The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] Those of you who have repeatedly attended my lecture series or any of my lectures in the field of spiritual science have already heard me present various aspects of the realities of the higher worlds from a wide variety of perspectives. And one or another being, one or another fact, has come before us in one realm or another and has then always been examined from this or that perspective. It may happen—and I would like to point this out especially today so that no misunderstandings arise—that, at first glance, contradictions seem to exist when this or that being, this or that “fact,” is illuminated from one angle at one time and from another at another time. But if you look closely, you will find that it is precisely through such varied perspectives that the complex realities of the spiritual worlds can become clear. I had to say this because I will have to shed light today, in part, from a new perspective on certain facts that are already known to the vast majority of today’s listeners from a certain angle. Precisely when we take the deepest text of the New Testament—known as the Gospel according to John—and read the meaningful words with which we concluded our reflection yesterday, it soon becomes clear to us that the almost infinite mysteries of the creation of the worlds and the becoming of humanity are already contained in these very first words of the Gospel of John. We may yet have the opportunity, in the course of our reflections, to show why the great chroniclers of spiritual events often express precisely the great, comprehensive truths in a brief, paradigmatic manner, as is the case in the first verses of the Gospel of John. Today we want to return to certain well-known facts of spiritual science in a different way than we did yesterday and see how they reappear for us in the Gospel of John. We will take as our starting point the relatively simplest facts of spiritual science.

[ 2 ] We know that human beings, as they appear to us in their everyday state of life, consist of four aspects: the physical body, the etheric or life body, the astral body, and the ego. We know that a person’s daily life unfolds in such a way that, from the morning when they wake up until the evening when they fall asleep, these four aspects of their being are organically connected and intertwined. We know that when a person sleeps at night, the physical body and the etheric body lie in bed, and that the astral body and the bearer of the “I”—or simply the “I”—are separated from the physical body and the etheric body.

[ 3 ] Now there is one thing we must make particularly clear to ourselves today. When we have a human being before us in their present state of development, we see this fourfold nature—the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I—as an interwoven necessity. When we then see this person lying in bed at night—and since only the physical body and the etheric body are lying in bed—this person lying in bed has, so to speak, the status of a plant. For the plant, as it appears to us in the outer world, consists of the physical body and the etheric or life body; it has neither an astral body nor an “I” within itself. This is what distinguishes it from animals and humans. Only animals have an astral body, and only humans possess an “I” within themselves. Therefore, we can say: From evening until morning, the human’s physical body and etheric body lie in bed; there, the human is, as it were, a being like a plant and yet, at the same time, not like a plant. We must make this clear to ourselves.

[ 4 ] If a free being, an independent being, exists today that has neither an astral body nor an “I,” but consists solely of a physical body and an etheric body, then it must look like a plant; it must be a plant. But when a human being lies in bed, he has outgrown the status of a plant, because in the course of evolution he added to his physical body and his etheric body the astral body—the bearer of pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, of instinct, desire, and passion—and added the bearer of the “I.” But every time a higher member is added to a being, everything in the lower members of that being also changes. If one were to add an astral body to the plant as it appears to us today as a being out in nature—if an astral body were not merely to surround the plant from above but to permeate it—then what we see permeating the plant’s substance would have to become animal flesh. For the penetrating astral body transforms the plant in such a way that its substance becomes animal flesh. And the plant would have to be transformed in a similarly corresponding way if it possessed an “I” within itself in the physical world. Therefore, we can also say: When we have before us a being that, like the human being, possesses not only a physical body but also invisible, higher, supersensible aspects of its nature, these supersensible aspects are expressed in the lowest members of the being. Just as your inner soul qualities are superficially expressed in your facial features, in your physiognomy, so your physical body is also an expression of the workings of the astral body and the “I.” And the physical body does not merely represent itself; it also represents a physical expression of the physically invisible aspects of the human being.

