The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[It is a profound truth:] The gods have been man-like beings in the past, and man will be a god-like being in the future. The gods have gone through an apprenticeship in the past; man is going through it today. What have the gods achieved in their development that preceded the earth? To be able to co-create all that surrounds us. Mineral, plant and animal kingdom are a creation of the gods.

Once there was a state for the gods - devas - in which they learned exactly the same thing that man learns today. Any finished art presupposes that lessons have been learned. [If you study Raphael, you will find that he was preceded by predecessors who gradually tried what he then brought to a supreme level]. In order for harmony to emerge, experiments must first be made, disharmonies must be overcome.

Human beings today are learning to master the mineral kingdom. The further we look back in history, we find that in the beginning man could not master the mineral kingdom. Only gradually did he learn. He ground his grain with two stones until gradually [after much trial and error] he brought about the mill. He learned to transform the forces of the mineral kingdom into art products. Basically, all human activity is a transformation of the mineral forces and substances into art products. There were times when man had not yet laid hands on the mineral kingdom, but had begun to plow the earth. We can look into a future where man will have transformed all minerals into artificial products. In a millennium, not so many discoveries have been made as in the nineteenth century alone. Things will go faster and faster in the future. Wireless telegraphy can already give a foretaste of it. [From here, for example, blowing up the Tuileries.] If man has not become unselfish, he can wreak great havoc.

Man cannot transform the plant and animal kingdoms today, merely the mineral kingdom. In the next round, everything that man has reshaped will rise as a plant. Through the Pralaya, man will gain the germ [of what he is developing today]. Everything he achieves in overcoming the mineral kingdom will come up to him. The Cologne Cathedral, for example, will rise in the fifth round as a plant cathedral. Now man tries to put things together in external form, then they are there. In the same way, the devas used to try to put together what can rise today as a plant.

When I look at an infinitely beautiful rhythm, I have to learn that it is made of lessons. We see the sequence throughout the turn of the year: Nature dies and rises again. This is only possible because the sun is in a regular relationship with the earth. In the solar time, on the second planet, it has learned to make the turn. The solar devas first tried the way in which the rhythm is brought forth. So it is with all activity. It took a long time in the Saturnian time until the quartz crystal was brought forth. And so we have Saturn, Sun and Moon devas which brought forth the three realms and also the cycle of the year. All are effects of long activities and the signs of an activity in the future. Man has been in this work and through it has become as he is. Thus man is connected with the three realms. For what has it happened that the sun and the moon and so on have been brought into certain orbits? For man. For his sake the sun turned around and started its new orbit. At Christmas we have the shortest day. It was an infinitely important point when the sun parted [from the earth]; the earth was left to itself and now had to unfold the power itself, which had otherwise been given to it by the sun. From the feast of Easter the sun is really there, in full power.

Everything that happens in summer is an epoch related to the earlier period in which there was a union [of sun and earth]. And winter is the realm of darkness, which now comes to the earth, so that at Christmas time man can say to himself: Something happens here every year, like when the sun left. Therefore, every year the etheric power coming to the earth is drawn away. Christmas has not only a symbolic, but also a natural meaning. There from the human being a power withdraws, which otherwise comes to him.

A natural consequence is that man adapts his life to this changed life of the earth. When the student is ready, he must pay attention to it. Man must unfold from within the forces that otherwise flow to him from without. He must unfold the spring within himself. This source must be nurtured in the winter time. At the end of winter he must have made himself ripe to receive the outer life again. This is indicated in the festivals.

Christ is the revival of the inner etheric forces and is placed in the time when the earth gives out the least forces. At the time around Easter, he must give life to life. In this festive year man notices one thing: Here a force arises in him, which also flows in on him from outside. There man remembers the time when he was still one with the sun. Man was in the bosom of the gods; then he had split off at the same time with the earth, and must now begin to shine from within.

We see why the great myths of all times gave names of gods to the planets. What the god is spiritually, the planet is physically. Festivals are not something arbitrarily inserted, but read from the heavens. The festival calendar is the cosmology. In the times when people understood the connection between human and celestial life, the priests composed the calendars. This is important for the one who, at a higher level of development, directs his gaze up to the heavenly bodies in order to put himself in harmony with the world forces, and this, in turn, is the basis of astrology. The etheric body will flourish differently if it is a sun child or a winter child. By placing the birth of man on certain dates, the Maharajas can cause etheric forces to act upon him as his karma requires. From the time of birth, one can in turn infer the karma.

