The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] In these lectures, we have thus far sought to form a picture of the Earth’s evolution in connection with that of humankind, because we needed to examine how the Earth’s past and the facts of its evolution are reflected in our understanding of the individual cultural periods of the post-Atlantean era. We were able to characterize precisely the deepest experiences of the disciple of the Rishis and show how these inner experiences of such a candidate for initiation presented themselves as inner, clairvoyantly perceived images of the conditions and processes that took place in our primordial Earth when it still contained the Sun and the Moon within itself. We have also seen what a high level of initiation such a student of Indian culture had to attain in order to be able to form such a worldview—an image that stands as a repetition of what took place in the distant past. We have also seen what the Greeks thought when, during Alexander’s campaigns, they became acquainted with what an Indian initiate experienced—in whose soul arose the image of the divine-spiritual, creative force that began to express itself in the primordial mist, when the sun and moon were still united with the Earth. This image—the Brahman of the Indians, which appeared to the Greeks as Heracles—we have sought to bring before our souls as an inner reenactment of the events that actually took place in the past. It has also already been emphasized that the successive periods of the Earth’s development were reflected in the Persian and Egyptian cultural epochs. So what happened in the second epoch, when the Sun withdrew from the Earth, was manifested in the imagery of the Persian initiates. And what took place as the Moon gradually withdrew became the worldview and principle of initiation among the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Babylonians, and Assyrians. Now, in order to be able to look very precisely into the soul of the ancient Egyptian—for that is, after all, the most important thing for us, and we will regard the Persian initiation merely as a preparation—we must once again examine more closely what actually happened to our Earth during the times when the Sun and Moon separated from the Earth.

[ 2 ] Let us now sketch a picture of the Earth itself, which gradually took shape as the Sun receded and, later, as the Moon also receded. We will set aside the great cosmic events and focus on what happens on Earth itself. If we look back once more at the Earth in its primordial state, when it was united with the Sun and the Moon, we would not find our animals, our plants, and certainly not our minerals there. That from which the Earth was originally formed consisted at first only of human beings—only human seeds. It is true that the seeds of animals and plants were already laid down on the ancient Sun and the ancient Moon, and that these were also contained within the Earth’s primordial state; but they were, so to speak, still dormant seeds—not seeds from which one could have discerned that they were truly capable of producing anything. Only when the Sun began to move away—only then did the seeds that would later become animals become active. And only when the Sun had completely separated from the Earth, leaving the Earth and the Moon alone, did those seeds that would later become plants become active. And only when the Moon began to move away did the mineral seeds gradually form. Let us therefore take note of this.

[ 3 ] But now let us take a look at the Earth itself. When the Earth still contained the Sun and the Moon within itself, it was merely a kind of vast, ethereal mist of enormous extent, and within it the human seeds were active, while the seeds of the other beings—animals, plants, and minerals—lay dormant. Therefore, because only human seeds were present but no eyes yet existed, no eye could have observed these processes from the outside; thus, the description given here can only become visible in retrospect to the clairvoyant. This description is made under the hypothetical assumption that someone would have seen it if they had been situated at a point in outer space at that time and had been able to observe it. Even on ancient Saturn, a physical eye would not have noticed anything at all. Back then, in its primordial state, the Earth was merely a misty nebula that would have been perceived only as heat. From this mass, from this primordial etheric nebula, a luminous ball of mist gradually took shape, which could already have been seen if an eye had existed at that time. And if one could have penetrated it, so to speak, with a sensory perception, it would have appeared like a heated space; it would have looked much like the inside of an oven. Very soon, however, this nebular mass began to glow. And this ball of mist that had formed there contained within itself all the seeds just mentioned. We must realize that this misty nebula was not like today’s fog or today’s cloud formations, but rather all substances—both solid and liquid as we know them today—were dissolved within it. All metals, all minerals—everything, everything—was present there in a misty and nebulous form, in a very transparent form, in a luminous mist. A luminous mist was there, permeated by heat and light. Try to imagine it. What had become of the ethereal mist was a luminous gas. And this grew brighter and brighter, and precisely through the condensation of the gases, the light grew ever stronger, so that indeed, at one point, this misty nebula appeared like a great sun shining out into outer space.