[ 5 ] Thus, the human glandular system—and everything we include in it—is an expression of the etheric body within the human being. Everything we include in the nervous system is an expression of the astral body, and everything we include in the circulatory system is an expression of the ego-bearer. Thus, within the physical body itself, we must again distinguish a fourfold structure, and only those who adhere to a gross, materialistic worldview can regard the various substances in the human physical body as equivalent. What pulses through us as blood has become such a substance precisely because an “I” dwells within the human being. The nervous system is structured as it is and consists of such a substance because an astral body is present within the human being. And the endocrine system has come to be as it is because there is an etheric body within the human being. If you consider this, you will easily see that, fundamentally speaking, the human being is a contradictory entity from the evening, when the person falls asleep, until the morning, when the person wakes up. One might say it should be a plant, yet it is not a plant. For a plant does not have, within its physical substance, the expression of the astral body—the nervous system—nor the expression of the “I”—the circulatory system. A physical being such as the human being, with glandular, nervous, and circulatory systems, can exist only if it contains an etheric body, an astral body, and an “I.”

[ 6 ] But as a human being, you leave your physical body and your etheric body at night with regard to your astral body and your “I.” You leave them, so to speak, callously, turning them into a being full of internal contradictions. If nothing spiritual were to take place from the moment you fall asleep until you wake up, and you were merely to withdraw your astral body and your “I” from your physical body and etheric body, then you would find your nervous and circulatory systems destroyed in the morning, for they cannot survive unless they contain an astral body and an “I.” Therefore, the following occurs, perceptible to the clairvoyant consciousness.

[ 7 ] As the ego and the astral body withdraw, the clairvoyant sees a divine ego and a divine astral body entering the human being. In fact, even at night—from the moment a person falls asleep until they wake up—an astral body and a “I,” or at least a substitute for them, are present in the physical body and the etheric body. When a person’s astral body withdraws, a higher astral body enters the person to sustain them until they awaken, as does a substitute for the “I.” From this you can see, then, that within the realm of our life, in the sphere of our existence, other beings are at work besides those that initially manifest themselves within the physical world. In the physical world, minerals, plants, animals, and human beings express themselves. Within our physical sphere, these human beings are, at first glance, the highest of all beings. They alone possess a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and an “I.”

[ 8 ] From the fact that, at night, the astral body and the “I” withdraw from the physical body and the etheric body, you can infer that the astral body and the “I” still possess a certain degree of independence today, that they separate, so to speak, and can live for a certain period of their daily lives in this way, separated from the physical and etheric vehicles.

[ 9 ] Thus, the following becomes apparent to us at night. Just as the human physical body and the human etheric body serve as vessels for the human “I” and the human astral body during the day—that is, for the innermost aspects of the human being—so, at night, they become vessels or temples for higher astral and “I” entities. Now we view what lies in bed differently, for within it there is also an astral aspect—but a divine-spiritual astral aspect—and also an “I”—but a divine-spiritual “I.” In a certain sense, we can say: While the human being sleeps with regard to his astral body and his “I,” these beings—which now also belong to the realm of our life and which enter our physical body and etheric body when we leave the latter—are awake within him and maintain the structure of his organization. Such a fact can teach us a great deal; and especially when we consider it in conjunction with certain observations made by clairvoyants, it can provide us with valuable insight into human development. Let us now relate this very fact—the difference between waking and sleeping—to the great facts of spiritual development.

[ 10 ] Although the human astral body and the human “I” appear to be the highest, the most inner aspects of human nature, they by no means reveal themselves to be the most perfect. Even a superficial observation reveals that the physical body is more perfect than the astral body. Indeed, I pointed out here two years ago how the human physical body appears increasingly marvelous to us in terms of its entire structure the more deeply we look into it. The marvelous structure of the human heart and the human brain not only satisfies the mind’s refined intellectual need for knowledge when examined anatomically, but also elevates the aesthetic and moral sensibilities of those who approach them with their soul, enabling them to recognize the sublime, wisdom-filled mechanisms contained within this physical body.

[ 11 ] The astral body has not yet reached that stage. It is the vehicle of pleasure and pain, instincts, desires, and pleasures, and so on, and we must recognize that, driven by his desires, man reaches for all sorts of things in the world that do not in the least serve to promote the wise and artful workings of the heart or the brain. Through his lust for pleasure, man seeks to satisfy himself with things that, like coffee, are poisons to the heart or similar. In doing so, he provides proof that the astral body yearns for pleasures that are, for example, harmful to the wisdom-filled faculties of the human heart: for decades, the heart withstands such poisons that a person ingests out of the astral body’s craving for pleasure. From this you can see that the physical body is more perfect than the astral body. Even if, in the future, the astral body will one day be far more perfect, today the physical body is the most perfect in its development. This stems from the fact that the physical body is, in fact, the oldest of the components of human nature. It serves as proof that work had already been done on this physical body long before our Earth came into being.