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If one follows the sun as it rises, one sees that it does not rise at the same point every day, but that it rises at a certain point in the spring and then gradually advances further and further. This [point] is determined according to a sign in the [zodiac]: Now the Sun rises in the sign of Pisces ♓, formerly it was in the sign of Aries ♈, still earlier in the sign of Taurus ♉, and if we go further and further back the circle we come to the sign of Gemini ♊, Cancer ♋, Leo ♌, Virgo ♍, Libra ♎, Scorpio ♏, Sagittarius ♐, Capricorn ♑, Aquarius ♒.

Around 800 BC, the Sun began to rise in the sign of Aries or the Lamb. The constellations are so far apart that they always make up about one-twelfth of the circle. From one constellation the sun passes into the other. Around the year 1800 the sun moved into the constellation of Pisces, so it took 1800+800=2600 years to pass from one constellation to the other. This is always connected with great transformations on the Earth. There are always significant cultural changes going on. The changes in the conditions of the earth are of course connected with the fact that the sun has great influence on the earth. Everything that is called mental in man is connected with the sun, everything physical with the earth. When man lives on the earth, [he is dependent on the earth, develops according to the earthly conditions]. 2600 years ago man took up different than now; then he was formed to be an athlete, for example, now he is formed to be a writer.

Also on the sun the conditions are changing. We can say that for the Sun, for the Earth the changes have great importance. When man is spiritually embodied, he lives in the conditions of the Sun, in Devachan. He is connected with the earth gravity as long as he is on earth. If he dies, he will be related to the solar gravity. The moon is in between, it is connected with the astral body, forms the intermediate stage between the earth and the sun - Kamaloka.

The incarnations have the purpose that man really goes through what he can go through. Not haphazard are the incarnations, but man is connected with the solar existence, so that he develops mentally just as the sun moves in its [ecliptic]. In 12 times 2600 years, that is in 31200 years, the sun goes once around through all constellations. This is also the time in which man goes through his mental development. He goes through twelve stages in a cycle, then he always meets different stages on earth, in which he learns new things. Female-male is occultly counted together, so that he has to go through twenty-four incarnations. This is the law of the interspace between new birth and death. This coincides approximately also with the race formations. Always between two such [constellations] a new race arises. In each race man has incarnated twice, as man and as woman. He finds different conditions and learns in different ways. Pedantic regularity in the incarnations does not exist; because it does not depend only on the inner conditions of man. [When the earth can use someone, then the law is broken.] So, on the whole, only in general this cycle of individuality coincides with the cycle of race. The intermediate time is also related to the laws of heaven.

Man comes to Kamaloka by the fact that his astral body is still connected with the drives and desires which he can satisfy only on earth, in the physical shell. As long as the human being has not gotten out of the habit of desiring, so long it lasts. Man has been completed in his present physique by the coming out of the moon. Therefore, his instinctive life is connected with the moon. The urge to the physical body is implanted by the moon and is connected with the moon forces. Therefore, man is embodied with the sphere of the moon as long as these drives last in him. A lunar cycle lasts eighteen years. This is also the time man must remain in the Kamaloka.

All these deeper truths are expressed in the religious-ritual formulas. Thus we have also the gateway to the so-called astrology.

A new cycle is the occurrence of the same conditions. The evolution runs along a spiral, so that each time it starts at a slightly higher point.

On the body of sensation hangs the sense sensation, the power to see and to hear. Our intercourse with the environment is related to our sense sensations, how much of it we can take in, whether or not we have a well-organized ear or eye. Our perceptions are regulated by this. How much we can absorb into our inner being in a lifetime depends on this. The sentient body has significance only for one incarnation of man between birth and death; it has no more influence for the immediately next incarnation. Now the sentient soul sends its Indriyas into the perceptions. Something higher is how man processes the impressions. This is imprinted on the sentient soul; this still has meaning for the next incarnation. Something still higher is the impression that man makes on his mind soul - as memory, feeling - how one enjoys something in the mind soul, and that has significance for the third incarnation. So that man with the construction of his external senses belongs only to the present, but what he processes with them goes into other incarnations.

Those who process little will bring nothing into the next incarnation through themselves; the other adds something from within himself which has a lasting effect. Let us think of such people opposite leading individualities. Who processes little, little can be implanted in him. Through the receptive mind-soul, the achievements are taken over into the future.