[ 4 ] There was indeed a time when the Earth still contained the Sun within itself, when it was still radiant and luminous, and when it radiated its light out into outer space. But this light made it possible not only for human beings to live on Earth in that original state, but also for all other higher beings—who did not assume a physical body but are connected to human evolution—to live in the fullness of light: angels, archangels, and primordial forces. But they were not the only ones there; even higher beings lived in that fullness of light: the Powers or Exusiai or Spirits of Form, the Forces or Dynamis or Spirits of Movement, the Dominions or Kyriotetes or Spirits of Wisdom, and those spirits called the Thrones or Spirits of Will; and finally, in a looser connection with the fullness of light, gradually detaching themselves from it, the Cherubim and the Seraphim. The Earth was a celestial body populated by an entire hierarchy of beings, ranging from the lowest to the highest and most exalted. And what radiated out into space as light—the light that permeated the Earth’s body—was not merely light, but also what later became the Earth mission: it was the power of love. This was the most essential component within the light. We must therefore imagine that it is not merely light that is radiated—not merely physical light—but that this light is imbued with, and spiritualized by, the power of love.

[ 5 ] This is hard to imagine for the modern mind. After all, there are people today who describe the sun as if it were some kind of gaseous ball that simply radiates light. Such a materialistic, purely material conception of the sun is the only one that prevails today. The only exceptions to this are the occultists. Anyone who reads a description of the sun today, as it is presented in popular books—books that serve as spiritual nourishment for countless people—has not come to know the true nature of the sun. What is written in these books is, with regard to the sun, just as meaningful as if someone were to describe a corpse as the essence of a human being. Just as a corpse is a human being, so too is what astrophysics describes about the sun the sun itself.

[ 6 ] Just as the person who describes a corpse omits what is most important about a human being, so too does the physicist who describes the Sun today fail to describe its essence when he believes he has identified the Sun’s internal components through spectral analysis; what is described is merely the Sun’s outer body. In every ray of sunlight, the power of higher beings who inhabit the sun streams down upon all earthly beings, and along with the light of the sunbeam, the power of love itself floats down—the very same power that flows here on Earth from person to person, from heart to heart. The Sun can never send merely physical light to Earth; the very essence of the hottest and most fervent feeling of love is invisibly present in the sunlight. With it, the forces of the Thrones, the Seraphim, the Cherubim, and the entire hierarchy of higher beings who dwell in the sun—and who have no need for any body other than light—flow toward the Earth. But because everything that exists in the sun today was still connected to the Earth back then, all these higher beings were also connected to the Earth itself. Even today, they remain connected to the Earth’s evolution.

[ 7 ] Then we must bear in mind that human beings—who were the lowest of the higher beings—already existed in embryonic form at that time as the new child of the Earth, carried and nurtured by these higher beings, living in the bosom of these divine beings. Humanity, living in that era—the point in Earth’s evolution where our reflections now stand—must have possessed a much more subtle body at that time as well, precisely because it was still in the bosom of these beings. And it becomes clear to the clairvoyant consciousness that the body of the human being of that time consisted solely of a fine mist-like and vaporous form—an air or gas body, a gas body completely permeated and suffused by light. Let us imagine a regularly shaped cloud, like a cup-shaped formation widening toward the top, and let us imagine this cup glowing and illuminated from within by an inner light—and we have the humans of that time, who were just beginning to develop a dim consciousness in this Earth evolution, a consciousness such as the plant world possesses today. People were not like plants in the modern sense; they were luminous and warm, cloud-like masses in the shape of a chalice and without fixed boundaries, not separated from the total mass of the Earth by fixed boundaries.

[ 8 ] That was once the form of the human being—a form that was a physical body of light, still imbued with the powers of light. Therefore, because of the subtlety of this body, not only could a distinct etheric and astral body sink into it—and not only the “I” in its very earliest stages—but also the higher spiritual beings connected to the Earth. At that time, humanity was still, so to speak, rooted upward in the divine-spiritual beings, and these permeated it. It is truly not easy to describe the splendor of the Earth from that time and to convey a sense of that era. We must imagine the Earth as a sphere radiant with light, surrounded by light-bearing clouds, producing wondrous light phenomena with a marvelous play of colors. If one could have reached a sentient hand into this Earth, one would have perceived sensations of warmth, the incandescent, luminous masses undulating up and down—within them all the human beings of today, enveloped and surrounded by all the spiritual beings, radiating light outward in magnificent diversity! Outside, the earthly cosmos in its great diversity; within, the human being bathed in light, connected to the divine-spiritual beings, emanating from them and radiating streams of light into the outer sphere of light. Humanity hung, as if by an umbilical cord springing from the Divine, upon this whole—upon the womb of light, the cosmic womb of our Earth. It was a shared womb of the worlds in which the human being—a being of light—lived at that time, feeling at one with the Earth’s mantle of light. Thus, in this delicate, ethereal form, the human being hung as if by the umbilical cord of Mother Earth, and was cherished and nurtured by the whole of Mother Earth. Just as, in a more literal sense, a child is nurtured and cared for today in the mother’s womb as a fetal seed, so too was the human seed nurtured and cared for back then. Thus did humanity live in those ancient, primeval times of the Earth.

