The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] Today we will reflect on matters that are familiar to you from a certain perspective. But as is the case with all matters of spiritual science, we can only fully grasp them when they are examined from various angles; and within the anthroposophical movement here in our Central European regions, there are matters to be discussed that are drawn from highly advanced research in the occult—matters that can therefore easily be misunderstood. On the other hand, however, we would not make any progress if we did not dare to speak about such things quite candidly for once.

[ 2 ] Keep in mind that as we trace human evolution back through the various cultural epochs of the post-Atlantean era all the way to Atlantis—and as we ascend into ever more ancient times even within Atlantis itself—we find, when we direct our spiritual gaze toward these events, that human forms are constantly changing. In the last third of the Atlantean epoch, the etheric body is, to a certain extent, still outside the physical body; the head of the etheric body is not yet connected to the forces of the physical body, which are the forces of the “I,” of self-consciousness. If we observe the underlying process, we can say: The further development consists in the etheric head pushing its way into the physical head. If we look at a horse today, the horse’s etheric head protrudes above its physical head. It still extends a considerable distance beyond the physical head. I have also told you what a powerful structure the etheric parts of the elephant form, which extend far, far beyond the physical body. In the same way, during the Atlantean era, the etheric body of the human being was still on the outside and gradually pushed further and further inward. Such a pushing inward from a more subtle member into a denser one simultaneously signifies a densification of what is physical. The human physical head, therefore, looked quite different back then than it did later. If we were to go back even further, to the late Lemurian period, we would see very little of the physical head spiritually; it existed only as very soft, translucent matter. It was only through the gradual pushing inward of the etheric head that parts of the head became condensed, first becoming detached from the surrounding parts. Even in later Atlantis, human beings were still endowed to an immense degree with what has been pathologically preserved in the hydrocephalus—a watery brain. In addition, we must also consider a softening of the bones, a complete softening of the upper limbs of the human being. That sounds terrible to people today. From this watery substance, what today forms and encloses the human head has hardened. It is not even a very inappropriate image that I sometimes use—the hardening, the crystallization out of the masses of water, out of a salt solution in a glass; it reproduces the process quite accurately—this crystallization of the salt out of the watery salt solution. What happened to the head at such a late stage occurred much earlier in the rest of the human being. The other limbs, too, gradually took shape out of a soft mass.

[ 3 ] So we can ask: Where, then, is the human “I”—the “I” of today? Not actually within the human being; it is still in the environment. With the withdrawal of the “I,” we can also say that the upper members of the human being harden. Because the “I” was outside the human being, it was, in another respect, still imbued with a characteristic that later changed. By withdrawing into the physical body, the “I” was prompted to become an individual “I,” whereas before it had been a kind of group soul. I would like to give you an image to illustrate this fact. Imagine a circle of twelve people; these twelve people are seated somewhere in a circle. As a result of development as it stands today, every person has their “I” within them. So there are twelve “I’s” seated around the circle. But if we consider such a circle of people in the Atlantean era, the physical bodies would also be seated around the circle, but the “I” is still in the etheric body, which is still outside. So each person’s “I” is situated in front of them. However, the “I” has a different quality: it is not so centralized; it immediately unfolds its forces and connects with the “I’s” of the other people, so that they form a ring that in turn sends its forces toward its center. So here we have an etheric circular body that forms a unity within itself, and within it the “I”s—that is, a circle of physical bodies and, within that, an etheric circular surface that forms a unity. Through the fact that the “I”s are encompassed, the individual “I” is enclosed, and through this image we arrive at a vivid conception of the group souls.

[ 4 ] If we go further and further back, we can retain this image, but we no longer need to imagine such a regular circle of people; rather, these people can be scattered throughout the world in the most diverse ways. Let us imagine one person in western France, another in the eastern United States, and so on—not sitting together, but when it comes to the laws of the spiritual world, the “I’s” can still be connected, even if the people are scattered across the earth. These people then form this circle. What is formed by the convergence of their “I’s” is not, admittedly, a geometrically beautiful etheric body, but it is nonetheless a unified whole. There was thus a group of people at that time who were connected by the fact that their “I’s” formed a unity; and essentially there were four such group “I’s.” You must imagine these people again in accordance with the laws of the spiritual world. The group souls of the four groups merged into one another; they were not internally connected, but they did merge. These four group souls are named after the four apocalyptic beasts: eagle, lion, bull, and human. The human, however, was at a different stage of development back then than modern humans are today. The names are derived from the organization of the group souls. Why could they be called that? Today I would like to help you understand this from a different perspective.