What now even man works into the consciousness soul, that goes into the fourth incarnation. Concepts belong to the consciousness soul; so that concepts, which seem to be innate, are acquired before [four] incarnations. Now even the highest mental images, as we experience them about the Divine, enter into the spirit self and work into the fifth incarnation.

According to this, one can calculate how to lead humanity as an initiate. If in the fifth sub-race Theosophy should come out, in the fifth preceding race this Divine had to arise.

Those whom I can now influence through my Rishis will then be ripe to receive the same in terms - said the Manu.

What man develops in his life-mind through meditation, he takes across to his sixth incarnation. And when he has learned to act on his etheric body through meditation, he takes what he has learned as chela over into the seventh incarnation. When the spiritual man is trained, it passes over into the eighth incarnation. And the master affects the ninth incarnation.

So we see that higher beings have had influence on the etheric body for seven incarnations, and on our physical body powers from the fourth sub-race of Atlanteans through nine incarnations. Therefore, the present bodies are built up by the beings who at that time had an effect on the Atlanteans.

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Laws of evolution of the inner karma We thus see the working of the inner karma and will understand what the Manu did when he prepared in the fifth sub-race of the Atlanteans - Ur-Semites - the little cluster that became the next tribal race. Something had to be prepared that could work after the sixth - Akkadians - and the seventh sub-race of Atlanteans - Mongols - had passed, still during four incarnations. After four incarnations comes out what has been implanted in the consciousness soul: the ego.

According to this scheme, the initiates calculated the future plan of mankind.

If we wish to understand the consciousness soul of a man, we must go back to his fourth incarnation. Those natures which assert themselves with especially strong energy have acquired it by especially strong activity four incarnations ago. People who have especially clear, combining mind and special feeling directions go back to three incarnations. Something that adheres to the sentient soul, feeling of beauty, tone of voice, timbre, goes back to the previous incarnation, In the case of the person who has not made it to the spirit self, we can only go back to four incarnations. We then see that something else is acting on him.

Everything is gradual in the world; new beings are always advancing. The higher, more perfect beings act upon those bodies of man over which he himself has no influence. Therefore his lower bodies are better organized than his astral body. The astral body is the result of human karma. Etheric body and physical body partly also, but other beings must cooperate, so that a special etheric body and physical body correspond to this astral body. We have seen that chelas can act on their etheric body, and masters, adepts on their physical body. On [every] human etheric body and physical body chelas and masters can also act. The difference is that the human being acts unconsciously, whereas the chela and master act consciously.

There are entities that still rise above these. On what do they have influence? On still higher things in man. Before man became a physical being, he was an etheric being and even earlier an astral being. Now nothing is lost on earth. What exists, remains, only it takes higher forms. The former etheric and astral bodies of men have become general; they work together as the astral bodies of the different nations. As masters work on our physical body, higher entities work on these "racial bodies"; "angels of circulating times>" they are called. They are the great regulators of national developments. They condition the appearance of a certain individuality in a nation - Luther, Bismarck. So there is more at play than human karma; it is intelligent direction.

Higher up is an even greater spirit, whose body is a mental one. In Christian esotericism they are called the "Archangels of the Circulating Times": seven great regulators of religious systems. Each sub-race has a system. The archangels together form the choir that regulates our root race: a choir of seven genii.

When you go up to the Arupa region, there we have what is called the body of genius that governs the whole root race; still higher, the genius that governs the whole round. Thus we come up to the seven who stand before the throne of God. All esotericism has this hierarchical division up to the top.

If we go back to the leader in the third root-race - Lemuria - who gave the impact to the impregnation with Manas, we see that it is a power even higher than the archangels of the circulating times. <"Exusiai> are called these powers, beings who regulate knowledge, while the archangels still regulate [in the unconscious] the religious.

So we see that the world becomes "entities" through and through. [Inwardly with its own body, outwardly other beings regulate karma]. He who does not know that everything is entity around him, does not know that from everywhere comes the counteraction to his action.

