The Rudolf Steiner Archive

A week ago I attempted to explain a way of thinking which is very alien to people in the West and which gives the theosopher insights into the cosmos. The lectures must of necessity be sketchy in character, and this prevents me from presenting the theosophical cosmology in full detail. I will, however, attempt to give you a picture of the genesis of the world which is the basis of theosophy, doing so in narrative form. I would ask those who demand something scientific to remember that it simply is not possible for me to give any kind of scientific foundation for what I have to say in three short lectures. Anyone who wants such a scientific foundation will find it in a later course, when I will be speaking on the subject in more detail.³⁷ A second volume of my Theosophy, which is due to appear soon, will also be on cosmology.³⁸

Above all let me give you an important initial idea which essentially is very simple, but must be considered by anyone who seeks to understand evolution in theosophical terms. Speaking of evolution on the large scale, we mean not only animal or plant life arising from another life, but also the great transformations in our universe, and this includes the origin of matter, matter in the actual sense, as we are able to perceive it with our physical senses today.

The last time we spoke of the seven successive levels to be distinguished in the evolution of our planet, and I described them to you at least briefly. You need to envisage our earthly planet going through seven stages in rhythmical sequence, as it were, stages we call rounds. Everything that exists and lives on our Earth today did also exist before our present-day Earth came into existence; it existed, however, in a kind of seed stage, just as the whole plant exists already in a seed, lying dormant in it, as it were, before it unfolds in the outside world. In theosophy we also call such a dormant stage of all human beings ‘pralaya’. The state in which everything awakens to life, gradually emerging and progressing from beginnings to perfection, to a peak, is called a ‘manvantara’. When perfection has been reached, pralaya again follows, to be followed in turn by a state of being awake and growing. The planet is going through this sequence seven times, awakening to a new round seven times. The period between one manvantara and another thus passes in a state where everything that is alive and active on our Earth goes to sleep, as it were. This sleep cannot be compared with ordinary human sleep. With the latter, only the activities of the rational mind and the human senses are suspended, whilst human physical life continues. You have to see the Earth’s sleep state as something very different. This state of the Earth would only be perceptible to the opened eye of the most highly developed seer, a dangma.

Such a state cannot be described in our words, for our words are not made for this form of existence. I cannot find words for this state in any language. The developed seer would therefore say something quite different to give an idea of this state. He would say: Imagine a plant. You see it. Now think of a kind of plaster cast of this plant, with the plant in all its parts now a hollow space surrounded by plaster of Paris. Now imagine that everything which is plaster of Paris is spiritual and only perceptible to certain sensory perceptions. Someone who is able to see the plant cannot see the plaster cast at the same time, it being the negative of the plant.³⁹ This would be more or less what a developed seer would be able to perceive of the Earth in its pralaya sleep. The Earth would not be there. It would be the cavity, the hollow form. It is as if it were in an great, tremendous sea of most sublime spirits which is gradually thinning out in all directions, with the existence of Earth itself pouring forth from this, as it were.

Then something began to develop in this hollow space, but it was not yet perceptible to physical eyes, only to a highly developed seer who is able to move freely in the sphere of the devachanic plane. Someone who has this vision would see an orb in space at the beginning of earthly existence, a purely spiritual orb, with anything on it also spiritual, only perceptible to the devachanic seer’s eye. Before a new round began, our Earth was in such a spiritual state. Awaking from pralaya sleep it awakened to such an orb. The devachanic seer perceives it to have a marvellous reddish shimmer. The orb is not visible to someone with astral vision only. It still holds everything in it which will later be Earth. Even the densest bodies are already there.

How can we get a picture of this? We may consider a simple process. Imagine a vessel containing water. The water is liquid. As you reduce the temperature the water will freeze and turn to ice. You have the same thing as before—ice being nothing but water, only in a different form. When you increase the temperature the ice will turn to water again, and if you heat it further even to steam. You can imagine that all materiality arises through condensation from the spiritual. The spiritual orb—only visible to a highly developed seer’s eye—condenses more and more, having first gone through a minor pralaya. It will then also be apparent to a less highly developed seer’s eye. A kind of short sleep state follows, and then the whole sphere presents in a more condensed state. It is then visible to the astral eye, that is, to someone whose senses have been opened on the astral plane. Then comes another pralaya state, and the orb emerges again, now in form of condensed physical matter. It is only now that physical eyes can see it, physical ears hear it, physical hands take hold of it. This is the fourth state. After another short pralaya the state dissolves again, and we have an astral orb again, but the spirits in it are much more highly developed now. An analogous state develops in the sixth round, which again is only visible to a devachanic seer. After a further pralaya the state is such that only the most highly developed seer’s eye can see it. Then the orb vanishes even for a dangma. A major pralaya follows, after which the whole process begins to repeat itself. This happens seven times over. The Earth is thus transformed from its lowest to its highest level.

Let us now look at the first round. The best way of studying it is to look at what was then densest on our Earth. Mineral forms did not exist in the first round, nor did physical forces of nature or chemical forces. The Earth had by then only developed far enough to provide a basis for physical existence; it created this basis in order to prepare for physical existence in the fourth round. The Earth then presented as a fiery mass, at such a tremendously high temperature that none of the forms of matter we have today could have the form which they have today. All substances were primeval mass—a kind of mush if I may use such a common term—uniform and undifferentiated. In theosophy the Earth is said to have been in the fire state at that time. This is no ordinary fire, however, but a fire of a higher, spiritual kind. No chemical elements existed. Yet there was activity inside this matter. Two kinds of spirits were active in it—those we call ‘dhyan-chohans’ and others which had not yet descended into the state of physical materiality, partly having a spirit body and partly being enveloped in astral matter; these flooded the fire matter with tremendous speed. We see irregular forms continually arising and disappearing, including forms which are already reminiscent of what will later exist on Earth. It seems like a kind of template, always coming and going. Something bubbles up which reminds us of the forms of later crystals and later plants, and indeed even something which is already assuming human forms, only to blow away again. The human beings who would incarnate at a later time lived in that fire, developing and modelling the bodies, preparing them. That is how this state in the first round on Earth presents itself to us. This fiery, flowing Earth then went into a sleep state.

The second round started in the same way. Let us again look at the earth where it was at its densest. This state now took a completely different form compared to before. It was a form which modem physicists also know, calling it ‘ether’. Ether is subtler than present-day gases, but denser than the Earth had been in the earlier round. In this extremely subtle matter, something evolved which we call chemical elements. You will find this second stage referred to in a truly marvellous way, saying that the gods arranged everything according to measure, number and weight.⁴⁰ Something which until then had been irregular became organized into chemical elements, and these assumed order by numbers. Chemists will understand this, for they know the regular periodic system of the elements. Matter thus developed specific proportions of measure and number once it had gained a degree of density, an etheric form. Individual substances still did not relate at this stage. They were alien to one another. Now, with matter differentiating, we see the most marvellous forms develop which are reminiscent of those that would come later, but are not yet stable—star-like forms, angular forms, tetrahedrons, polyhedrons, rounded forms, and so on. A hint is given of the forms that will later appear in the natural world. In the first round, crystalline forms had their precursors; now in the second round preparation is made for the plant world. Then the whole passed away again; the astral and the devachanic went through pralaya again before appearing in the third round.

If we consider the physical state of the third round we find that matter had changed considerably. It was not yet differentiated into air and water but was a kind of vapour or mist. No longer in ether form but like a kind of water vapour, mist, or like our clouds today—that is how we would have to envisage the Earth at this third stage. With those mists—we find them in ancient legends like those of Niflheim (land of mist)—matter was now no longer organized according to number but endowed with energies. Occult scientists speak of the law of elective affinities here. Chemical substances regulate themselves according to this law. Now, in the third round, energy appeared, making it possible for small things to grow larger and expand. Substances were able to organize themselves fully from inside, filling themselves with energy. Not only did the beginnings of plant nature appear, which we already saw in the second round, but growth had become possible. The first animal forms appeared, though we would consider them utterly grotesque today. Gigantic, colossal forms arose from the mist. There is some truth in it for an occultist when he looks up at the clouds and sees that one looks like a camel, another like a horse. In this third round entities were nebulous forms, with reproduction consisting in one changing into the other, one arising from another, like today’s lower cell organisms, which remind us of that time. The animal-like bodies arising from the mist were able to provide a first basis so that individual entities that had come across from earlier worlds would find a body. The human being was then able to incarnate, finding a housing that allowed him to come to expression, though initially in an imperfect, primitive and awkward way. Incarnations may also misfire. We may say that entities were on Earth in the third round that were intermediate between human and animal, with the human being not entirely at ease in them but still able to incarnate.

Then came another pralaya, followed by the fourth round. This is the round of which we ourselves are part. The Earth had thus first gone through the devachanic state, then down through the astral and etheric state, finally coming to the physical state which we have now reached. In the first round, the basis for the mineral world developed, in the second, the basis for the plant world; in the third round the potential arose for the development of animal forms. Now, in the fourth round, the human being has been given the ability to assume the form which he now has.

Let us take a closer look at the state of our physical Earth, our present round. The state of the Earth at this fourth level must be said to be very much denser than the states of the earlier rounds. Initially there was a fiery state, then a misty one, and then one that was between air and water. Now, however, at the beginning of the fourth round, we have a kind of swelling matter, rather like protein. The whole Earth was in that state at the beginning of the fourth round. Then everything gradually condensed, and matter as we know it on Earth today is nothing but the condensed matter which had originally been swelling—just as ice is condensed water matter. At the beginning of this fourth round, all entities were such that they could live in this swelling matter. The form of the human being did resemble that of today, but man was still in an utterly dim state of consciousness which would be comparable to a dreaming person today. He dreamt his way through life in a kind of sleep level of consciousness; he did not yet have a mind and spirit.