[ 5 ] Let us now vividly transport ourselves back to the early days of Lemurian life. The souls that are now incarnated in human bodies had not yet descended to the level of physical bodies; they did not yet have any inclination to unite with physical matter. Even the bodies that would later become human bodies were still very, very animal-like. On Earth, there were the most grotesque physical beings, which would themselves appear grotesque compared to what we today call the most grotesque animals. Everything was still in a soft, slippery substance, either watery or fiery and boiling—both the human beings and their surroundings. Of course, even among these grotesque forms were the ancestors of the physical human body, but these had not yet been taken possession of by the I’s. In fact, the four group souls we have described already existed as four group souls before the spiritual entered the physical organization, so that four “I’s” were awaiting their incarnation—I’s predisposed to very specific forms that were present down there. Some were predisposed to be drawn to the organisms that already existed in physical form in very specific shapes, while others were drawn to different ones; the forms that were down there had to correspond in a certain way to the types of “I”s that were waiting there. There were forms that were particularly suited to receiving the lion “I”s, others for the bull “I”s, and so on. This took place in a very early period of Earth’s development. Now imagine that the group soul—which we have called the Taurus soul—is drawn to very specific forms that exist down there. These forms have a particular appearance; similarly, the Lion soul was drawn to specific forms. Thus, the physical realm on Earth also presents us with a fourfold picture. One group developed particularly strongly those organs whose functions corresponded more closely to those of the heart; they were organized one-sidedly toward the heart; a particularly aggressive, courageous, and assertive element was present in them. They are courageous, want to assert themselves, want to overcome others, and are, so to speak, already conquerors—born conquerors—even in their very form. These are the ones in whom the heart—the seat of the “I”—has been strengthened. In others, the organs of digestion, nutrition, and reproduction are particularly developed; in the third group, the organs of movement are especially developed; in the fourth group, however, the qualities are evenly distributed—both the courageous and aggressive traits and the calm ones that arise through the development of the digestive organs; both were developed. The group in which the aggressive quality—which belongs to the organization of the heart—was developed consisted of those whose group souls belonged to the lion; the second group was that of the bull; the third group, associated with the mobile element that has little interest in the earthly, belongs to the group soul of the eagle. These are the ones who can rise above the earthly. And those in whom things remained in balance belonged to the group soul of “Man.” Thus, we have, so to speak, the projection of the four group souls in the physical realm.

[ 6 ] At that time, a most peculiar sight would have presented itself to the observer. One would have encountered a kind of race about which one could have said, with prophetic insight: These are physical beings that are somewhat reminiscent of lions, who embody the character of the lion, even though they looked different from today’s lions. They were lion-hearted people, aggressive human prototypes. Then there was a group of bull-like people, all viewed from the physical plane. You can easily fill in the details for the third and fourth races. The third race was already highly visionary. While the first was combative, and the second cultivated everything related to the physical plane and the processing of the physical plane, you would have found a third class of people who were very visionary. As a rule, they had something that was malformed in relation to their other bodies. They would have reminded you of those people who possess a great deal of psychic ability and believe in visions, but who, because they do not care much for the physical, have something withered about them, something stunted compared to the vigor of the other two groups. They would have reminded you of a bird-like nature. “I want to hold back my spirit”—that was the tendency of the eagle people. The others had something that was, so to speak, a mixture of all parts.

[ 7 ] There is something else to consider: If we go back far enough to encounter such conditions on Earth, then we must also allow ourselves to consider the idea that everything that happened in the course of Earth’s evolution occurred in order to regulate the affairs of the Earth from the spiritual realm. It was all merely a detour on the path to modern humanity. Anyone who had been able to look more deeply into these matters would have discovered that these lion-like beings—which recalled what we see today in the lion’s body, albeit in a completely different way—exercised a special attraction for the male figures of the etheric bodies. These were particularly drawn to these lion-people, so that these were beings who outwardly had a lion’s body but inwardly a male etheric body. It was a powerful etheric being with a male character, and a small part of this etheric being condensed into the physical lion’s body. The physical body was, so to speak, the comet’s nucleus, while the etheric body formed the comet’s tail, which was the actual creator of the nucleus. The Taurus race, however, had a special attraction for the female etheric body. Thus, the Taurus body possessed precisely the power to attract the female etheric body and unite with it. And now imagine that this process is constantly at work, with the etheric bodies continually penetrating and transforming one another.

