish, we find preserved in the outer world that which reminds us of our origin from the physical Sun, that which reminds us that we once belonged to the Sun. Now the Sun has departed and is outside the Earth. It acted from the outside, even upon the people on Earth, and a state gradually emerged that is a state of transition in consciousness—a state of waking and sleeping. Increasingly, a state is developing in which the human being is more connected to his or her “I,” including in relation to his or her higher members of being—the etheric and astral bodies—and this state alternates with the one in which the astral body withdraws from the physical body. It is the state that is still preserved today in the alternation between waking and sleeping.

[ 9 ] Now let us study this state of transition. We are all familiar with it, for it is one of the most fundamental phenomena. We know that when a person is awake, there is a regular connection between the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the “I”; when the person falls asleep, the astral body and the “I” withdraw from the physical and etheric bodies. Back in ancient times, the “I” did not yet exist; instead, a part of the etheric body went out with them; this state can therefore still be compared to the state of sleep. Now we must be clear about the fact that, by leaving the physical and etheric bodies behind in bed, a person actually bestows upon these bodies the status of a plant. A plant has a sleeping consciousness, as do the human physical and etheric bodies during sleep. But today, even the astral body and the “I” of the normal human being have a kind of plant-like consciousness during sleep, for they, too, have no awareness of their surroundings. This was different in ancient times; back then, when a person’s consciousness withdrew, they had a dim awareness of the spiritual events taking place outside. And now we can form a picture of another fact—an important fact—that arose from the Earth’s separation from the Sun. Before this happened, the whole human being—in terms of their physical, etheric, and astral bodies—was under the influence, under the dominion, of the material and spiritual forces of the Sun. At that time, it depended on the position of the Sun whether the human being, in relation to their physical, etheric, and astral bodies, was under the influence of the Sun, which shone directly upon them. But we now ask ourselves: Is there not another influence of the Sun during this time?—Back then, when no physical eye could yet have seen the Sun, when it had not yet penetrated the dense atmosphere, the etheric body and the astral body, when they were outside the physical body, received important influences from the spiritual forces emanating from the Sun. Human beings could not perceive these influences, for they were not yet ready for them. And then later, this possibility arose because human beings received a power that enabled them to perceive what emanated spiritually from the sun.

[ 10 ] What, then, was the event that enabled human beings to perceive the forces dwelling within the sun—those sublime forces that had to depart from the earth, having united themselves with the sun? When were they granted this perception?

[ 11 ] Gradually, the forces flow into the Earth. And the most important moment—the moment, so to speak, when the matter is decided, when human beings received the full powers, not only the physical but also the spiritual powers of the Sun, to absorb them within themselves in a state of full consciousness—is the appearance of Christ on Earth. So we can say: There is a moment when human beings physically separate themselves from the sun. The fish conveys this thought to us: You remind me of what my condition once was, before I had to detach myself from the sun. At that time, however, the higher forces—led by Christ, the high spirit of the sun—also left the earth immediately. And human beings gradually matured to the point of receiving his forces just as they had received the physical forces of the Sun from without. And on Earth, the inner spiritual force had to appear as a reality, just as the physical forces of the Sun had appeared in the past. What, then, were the initiates permitted to remind people of when Christ appeared? Of the ancient home of the Sun; and the symbol that reminded them of this ancient home was the symbol of the fish. That is why the fish appears in the catacombs as a true symbol connected to the development of humanity. And the disciple of the first centuries, who saw the symbol of the fish everywhere, felt what the initiates whispered into his ear with shivers of emotion, for this led him spiritually into the sanctity of Palestinian history, and at the same time led him cosmically out into the mighty phases of our Earth’s evolution. Such practices were cultivated in the schools of initiation, and in symbols such as the fish symbol that we find on the walls of the catacombs, we have the outward expression of these mysteries, just as a geologist finds a sign of something from the distant past in a plant fossil. But just as this imprint did not exist solely of its own accord, so too is the fish symbol like an imprint of what was practiced in the mysteries. And this symbol did not appear suddenly. Long before the appearance of Christ, the disciples had been pointed toward the coming of Christ by the prophets of the Messiah—all the way back to the Druidic mysteries—and everywhere this symbol was already playing its role. Thus we see how an important moment in the Earth’s evolution is captured in the fish symbol. Let us now move on!