Astral Man
Ether man
Physical man
Etheric body
Astral body

It is always necessary to a kingdom of nature that three certain forces be processed by the beings of this kingdom of nature. Thus, the mineral kingdom processes the chemical forces. The plant kingdom depends on the light; certainly also heat is necessary, but it remains in the environment, the light processes the plant directly. The animal kingdom processes the heat, the fire. Then in the human kingdom the sound is processed. All processing is done through organs. Through leaves, the light is processed into the plant, and this creates the pigment chlorophyll, green color. Animal life warmth is produced by the heart. The heart is the organ through which the heat passes into the human and animal body, it works the heat around. The heart, like the other human organs, is built symmetrically. Actually, man has two hearts separated by a septum. Each half of the heart is in turn separated by a septum into atrium and actual heart, so that one has to distinguish four spaces: Atrium and ventricle, connected by the valve, and right and left heart. Now from the left ventricle goes the great vein, aorta, upward first; then the aorta sends a branch that supplies the brain. Another branch goes throughout the body, supplying the abdominal region through a fine vein. Other branches go down into the limbs, and then they come into the right atrium. From the brain, a branch goes back into the right atrium. This is the great circulation.

From the right ventricle goes the small circulation; the branch goes directly into the lungs and coming back from the lungs goes into the left atrium, then through the left valve into the left ventricle. In the lungs, the blood is renewed; it breathes in the oxygen, the blue blood goes through the combustion process and starts its cycle again as red blood. Combustion always means the combination of a substance with the oxygen of the air. What goes on in the lungs is a process of combustion; a real relationship that develops between the individual animal body and the whole air is what happens. Just as the plant consumes light, so the animal consumes fire; it is a heating of the body. The higher process is that which then takes place in man alone - animals have merely a disposition of it - that is sound.

These three links represent a connection between microcosm and macrocosm. The big circuit that goes through the whole body is called microcosm; the single being and the small circuit represent the connection with the macrocosm. There are transitions between individual beings: Fishes have no lungs and also no heart so developed, therefore the fish has alternating warmth, the warmth of its environment. The heart gradually works its way out in the reptile; the lungs work their way out of the swim bladder, from an aquatic organ into an air organ.

Everything in the world is based on this connection between microcosm and macrocosm. The connections made in this way make it clear that it is impossible for human beings to be separated from the larger world. It is impossible for man to exist without air. It is illusion to believe that man is more independent than his hand. He, too, can live only in connection with the great organism. It belongs to the earth as the hand belongs to man. The heart is a kind of brain for the future. This can also be understood already now. The brain is merely a bulge of the nervous system. Now there is not only this nervous system in the human body, but also the solar plexus, the sympathetic nervous system. There are two smaller strands on the spinal cord, they spread out, and their task is to supply all involuntary movements of the human being, which are connected with digestion, respiration and so on, plexus solaris. In lower animals this sympathetic nervous system has a much greater importance, because it precedes the actual formation of the heart, as for example in the intestinal animals, they are also called plant animals. Now the heart is formed with its nervous system and makes the creature self-sufficient, which develops its brain.

Three things we can say:

First: The world creates a being through the sympathetic nervous system.

Second, it gives it the opportunity to become self-sufficient through the heart.

And thirdly, the cerebral nervous system is formed, whereby that which formerly acted upon the heart from without, acts outwardly from the brain through the heart. As to the sympathetic nervous system corresponds light, so to the brain corresponds inner light, and between the two stands heat.

We want to consider as an example an organ which can show us how, towards two sides, a being can be dependent. Basically, one can also consider a human organ as independent to a certain extent - for example, the eye. It is more noble than the whole human being, it is more developed. The eye rests as a round body inside the eye socket. If we could take it out and make a cut, we would see the following: In front, the wall of the eye is transparent; light can enter the eye through the pupil. [Behind] is the lens of living material, in there the light is refracted; it passes through the fluid that fills it, and a small image is formed on the posterior wall. So far the eye is a physical apparatus; the same thing happens in any photographic apparatus.

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So far the eye is physical body, Sthula Sharira. It goes to the generation of the image. But it this image would never be my image if the eye were only physical body. For that, the eye must be in some connection with the person concerned, it must be a part of his organism, it must be alive. This is brought about by the fact that the eye is continually maintained in life from the body. The blood circulation supplies the eye with blood, inside the eye is wallpapered with small blood vessels, clothed with the choroid. Through it it is a part of the body, it lives, is maintained as a member of the living body by the choroid. This is the lower self of the eye.