Let us take a closer look at this. The human being was possible in the swelling material. We would call the human being of that first race a human being in a dream. It is difficult to describe the human being of that first race. This state was followed by another, when matter condensed more and differentiated into a materiality that was more spiritual and another that was more physical—north pole and south pole, as it were. I would ask you to take note of the difference between the occult view of this and the generally accepted Darwinian view. When the Earth was in that state, the human being was present, and so was the plant world; the animal world was also extant, but in forms where there was as yet no sexual reproduction and no warm blood. These life forms were not yet able to produce sounds from inside themselves. The human being himself was still silent. Nor was he able to think, being unable to have even the dimmest ideas. The mind and spirit had not yet come to the living body. In the next race, the second one, matter differentiated to create two poles. The human being was, as it were, withdrawing the matter which was useful to him, setting anything less useful aside; this led to the higher animals developing as a kind of lateral branches. The lower animals already looked similar to today’s molluscs, and even fish-like forms were evolving.

The human being continued to develop. At the third level of race evolution he again set aside matter which he was unable to make the vehicle for a higher form of conscious awareness. He again let this go to provide material for creatures which then looked more or less like amphibians, in giant forms. Myth and fable refer to them as flying dragons, and so on. So far none of the life forms which had evolved had sexual reproduction. Only in the middle of the third race, the middle of the Lemurian age, did the beginnings of this appear. The arena for these events was in Lemuria, in the region of today’s Indochina in the Indian Ocean.

In the middle of the Lemurian age came the great event which made the human being human. Not all the humans which had come across from earlier planetary states were at the same level of evolution. Those who had achieved normal evolution during the earlier cycle on the misty Earth, were able to embody themselves during the third race. A number of them had, however, already reached a higher level, and they were completely unable to embody themselves in the third round. In every round, some human beings evolved to a normal level and others to a stage that went beyond this. Those who went beyond the normal level were masters, more highly developed individuals. In theosophical terminology they are called ‘solar pitris’. They had gained a higher level of spirituality but could not embody themselves in the body which the human being had at that time, just as today’s human being cannot incarnate in a plant body. They waited for evolution to continue until the right moment had come and their first true incarnation became possible in the fourth race. Then those more highly developed individuals, the solar pitris, were able to take possession of the existing forms. A humanity arose that had reached a high level of spiritual development. Legend and myths tell that there were people in those times who stood high above other human beings—individuals like Prometheus,⁴¹ the rishis of the Indians, fire rishis who then became the actual leaders of the human race, and also the manus which gave later humanity their laws. Only those solar pitris were able to incarnate as adepts.

As I told you, sexuality did not yet exist at the beginning of the fourth round. The division into sexes only came in the Lemurian age. And it was only with this that incarnation became possible, taking possession of a body, something which had not existed before. Previously, one entity had arisen from another. With the division into sexes in the middle of the Lemurian age, birth and death came on Earth, and this also meant the possibility for karma to be active. People could burden themselves with guilt. Everything we know to be ‘human’ arose at that time.

The continent of Lemuria perished in fire-like catastrophes, and the continent of Atlantis then arose from what today is the Atlantic Ocean. Another important event came in Atlantean times. I drew your attention to it when I spoke about Pentecost.⁴² I said then that except for the solar pitris, all existing entities were at a low level of mind and spirit. Only selected bodies were able to receive the solar pitris. The others would merely have made it possible for those spirits to live in a state of dim conscious awareness. People without heart and mind would have arisen if the bodies of that time had been used. The pitris therefore waited until specific animal forms had developed further. These had gone down more deeply into the life of drives on the one hand, but on the other hand this had created the preconditions for brain development at a later time. Matter had differentiated into ‘nerve matter’ and ‘gender matter’. The pitris who had waited for this later stage then became embodied in this poorer form of matter. This is called ‘the Fall’ in religious terminology—the descent into matter of a poorer kind. If this had not been done, they would all have remained at a much less consciously aware level. They could not have been used for the clear life of thought which we have today, but would have remained in a much dimmer, duller state. The price they paid for this was that they let the body get worse on the one hand, so that on the other hand they could enhance it and develop brain matter, achieving a higher level of conscious awareness. A special outcome of the Atlantean race’s evolution was a phenomenal memory.

When Atlantis had perished—through water—our present fifth race became a later continuation. Its special achievement has been the associative mind which enables the fifth race to take art and science to their highest levels, something which had not been possible before. In the fifth sub-race of the fourth round the human being reached a high point—control through the spirit, a spirit which had descended into matter so that it might now be taken upwards again to higher and higher levels. We have seen the cosmos evolve in rhythmic sequence of stages to the point where we are today. Earlier rounds led to the development of

1. mineral world,
2. plant world,
3. animal world,
4. [and then] human being.

Theosophical cosmology is an edifice complete in itself which has arisen from the wisdom of the most highly developed seers. If only I had a bit more time, I would be able to show you how particular natural scientific facts go powerfully in the direction of substantiating this image of the world. Consider Haeckel’s famous genealogies, for instance, with all evolution interpreted in a purely material sense.⁴³ But if you take the spiritual states as they are described in theosophy, rather than matter, or crystal, you can produce genealogies, just as Haeckel has done, though the explanation would be a different one.

Let me draw your attention to the following to prevent you from confusing the different astral or physical states described in some theosophical works with what I have been saying here. Evolution is often described as though different states ran side by side; you see orbs put side by side, so that it seems as if life moved from one to the other. In reality there is, however, only a single orb, and it is only its condition or state which changes. It is always the same orb going through the different metamorphoses—spiritual, astral, physical, and so on.

We have seen, therefore, that the starting point, which we took from Goethe’s words, has its full justification, the words being that ultimately it is the human being who shows himself to be the goal, as it were, a mission of the earthly planet.⁴⁴ The occultist knows that every planet has a particular mission. Nothing in the cosmos is random chance. The mission of physical evolution is to let the principle which is arising for us luman beings reach its goal. You would not find a human being like the present-day human being on any other planet. Spirits—yes, humans—no. The Earth exists so that the human being could evolve as an entity aware of being an I. The natural worlds evolved in the first four rounds in order that in the fourth the human being would have self-awareness, able to mirror himself consciously in the body. He will continue to ascend to higher states, and only very few people can form a real idea of these.⁴⁵ In the next, the fifth round, the mineral world will disappear completely. All mineral matter will be transformed into plant matter. Everything will live in the plant idea—speaking in occult terms. Then the plant world, too, will reach perfection, and in the following round the animal principle will be the lowest world. In the seventh round the human being will have reached the height of his evolution. He will then be what he is meant to become in his planetary evolution.

Someone who understands this may also gain profound insight into religious source documents. There was a time when people believed in them like children. There followed a period of enlightenment, when nothing was believed. Now a time will come when people will learn to understand the images again which have been preserved for us in religious writings, tales and fables. Thus we have the seven rounds shown as the seven days of creation in the Bible. The first three days of creation have passed, we are now in the fourth. The last three are still to come. The first three days of creation represent the rounds that lie in the past; in the last three we have an indication of what will come in future. Properly understood, what Moses wanted to say in describing the fourth day of creation was that we are in the fourth round; he also described this day specifically. This is also why you have two creations in the Book of Genesis.⁴⁶ People who merely apply the rational mind to the Bible will never understand this. The human being of the seventh day has not yet been created. Creating man out of clay is a simile for our fourth round. The double creation story speaks in image form of what has been created, of the state in which we are now, and of the state which will exist at the end of the seventh round. When we look at the Bible texts in this way, these documents suddenly gain a meaning of which we could not have the least idea before. Now humanity will finally realize that the meaning of it all is so profound that we almost have to become different human beings in order to understand. It will be necessary for the sublime spiritual meaning of this, the oldest document to be made plain again,⁴⁷ which is the mission of the theosophical movement. This does not find fault with the materialistic aspects of our time, realising that they are necessary. But it works towards the goal of letting humanity recognize the spiritual meaning of those documents again. This is also what we want to work on in the winter which lies ahead. Today’s lecture is the last in the course. But our Mondays will continue. We’ll meet here every Monday night at eight.

• 37. It appears this was never given. Elements may be found in public lectures, e.g. Berlin, 9 March 1905 on the origin of the Earth [in German, in GA 53].
• 38. See in ‘About this volume’.
• 39. See for instance the lecture given in Berlin on 30 October 1905, in Foundations of Esotericism (note 13).
• 40. See notes on the Logoi (2 July 1904) in this volume.
• 41. See lecture given in Berlin on 7 October 1904, in The Temple Legend (note 22).
• 42. On 23 May 1904. In German in GA 93.
• 43. See Ernst Haeckel, The Natural History of Creation vol. 2.
• 44. See Note 32.
• 45. E.g. essays in Cosmic Memory (note 11, chapter on the Earth and its future); lecture given in Oslo on 12 June 1912, in Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy and Philosophy, GA 137, London & New York: Rudolf Steiner Publ. Co. & Anthroposophic Press 1945.
• 46. See lectures given in Berlin on 4 Nov. & 8 Dec. 1903 [in German] in GA 88, and lecture course Genesis, GA 122, tr. D. Lenn, O. Barfield; London: Anthroposophical Publ. Co. 1959.
• 47. See lecture course Genesis (note 46).

We have to realize that the microcosm does to some degree relate to the macrocosm. Human beings have dual nature the way they present themselves today—body and soul from the outside, and the spirit which they have been developing from the inside, beginning in the middle of the Lemurian age. Soul and body are vestments for the evolving spirit. Human beings will gradually be more and more spiritual. The soul is the mediator between the physical aspect and the spirit. Today’s spirit human being had no part in the process in which hosts of sublime spirits worked to develop this organism with its body and soul. This has been created out of great wisdom. The most perfect photographic apparatus would be child’s play compared to the structure of the eye, which shows such wisdom, and this also holds true if we compare a piano with the structure of the ear, which also shows wisdom. The human skeleton is configured in a way showing the greatest wisdom. Every bone is made up of countless numbers of small struts that support one another. This is a much more profound wisdom than any wisdom human beings have ever gained through their activities in the outside world. How does the human being show his dual nature? Where the vestments are concerned, in a perfect structure; where the spirit is concerned, as the beginning of a gradual evolution.