[ 12 ] What today’s theory of the origin of the world—which has grown out of purely materialistic notions—says is, after all, nothing more than a materialistic fantasy; whether it is called the Kant-Laplace theory or some other recent “theory,” it makes no difference. These materialistic fantasies are certainly useful for understanding the external structure of our world system, but they are of no use if we wish to comprehend that which is higher than the external images perceived by the eyes.

[ 13 ] Spiritual research shows us that, just as human beings pass from one incarnation to the next, a celestial body such as our Earth also underwent different forms and different planetary states in ancient times. Before our Earth came into being, it existed in a different planetary state. It was what is called the “old Moon” in spiritual research. This is not the Moon we know today, but an ancestor of our Earth as a planetary entity. And just as human beings have evolved from an earlier incarnation into their present one, so our Earth has evolved from the old Moon into the Earth. The old Moon is, as it were, a preceding incarnation of the Earth. In turn, a previous incarnation of the old Moon is the Sun—not the Sun we know today, but yet another ancestor of our present-day Earth. And finally, an ancestor of this old Sun is the old Saturn. Our Earth has passed through these earlier states: a Saturn state, a Sun state, and a Moon state. And now it has arrived at its Earth state.

[ 14 ] The first seed of our physical body was sown on ancient Saturn. We could also say: None of what surrounds human beings today—nothing from our present animal kingdom, plant kingdom, or mineral kingdom—existed on that ancient world body which we call the ancient—not the present—Saturn. But the first germ of the present physical human body was present there. This physical human body existed in a completely different form than it does today. It existed at that time in its earliest embryonic state, and then it developed during the evolution of Saturn. And when this evolution came to an end, the ancient Saturn passed through a kind of cosmic night, just as a human being passes through Devachan to reach the next incarnation. And then Saturn became the Sun.

[ 15 ] And just as a plant arises from a seed, so too did the physical human body arise on the ancient Sun. Little by little, this physical human body was permeated by an etheric or life body, so that on the Sun, the etheric or life body was added to the embryonic form of the physical body. Man was not a plant, but he had the value of a plant. He consisted of a physical body and an etheric body, and his consciousness at that time was similar to the consciousness of sleep or similar to the consciousness that the entire plant kingdom of the physical world around us possesses today. The solar existence came to an end; once again, a world night ensued—or, if we may put it that way, a world Devachan. After the Sun had passed through this world Devachan, it transformed into the ancient lunar state.

[ 16 ] And once again, those parts of the human being that had already existed on Saturn and the Sun began to emerge: the human physical body and etheric body. And during the Moon phase, the astral body was added. Now the human being had a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body. From this you can see that the physical body, having originated on Saturn, was already undergoing its third stage of development on the Moon. The etheric body was added on the Sun; it had now been raised to a second stage of perfection. The astral body, which had only just been added, was at its first stage on the Moon.

[ 17 ] Now something happens on the Moon that could not have happened during the Saturn and Sun periods. While the Saturn and Sun stages of development encompassed human beings as relatively unified beings, the following occurred at a certain stage of the ancient Moon’s development. The entire world body split into two parts: a Sun and a satellite of that Sun, the Moon. So while we speak, so to speak, of a planetary evolution in the case of Saturn’s evolution—and likewise in the case of the Sun—we speak of a lunar evolution only during the early phase of the Moon’s evolution. This is because, at first, everything that constitutes our Earth, Sun, and Moon was united in this single ancient world body. Then two bodies emerge. What emerges there as the Sun is neither our Sun nor the ancient Sun we mentioned earlier. It is a distinct state that separated from the ancient Moon as a solar state, and alongside it, a planet emerged—located outside this Sun and orbiting it—which we now call the “ancient Moon.” What, then, is the significance of this division of our Earth’s predecessor during the ancient Moon’s evolution?

