The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. The Development of Humanity through the Cultural Epochs

[ 1 ] In those days, when the Earth and the Moon were still one, in the age of fiery gases, all water had dissolved into steam; it was a haze of all substances.

[ 2 ] Those physical bodies into which the souls had entered were not like the humans and animals of today. They would seem grotesque to us; the physical bodies were shaped by the presence of the soul. It is of great importance that the lungs form with the entry of the soul. Until then, these beings moved through the air by swimming and floating. During the period of cooling, the swim bladder transformed into the lungs; it formed with the entry of the soul.

[ 3 ] This transformation made blood formation possible. The “I” was able to unite with the human being. These processes do not occur quickly; they take millions of years. The ability to breathe through the lungs and the descent of souls into bodies is wonderfully expressed in the Bible with the words: “God breathed into the man’s nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living soul.”

[ 4 ] Thus, through theosophy, the profound truths within the religions emerge—truths that compel people to respect the immense realities in human evolution. This reverence for the supernatural persisted until about the fourteenth century, when Christianity became materialistic. It is by no means Christian to seek to understand spiritual beings—and Christianity in its spiritual form—in an abstract, dry manner through the studies of theology, geology, and so on. It is truly Christian to express the great events in cosmology as Moses did in the past: “Adam fell into a deep sleep!” This means that Adam clearly perceived the evolution on the astral plane. It is presented as a symbol that, through clairvoyance on the astral plane, he perceived how the [gill-breathing] being was transformed into a lung-breathing one through the Self.

[ 5 ] The urge to wander on the Moon was linked to the mating and estrus seasons. Reproduction took place on the sunlit side, while the intervening period was spent on the other side.

[ 6 ] The animal-men, who were the highest lunar beings, had not yet attained any degree of love; love, which extends from the highest level down to the plant kingdom, had not yet taken hold on the Moon. Everything was strictly governed by cosmic forces; wisdom was the guiding principle. The deeper descent linked humanity to the emergence of the astral body, and with that, love began. The Moon is the planet of wisdom; the Earth is the planet of love.

[ 7 ] The wise structure of the body took shape primarily on the Moon; at the end of the Earth, love will be the watchword. When we look at the marvelous plant forms and the wise structure of the human being, we find that everything is also permeated by love. In human beings, it first manifests in the blood ties of the ancient Atlanteans and rises to the compassion of brotherly love. From the coarsest forms of sexuality to the finest bonds of the soul, the bond of love enfolds all beings. The transition from wisdom to love is a great step forward.

[ 8 ] Humanity owes the gradual infusion of love to the high solar beings who already possessed all the spiritual faculties and whose progress had reached its pinnacle. Yahweh instills the “I”; He is the bringer and giver of love, through which a unifying bond is created; it is a mutual giving and receiving that nurtures the soul in love.

[ 9 ] Some beings remained at a level between the gods and humans; only a portion of them reached the Atma stage. Many remained at the Budhi stage, while humans began to develop Manas.

[ 10 ] The Atma gods, the solar beings, sought to instill love in humanity, while the lunar gods sought to instill wisdom. The important role that blood kinship played at the beginning of the Lemurian era came to the fore among humankind. Because the Hebrews felt they were blood relatives, they were able to base their legislation on this principle.

[ 11 ] Love brings people together. Through it, they form larger and more inclusive communities. The moon gods provide an important counterforce. Freedom and individuality would have vanished; people would have dissolved into a general mass of love. That is why the moon gods directed their strongest attack against this union; their leader was Lucifer. There were thus two currents: that of Yahweh and that of Lucifer—the current of love and the current of freedom.

[ 12 ] The Atlanteans already had their secret schools. In the post-Atlantean era, the most highly developed people, led by the great leader Manu, migrated to the Gobi Desert; from there, colonists spread out to all cultures. Wisdom was disseminated by people—by initiates—not through books.

[ 13 ] Indian culture consisted of descendants of the Lemurians and Atlanteans. The Indians received the wisdom of the Vedanta from the messengers from Gobi, who were the holy Rishis, seven in number.