[ 12 ] There was a time when the Moon separated from the Earth. For a certain time, the Earth existed together with the Moon; then the threefold structure emerged: the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth came into being. These were tremendous catastrophes that unfolded; the events of that time were of a stormy nature. Humanity’s physical form had not yet reached a very high level at that time, and it left that behind as an ossified stage of development. To understand this, we must first and foremost consider one thing: When the Sun emerged, the Earth regressed in its development; it deteriorated. Only when the Moon departed, taking with it the very worst elements, did an improvement set in again—an elevation. So for a time we have an upward trend in evolution until the Sun departed; then a downward trend, where everything became worse, more grotesque; and then, when the Moon departed, evolution rose again. A form has also been preserved from this stage of development, one that is degenerate and does not look at all like it did back then. But it is there; it is the form that human beings had before the Moon departed, before human beings even had an “I.” That ethereal entity which, so to speak, reminds human beings of the lowest stage of Earth’s evolution—that point where we had descended deepest into the passions, where the human astral body was most susceptible to the worst external influences— that very entity in which the low point of our shameful development on the Earth is preserved is what we see today, albeit in a degenerate form, in the serpent. And so, on the other hand, we have also drawn this serpent symbol from the course of evolution. This is not something invented, but a symbol rooted in the deepest depths: The fish and serpent symbols have been drawn from the mysteries of our evolution. And just as the natural mind feels at peace when it sees the luminous body of a fish in the pure, chaste element—just as it feels peaceful there—so too will an uncorrupted mind feel horror when it sees the slithering serpent. Such feelings are not unfounded memories of events we once experienced in the course of evolution. As much as a person enjoys seeing the wondrous, sunlit, and vibrant fish forms in the water and recalls his former innocent heights—when he had no “I” yet but was guided by the finest spirits of evolution— it is just as true that, when the slithering serpent approaches, they recall their most dreadful period of Earth’s evolution—the time when they were on the verge of falling behind in their development. What we experience emotionally here is connected to cosmic realities, and we come to understand those unconscious experiences of the human soul that seem so enigmatic to us, yet arise with such vehemence and clarity precisely when human beings have not yet been influenced by culture. This becomes clear to us as a result. Certainly, human beings can completely overcome their fear of the serpent, but that is culture; the naive feeling, after all, lies at the very root of the soul, and it goes back to such ancient times. Yet these are also the times when human beings were physically still at the level of the serpent; when those elements began to intervene which, as we have said, prepared them for their freedom, prepared them to receive the Christ in his full significance and greatness and with true dignity.

[ 13 ] We ask ourselves: What, then, are these elements that helped humankind not to sink into the depths? They are the beings we mentioned yesterday, who acted upon humankind when it had reached its lowest point and are now guiding it back upward: these are the Luciferic beings. The Sun Spirits were not yet acting upon him; but these beings, who had sacrificed themselves, were acting upon him. In a remarkable way, they wandered among the people who populated the Earth. Outwardly, they had a certain human form, for even the highest spirits must incarnate in the forms that exist on Earth. Thus, certain beings also outwardly assumed the form of humans as they were at that time. They walked about on Earth in such a way that they said to themselves: We are similar in form to human beings, but our true home is not on Earth; our home is on the two interplanetary bodies, Venus and Mercury. They walked among human beings, but they looked up and knew themselves to be one with Venus and Mercury. That is where their souls—the best part of them—resided, and their outward form was, in essence, a kind of illusion. Yet it was only through this that they could give humanity what it needed: guidance and teaching, because their home was not on the Earth, which was yet to be formed, but on Venus and Mercury. And it is they whom we must describe as the first teachers and initiates in humanity—outwardly like the people of that time, but inwardly endowed with lofty and significant abilities, so that they could influence all of humanity and, in part, in particularly secluded schools—the first mystery schools—the individual advanced human beings as well. And there have always been such advanced individuals who had their home in the stars and who, despite their connection to the stars, took physical form on Earth and walked among human beings. Humanity itself progressed further and further and drew ever closer to the midpoint of the Atlantean epoch.