[ 18 ] The significance of this separation is that, when the Sun split off, the higher beings and the finer substances departed from the entire mass, emerging as the Sun. The coarser substances and the lower beings remained with the old Moon. Thus, during the development of the ancient Moon, we now have two bodies instead of one: a solar body that harbors higher beings, and a lunar body that harbors lower beings. If the whole had remained together and the separation had not occurred, certain beings that developed on the separated Moon would not have been able to keep pace with the solar beings. They were not ready for it. They therefore had to separate the coarser substances and build a separate arena for themselves. But even the higher beings could not have remained united with these coarser substances; that would have hindered their faster progress. They, too, needed a special arena for their development, and that was the Sun.

[ 19 ] Let us now consider the beings found on the ancient Sun after the separation, and those who inhabit the ancient Moon after the separation. We know, of course, that during the Saturn stage the physical human body was formed; on the Sun, the etheric body was added; and on the Moon, the astral body. Now these human beings—or, if we may say so, these primordial humans on the Moon—had in fact gone with the separated Moon. It was precisely they who were unable to keep pace with the rapid development of the solar beings—those entities that had separated with the Sun and now lived within the finer substances and matter on the Sun. Consequently, these human beings also became coarser during the Moon’s evolution. Thus, during the Moon’s evolution, we find humanity in a state where it consists of a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body. It had, therefore, reached the same stage of development that today’s animals have. Animals, too, have a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body. But you must not imagine that human beings on the ancient Moon were actually animals. The form of the human being on the ancient Moon looked quite different from that of today’s earthly animal. It would seem very fantastical to you if I were to describe it to you. So, we find, so to speak, ancestors of our present-day human beings on this ancient Moon who possessed a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body, and who, after the whole system had separated from the Sun, allowed these bodies to harden and become coarser within themselves than would have been the case had they remained with the Sun.

[ 20 ] Now, however, what had separated from the Sun had also undergone this threefold development: the Saturn, Sun, and Moon phases. Only, all of this followed, so to speak, the direction of the Sun, while the ancestors of humankind followed the direction of the Moon. In these beings who went with the Sun, we can likewise distinguish a threefold structure that runs entirely parallel to the threefold structure of the human being. On the Sun, too, there were beings who had, so to speak, attained three members. Only, instead of having driven these three members toward coarsening after the separation, the three members had now come to refinement. Imagine the process this way: After the separation, the human ancestors became coarser beings than they had been before; they hardened. The corresponding beings on the Sun, on the other hand, became more refined.

[ 21 ] What has become of the human being as a result of having acquired an astral body during the lunar phase of evolution brings him, in a certain sense, down to the level of animality. The beings who do not go along with this—who draw the finer substances up toward the Sun—become more refined. Just as human beings harden on the Moon, so beings of a high spiritual nature arise on the Sun. In spiritual science, this spirituality is described as the counter-images of what developed on the Moon.

[ 22 ] On the Moon, human beings developed, so to speak, into the level of animals, even though they were not animals. Now, wherever animal characteristics appear, people have always distinguished—with some justification—between animals of different levels. The animal-people on the Moon appeared in three distinctly different stages, which spiritual science designates as the stages of the “Bull,” the “Lion,” and the “Eagle.” These are, as it were, typical manifestations of animality. There were thus three distinct groups on the ancient Moon: Bull-people, Lion-people, and Eagle-people. Although we certainly must not use these names to refer to the modern animals—the bull, the lion, and the eagle—the degenerate nature of those primordial human beings, whom we must describe as Lion-people on the Moon, is nevertheless expressed in a certain way in the feline species. And the character of the ungulates expresses the degenerated nature of those human beings who are referred to as bull-people, and so on. This was the coarsened nature resulting from a three-stage evolution. On the Sun, however, the spiritual counterparts of these existed. There were also three groups. While the development of the astral on the Moon formed these three different animal-men, the corresponding spiritual human beings arose on the Sun—namely, as angelic beings, spiritual beings whom one also designates—but now as spiritual counterparts—as the lion, the eagle, and the bull. So when you look toward the Sun, you see spiritual beings of whom you say to yourself: They represent to me the beautiful, wisdom-shaped archetypes! And on the ancient Moon, you have something like solidified reflections of what is up there on the Sun. But there is still something else that lies behind this as a mystery.