But of the image we would know nothing [yet], the eye is only living. It must enter into the service of something higher, which is the retina, a fine nerve membrane that is in communication with the brain. The image is transformed into consciousness and led to the brain. The eye gives itself up, to a higher self. So it grows out of a foundation, gets form and gives what it creates to a higher being. So it is with every being, also with the human being. As the eye is rooted in the human being, so the whole human being is rooted in the physical earth and draws its means of support from it. And just as the eye has a physical body, so man also has it and in turn gives himself to a higher being. In the whole world the same is to be found; one sees how everything is connected.

Now it is a question of our becoming precisely aware that a being can be a physical body in particular, without connection with another; but that it cannot be a living being without connection with others. Hence we speak of a general Brahma and not of a particular one.

So as we have considered the eye, it is with the present man. But it was not always so. In lower animals we can consider a kind of eye point, that pushes out, seeks first to come into existence; therein lies desire. Before the eye became such an unselfish organ, there was in it the desire to develop, its kamic, the desire to come to the light. If we look at this eye, we see:

First: the physical that is formed.

Second: a kind of force, that the eye is formed just at this point.

Third: the desire to come to the light.

It is just like human beings: physical body, etheric body and astral body. The desire must be present, but has already given way to selflessness at the eye, has surrendered to higher purposes. Through desire it called itself into existence, and later devotion arose instead of desire. Such is the astral body, it has the meaning to call into existence, to create, and when the human being is there, it must transform into devotion. The whole man must come as far as the eye, instead of desire there must be devotion.

[If you turn to this contemplation again, you will ask yourself: yes,] what does the eye actually perceive? In order for it to perceive, an image of the object must first be created. Between that which perceives and the object itself an image slides in, so that one must distinguish: Object, image and perception.

Let us now consider the ear. A superficial observer might think it is the same, but it is not. First of all, the ear has an external auditory canal. Attached to it is the eardrum, it closes the ear inward. After that, the actual organ of hearing begins. It has the little cartilages and the three arches; these are lined with a network that goes into [the cranial nerve]. There are a lot of little fibers in the ear, each tuned to a particular tone. When a sound comes from outside, for example, " the little fiber that is tuned to starts vibrating, the others don't. They have in their ear something like a real piano, Corti's organ.

The difference between seeing and hearing is this: in seeing, an image is made of the object; this is completely omitted in hearing, one perceives the object directly. So one enters into a much more intimate relationship with what is happening in the world. The ear is therefore more advanced than the eye, it is much more absorbed in the object, no image is pushed forward. The eye, too, will eliminate the image, at a much higher level, and then the eye will perceive not merely images, but objects directly. But then they will be higher, finer objects than those which the ear perceives{[, ethereal objects.

I have said,] man is, as it were, the transformed plant, the head is the root, firmly rooted in the earth. The ear as the most advanced organ should show how it has grown out of the objects and how it grows in again. The three arches do not stand at random, but in three different directions. If any of these channels is defective, man begins to stagger, he cannot stand vertically; so that man owes his orientation to the three arches. They are placed perpendicularly in three directions of space, and only through them man can orient himself.

What holds man to the earth? Gravity. As long as the earth itself directed man upright, he did not need special gravity organs. Since the earth has released man, he has just in the ear, the most advanced organ, the organs to straighten up in the sense of gravity. So that we have two senses in the ear: the sense of gravity or gravitation, sense of orientation, which is the lower, lower sense, and the higher, the sense of hearing.

So we can see how complicated everything is in life. In the eye, when the image will be off, we will also have two senses. This is something that lets in the development do a look in perspective.

The ossicles initially consist of the hammer, which can strike another ossicle, the anvil. Another bone goes off, horseshoe-shaped, it's called the stirrup, and it finishes off with the oval window. This was the vestibule. From here go three arched canals, into which the auditory nerve opens. With these three arches we must remember that they go to the three directions of the space. Then come the cochlea, equipped with a fluid, and the labyrinth.

In contrast to the eye, we are dealing with the immediate object itself. This is a higher degree of going into the object.

We have not merely one sense in the ear, but basically two senses. When the canals are damaged and the arches become disordered, man gets vertigo; he cannot orient himself in the three dimensions of space. It is the sense of orientation, [gravitational sense]; this is even the older sense of the ear. Even in lower animals there are organs similar to half-hump-shaped canals, in which there are small stones, called otoliths, which move when the animal changes its position. In very lower animals, where there is no question of hearing, we find these small stones - the sense of orientation. Also already in plants we find cells, preferably in the root tip, which contain loosely lying small starch grains. These have a special task. Plants grow vertically out of the earth, in the upward direction of gravity. How do they find their way? They have a sense of direction through the starch grains. The root is the head of the plant, during the rotation the otoliths have formed. In the moon plants - like mistletoe, for example - we don't find them.