The development of the human being is the work of two hosts of sublime cosmic builders.⁴⁸ They are gradually handing their work over to others. Wisdom is the essential quality of these cosmic builders. At the time when human beings began to develop the spirit, in the middle of the Lemurian age, one of these hosts really handed over to others who are now helping human beings to take mind and spirit onward through their incarnations. The wise cosmic builders who created the human being as a microcosm have also evolved further themselves, for everything is in evolution. They learned their task on the [old] Moon where they went through the highest level of evolution that was possible on the Moon. This enabled them to undertake the construction of the human body on Earth. In the middle of the Lemurian age the next higher quality developed in them. This was love. Their manas had been perfected on the Moon; now they rose to the level of budhi. Love is the outer macrocosmic form taken by budhi. On the Moon, they had learned everything that could be learned there, and they were therefore able to construct the wonderful edifices of the microcosm.

They developed their budhi in the middle of the Lemurian age, as they had developed their manas earlier, on the Moon. From then onwards the human race was no longer constructed out of wisdom coming from outside but guided out of love. The new task the macrocosmic spirits had taken on was to achieve ennoblement through love.

Higher development of any kind can, however, only be achieved by letting others lag behind. On the Moon, a group of spirits had lagged behind in their development. They entered into the phase of Earth evolution in a latent state and were only then able to develop further in their individual manas. They were only able to emerge very gradually. These are the spirits full of wisdom which in esoteric terms are called the luciferic principle. Lucifer, leader of the human intellect, was now intervening, whilst the other spirits were the leaders of love.

Let us consider the next level of planetary evolution, which is Jupiter. Everything mineral will then have vanished, been absorbed. Wisdom will have been transformed wholly into love. The result will be that because the macrocosm is love, the astral body will then be able to reach its highest level of development. The plant world will be the lowest then, and the human being will have such a soft astral body that the astral will be formcreator, law of nature. Karma will be a thing of the past and love will have become a reality. The consequence will be that everything people feel will also come to immediate expression in the world of form. The human being will reflect his karmic balance sheet. One will then be able to see what kind of karma he has brought with him. Love will be an immediate reality, as the law of nature is now. Budhi will thus come to expression at this fifth level.

At the sixth level, the macrocosmic atman will come to expression. The divine self will be present at first hand, coming to expression in manasic matter... [text missing]. Today the word can only exist physically in the spoken word. At the sixth level the word will flow through the world as an immediate presence, resounding. The human being will then have become sound. This is what the author of John's gospel referred to as the Logos. Just as with everything that is to come, one individual always develops in advance in order to assume leadership, and so the word has become flesh now in the Christ. At the sixth level, however, humanity will be word become sound.

To understand the position of the principle of spiritual evolution we have to consider a significant development in the Atlantean race. Spirits that had initially been [full of wisdom] now became rebels, agitators wanting to gain their independence. Suras became asuras. Until then they had been latent on Earth. They are the powers which now, at the present time, represent the intellectual and mental side of humanity. This aspect of Lucifer is also the one which represented Christianity in the early centuries.

Two documents relating to this exist—one in the Vatican, and a copy of it in the possession of the most initiated Christian in the West, the Count of St Germain.

This Lucifer-nature had also represented Christianity in the early centuries. Then Lucifer had gradually changed into a kind of adversary in the Christian tradition. Originally his position had been that of the human being’s friend.

Evolution thus means that the different streams in the universe do not develop at the same rate. Part has to go ahead, something else needs to catch up later. This lagging behind of evolutionary streams leads to opposing interests in the world. This is an important occult law. Certain evolutions have been shown as ascending and descending in theosophical books. We have 7 planets with 7 rounds each and always 7 form states, a total of 343 states. These were at about their halfway point by the middle of the Atlantean age. The ascent thus began with an intervention from the luciferic principle. In the descent, evolution became delayed, and in its ascent it came to be faster and faster. This accelerated development did not, however, address itself to the whole of the physical plane but only to individual spirits. The lords of wisdom had initially been in ascending evolution. They had reached a peak by the middle of Atlantean evolution. Where love is concerned they are at a beginning; they carved love into the macrocosm, but they are in the descending line and in delay. The lords of the luciferic principle, on the other hand, are in the ascending line of development. Because of this, intellectuality is increasing rapidly, whilst ennoblement through love is very slow. Example: piano maker working with loving care would be out of place in a concert hall; there you have to have the perfect virtuoso pianist. Disharmony would result if the former wanted to go on to do his hammering with the same loving devotion in the concert hall.⁴⁹

Two streams must therefore always come together. Relative evil arises when two streams, perfect in themselves, interact. Jesus said to his disciples: 'Why do you call me good? No one is good except God only.'⁵⁰ Nothing in the world is good, only the principle of the beginning, which is the Father. So this is how the godlike atman and budhi qualities develop macrocosmically in the hosts of the world's disposers.

• 48. See also Cosmic Memory (note 12, chapter on gender division), and lecture given in Berlin on 25 October 1905, in The Temple Legend (note 22).
• 49. See also lecture of 2 November 1904 in this volume, and the lecture of 23 May 1904 in GA 93 [in German].
• 50. See lecture of 18 November 1903 [in German] in GA 88.

We left human evolution at the point where the human being entered into what we would call the mineral realm. He had now become mineral. A brain had been developing from the middle of the Lemurian age. The mineral world achieved its highest quality when the brain developed, with intellectuality establishing itself within it. This descent of humanity to the mineral world was only possible because earlier stages of evolution had taken the human being through the first, second and third elemental worlds.⁵¹ Before going through the three elemental worlds the human being was pure monad, pure spirit (atman, budhi, manas). He then descended through the three elemental worlds into the fourth. The mineral world is the fourth world. Who was actively involved in this development?

Spirits called 'dhyani of wisdom' were active, putting the body together in its mineral form from the outside. And it was only when the brain was finished that the stream of evolution could continue from inside. If the dhyanic spirits of wisdom had continued to work from outside for themselves at this time, the human being would have grown harder even than the mineral world; he would have had no inwardness, no spirituality to counter the hardening tendencies of matter, and he would have been lost to cosmic life. He would have dropped away like a cinder in the course of evolution, cast out from the successive natural worlds. If a life in mind and spirit had not intervened from inside, a world of completely petrified human concretions would have arisen that would have been incapable of evolving further. Such a petrified world must drop out from the succession of worlds. Occultists call this hypothetical world the 'eighth sphere'.

As they were lagging behind at the time, the dhyani of wisdom would have taken humanity to a dead end. At this point the dhyani that had lagged behind before and were now ascending took hold of humanity. This spiritual principle took humanity, then moving towards hardening, to bring spirituality into human evolution. The dhyani working from inside sought to spiritualize the human being more and more, and in that case there would have been wisdom only. The human being then had two avenues open to him—to fall to the eighth sphere,⁵² or to be wholly spiritualized. Either would inevitably have led to something other than humanity is today—humanity would either have vanished into the eighth sphere, or it would have been steadily getting more spiritual. These two streams worked against each other from the middle of the Lemurian age. The situation would have remained like this if the dhyani that had built up the human being from outside and would have taken him onward into the eighth sphere had not taken in budhi or love. (In Marie Steiner-von Sivers’ notes, this sentence reads: ‘It would have remained like this if the dhyanic spirits of love had not incarnated in order to bring love also into matter.’) They thus saved the material aspect of the human being from perdition. They joined the others as a third stream; these were working from the outside.

With the three streams acting together, part of the material, mineral world became this tripartite human being made up of matter, or body, of soul and spirit. Anything that could not be taken along because the streams were not equal did indeed turn into cinders. That is [today’s] moon. It is a piece of the eighth sphere; cinder. In the moon we have a symbol, for the time being, of what the first dhyani might have achieved. The activity of the dhyanic spirits, which had given the human being his form until then is thus symbolized in the moon. In Jewish esoteric language they are collectively called Yahveh or Jehovah, the god of macrocosmic wisdom, of form. H. P. Blavatsky therefore calls him a moon god, the god of form. In [A. P. Sinnet’s] Esoteric Buddhism, the moon is seen as part of the eighth sphere. It is only a part of it, however, a symbol of what the human being would have been in the eighth sphere. Yahveh is the elohim of the fourth round, the lord of wisdom-filled form (the fourth elohim).

From the middle of the fourth round, the lord of love was active—the Christ, the world's love, the second Logos. The lord of form, the fourth elohim, was wisdom, the third Logos. Jehovah is the spirit of the third Logos. In the spirit, the Christ principle, the principle of love, began in the middle of the Lemurian age. Lucifer intervened at the same time. We must get to know the difference between things perishable and imperishable. Greek sculptors, for example, created magnificent, glorious works, but a time will come when they will all have perished. If those works were all, we would have to say that they are perishable. Everything on the physical plane is mortal in this way. But the fact that artists work on the physical plane means something that will remain for the artist's spirit, something that would not exist if he had not been working on the physical plane. Taking in something done on a lower plane is the faculty of the spirit on a higher plane—that is evolution. It is only by incarnating that human beings gain riches in their spirit which they would not otherwise have. That is what the perishable means for the imperishable.

The skeletal system is the most mineral aspect of the human being. It also gives physical human beings at the present time their most perfect form. In future Earth evolution, the digestion, the heart, and so on will be more and more perfect, but not the skeletal system. This will gradually vanish. Standing firm in the physical world with one’s skeletal system is important. Human beings will be able to take with them what they have become through their skeletal system.