[ 23 ] These images on the Moon are not unrelated to their spiritual counterparts on the Sun. On the ancient Moon, we find a group of primordial human beings—the Taurus humans—and on the Sun, a group of spiritual beings known as the Taurus spirits; there is a spiritual connection between the archetype and the image. For the group soul is the archetype and acts as such upon the images. The forces emanate from the group soul and direct the image below: the Lion Spirit directs the beings who, as Lion-People, are its image; the Eagle Spirit directs the Eagle-People, and so on. If these spirits, who are up there, had remained united with the Earth, if they had remained bound to their images, if they had had to dwell within their images, they would not have been able to move, nor would they have been able to exert the forces they needed to exert for the salvation and development of the images. They had to say to themselves: We must now, in a higher way, provide for what must develop on the Moon! The Spirit of Taurus said to itself: “I must care for the Taurus people. Down on the Moon, I cannot find the conditions necessary for my own advancement. To do so, I must dwell on the Sun and send my powers down from the Sun to the Taurus people.” It was the same with the Spirit of Leo and the same with the Spirit of the Eagle. Such is the meaning of evolution. Certain beings required a higher realm than the beings who were, so to speak, their physical counterparts. These physical counterparts required a lower, more limited realm. In order for the spiritual beings to act, they had to choose the Sun and send down their powers from outside. Thus we see how, on the one hand, evolution moves downward, so to speak, while on the other hand, it moves upward.

[ 24 ] Now the evolution of the ancient Moon continues. By acting upon their images from the outside, the spiritual beings spiritualize the Moon, so that it may later reunite with the Sun. The archetypes once again absorb the images, soaking them up, as it were. A world Devachan, a world night, forms once more. — This is also called a “Pralaya,” while those states—such as Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon—are called “Manvantaras.” — Following this cosmic night, our earthly state emerges from the darkness of the cosmic womb; it is destined to bring humanity to the point where it can add the “I” or the “I-bearer” to the physical, etheric, and astral bodies.

[ 25 ] But now everything that has already developed in the past must be repeated once more. This is a cosmic law: if any higher state is to come into being, what was there before must first be repeated. First, then, the Earth had to pass through the old Saturn state once more. Once again, the first rudiments of the physical body developed, as it were, from the world-germ. Then comes a repetition of the Solar state and a repetition of the Lunar state.

[ 26 ] The Sun, Earth, and Moon are still united as a single body. Then a repetition of what had happened before takes place: the Sun splits off again. Once more, those higher beings who need this higher stage of development depart with the Sun. They take the finer substances with them so that they may establish their own world within them. Thus, the Sun separates from the Earth—which at that time still held the Moon within its body—and takes with it those beings who are ready to continue their development on the Sun. You can imagine that among these beings were, above all, those who had previously functioned as the archetypes. All these beings, who had attained the proper maturity during the ancient Lunar Age, moved forward and, as a result, could no longer dwell within the coarser substances and beings that the Earth and Moon contained. They had to detach themselves and establish a new existence on the new Sun—the Sun of today.

[ 27 ] What kind of beings were these? They were the descendants of those beings who had already developed on the Sun during the ancient lunar phase as the Bull Spirit, the Lion Spirit, and the Eagle Spirit. And the highest, the most advanced among them, were those who had united within themselves the nature of the eagle, the lion, and the bull into a harmonious unity. The most advanced spiritual beings who now took up residence on the Sun were the beings who can be described as “archetypes of humanity,” as “spiritual human beings” in the true sense of the word. So imagine that among those spiritual beings who, during the ancient Lunar Age, were to be found on the Sun as the Spirit of the Bull, the Spirit of the Eagle, and the Spirit of the Lion, there were some who had attained a higher stage of development. They are the true spiritual human beings who now primarily reside on the Sun. They are, so to speak, the spiritual counterparts of what is developing down below on the separated Earth and Moon. Down below, however, the descendants of those beings who were on the ancient Moon are developing. Now you can imagine: Since a certain densification and hardening of these beings had already occurred on the old Moon, the descendants of these beings from the old Moon were now all the more likely to appear with a predisposition toward densification, hardening, and withering. Indeed, a sad, desolate time begins for the separated part that once contained the Earth and the Moon. Above, on the Sun, there is an ever fresher and more vigorous development, an ever fuller life—below, on Earth, sadness, desolation, and a hardening that becomes increasingly pronounced.