You see that the plant has one pole toward the earth, the other pole goes toward the sun. The leaves strive toward the sun; as far as they can, they stand perpendicular to the sun. The plant leaf is made up of cells; on the surface of green foliage leaves are cells which are somewhat convex toward the outside and flat toward the bottom. Each such cell is like a lens with the bright focal point in the center. Only when the lot is vertical, the focal point falls in the center, otherwise it falls back; it is like the eyes of insects.

So the plant seeks sun pole and earth pole. This is the peculiarity of the light beings or plant beings. Every prana being has these two poles, one to the ground on which it grows, the other to the source that gives it the life forces. As long as man was a solar being, he was like that. Man has turned around, thereby he has transformed his old sense, the gravitational sense, and now, on his entry into the mental, he has added the auditory sense and developed the corresponding organ through which he becomes a creator. To the hearing is added the larynx, a sense organ which becomes the organ of will. Both correspond to each other.

The earth brings forth gravitation, the ear perceives gravitation. Now the force is in the human being after he has torn himself away from the earth. The turned gravitational force in the spirit, the word, he must now bring forth.

With the organ of hearing we have already united two senses, and in addition an organ of expression, in order to express what we have heard. We cannot yet see this in the sense that is spread over the whole body, in the sense of touch. In it there are also two different senses: the sense for hard and for soft resistance as well as the sense for cold and warmth, temperature sense. The actual sense of touch is an ancient sense, like the sense of gravity. Even the simplest cell of the [skin] has a sense of touch. Sense of temperature occurs later, like the sense of sound to the sense of gravity. Here we see how the human being is in development. The ear has already got its larynx, the skin has not yet got what corresponds to it. In the human head an organ is preparing itself which will spread warmth around it, just as the larynx brings forth sound, a very small body, the so-called mucous body, which in the future will stretch out over the whole body.

A third sense is the eye, it does not yet have the organ corresponding to it, even the second sense, it is still far behind. The second sense [of the eye] is clairvoyance, and an organ will come to its side, which today is already predisposed in the brain, it will turn the images of the eye into realities. This organ is called the pineal gland.

Man will make the word a real object by permeating it with warmth. Man's present thoughts create his organs.

Certainly the present materialistic doctrine of evolution tells us that from the mineral kingdom the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, the human kingdom arose. According to the theosophical teaching, the original is man. He has separated from himself first the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom and the mineral kingdom. In these three kingdoms we can see it best.

In the coal deposit we meet the burning coal; it was a plant millions of years ago. The huge primeval forests that covered the earth had trees similar to ferns and horsetails. They first buried themselves in themselves. The solid ground has originated from the plant, in that it formed the earth ground as coal solidified. Our whole mineral world we would be able to follow, if we go on, up to the plant world. The rocks are nothing else than corpses of ancient plants, and our present coal would change after millions of years to other rock. So that the basic substance of all minerals is coal. Coal is plant body and original substance of all mineral. What is it, then, that actually makes all other minerals out of coal? What force is it?

It is a force which really pervades the whole mineral world, namely the electric force which rests, as it were, locked in all mineral and which can be called forth. And what has made the various minerals out of coal is precisely the electric force.

What actually causes the plant to become a mineral, a coal? What goes away from the plant? Prana - the life principle goes away. If we take it away from it and instead give electricity to the carbon, if we replace the life ether with electrical or chemical ether, then we get mineral.

If we go up still further, there is no vegetable kingdom on earth either, but only an animal kingdom; and the vegetable kingdom is born out of the animal kingdom just as coal and rock are born out of the vegetable kingdom. What did this animal kingdom contain at that time? It was a kingdom which consisted of a different substance than the present one. It was air animals. This ancient animal kingdom mixed air with prana and also with kama, and this air was carbonic acid. That which we find today in certain seltzer waters, these air bubbles, was the matter of which the animals were composed. Kama, Prana and carbonic acid, that resulted in our ancient animal kingdom. Carbonic acid consists of carbon and oxygen. At the moment when oxygen is released from the animal, it retains only carbon and sinks into the plant kingdom. And what happened to Kama? It draws the oxygen; as we know, it causes the blood circulation. Thus we have a certain cycle from the aerial animal to the plant and to the mineral. In those ancient times, where there was no human kingdom, the plant was an aquatic being, so we have to distinguish:

- First: an ancient animal kingdom in the air, interwoven,

- second: with an ancient plant kingdom whose matter was liquid carbon, that is, water, and

- thirdly: the mineral kingdom - earth, solid matter.