The fact that the bones of the Christ must not be broken means that the part of him which belonged to the mineral world must not be destroyed, had to be left intact. The symbols from the mysteries were then for the first time lived out in the world. The Christ becoming a human being was one of the most important cosmic events in the fourth sub-race of the fifth root race. The founders of earlier religions had taught wisdom; the Christ teaches love.

The sub-races of the fifth root-race

• 51. Luke 18:19, Matthew 19:17.
• 52. See Note 6.
• 53. See the 6th and 12th lectures in this series. Also lectures given in Berlin on 9 and 16 October 1915, in Foundations of Esotericism, note 13, and the lecture given on 18 October in The Occult Movement, note 23.

There are three terms we want to consider. We have to imagine that every spirit in the universe consists of three principles, as does the human being. We need not know the three principles for the other spirits, but they definitely exist:

1. conscious awareness
2. life
3. form.

When we consider the entities that exist on our Earth we find that all of them take their form from the mineral world, as we call it. There is no other form principle for the human being within the Earthly world. This form of the mineral world can only be taken to a higher level by giving it life. A life form can only gain a centre by life coming to conscious awareness. Form, life and conscious awareness are therefore the three principles which every entity has. The human being thus consists of body, soul and spirit. We know that the soul extends into the body, creating the soul body. This is filled, as it were, with sentient soul. The higher principle always integrates itself into the lower. The soul has conscious awareness because the spirit integrates itself into the spiritual (or consciousness) soul. Because of this, the human being has threefold nature—form, life and conscious awareness.

Bringing the different spirits in the world before the mind’s eye, we can divide them into three kinds by using this definition:

1. those where form predominates over the other two, life and awareness
2. awareness may prevail over life and form
3. all three may be in equilibrium.

For the present cycle we refer to

1. Spirits where awareness is predominant—‘dhyani’. They have a powerful conscious mind.
2. Spirits where conscious awareness, life and form are in equilibrium—called ‘substances’ in esoteric terms.
3. Spirits where form is prevalent—the ‘elementals’. ⁵⁵

For the ‘substances’, some connection exists between dhyani and elementals. Human beings were in the substance state when they emerged from the elemental spirit state and combined with the soul. They were merely models, or forms, at that time. Human beings were beautifully luminous orbs at that time, with their souls floating around them. They were ‘substance’ in the middle of the Lemurian age. Today they have gone beyond the level of being at mere ‘substance’ level. They are in the process of dhyanic evolution. In esoteric terms the principle which was ready to take possession of those bodies in Lemurian times is called 'human'.

We now ask: What are these three kinds of spirits able to do? Firstly let us consider the entities where conscious awareness predominates. Their conscious awareness is more all-encompassing than their own life and their own form. They are therefore able to have power over other life and other forms. In Christian esoteric terms such spirits are called angels of the orbital periods. What makes a planet able to orbit the Sun? The fact that it has an angel of orbital period which is able to make it move in orbit. These are the planetary dhyani or spirits. The Earth thus has its own angel of orbital period, its Earth dhyan. Let me remind you of the ‘Earth spirit’ in Goethe's Faust . Its body is the whole astral matter of the Earth.⁵⁶

The human being is in the process of becoming a planetary spirit. At present he is image of the godhead only in mineral terms, for he must still develop his astral, rupa-mental and arupa-mental nature. Then, at the end of the seventh round, he can become an angel of orbital period. The highest of the dhyan chohans will then say to him: ‘All animals and plants are given into your care.’ This will thus happen on the 7th day of creation. The human being will then be a dhyan chohan, a dhyanic cosmic spirit (chohan = cosmic spirit).

Secondly the spirits in whom form, life and conscious awareness are in equilibrium have power over form and are themselves guided by their conscious awareness. Spirits of this kind, which we know, are human beings who are at a certain level. They continue to develop and free themselves more and more of being under the control of their form, their lower nature. They seek to achieve something higher, which is awareness.

Thirdly, in the elemental spirits, form is mightier than life and conscious awareness, and their form thus needs to be controlled by conscious awareness and by life. They are the exact opposite of the dhyanic spirits. These can control more than just their form and life. In the elemental spirits form is more all-encompassing than life and conscious awareness. They therefore need a different life and a different conscious awareness to control their form. This means that elemental spirits have to lodge themselves in another kind of life and another kind of conscious awareness so that they may use it for themselves. They therefore retard the life and conscious awareness of others. The elementals are thus the spirits which hold evolution back. All parasitic life forms are governed by such elemental spirits. For us humans these life forms had already come to completion according to their kind in the lunar period, which is why form is predominant in them. They are now in decline, with their evolution in descent.

Animals with external skeletons, for example, have gone beyond evolution. Their inner development has dissolved, and they surround themselves with a horny layer on the outside (beetles, insects). They are preparing to subside into the eighth sphere. The ancient Moon also had an eighth sphere, a satellite Moon. Those life forms reached completion then, going beyond their evolution, and are now like overripe fruit. Spiders belong to the eighth sphere, for instance, and among plants, the mistletoe. Goethe therefore attributed the world of spiders and flies to Mephistopheles.⁵⁷ Anything parasitic is an outer reflection of elemental spirits living on the astral plane.

Before that the human being was also an elemental spirit. Not everything that is physical in him is destined to be redeemed. A cinder remains. This cinder, which remains there, is always present in the human being; because of it, the human being is under the influence of those astral elementals; the elemental nature which goes with it clings to him. Because of this, the human being is always connected with the principle which is inimical to his development, inhibiting and disrupting it. The spirits that cling to the human being are called 'Alben' in German mythology [elves, sprites, goblins, old English mære;—translator]. They appear vaguely in what are called 'nightmares', dreams where one thinks a spirit is sitting on one's chest. When you gain astral visions, you first of all see these spirits. (The 'dweller on the threshold' in Bulwer Lytton's Zanoni.)⁵⁸ It is a reflection of the human being’s astral knowledge of his mare, trying to fend off the enemy, a projection of an astral spirit in ourselves. It is the [lesser] guardian of the threshold. Someone unable to overcome his fear of the enemy within will usually turn back at the gate of initiation.

In the higher region of the astral plane, the [image of the] sphinx needs to be cast into the abyss before you are able to move ahead. The human being, who must develop, moves towards this moment. This is a developmental stage which people do not need to go through in the same way. It is possible for an individual to be guided through it with his eyes blindfold, as it were. If you are able to take moral nature to a higher level first, before you gain astral vision, the guardian of the threshold will appear less fearsome.

In the Atlantean race, it was above all the Turanians who gave themselves up to black magic and gained the greatest familiarity with the world of the elementals. Occult schools now put the main emphasis on practising the virtue of devotion, of selflessness and on moral development to equip people more effectively for the struggle. All occultists who continue to be ambitious, vain or self-seeking, get to know these retarding powers in evolution in a truly dreadful way, with these powers influencing them all the more strongly. We must love the teaching, be modest, humble and dedicated if we want to be sure of winning through. Evolution is retarded, held back by the elemental spirits, whereas it is accelerated by the dhyanic spirits.

• 55. See note 13. In the lecture given in Berlin on 27 October 1905 (Foundations of Esotericism, note 13), the terms ‘planets (states of consciousness), rounds or elemental worlds (life), globes (conditions of form)’ are equated with the Christian terms ‘power, kingdom and glory’.
• 56. Spirits of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd elemental worlds. See Note 6.
• 57. Goethe’s Faust I, ‘god of flies’, ‘lord of flies’.
• 58. Edward George Bulwer, Earl of Lytton (1803–1873). Zanoni; The Dweller of the Threshold, Book 4.

Since all evolution follows three principles—conscious awareness, life and form—and every entity must go through these three principles many times, we need to know exactly what levels of awareness, life or form we may be speaking of. Something can be known about seven of them. The seven levels of conscious awareness are:

1. The ‘trance’ state of the mind, also known as ‘deep trance’
2. Dreamless sleep
3. Dream-filled sleep
4. The waking state, or awareness of objects
5. The psychic state, or life in image awareness
6. The hyperpsychic state, or life in conscious awareness
7. The spiritual state = self-aware all-embracing awareness

The trance state is characteristically universal. It is the most comprehensive awareness as far as the range is concerned, but it is limited by dimness. It is the dimmest state of awareness. An entity living on our Earth which is put into this trance state would perceive the movements of the planets, mineral forms, crystalline forms, etc. Plant, animal and human life would not exist for this spirit. If this trance state is induced, the entity is in a position to see such things in the cosmos, but not the life of physical life forms. If a trance is entered into pathologically, the individuals concerned start to describe cosmic chains, and so on; sometimes this is in a confused way, but sometimes they will produce some very strange things that are very similar to the theosophical teachings. It is a wide-ranging universal awareness, but too dim to perceive actually living, sentient life forms.

The second state is the one we call 'dreamless sleep'. The way in which human beings go through their sleep state is generally still so dim that most of them feel that they are unconscious in it. It is less dim than the first state, but narrower. People who go through it consciously perceive what happens in the mineral and plant worlds, but the animal world, and so on, the world of inner responses and thoughts, does not exist for them. Sleepwalkers of this degree produce extraordinary drawings of arabesques in this state, but are not able to draft cosmic systems.

The third state is that of dream-filled sleep, which is familiar to us. We usually know nothing of any connection between our dreams and what is going on in the cosmos. The state is not all-encompassing but reflects the inorganic world and mineral, plant and animal nature. To someone who has not developed further, reflections of his own passions, his animal nature, will often appear in such dreams.

In the fourth state, the waking state, which is the narrowest but also the clearest, we perceive the mineral world, plants, animals and humans, but only in their outer form; not the law, not the inner response. This is something people must construct for themselves in the waking state, going by the outer gesture.