[ 28 ] Now something occurred that alone made further development possible: what is now the Moon split off from the combined world body of Earth and Moon, and what is now the Earth remained behind. With this, the coarsest substances—which would have driven the Earth into complete hardening—were removed, and the Earth was freed from what would have led to its complete desolation.

[ 29 ] At the very beginning of our Earth’s evolution, the Earth was united with the Sun and Moon as we know them today. Had the Earth remained with the Sun, humankind would never have been able to reach its present stage of development; it would not have been able to keep pace with the kind of evolution required by the beings on the Sun. Up there, humanity did not develop as it does on Earth; rather, a spiritual archetype of humanity developed, of which modern humanity—as it appears to us in physical form—is, in essence, merely a reflection. On the other hand, had the Moon remained with the Earth, humanity would have gradually withered away, become mummified, and found no possibility for development on Earth. The Earth would have become a barren, arid celestial body. Instead of human bodies as they exist on Earth today, something like lifeless monuments would have arisen, growing out of the Earth’s soil like withered human figures. This was prevented when the Moon split off and ventured out into space along with the coarsest substances. This created the possibility on Earth that the “I” could be added in a corresponding way to what was already present in the descendants of the beings of the ancient Moon—namely, the physical, etheric, and astral bodies—so that human beings could experience the fertilization by the “I” precisely because the forces of the Sun and Moon acted from the outside and maintained a balance there.

[ 30 ] On Earth, humankind continued its evolution. What had come over from the ancient Moon represented, in a certain sense, a downward evolution into a lower state. Now, however, humanity received a new impetus, a drive upward. Throughout this entire period, the corresponding spiritual beings—who had separated from the Sun—continued to evolve further and further.

[ 31 ] What became possible as a result of the Moon breaking away from the Earth? You can easily imagine this if you use a comparison. Imagine, for a moment, that we have a block of hard iron in front of us, and—let’s say—we are people of average muscular strength. We hammer and hammer, trying to flatten the iron, but we cannot shape it. Only when we soften the substance by melting it can we form it. Something like this had happened to the Earth after the coarsest substances had separated from it along with the Moon. Now the Earth’s beings could be formed. Now those beings intervened once more who had their sphere of activity on the Sun, and who had already intervened from the Sun onto the old Moon as group souls during the old lunar phase. Before the separation of the Moon, the substances were too dense. Now these beings, who had their sphere of activity on the Sun, made themselves felt as forces that gradually shaped and formed human beings into their present form.

[ 32 ] Let’s take a closer look at this. Imagine you could have stood on that ancient celestial body, which consisted of the Earth and the Moon. From there, you would have seen the Sun out in the distance. If you had also possessed clairvoyant abilities, you would have seen the spiritual beings we described earlier. On Earth, you would have seen a kind of hardening, a desolation, and you might have said to yourself: All around there is nothing but desolation. Everything on Earth seems to be dead. The forces of the Sun cannot exert any influence on what is preparing to become a vast field of dead earth. - And then you would have witnessed how the lunar mass separated from the Earth. The substances of the Earth would have become soft, malleable, and plastic, and then you might have said to yourself: Everything has become malleable and plastic; the forces descending from the Sun now have the opportunity to act once more. Then you would have seen how the Taurus spirits were now able to regain their influence over human beings—who were the images of these Taurus spirits—and likewise with the Leo spirits and the Eagle spirits. And you would have said to yourself: Out there is the Moon. It has tempered its harmful influence by moving away and now acting only from a distance. In this way, it has enabled the Earth to allow the spiritual beings to act upon it once more.

[ 33 ] Tomorrow we will see what kind of picture presents itself to the clairvoyant when he traces the more distant images of past evolution in the Akashic Records.