[ 14 ] The human form as we know it today did not begin to take shape until the first half of the Atlantean era; it was only then that human beings began to find their way into it. There were, however, certain beings who, even in that ancient Atlantean era, were at a very low level on the scale of humanity—these later became the backward races; furthermore, there were those who had remained malleable, and those who inhabited human bodies only very temporarily. What I am about to describe occurred very frequently during the early Atlantean era. Imagine such an ancient Atlantean at a high level of development by Atlantean standards. Such a being was often prompted by certain circumstances to separate his physical body—which was, after all, highly malleable—and his etheric and astral bodies from the spiritual parts, which then withdrew further into the spiritual world in order to later assume other physical forms. It happened very frequently that the physical, etheric, and astral bodies were arbitrarily abandoned by their soul-spiritual entities long before they were ready to die. And when these bodies belonged to particularly high-level individuals, they were pure, good bodies. High spiritual beings would then take up residence in such bodies, and so it often happened in the ancient Atlantean era that beings who otherwise could not incarnate on Earth used such advanced physical forms to descend among humanity. It was these beings who worked as the great teachers in the Atlantean schools of initiation. They worked powerfully with the means available at that time. When a person, so to speak, stepped out of his physical body at night, he possessed a dim, clairvoyant consciousness. During the day, the outer contours were still blurred. There was not, at that time, such a sharp distinction between the two states as there is today. Thus it came to pass that the ordinary person saw such an individual alternately: human-like by day, but quite different by night in a spiritual-soul-like manner; yet he knew: this is the same being who appears to me by day in physical form. These were the beings who, in a sense, were Venusian and Mercurian beings, who intervened in human existence and were with people both day and night. A memory of these beings remained in the human souls that incarnated again and again, and such a memory was present among the people who had populated Europe when they spoke the names Wotan and Thor. When the ancient inhabitants of Europe spoke of the gods, these were not figments of the imagination, but memories of Atlantean figures. And likewise, when the Greeks spoke of Zeus, Apollo, and Mars, these were figures they themselves had experienced during the Atlantean era. While memories of ancient Lemuria surfaced during the Egyptian era, what emerged in Greece at that time was what had been the earthly experience in ancient Atlantis.

[ 15 ] Now we must be clear about this: if all of this in later religious systems is a memory of earlier events on Earth, then an important event must have occurred precisely at the moment when the last of these memories could have surfaced. And that was roughly the time when the Greek and Roman peoples recalled the Atlantean era. But it was also the time when Christ brought about a significant, new turning point in Earth’s evolution. We have already touched upon what kind of influence this was today when we said that after the long intervening period during which the Luciferic beings prepared humanity—making it capable of receiving the first impulse—the Sun not only shone upon humanity from without but also exerted its inner forces upon it. This period is far from over; it is only just beginning, for it was only with the appearance of Christ that the first impulse was given for that which otherwise shines down physically and bodily from the sun onto the earth to also radiate inwardly and spiritually. And the light will grow ever brighter—the light that, as sunlight, as spiritual light, as the light of Christ, will radiate through the human being from within, just as the outer sunlight shines upon him from without. This will be the future of humankind: that he will not only gaze upon the sun with his outer eyes and perceive its glory, but that he will also awaken the spiritual meaning of the sun within himself. When they are capable of this, only then will they fully understand what actually walked the earth in the form we call Jesus Christ. This will only be understood by human beings slowly and gradually. And just as it is true that in pre-Christian times they had to comprehend the heralding spiritual beings who, so to speak, sent humanity down into the physical world, so too is it true that human beings must now, through a truly spiritual movement, comprehend that spiritual power which at that time emerged from the earth together with the sun. Humanity must be able to receive this power again as an inner spiritual force; it must comprehend this spiritual power—which gives it the great impulses into the future—this Christ-force.

[ 16 ] And to comprehend this Christ-force, all spiritual science is necessary; everything that can be brought to bear in the form of spiritual teachings is part of this as a spiritual seed. One cannot say that anthroposophy is Christianity; rather, one must say: That which has been given to the Earth and to humanity through the Christ principle will gradually be understood through the instrument of anthroposophy. But as it is understood, it will increasingly become the spiritual seed, and that great impulse will be increasingly infused into the Earth’s evolution. For humanity needs this—having descended to the very depths of matter—in order to tear itself away from it once more and return to its spiritual homeland.