Now, however, these kingdoms still remain in their descendants. When the ancient animal kingdom was there alone, it did not need first to bring up external substance. But now, when the plant kingdom arose, it had to draw substances out of the plants in order to nourish itself. So that the animal kingdom ceases to be the only kingdom, it is dependent on the kingdom next to it. So it is the ancient animal kingdom that draws its nourishment from the plant kingdom.

Then we get a plant kingdom which processes the mineral kingdom. This is always done with the help of another. In the mineral kingdom, the animal kingdom processes the plant kingdom with the help of heat. The plant kingdom processes the mineral kingdom with the help of light, and our mineral kingdom processes electricity.

The ancient animal kingdom did not yet have heat, but had within it the power of kama. This is connected with the animal kingdom also now, but not with substance, but with heat. With the plant, in the connection with the light, there is the prana. In a certain respect heat and kama have entered into looser connection by the fact that something has come between them. If we go back from the air, we think of this connection becoming still looser; if we come back from the heat into the air, we have not kama penetrating the air, but sound, and thus we come to man. Originally the word - word-sound - then man has gone through all the kingdoms until he returns and becomes again the ruler of sound.

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The various limbs of the human being are related to the seven successive great planets. We must be clear that the human body as such has the physical degrees, then the etheric body and the astral body. Developed they have on Saturn, Sun, Moon.

Let us realize for once that something also had to have been already present when the Saturn chain began. We must ask ourselves: How did the physical body originate? This has become from an astral body. It is divided into these three parts, as it were like pieces of ice are condensed in water. We can regard this physical body as a condensation. It was exactly an imprint of the preceding divine astral body. During the whole development of Saturn this physical body gradually subdivides. Little by little the seven sensory germs of man work themselves out. On the sun the etheric body separates. This division causes at the same time that the senses, which were formed earlier on Saturn, attain a certain ability. Earlier they were only physical apparatuses on Saturn. Because of the addition of the ether on the sun, the eye shines, the ear sounds. So that we can say that the physical body and the etheric body work together on the sun, while a rest of the astral body remains. On the moon, a new system is added: masculine and feminine, in such a way that on the moon the physical body is always the masculine, the etheric body the feminine. The astral body is neutral.

Now we have on the Moon three bodies sharply differentiated: physical body, etheric body and astral body, which come to Earth as the fruit of the Moon. What must happen? Man must become self-aware, he must get an "I". He could not get an "I" if only the forces were in him which come from the moon; it must come from outside. It is the force that comes from Jupiter. From the next planet we will enter comes the force that forms our I. The power center of Jupiter is already there, the earth Jupiter not yet. The beings that have now reached Jupiter draw man after them and now give him the power of the ego. The astral body must now first be made suitable to become the bearer of this I, and is now endowed with two kinds of forces: with Mars forces and with Mercury forces. The Mars forces first make it free from the Moon forces, and the Mercury forces prepare it for the next three planets; they make it suitable for ascension.

What becomes of the astral body when it has absorbed the Martian forces, we call the sentient soul; when it has absorbed the Mercury forces: the mind soul, and the move to Jupiter: consciousness soul.

Now a great change has taken place with the astral body. This revolution causes its whole nature to change, it is split into two. In the astral body of the present earth man the lunar forces are still present: This is the lower pole of the astral body; and that striving towards Jupiter is the higher pole - they are the bodily and the spiritual pole. What goes on with the bodily pole is subject to birth and death. The spiritual pole is still a baby, gradually forming and becoming the causal body. What the latter has achieved remains, while the lower pole is always building up its physical and etheric body anew. This lower pole of the astral body is even now hermaphroditic, male-female. And while on the moon the physical body was always male, the etheric body always female, on earth this changes in such a way that the human being is male in one incarnation and female in the other. Likewise, the etheric body alternates. When the physical body is passive, the etheric body is active. The forces are polar.