[ 9 ] Then the Sun began to separate, taking the finest substances with it. There was a time when the high solar beings left humanity, for everything that now belongs to the sun left our Earth, leaving behind the coarser substances. And this departure of the sun was accompanied by the mist cooling into water; and whereas we once had the misty Earth, we now have the water-Earth. At the center were the primordial waters, though not surrounded by air; slowly the waters transformed into dense, thick mists that gradually became more refined. Thus, the Earth of that time was a water-Earth—containing substances in a soft state, enveloped by mists that grew ever finer, all the way up to the highest spheres, where the mists became very fine. This is how we once envisioned our Earth. It had undergone this transformation, and human beings now had to, so to speak, sink their formerly light-infused gaseous forms into the murky waters and incarnate there as shaped masses of water within the water, just as they had previously existed as air forms in the air. Human beings became watery beings, though by no means entirely so. Human beings were never completely submerged in the water. This is an important point. It has been described how the Earth was, at its center, a water-Earth; human beings were only partially watery beings; they extended into the misty envelope, so that they were half water, half vapor. Down in the water, the human being could not possibly be reached by the sun; the mass of water was so thick that sunlight could not penetrate it. The sun’s light could penetrate the mist to some extent, so that the human being lived partly in the dark, light-deprived water and partly in the light-filled mist. However, there was one thing the water was not deprived of—something we must now describe in more detail.

[ 10 ] From the very beginning, the Earth was not only glowing and luminous, but also resonant, and the sound had remained within the Earth, so that when the light faded, the water became dark on the inside, yet was also permeated by the sound from within; and it was the sound that gave the water its specific shape and form, as can be demonstrated by the well-known physical experiment. We see that sound is a shaping force, a formative power, because through sound the parts are structured or ordered. Sound possesses a formative power, and it was this power that also shaped the human body out of the water. That was the power of sound that had remained within the Earth. It is the sound that resonates through the earth; it is the sound from which the human form took shape. Light could penetrate only that part of the human being that protruded from the water. Below was a body of water; above was a body of vapor, which the outer light touched—and to which the beings who had emerged with the sun had access. Before, when the sun was still united with the Earth, human beings felt themselves in its bosom; now the suns shone down upon them in the light and radiated their power through them. But we must not forget that what remained after the separation of the sun also included the forces that the Earth had to separate from itself—the forces of the moon.

[ 11 ] We are thus at a time when the Sonze had just departed, when that plant-like human being gradually had to submerge into the physical, watery earth. This is the stage that human beings had reached in their physical bodies at that time, which we see preserved today—in a degenerate form—in fish. When we see fish swimming through the water today, these fish are remnants of those human beings—naturally in a decadent form. We must imagine, for example, a goldfish in fantastical plant-like forms, with great agility, but with a sense of melancholy because the light had been taken from the water. A deep, deep longing arose. The light was no longer there; the longing for light gave rise to this yearning. There was a moment in the Earth’s evolution when the Sun had not yet fully emerged from the Earth; at that time, one could still see that form glowing with light—humans still at the level of the Sun in their upper part, but already in the form that has been preserved in the fish. Because the human being lived with half of his being in darkness, there was a rather low human nature down below; for in the part with which he was submerged, he carried the forces of the Moon within him. Even though these had not solidified into lava, as in today’s Moon, they were black, dark forces. Only the worst elements of the astral realm could be submerged there. But above was a misty form, like a head, into which light from outside shone and gave it its shape, so that the human being consisted of a lower and a higher part. Floating and soaring, he moved through this misty atmosphere. The dense misty atmosphere of the Earth was not yet air; it was mist—and thus not yet air through which the sun could have penetrated. Heat could penetrate, but not light. The sun’s rays could not kiss the entire Earth, but only its surface; the Earth’s ocean remained dark. Yet within this ocean lay the forces that later emerged as the Moon.

[ 12 ] As a result of the light forces penetrating the earth, the gods also entered it. Thus, below we have the godless, god-forsaken mantle of water, penetrated only by the power of sound, and all around it the mist into which the forces of the sun extend. Thus, even within the misty body that rose above the water’s surface, human beings were still fellow inhabitants of that which shone upon them as light and love from the spiritual world. But why did the world of sound penetrate the dark core of water?