[ 14 ] The first post-Atlantean culture, the Indian one, preserved the memory of the Atlanteans’ clairvoyance; hence the deep longing of the Indians for that time, when human beings still felt connected to the Divine; clairvoyance was valued more highly than the perception of external objects. They said to themselves: What we see out there are mere shadows, illusions! That is why they strove to transcend this world. Through yoga practices, they sought to extinguish physical reality in order to exchange it for clairvoyance.

[ 15 ] The Indians have retained their appreciation of the supernatural, but also their underestimation of the sensory world. It would be a great mistake to assume that this culture, if it has indeed passed away irretrievably, should [nevertheless] be brought back into the present.

[ 16 ] Persian culture represents progress in that it regards the earth as reality, as a field of work. The Persians were aware that the spiritual must be implanted into the sensory world. [The Persian] sought to redeem the sensory world with the help of the spirit. The great Zarathustra saw the God of Light in the sun’s aura; opposed to him is Ahriman, the God of Darkness.

[ 17 ] This was followed by the Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian-Egyptian civilization. It had powerful leaders who combined spirituality and science. The Egyptians sought to instill the spirit of reality. Their interpretation of the stars was based on astrology and imbued with spiritual wisdom, as were their architecture and famous monuments.

[ 18 ] In the fourth post-Atlantic era, the Greco-Latin era, something new emerged. Whereas the Indians longed for a dream world, the Persians made progress by conceiving of the sensory world as a field of work, and the Egyptians had the ability to organize their earthly existence according to the paths of the stars, it was reserved for the Greeks to regard themselves as a form of spiritualization. For them, form became the substance for the living immortalization of the spirit. The Greeks brought art down into earthly reality. Its social impact was a genuine, social state structure.

[ 19 ] Great states are founded on causes other than [mere] physical facts. The Romans were the first to develop the concept of the “citizen.” In Greece, people were like parts of a state; among the Romans, the individual came to the fore. They imbued their own nature with intellectual concepts, which is why jurisprudence flourished among them. They were conquerors of man’s external reality.

[ 20 ] An event of [fateful] significance then took place. From the Atlantean era through the Roman period, the God of Love, Yahweh, and the God of Wisdom, Lucifer, battled within humanity. The challenge was to unite these two extremes and give them individual form. Close blood ties began to break down even among the Hebrews. The time came when these bonds were no longer sufficient. Alexander the Great’s campaigns threw the peoples into disarray; the Roman campaigns established a center of spiritual selfishness.

[ 21 ] It was a tremendous step forward when Christ Jesus transformed the bond of love from a natural bond into a spiritual one. This is how his words are to be understood: Whoever does not forsake his brother and sister, son and daughter, and so on, cannot be my disciple.

[ 22 ] Love began with sexuality; the spiritual bonds between people must grow ever more subtle until, at the end of the earth, brotherhood embraces all humanity.

[ 23 ] The precursor to brotherhood came through Yahweh; Christ brought spiritual love into the world. Only when love is spiritualized can humanity fully let go of it. This love must continue to grow in people’s relationships with one another; it must become so great that it triumphs over all opposition.

[ 24 ] Christ Jesus appeared at a time when people were drifting apart, in order to unite them into one great brotherhood. Therefore, Christ Jesus is the true Spirit of the Sun and the Earth, the Ruler of the Earth, who places love at the center.

[ 25 ] Through Christ’s atonement and sacrificial death, the astral plane is transformed from love based on blood ties into universal brotherly love. The first act takes place in Palestine; here, a great bond of brotherhood is forged around humanity—the bond of truly loving one another even where no blood ties exist. Christ Jesus gave the impetus for a love that transforms everything, a love that overcomes all things. Christ Jesus is the greatest union between God and humankind.

[ 26 ] The fifth epoch marks a profound descent into matter; the spirit is completely held captive by it and becomes its slave. Even religion has become materialistic; Christianity must be renewed through theosophy.

[ 27 ] It is a descent of the spirit into matter; this is not meant to be a criticism [of our age], but rather must also be understood as a necessity. Concepts and logic are developed as a result; the natural sciences become the masters of the forces of nature. Yet it is still an enslavement of the mind when these gigantic achievements are used only to serve the basest needs—needs that were once satisfied in the simplest way while the mind was being cultivated. It is a waste of mental energy when it is used to satisfy animal instincts.