Now with the etheric body, namely when it is active - masculine - the quality which Plato calls courage is exhibited, and we therefore actually find that certain acts of courage, especially when one speaks of love, are more exhibited in the female sex than in the male, while in the average man in love the receiving is more apparent.

The changes in the astral body itself, brought about by Mars and Mercury forces and the Jupiter forces - what are they like? When the divine entities recognized the time to be right, they brought down the Mars forces and put them into man. These forces are preferably sound and sonic. In contrast, the Mercury forces are preferably forces of light, color phenomena. The astral body becomes luminous in a new way. About the middle of the Atlantean race the Mercury forces begin to work. There also the one eye turns into the two. The Mercury forces illuminate the astral body, the Jupiter forces penetrate it with forces similar to the electric ones. There the foundation is laid for what has been described above in relation to coal.

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Sonic Forces Mars Forces - Sentient Soul

Light forces Mercury forces - mind soul

Electric forces Jupiter forces - consciousness soul

When one learns Theosophy today, one often feels it to be something completely new. Neither a man who has graduated from the theological, nor one who has graduated from the philosophical faculty, will ever have heard of these relations of man to the rest of nature. Yet there is nothing in our present science that contradicts these teachings. Everything that is taught today only gets a hand and foot when it is built on the basis of Theosophy. The future development will be such that Theosophy will spread over all branches of knowledge. It will not take very long, because the development does not always go at the same speed; at the beginning it goes rapidly, slows down, and when it is past the middle, it goes up again rapidly. This can be proved by following things on the astral plan. From Charlemagne to the eighteenth century, there were many discoveries. Nevertheless, in these thousand years the development does not contain more than in the hundred years that have gone on since the end of this development. However, it is now going ten times as fast as in the time of Charlemagne. From this we can infer that it will not be very long before the Theosophical worldview will draw wide circles around it.

One does not find this knowledge any more with those who are determined "ex officio" to it. It was not always so. In the year 83 a man was born who had a great influence on the development of Christianity. In every line of this man we find a theosophical teaching. Now, however, he was the purest churchman. He saw in the church the purest embodiment of Christianity. From this we see that there was a theosophist as the tone-setting church teacher in those days. If you keep the terms fluid, only then you will understand the different theosophies of the world. It is not the way of expression but the meaning that must be emphasized. The doctrine of the sevenfold constitution of man is found in Augustine. He starts from the soul. It was common at that time to divide man into the well-known three members: Body, Soul and Spirit. These three parts presented themselves to the church father approximately like three liquids, which one mixes together and then can no longer distinguish from each other. Thus Augustine gets seven members out. They correspond to the sevenfold division of the theosophists. By also acquiring such views, our own insight becomes deeper and deeper.

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From the scheme we see that we need do nothing but study our own Christianity. Augustine had predecessors: Justin the Martyr; then Origen taught especially clearly. He explicitly taught the pre-existence of the soul. A philosophical foundation for Christianity was needed because Arab philosophers were gradually arriving from Spain. These had thorough knowledge in the occidental philosophy, namely of Aristotle. This also forced the Christian teachers of the Middle Ages to study Aristotle and base Christianity on him. Averroes and Maimonides were the names of the Arab philosophers. Under the compulsion of Aristotle, the initial doctrine of the soul came into Christianity.

The Celtic remnants first seized Christianity with power. The purest and most vigorous Christianity until the tenth century was taught in Ireland, England and Scotland. A beautiful monastic life developed there. The missionaries who spread Christianity in Central Europe were all from this area. Why is it in the Celtic monasteries that Christianity takes its beautiful, powerful form? In the ancient Druidic mysteries there were the same teachings. As a secret service, the teachings of the Druids were still present until the age of Queen Elizabeth. What was taught in the Druid Mysteries was the same as what is in Theosophy and Christianity. They basically got their own teaching, only in different words. Only one thing was new, which gave the great impetus to this wise mission. They had been told: We are there for the preparation of a future religion; our religion will give way to a greater one. As with the prophets of the Old Testament, Christianity was expected, foretold in the Druid Mysteries. Now they had what was expected. In Christianity came what had been predicted for millennia. The tragic train comes because the doctrine of the twilight of the gods exists; the old gods must give way to a new religion.

The teacher to whom the Irish and Scottish monks mainly go back is Beda Venerabilis. With him one finds similar things like the teachings of the carbon. In the Middle Ages one has forgotten this so that one does not understand any more what one reads with the great spirits. All this will revive Theosophy.