[ 13 ] The reason was that one of the high solar spirits had remained behind, binding his existence to the Earth. This is the same spirit we know as Yahweh or Jehovah. Yahweh alone remained with the Earth; he sacrificed himself; it was he whose inner being resonated through the water-earth like shaping clay.

[ 14 ] But because the worst forces had remained as ingredients in the water-earth, and because these forces were terrible elements, the vaporous part of the human being descended further and further, and from the former plant form a being gradually emerged that stood at the level of an amphibian. In legend and myth, this form—which stands far lower than later humanity—is depicted as the dragon, the human newt, or the lindworm. And the other part of the human being—which was a citizen of the light—is depicted as a being that did not descend, that fights against the lower nature, and is portrayed, for example, as Michael, the dragon-slayer, or as Saint George, battling the dragon. Even in the figure of Siegfried and the dragon, we find—albeit in a transformed form—images of what was then the human constitution in that dual division. Warmth entered the upper part of the Earth—and thus also the upper part of the physical human being—and formed something like a fiery dragon. But rising above it was the etheric body, in which the power of the sun was held. Thus we have a figure that the Old Testament depicted quite well in the form of the seductive serpent, which is also an amphibian.

[ 15 ] Now the time was drawing ever closer when the lowest forces would be cast out. Mighty catastrophes shook the Earth, and to the occultist, the basalt formations appear as remnants of those purifying forces that once shook the Earth’s body when the Moon had to separate from the Earth. But that was also the time when the Earth’s watery core became increasingly condensed, and when the solid, mineral core gradually formed. On the one hand, the Earth was compacted by the Moon’s separation; on the other hand, however, the upper regions transferred their heavier, coarser substances to the lower regions, and above, there arose more and more of a substance that, while still permeated by water, gradually became similar to our air. Thus, the Earth gradually acquired a solid core at its center, surrounded by water. At first, the nebula was still impenetrable to the sun’s rays, but as the nebula released substances, it became thinner and thinner. Later—much later—it turned into air, and gradually the sun’s rays, which previously could not reach the Earth itself, were able to penetrate it.

[ 16 ] Now came a stage in the development of our Earth that we should clearly hold before our minds. In the past, human beings were submerged in water, with only their heads protruding from the mist; now, through the densification of the Earth, the water-dwelling human gradually acquires the ability to solidify its form and develop a solid skeletal system. Human beings became more solidified within themselves. As a result, the upper part of the human being transformed in such a way that it became suited to the new development. This new development—which had previously been impossible—was breathing air. Now we find the first rudiments of the lungs. In the upper part there used to be that which received the light, but which could not penetrate further. Now the human being felt the light again in his dull consciousness. He could feel what was shining down upon him as divine forces flowing toward him. During this transition, he felt what was shining upon him split into two parts: the air itself penetrated him; the breath of the air penetrated him; previously, the light had merely touched him, but now air entered him. The human being who felt this must have said to himself something like: Before, I felt the power above me as the power that gave me what I now need to breathe. Light was my breath. — What now flowed into him was like two brothers to him; light and air were two brothers to him. Now it had become a duality for him: light and air.

[ 17 ] The breath of the Earth’s air that flowed into human beings was, at the same time, the announcement that human beings had to learn to feel something entirely new. As long as there was only light, human beings knew neither birth nor death. In the past, the cloud, glowing with light, would transform, and human beings experienced this much like changing a garment; they did not feel that they were being born, nor that they were dying; they felt themselves to be eternal, regarding birth and death merely as events. With the first breath, the awareness of birth and death arose: The air, the breath of air that had separated from its brother, the ray of light—so humanity perceived it at that time—which thereby also separated the beings that had previously flowed in with the light—that is what brought me death.

[ 18 ] Who was it, then, who caused the awareness: “Though I have a dark form, I am connected to the eternal being”—who was it, then, who dispelled and destroyed this awareness? The breath of air that flowed into humanity—Typhon. Typhon is the name of the breath of air. And as the Egyptian soul experienced within itself what had taken place—namely, that the ray that had previously been one split into the ray of light and the breath of air—this cosmic event became for that soul a symbolic image, represented as the murder of Osiris by Typhon or Set, the breath of wind.

[ 19 ] A great cosmic event is hidden in the Egyptian myth in which Osiris is said to have been killed by Typhon. The Egyptians perceived the god who came from the sun—and who was still on good terms with his brother—as Osiris. Typhon was the breath of air that brought mortality to humankind. Here we see, in one of the most striking examples, how the facts of world evolution are reflected in people’s inner awareness.

[ 20 ] This is how the formation of the trinity of Sun, Moon, and Earth came about. All of this was conveyed to the Egyptian student through profound, deeply meaningful, and deliberately crafted images.