In the more enhanced states of awareness the bright clarity of physical awareness is retained. The fifth state, psychic awareness, extends through the astral world where feelings are directly perceived. Thus you will not just see someone’s sour face but directly perceive his feelings. The sixth state is the hyperpsychic state of awareness. Here human beings perceive all kama, and in addition also all that lives. They see the principle of growth and of life itself. The seventh state is spiritual awareness. In this, human beings perceive everything that happens in the cosmos in bright, clear conscious awareness.

We then also have the seven stages in the evolution of life. They are:

1. The first elemental world
2. The second elemental world
3. The third elemental world
4. The mineral world
5. The plant world
6. The animal world
7. The human world

To characterize these stages in a way similar to the one used for the conscious mind above, we may say the following. The first elementary world is the most subjective. The second is less subjective. The third even less so. We are in fact able to distinguish three degrees of subjectivity in the three elemental worlds. Where it begins to be objective, that is, acts in such a way that it acts not only from the inside to the outside but is seen from outside, it becomes mineral world. In the case of the first elemental world, existence comes into its own in outer terms. In the case of the second elemental world, life comes into its own in outer terms. In the case of the third elemental world, sentience or awareness comes into its own in outer terms. In the case of the fourth state, which is the mineral world, existence has become objective (4th level of life). The plant world: life has become objective (5th level of life). The animal world: sentience and awareness have become objective (6th level of life). In the human world all three degrees become objective (7th level of life). Conscious awareness and the I have then entered wholly into objectivity.

Life thus evolves through the seven worlds. Form also goes through seven stages, as follows.

1. The arupic form, which is form in its earliest potential, when it is not as yet actual form, but already has the urge to go outwards.
2. The rupic form, which is the spiritual form, with a mere hint of an outer form.
3. The astral form begins to be outwardly visible.
4. The physical form.
5. The plastic form, no longer rigid but making itself felt from the inside, with life pushing outwards, into form.
6. The intellectual form, which has grown even more mobile, with the spirit pushing outwards.
7. The archetypal, original form. This form is absolutely in control of itself, wholly mobile in itself. Everything pushes outwards; it can configure anything; it is active.

If we now want to consider the evolution of a particular entity, we have to be clear in our minds that it has to go through all the stages of conscious awareness, life and form, and that this happens in the following way.

Every entity must go through the seven stages of conscious awareness. Each stage of this state of consciousness in the various forms it takes is called a 'planetary system' in theosophical textbooks. An entity goes through a planetary system, which means that it metamorphoses through these seven states of awareness. The human being is now going through the stage of waking consciousness. This is known as the 'Earth state'. Before this he went through the state of dream consciousness. That was at the stage of lunar evolution. This is put in words as: The human being has completed the Moon stage in his evolution.

Human beings have to go through all realms of life in every state of conscious awareness. On the Moon they thus went through the first, second and third elemental worlds, and through the other four worlds in dream consciousness. On Earth they have to go through the seven stages of life. At present humans are on the planetary system of the Earth, which means in the waking state, in the middle life stage, and in the mineral world. In form, humans are now physical (fourth globe or fourth form state); in terms of life they are mineral (fourth round); in terms of conscious awareness, awake (fourth planetary system). A 'round' means the passage of an entity through one of the realms of life. Each planetary system has seven rounds. On Earth, human beings are in their fourth round. In this round, mineral evolution will be taken to its perfection, in the fifth round plant evolution, in the sixth animal evolution, the animal level of awareness, and in the seventh round human conscious awareness.

Every entity must go through all forms in each of these seven worlds, assuming every form. It will be arupic first, then rupic, astral, physical, plastic, intellectual and finally archetypal. These seven metamorphoses of form were called the seven 'globes' in the early days of developing theosophical teachings:

• arupic metamorphosis the first globe,
• rupic metamorphosis the second globe,
• astral metamorphosis the third globe,
• physical metamorphosis the fourth globe,
• plastic metamorphosis the fifth globe,
• intellectual metamorphosis the sixth globe,
• archetypal metamorphosis the seventh globe.

These seven globes are not actually separate globes; the objective process is not such that one leaves one globe for another. Together they make up an orb in which these different form states are interpenetrating. This evolution of form states was called the 'phase states' in earlier esoteric terminology. Something is connected with this that may be described by taking the following line of thought.

Imagine an entity with physical eyes, and also that all those states are always present in the world. Whilst human beings are at their level, other entities are at different stages of evolution. In esoteric terms this is called: Here a higher form of space begins. This region is called the region of perviousness in esoteric language. Even in the astral world, two entities are able to interpenetrate. You need to develop an inner feeling for this region of perviousness, for the way our world is penetrated by another. Physically we see only part of the cosmos, a part of the whole. From this point of view a visible heavenly body is one that is in the fourth state of form, in the phase of physical form; with regard to life this is the mineral world.

Physical visibility arises gradually, from the arupic form downwards, and then gradually disappears again as we move towards the archetypal form. We therefore also call these form states 'phases'. The Earth went through the arupic, rupic and astral states before it became physically visible. After the physical it will still go through the plastic, intellectual and archetypal states.

On the physical plane, an occult relationship exists between these form phases and the phases of the Moon. The passage through the seven form phases from the arupic to the archetypal state is therefore called a ‘cosmic month’, though the term is not used in all esoteric languages. Passage through all states of conscious awareness is called a ‘cosmic year’. Between cosmic day (form cycle) and cosmic year (conscious awareness cycle) lies the cosmic month (life states). It is longer than a cosmic month and shorter than a cosmic year.

In esoteric terms conscious awareness is ‘the Sun’, form ‘the Moon’, life for us now ‘the Earth’. A state of conscious awareness takes longest, a life state takes less long, and a form state is the least long. Every life state must go through all seven form states. From arupa to archetypal state it goes, first of all in the first elemental world, then in the second and third elemental worlds, and so on. It thus goes through seven times seven consecutive metamorphoses of life—those are the seven rounds, each of which goes through seven metamorphoses. Seven times seven metamorphoses or 49 which every entity has to go through: 49 on Earth, 49 on the Moon, thus 49 each on seven planetary systems, i.e. 7 times 49 = 343 (the sum of digits = 10). These 343 states make up a cosmic year.⁵⁹

We are now in the fourth planetary system (fourth state of conscious awareness, waking consciousness). We are on the Earth, going through the fourth sphere of life, the fourth round, the mineral world. The mineral world has reached the fourth globe, that is, the fourth form phase, which is the physical phase. It will reach perfection in this round, which also means that the human physical body in its mineral aspects will reach perfection in this round. On completion of all 343 states the human being will be what we call a ‘god’. This is not the supreme god but 'the third Logos', which is in truth the Logos of form when it will have gone through the 343 metamorphoses. It is form at its most advanced stage. These different configurations of conscious awareness are form again on the higher plane. Conceived as a whole, these 343 forms are thus the third Logos. The second Logos will represent life at its highest stage, and the first logos, conscious awareness at its highest stage. The stages of form are represented in colours and signs for esoteric students, the stages of life in sounds, life sounding forth. No characterizing signs exist in the physical world for the stages of conscious awareness.

• 59. See lecture given in Domach on 20 November 1914, in Balance in the World and Man, GA 158, tr. D. Osmond; N. Vancouver: Steiner Book Centre 1977.

Conscious awareness on the first planet was at deep trance level. It had the widest horizon, yet it was also the dimmest. The human being had an overview of the whole planetary system in this state. On the second planet, conscious awareness was at the dreamless sleep level—somewhat brighter but also narrower. On the third planet, dream-filled sleep level awareness was distinctly brighter and narrower. At the dreamless sleep level, human beings were able to perceive life, at the dream-filled sleep level also the inner feelings. Conscious awareness on the fourth planet is daytime consciousness, narrowed down to the greatest degree but also destined to perceive the conscious self in another individual. This is the clearest state of conscious awareness. The psychic level of awareness on the fifth planet will be far brighter than our present one. It will extend across the whole astral sphere. On the sixth planet, conscious awareness will be at the hyperpsychic stage. The lower thought world will be openly apparent to human beings. On the seventh planet humanity will reach the spiritual stage of conscious awareness. Then the higher mental world will open up before them. Every developmental phase within such a level of conscious awareness is called a ‘planet’ or a ‘planetary evolution’. This covers the evolution of conscious awareness.

A review of the evolution of life follows. Every stage of awareness has to go through seven life stages, these being the first, second and third elemental worlds, the mineral, plant, animal and human worlds. Each phase of passing through a life stage is called a ‘round’. We thus have 7 rounds on each planet, and on the 7 planets together 49 metamorphoses of life.

The stages of form.

Every life stage has to go through seven form stages, the forms of the

1. arupic
2. rupic
3. astral
4. physical
5. plastic (physically mobile—life governs form)
6. intellectual (not only mobile, but can be penetrated by thought)
7. archetypal (the whole I lies exposed to the outside world)

These form stages are called 'globes'. Every stage has a special function. Let us consider these functions in the case of human beings.

Human beings first of all go through the seven worlds in the seven form stages in deep trance awareness. On every planet, the densest stage is the middle one (No. 25 in the table below). We thus have the first elemental world in the arupic, rupic, astral, physical, plastic, intellectual and archetypal stages; then the second elemental world in the same seven stages, and likewise the third elemental world. We also have the mineral world in the stage states. These realms were only at the seed stage, however; in reality there was only one world. Number 49 is the human world in the archetypal stage, as the last globe in the last round—form, life, spiritual awareness.

The characteristic physical form is gone through in the middle of the 49 stages. The human being entered into evolution as a universal spirit which then became a separate spirit. First of all an individual orb separated off from a general orb. Those individual human orbs went through the different transformation stages. One of the later transformation processes yielded the ‘ether double body’. This stage of first separation from the universal is called ‘conscious awareness going down into the abyss’.⁶⁰ It is reached in the physical stage of the first planet. 24 stages went before, with another 24 to follow. The middle stage, the 25th, is the densest. The physical potential for the human being arose as a dense physical orb. At that time the Earth was like the ether or like the consistency of light on our present Earth. When awareness had fallen into the abyss it had a form rather like a mulberry.