[ 34 ] We look back to the ancient Saturn stage and tell ourselves: that is where the first rudiments of the human physical body were formed. What we regard today as the physical body first took shape on Saturn, as it were, out of the chaos of the universe. Then came the Sun stage. The etheric body was added to the first form of the physical body. On the ancient Moon, the astral element was added, both to the forms that continued to develop on the separated Moon and to the spirits on the separated Sun. On the Moon live the images at the level of the animal realm; on the Sun live the spiritual archetypes. Finally, on Earth, a state gradually emerged through which human beings became capable of once again assimilating within themselves what had developed on the Sun as the astral element during the Moon’s evolution and which now acted within them as a force. And now let us trace these four states as they are described to us in the Gospel of John.

[ 35 ] The author of the Gospel of John calls the supreme force—which, emerging from the chaos of the universe during the Saturn evolution, provides the spiritual seed for the physical human form—the “Logos.” He calls that which emerged on the Sun and became integrated with what had arisen on Saturn the “Life”—what we correspondingly call the etheric or life body. What was added on the Moon, he calls the “Light,” for it is the spiritual light, the astral light. This astral light brings about a hardening on the separated Moon and a spiritualization on the Sun itself. What had come into being as a spiritualized entity was able to develop further and did indeed continue to develop. And when the Sun split off from the Earth once more, what had developed on the third stage shone into human beings. But human beings were not yet capable of perceiving what was shining into them from the Sun. It shaped the human being, acted as a force, but human beings could not perceive it.

[ 36 ] What we have thus come to understand as the essence of Saturn's evolution, we now express in the words of the Gospel of John:

“In the very beginning was the Logos.”

[ 37 ] Now let us turn to the Sun. If we describe the facts of how what had arisen on Saturn continued to develop on the Sun, we say: The etheric body was added:

“And the Logos was life.”

[ 38 ] On the Moon, the astral entity was added, both in its physical and spiritual forms:

“In the living Word, the light came to be.”

[ 39 ] Light continues to evolve: on the one hand, toward clairvoyant light, as the Sun separated from the Earth; on the other hand, toward darkness along with humanity. For when he was to receive the light, he—who was darkness—did not understand the light.

[ 40 ] When we examine the Gospel of John in light of the Akashic Records, we read the following about the evolution of the world:

[ 41 ] In the very beginning, during the Saturn evolution, everything arose from the Logos. During the Sun evolution, life was present in the Logos. And from the animated Logos, light arose during the Moon evolution. And from the luminous and animate Logos, during the Earth’s evolution on the Sun, light emerged in a higher form, while human beings emerged in a state of darkness. And from the Sun, the beings—who were the advanced spirits of the Bull, the Lion, the Eagle, and humanity—shone down as light upon the Earth into the forming human forms. But they were in darkness and could not comprehend the light that shone down upon them. — We must not, however, imagine this as physical light, but rather as the light that was the sum of the radiations of the spiritual beings—the spirits of the bull, the lion, the eagle, and humanity—who were the continuation of the Moon’s spiritual evolution. - What streamed down was the spiritual light. Human beings could not absorb it; they did not understand it. It promoted their entire development, but without them being conscious of it:

“The light shone in the darkness, but the darkness could not comprehend the light.”

[ 42 ] This is how the writer of the Gospel of John presents these great truths in a paradigmatic way. And those who knew such things have always been called the “servants” or “priests of the Logos, as he was from the beginning.” Such a priest or servant of the Logos, as He was from the beginning, is the one speaking here. In the Gospel of Luke, we find essentially the same thing in the introduction. Try reading with proper understanding what the author of the Gospel of Luke says. He intends to report on the events that took place from the beginning, “as they were handed down to us by those who saw them from the beginning and were servants of the Word.”

[ 43 ] And we believe that servants of the Word or the Logos wrote these documents. We come to believe this when, through our own spiritual research, we see how things were, when we see how our Earth’s evolution is shaped by Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon. When we then see in the comprehensive words of the Gospel of John and in the words of the Gospel of Luke that we can rediscover this independently of any written record, we learn to appreciate these texts once again and say to ourselves: They are evidence to us that they were written by those who could read in the spiritual world, and they are a means of communication for us with those who lived in ancient times. In a certain sense, we look them in the eye and say: “We recognize you!”—as we rediscover in spiritual science what they had recognized.