[ 8 ] The relationship between the lion-like humans and the bull-like ones is particularly important in earlier times. The others are of less significance. The male etheric bodies, which crystallized a physical lion’s body from within themselves, had the ability to fertilize the physical lion’s body itself, so that the reproduction of humanity was, in a sense, ensured by the lion-like race. It was a kind of fertilization arising from the spiritual realm, an asexual form of reproduction. The bull-like race, however, was also capable of achieving the same result. What had become physical exerted a reciprocal effect here on the female etheric body. In the course of evolution, things took a different turn. While the lion-like nature retained this mode of reproduction—because the fertilizing power came from the spiritual realm above—as this process intensified, the other process was increasingly suppressed. The bull-like humanity became more and more infertile. The result was that, on the one hand, we had a humanity sustained through fertilization, and on the other hand, another half that became increasingly infertile. One side became the female sex, the other the male sex. Today’s female physical nature, after all, has a male etheric body, while the man’s etheric body is female. The woman’s physical body evolved from the lion nature, while the physical bull body is the ancestor of the male body.

[ 9 ] The spiritual aspect of human beings has a common origin; it is neutral and did not enter the physical body until the sexes had already differentiated; it was only then that the spiritual aspect was addressed, and only then that the head became hardened. It was only then that the etheric body of the head united with the physical body; it made no difference to it whether it settled upon a male or female body—in this respect, both sexes are equal. We must say that, in her development—as long as we disregard what lies beyond differentiation altogether—the woman has something lion-like in her nature. This hidden courage can certainly be found. A woman can develop the courage of inner strength, for example, in war, in nursing, or in certain services to humanity. The male physical body possesses what we might, in the true sense, call a bull-like nature. This is connected to the fact that the man, as he is otherwise organized, is more inclined toward activity rooted in physical labor. From an occult perspective, this is indeed how things appear, even if it sounds very strange. So you see how these group souls have worked together. They work by combining their efforts—the lion and the bull group souls. These divine beings work together, and within modern human beings lie the workings of the various divine group souls.

[ 10 ] These images, which I have presented to you here in sketch form, will certainly have an effect. If you trace human beings back further and further, to the time when reproduction was not yet possible, then we must say: The outer, physical female body transformed into something lion-like, while the male body was bull-like. Such things must be taken only in a sacred, serious sense if we are to understand them correctly. It would be easy for those who have studied human anatomy to deduce the anatomical differences between the physical bodies of men and women from these natures of the lion and the bull. Physical science will remain entirely fruitless, merely reporting external facts, as long as it does not penetrate into the spirit of these facts.

[ 11 ] Now it will no longer seem so strange to you that there once existed a race of humans who had the body of a lion. They assimilated the “I” nature, and as a result, the lion’s nature gradually transformed into a woman’s body. Those who received nothing of this spiritual essence transformed in a completely different way—namely, into today’s lions and their relatives. Why these animals, too, are hermaphroditic is a topic for another time. Those who received nothing of the spiritual essence gave rise to today’s lions, while those who did receive something gave rise to the female form as we know it today.

[ 12 ] Over time, many, many other aspects of these matters can be explored. Anthroposophical learning is not like mathematical learning. First, attention is drawn to the fact that, for example, there are the four group souls; at this stage, only the names are given. Then a particular perspective is chosen, and the subject is examined from the outside. And so we approach it again and again from a different angle. We circle around what was first presented and examine it from the most diverse angles. Anyone who is open to this will never be able to say that any anthroposophical concepts contradict one another. This is true even of the greatest subjects we consider. The diversity stems from the different points of view from which we observe things.

[ 13 ] Let us take away from this gathering what might be called inner tolerance. May we, especially within our particular anthroposophical stream, succeed in bringing this inner spirit of tolerance into the anthroposophical movement. Let us take this with us as a source of inspiration and now strive once more to have an impact in the outside world, so that this spirit of the deepest mutual understanding may take root. Even from different places, we can turn our souls and hearts toward what unites us all—toward the great anthroposophical ideals. And we can then bring forth what a spiritual organism is meant to be—something that grows and flourishes: the life of our anthroposophical cause, toward which we should radiate our strength from all manner of directions.