On the second planet, in the deep sleep state of awareness (dreamless sleep), the human being became immersed in number. The orbs developed on the first planet were acting in a certain regular harmony. A relict from that second state is that chemical elements do not combine in any random numbers. Colours and sounds are in an order determined by their wave lengths. On the second planet we thus find order based on measure, number and weight.

Only one world existed at the first stage (Saturn); at the second stage (Sun), when the human being had become immersed in number, it was possible to separate into two worlds. One world arose which remained a continuum all the way to the human being, and another containing everything that was not suitable for developing as far as the human being. This became a separate second world (potential for animal and plant worlds, the lower forms of life). Law: It is not possible to have higher development unless something is separated out and left behind at a lower level. The degree of development was specific and given in that potential of the first planet. From it followed the law of life. It is the law of unequal but full development—no taking without giving. The first obligation of the esoteric student is to give something back.

On the third planet a third element developed—the law of elective affinities. People develop sympathy and antipathy for one another. This law applies in all worlds, in chemistry, for example, and in the mineral world. This also made it possible for a new world to develop. The animal, plant and mineral worlds developed. The human being as we see him today did not yet exist at that time. He was still a kind of animal then, at the kamic level. The spirit had not yet entered into the body.

On the fourth planet, in waking consciousness, a new potential developed for some entities so that they were not subject to the law of elective affinity. A life form that went further had to come. This was birth and death, which did not exist before. This form of life could only come because entities no longer existed in isolation but were held together by a supersensible thread of life. Individual incarnations were as if threaded on some cotton. The entity became manifold in time through birth and death. Before, human beings were manifold only in space. On the third planet (Moon), multiplication happened by tying off and division, and all lived in sympathy and antipathy with one another. Everything which multiplies by division is therefore immortal in material terms. Because of this the lowest animals, monads, are immortal (according to Weismann).⁶² Death is only possible when insemination exists as well as division. The price for birth and death was that entities continued to be split off, with the human being developing at the cost of other entities. Because of this, birth and death was also imposed on all other entities, which have no individual karma. The human being had to push each of the worlds which were below him down by one level.

Birth and death are connected with human karma. On the next planet, the human being, having gained a higher level of awareness, will be aware not only of the workings of karma but will have conscious awareness in karma itself. His inner strength will have grown to such an extent that he will have the will to be his karma. He will bear it in his figure and physiognomy. His physiognomy will reveal what lies in his astral and mental body. It will then happen that someone who is good will also be truly seen to be good from the outside, and someone who is evil as evil. Such evil people will then be found only among those who trained in black magic. The great judgement will come, dividing good from evil. This will happen on the fifth planet. From the fifth planet onwards we can only speak of the evolution of goodness.

On the sixth planet everything that is meaningless will be eliminated as evolution continues—anything that shows itself to be senseless and illogical on the lower mental plane. This sixth planet is the planet of the Logos, the word, for it is the word which gives meaning.

On the seventh planet, a wholly purified condition will prevail. The planets that went before will have performed their functions, and the fruits of this will be gathered. This is the state of being in complete harmony with God.

The spirit was present all the time when the human body was evolving and going through all these stages. Initially it floated above the body, and then, in the middle of the Lemurian age, it united with the body. The spirit is meant to gather experience on the lower planes through the body. In Greek esoteric teaching, the human soul was compared to a bee gathering honey from the planetary evolutions, from the fall into the abyss on the first planet to the state of complete harmony with God on the seventh planet. Redemption is thus happening all the time. What is held under a spell in matter is released and redeemed. Human beings only gathered experiences from the time when they inhabited the body. Before that they were the architect who built the whole of it in order to inhabit it.

The human being thus goes through the following process of evolution.

The 25th level, the middle one, is always the deepest and densest. We are now on the fourth planet and at the 25th level, which means in the densest state. On the seventh planet, in the seventh world, the human world, and the seventh form, which is archetypal, human evolution will reach its greatest perfection. The human being will then have his archetypal form, be truly godlike and human, with an all-embracing, spiritual conscious awareness.

• 60. See notebook page ‘777 incarnations’ and Special Note, both in this volume. In a lecture given in Paris on 9 June 1906 (An Esoteric Cosmology, in GA 94; Spring Valley: St George Publications 1978), we read that the number 7-7-7 signifies the esoteric cipher of the three Logoi and the exoteric number is the multiplication of these three sevenhoods in the evolutional plan, i.e. 343.
• 62. August Weismann (1834–1914), zoologist. Rudolf Steiner wrote about him in his essay ‘Haeckel und seine Gegner’ [in German] in GA 30.

Today we will consider evolution on our Earth in particular. First, let us briefly sum up what we have been considering so far.

In Earth evolution we are at the fourth level of conscious awareness, that is, on the fourth planet. Bright daytime conscious awareness develops step by step through 49 stages. The highest level on the preceding planet, which was Moon, was the perfection of a highly developed dream-level awareness. This was similar to the awareness we now see in the most highly developed animals. The physical human being—not the human being of soul and spirit, for he was then following another line of evolution and would only unite later with the physical—was then able to think in the kind of way which the dream-level awareness of today’s most highly developed animals permits. At the beginning of such an evolution process, it is our most essential nature which matters for the way we progress.

Animals, plants and minerals developed earlier than the human being. Everything which had then developed in such a way that it could progress further went into a kind of seed state with the human being and through a pralaya. On the Moon, the human seeds were sufficiently far advanced to develop the capacity for a higher dream-level awareness. The animals had only reached a dim dream-like level, plants an even lower one, and the minerals were at a still lower level of awareness. Anything not suitable for further development was cast off as a kind of cinder. In the next stage, Earth evolution, seeds existed for that kind of humans, animals, plants and minerals. This means seeds existed not only from the human world, but also from the animal, plant and mineral worlds, which were very different then from what we know as animals, plants and minerals today. The minerals were more in the kind of state one sees today with metals at exceedingly high temperatures.

The forms evolving step by step in our Earth evolution are not identical with the animals, plants and minerals of earlier times. They were already a stage ahead of what was needed for Earth. Only the human being found the conditions he needed on Earth. The other worlds therefore developed more or less as overripe fruit. They were unable to take root. These entities are therefore not really at home on this Earth itself, but only in the soil provided by entities which are at home here. They became parasites. The Moon animals and plants were used to living in a kama soil, being wholly in the psychic realm, and therefore could only find a soil on Earth when kama existed there. They thus became parasitic, like mistletoe, for example, which developed independent growth on the Moon but was not able to grow directly in the soil here on Earth. It was a power that had its justification on the Moon, but not on Earth. This made it a power which retards and affects the development of other plants. Satan is therefore the lord of parasites; he uses the powers that are parasitic. In Germanic mythology, the god Loki was hostile to Balder, god of the Earth. Everything which had come down from the lunar period was represented by Loki. No one on Earth could harm Balder, only the one who had come from the Moon. Balder was therefore felled by a mistletoe, which had its power from the Moon.

Our animals, which are evolving, and the human being, too, have developed a skeletal system on Earth. The animals which had already completed their evolution on the Moon did not have a skeletal system there. On Earth they have created an exoskeleton for themselves—a crust or shell. Examples are beetles, arachnids and so on. They came into Earth evolution from the Moon. All life forms which truly follow Earth evolution develop an endoskeleton. This is why Eve is said to have been created from a rib. So there were then two streams on Earth, firstly everything that could develop into animals, plants and minerals on Earth, and secondly human beings in their seed stage.

How did the higher development of the human being proceed? To have everything in him that would later enable him to reach the level of development he was destined to reach, the human being needed to eliminate anything that would otherwise have gone into parasitic development. He had to develop those three other worlds next to his own.

The first phase was the period of time which is called the ‘first round’ in the theosophical literature. In the first round the human being had to create the potential for the physical and Earthly mineral world out of himself, in the second round the plant world and in the third round the potential for the animal world, for that of which these worlds evolved would have prevented him from achieving what he has only been able to achieve by distilling his human nature. It was only in the fourth round that he had freed himself sufficiently from all the other worlds, that he was then prepared to be the vessel for the spirit which had floated around him, waiting for him. It was only in the fourth round that he had developed so far that the spirit was able to take possession of this purified body. He was increasingly able to spread himself, leaving behind him along the way, as his offerings, the mineral, plant and animal worlds. All higher development must be paid for by leaving other entities behind.

In the fourth round the human being is learning to govern the mineral world through his senses. He makes use of the nonliving, mineral world and will advance further and further in this. The vital energies of the plant world are not yet in his conscious control. The Atlanteans controlled them unconsciously, instinctively. Atlanteans also created their airships unconsciously. The task for the second half of the fourth round is to pour the spirit consciously into the inorganic world. This means that by the end of the fourth round, the mineral world will have been gradually absorbed by the human being. He will have physically transformed everything physical and mineral with his thought forms. It is his task to redeem the mineral world again, pouring in his mind and spirit and configuring it through his spirit. In the second half of the fourth round the human being will have gone on to control the astral. On the last globe, the archetypal one of the fourth round, the mineral world will be wholly alive.

In the first half of the fourth round human beings finally developed the ability to relate their senses to the mineral world. In the second half of the fourth round they will redeem the mineral world. Part of it will, however, remain behind, being eliminated since it is of no further use to human beings. This creates the 'eighth sphere', which is of no further use to human evolution but only to spirits of a higher kind. Later, when it has dissolved into cosmic dust, it will serve as material for the creation of new worlds. It will be taken up into other evolutionary streams; the human being cannot take it up for himself. First you have evolution, creation for the outside, then involution, when things are taken in again.

In the fifth round the mineral world will have gone. It will have been redeemed. In the first half of that round human beings will develop the higher senses that will enable them to relate to the plant world the way they now do to the mineral world; they will develop 'plant thinking'. The human being would then live in full conscious awareness in the Garden of Eden. Gravity will have gone. Everything will have metamorphosed into plants. In the second half of the fifth round, the human being will draw the whole of the plant world into himself again; he will redeem it in so far as he is able to redeem it. These worlds had of course been separated out at an earlier time to help humanity, being superfluous and an impediment to human evolution.

The same thing will then happen with regard to the animal world in the sixth round. Then the human being will be wholly human. In the seventh round the human being will develop his true intended nature in his atman—free of those other worlds, which he cast out, he will then develop his own godlike nature. Every round is a day of creation [in the biblical sense, transl.]. The seventh round will be the seventh day of creation when man becomes godlike and when God can rest from his labours.

From the middle of our own round, the fourth, evolution will need to take another direction. The mineral world shows the most marked separation. The human being relates to the world of matter, which is growing denser, in a wholly external way. Minerals, plants and animals are more closely related to the surrounding world than he is. The forces in a crystal live in the universe, making no claim to be special or separate. It is part of the whole. The claim to be separate and distinct will grow more powerful in stages. The human being is most separate and by himself, something which happened above all in the middle of the Lemurian race for the human being. A housing was created for the spirit. Then the spirit united with the human being. And with the spirit then working to emerge again, human beings began to integrate into that world again, doing so through community. First they had to establish a separate identity; then they developed communities in the spirit, brotherhood. What had been sympathy and antipathy at the kama level now becomes power of attraction by choice. A deliberately chosen brotherliness develops. Someone belonging to a lodge of brothers no longer knows the separation which others know; he does not separate from his group but integrates into it in full awareness.

The conscious awareness of an adept rests in his brotherhood or group. Spirits who have reached a certain level with this are called dhyanic spirits, the great creative energies. Brotherhood lodges develop into dhyanic spirits. Dhyanic spirits are like collections of cells. The brotherhood lodge of the adepts will be seen as a dhyanic spirit. Evolution again brings enrichment here. An important point lies in the middle of the fourth round: Human spirits begin to come together in a brotherhood, to develop a dhyanic spirit.

We thus feel that there is a vast difference between the first and second halves of a round. In the first half, the human being develops the organs by means of which he reaches out. In the second half he draws those organs into himself again. The first half is meant to prepare him for that withdrawal. In the second half of the round every spirit will find redemption for its own kind of life, at the appropriate level. ‘Round’ is also ‘cycle’ in esoteric terminology. In every cycle, evolution proceeds from the arupic to the archetypal. This is known as an ‘epicycle’ [= globes]. It is thus only in the second half of a cycle or round that an entity can gather karma, for this will be when it begins to be active. The karmic development of an entity will therefore have significance specifically on the plane where it is evolving at the time.

Spirits exist that guide physical evolution from higher planes. Their lowest form of evolution occurs in astral matter. Every nation, every race, every tribe has astral matter in common which is the material in which the spirit of the nation incarnates. The spirit of a nation is always a bit ahead of the individual members of the nation in its development. From the middle of a cycle onwards it is able to gather karma. We help to create the karma of the nation, the race, and so on. This is known as 'collective karma' it is something very real. The result is that spirits which are one level further ahead will also have karma.

International endeavors belong to an even more comprehensive spirit that embraces all the astral material of the Earth. The physical Earth is also the physical body for this spirit of the Earth, the planetary Logos which, if we rise to it, signifies the karma for the whole of Earthly evolution. International endeavors are the first step towards the great unity we shall have on the arupic plane. Theosophists live with the idea of this great all-inclusiveness, this concentration in one point.

We have been considering the influences to which the human being is subject on the physical plane. Evolution in globes tends towards the physical plane. The human being, who is now at the mineral level, had to go through the preceding stages to prepare for his existence on the physical plane. In every area or on every plane we have to look at the part which matters. At present we are looking at the actual human being. In the seven consecutive states of the first planet (Saturn) he was quite imperfect, a kind of mulberry, a progressively developing form. First planet: Conscious awareness going down into the abyss. Spirits were involved in human evolution which had already gone through evolutions of their own and become dhyanic, which the human being will only be by the end of the 343 stages. These spirits had gained all kinds of powers and energies.

Human beings take in the first half of a cycle; in the second half they give back what they have taken. In the first half of the one cycle, the mineral world was thus separated out, since it was a hindrance to human beings. They were then using for themselves all the energy which would otherwise have served to develop the mineral world further; later on they absorbed this world again. In the second half of the cycle, human beings thus redeem the mineral world, metamorphosing it. They then give to the mineral world the achievements of their own evolution, having first separated that world out. Absolutely everything in human evolution is subject to the metamorphosis of taking and giving. This determines our ethical attitudes to the highest degree. Anything we make our own may only be taken so that it may be given back again later on.

The dhyanic spirits had gone through the taking stage at an earlier phase in their evolution. This makes them giving spirits on Earth. From the very beginning they were makers, guides and brought order. When the mulberry (Saturn) divided into many orbs, those dhyanic spirits had to develop many orbs from that one orb. At the second stage (Sun), they put the orbs in order according to measure, number and weight. At the third stage (Moon) they established the law of elective affinity, of sympathy and antipathy among the orbs. The dhyani of the fourth stage (Earth) rule over birth and death and over karma. They are lords of karma, the lipikas who are above all taking or receiving, beyond sympathy and antipathy. They intervene at the fourth level of awareness, which is the level of daytime conscious awareness. Again and again new makers would come in and intervene at the evolutionary stage which the human being had reached.

Let us be clear in our minds about the nature of those makers. Spirits who are at the human stage receive and give in alternation. We can only give something which we have previously received. The human being thus alternates between being subject to 'perception', as it is called, and activity. Perception is subject to the law of taking; activity to the law of giving. The law of the makers, however, is the law of revelation. Their activity is known as 'revelatory activity'. (Arranging the world according to measure, number and weight, sympathy and antipathy, separating good from bad, and so on.)

There is a major difference between these spirits which reveal themselves and us human beings. Seen on its own, human evolution proceeded in such a way that initially the human being was down in the abyss (physically an orb), which was followed by order being established with measure, number and weight, and so on. Human beings also become more spiritual at every higher level of evolution. If we go from the outside to the inside in human evolution, we come to the higher faculties.

We said that human beings are evolving towards the principle of brotherliness. Today, at the fourth level, manas emerges and budhi and atman are potentially there. At a later level budhi will emerge, and at an ever later one, atman. When brotherliness will develop around them from outside as they develop from the inside to the outside, they will apply these principles from the outside to the same degree as they are evolving from the inside. When the human being has developed manas, for instance, budhi will begin to shine out as a potential development. In developing budhi, human beings reorganize the whole astral body; the other pole of kama (budhi) then develops. The kama which previously filled the human being inwardly will go to the outside and surround him as budhi. This is an inversion, the reversal of the astral. All kama is received by benevolent powers which are directed towards the outside. Then atman will appear in budhi. The same outward-directed transformation will then come for the ether body. The ether body is able to act into the outside world, not only morally and beneficially, but also magically. It then gains magical powers, vital energies. The influence of atman and budhi causes the human being to be poured out into the world, he spreads out to benefit the outside world. A lodge based on brotherhood that is more highly developed has the ability to work magic in the world and influence the life ether.

At the next stage, atman, the divine self, will shine out. The human being will then be aware that he belongs not only to the Earth but to the whole world. He will develop Logos awareness. He will be a world creator, with the ability awakening in him to control the physical world just as he was controlling the vital energy before. Initially the human being developed from outside in; then from inside out. When he will have come so far that he will be able to control his outer surroundings, he will be a dhyanic spirit. Initially powerless where his influence was concerned, he will then be all-controlling ... [text missing].

Dhyanic spirits were also active in the middle of the Lemurian age. They had inwardly resolved to connect the spark of actual life in the spirit with the principle which is physical body. They had been able to be creative in the physical from the beginning. But they could not bring the manasic element into the physical unless they first created measure, number and weight, elective affinity and sympathy and antipathy in the physical. Now, with birth and death introduced, they had opportunity to connect the manasic principle with the physical body, and the physical body was then able to think. On the Moon they were able to implant kama in the Moon human being. The dhyanic spirits descended so far into matter in their creative work that they were able to pour the manasic spark drop by drop into the entity they had been preparing. The bodily principle was then able to take in the spark of thinking.

If the body had gone only through the one evolution, it would have been capable of becoming an extraordinarily powerful thinker. But humanity came across to Earth from the Moon with a kama that had been taken to its highest level of perfection.

The very first evolution: the dhyanic spirits formed the human physical body out of matter, and the human beings who had come across as Moon souls with kamic evolution (pitris) had a hand in this. They were also working in the body, but their further evolution was brought about in that the makers worked with them in raising the body one level higher than they had been on the Moon.

If the dhyani which created the body from virginal matter had been working on their own, human beings would have been thinking automatons. Human beings are however warm-hearted, with both sympathies and antipathies, and that has been the work of the Moon pitris. The virginal matter was on the one hand worked on by the dhyan chohans, who reveal themselves, and on the other hand by Moon pitris who joined in the work in the middle of the Lemurian age. This created human beings capable of thinking who were also able to connect sympathies and antipathies with their thoughts.

The human being had thus become a thinking soul dwelling in a body. On the Moon he had been a soul in a body. The principle we call 'ego' had been present as a soul quality from the beginning, going through evolution on the third planet.

On the fourth planet the ego also took in the manasic or spiritual principle. Before, the ego had been the highest principle, now it also took in the manasic. From this point onwards we are dealing with an ego endowed with spirit. Before, the ego was called 'ahankara', the element which now holds the spiritual ego within it. If human beings are able to say 'I' to themselves today, this ability comes from the middle of the Lemurian age. Before, every human being had been a divine thought. The soul had already evolved through three states. But in the middle of the Lemurian age the divine thought united with the soul so that there would be a soul endowed with spirit.

The truly eternal principle which is at work in us was initially the divine thought in us. We were then in the keeping of the godhead. The makers were from the very beginning preparing vessels for this divine thought, and we were permitted to share in the work. The souls dwelt in these vessels, to prepare them so that they might receive the divine thought. This is how soul, body and spirit came to be connected with one another in the human being. The manasic principle was poured into the human kama at that time. Then the human being was given budhi by other dhyanic spirits, and still later, others again gave him atman.

The potential which was there when the human being appeared as lunar soul, only appearing in its fullness by the end of evolution, is atman. The manasic shone out first in the lunar human being. This spark of the manasic was destined to bring budhi and atman to development in itself at a later time. The lunar human beings who came to the Earth in the middle of the Lemurian age, when their bodily house was ready to be inhabited and prepared to receive manas, are called pitris, which means 'fathers'. It therefore depended on how the pitris had developed earlier on, and when had they received the spark of manas. A pitri could also remain so far behind in evolution that in the middle of the Lemurian age he would not have reached the level of being able to connect with the human body and dhyanic spirit.

Evolutions always go in seven cycles. It is possible to lag behind a little in evolution at any stage in the seven cycles. Those who have remained behind will need to use the final phase to catch up on some things. We are thus able to distinguish seven classes of Moon pitris, according to the way in which they had lagged behind. These existed in the middle of the Lemurian race. Only the most highly evolved pitris were then able to incarnate. The others were not yet able to do anything with their bodies. Because of this new pitris were coming up all the time until the end of the Atlantean age and even into post-Atlantean times. To this day, pitris still incarnate in population groups that are at a very low level; one may also find quite childlike, little developed pitris among the lower levels of the population in our large cities. However, it is rare now for pitris to incarnate for the first time today. There are only few very young pitris who are still wholly governed by their kama.

Above these pitris there were others on the Moon who had not only reached the normal level but already gone for the kind of evolution which we are now aiming at; this was so that they might be leaders. Dhyanic spirits had to think for the pitris on the Moon, so that there were none on the Moon with independent thinking, nor any who were able to act independently. But the dhyanic spirits found individual pitris who were more willing instruments than others, as we now also see it in animals, for instance. These are guided by other thinking spirits, always one spirit per genus. Sophisticated dressage is nothing to surprise us, therefore. The thinking originates in another spiritual centre in that case.

During Moon evolution, some also proved more suitable tools for the dhyanic spirits. They were of two kinds, those in whom the astral body and those in whom the life body was the more willing tool. If the physical body had been available as a tool, they could have joined the ranks of dhyanic spirits, though as lesser dhyani with a more limited sphere of power. We can imagine, therefore, that apart from the seven classes of pitris two classes of them had developed to an even higher level. These were the solar pitris, with power over their astral body and their prana body.

On Earth, we thus have:

Firstly, pitris who had gone through the various stages of evolution to the highest which is normally reached; in the middle of the Lemurian age they began to go through a human evolution—Moon pitris.

Secondly, pitris who were half dhyanic, which means that by the middle of the Lemurian age they had come so far that they would very soon incarnate the higher divine principle in themselves—Sun pitris.

Thirdly, spirits who were already dhyanic. In the middle of the Lemurian age we have dhyanic spirits, manasic dhyani whose function it was to throw the spark of manas into the human being. Then we have those which threw the spark of budhi into the human being. These dhyani, which live on higher plane, are the ones which are called the buddhas in a higher sense, or Christos in Christian terms. They are the fourth dhyani, the budhi dhyani. They are real gods. We have now widened our horizon. The spark, which the budhi dhyani are there to give, can first of all be thrown into the solar pitris. Such a solar pitri, into whom the spark of budhi has been thrown, is called a bodhisattva.

At a much later time the spark of budhi was able to descend as far as the lunar pitris. The first lunar pitri who was filled with budhi and in whom human and godhead were united, was Jesus Christ. And there we have to consider that in Jesus Christ the budhi divinity had descended to the lowest level.

The budhi spark can descend as far as the kama manasic principle. The human being would then be a teacher. Buddha, Zarathustra, Krishna, Moses, Hermes and others were such teachers. Such individuals are born destined to be teachers. If the budhi influence went as far as kama itself, then the Christ principle had to descend into a body at a later time in life when it was already occupied by kama. That is how is was with Jesus who was only able to receive the Christ in his 30th year. If we consider the Jesus evolution, he had taken on karma by the very fact that kama was developed in him from the beginning. This had not been the case with the solar pitris; they were one level beyond kama. The lunar pitris had, however, started as purely kamic spirits and then begun to take on human Earthly karma. To be our brother, the Christ had to enter into a body carrying karma. The body, which was to receive the Christ, the budhi principle, had been configured by a higher chela of the third degree of initiation (Zarathustra). This body became the edifice for the godhead, the Christ.

Dhyanic spirits, too, are unable to bring thoughts to realization without prior preparation. And the human body had to be prepared before these spirits gave thinking to humanity.

Speaking of a trinity of the soul we have to say: Father, Mother and Son—Osiris, Isis, Horus.

Speaking of a trinity of the spirit, we have to say: Father, Word and Holy Spirit.

At a later time, trinity of the soul and trinity of the spirit were confounded.

In the middle of the Lemurian race, building the house for the human being had progressed as far as having the potential for thinking. The dhyanic spirits had gained the level of perfection which enabled them to endow the physical body with the power of thought. With the physical body now having this power, single-gender nature changed to two-gender nature. Before, an entity was able to produce offspring without involving another entity. The power of physical productivity was therefore twice as great in those entities than it is in individual human beings today. In the middle of the Lemurian age, therefore, the human power of productivity was divided in two, with the second half used to develop the ability to think. Until then humanity had evolved at the cost of other worlds which were eliminated by it. Now human beings had to divide in two themselves—into a lower and a higher productive power (power of thought). The latter developed at the cost of the former. Our physical power of rational understanding is thus former regenerative power transformed.

Up to that time only cold-blooded life forms existed on Earth. No life form had as yet the kind of blood that develops fire from within through kama. All of them, including the human being, were cold-blooded at the time. All the cold-blooded life forms we have today are atrophied forms descended from the cold-blooded life forms of that time. Every kind of warm-blooded life form we have today was still part of the human being then, only separating off gradually.

Step by step the human being would always leave behind anything that was less good in order to gain higher development. Reptiles, birds and mammals separated off first, the apes fairly late. Warm-blooded life forms are also earlier stages that have been left behind, with the human being casting them off just as he did the mineral, plant and cold-blooded animal worlds before. The fact that no warm-blooded life forms had existed until then, really means that a further world was created. In esoteric thinking, one does indeed speak of mineral world, plant world, cold-blooded animals, warm-blooded animals.

The warm-blooded animals were only separated off within the Lemurian age because kama entered into the bodies, taking hold of the lower part of that halved productivity. The kama acting from within brought about the warmth in warm-blooded life forms.

The dhyanic spirits were then able to create a human form where half the productive power was converted into powers of rational understanding. The Moon pitris then proceeded step by step to take possession of the human bodies thus created.

Dhyanic spirits may also lag behind in evolution. Some from the class of spirits who had created the human being on the Moon had thus remained behind. They had not managed to get so far as to take part in creating two-gender nature. But they had gained the ability to develop the kama body, configuring it with great wisdom. They were able to take the kamic principle in the human being to its highest peak. This was the work these spirits were still doing in the Lemurian age. However, on the Moon the kama body had not yet had gender, which means that these spirits were unable to take part in developing the kama in the sexual sphere.

Whilst the dhyani, which had gone ahead of them, had taken the human body so far that the spirit was able to enter into the bodies of two different genders, the single aim of these retarded spirits was to use their most sublime wisdom to create a human race that would develop what had been aimed for on the Moon, though this excluded sexuality. They furthermore found the wisdom in man to be akin to their own essential nature. They took hold of the human being and wanted to bring him into a form that would exclude all the lower kamic element; they wanted to bring him to perfection directly, without first going through sexuality. They wanted to make a human being full of wisdom, leaving aside what he must go through in his physical nature. These are the spirits which refused to take part in the creative work in physical nature.

If the human being had developed only in accord with the first dhyani's intentions, his lower kamic nature would not have developed, and he would have been under dhyani thought guidance. Who would then have been thinking in the human being? Divine thoughts had entered into him. Human beings would have been under God’s guidance. God would have been thinking in them, and never they themselves. They would then have been true children of God, but they could never have become like God themselves. They would have been thinking automatons, never able to grasp the inner spark of wisdom as their own; it would always have been an alien light.

Then those retarded spirits came and they were at exactly the right stage to come in and help at this point. They had developed the wisdom-filled kama body on the Moon, and they knew how to penetrate kama with wisdom. They were the spirits to whom the human being owed his freedom. He had to be tied in with kama so that the spark of spirit might be his own. They thus learned to love the light of the other dhyanic spirits. In esoteric terms they are called the great ascetics or kumaras. For at first they refused to be creative; they did not understand the two-gender state. They were insubordinate. They became guiding spirits for the human being at the point where kama was taken up towards wisdom.

The elohim, and especially the Jahveh elohim, had created the human being but did not want him to be 'like one of us’. Now, following the intervention of the retarded dhyani, they wanted at least to prevent human beings from becoming spiritual and leave aside everything low. Lucifer's original aim had been to let sexuality die away and let the human being merge wholly into the spiritual. Jehovah on the other hand tends to put the emphasis on physical life.⁶³ He does not want the human being to grow spiritual too soon, but wants to make him go through the phases of Earth evolution. Together the two bring about the free human being.

The rebellion of the lower dhyani was the work of Lucifer, the intervention of the spirits who free the human being is known as ‘Lucifer’s secret’. In all esoteric schools, Lucifer was venerated as much as all the other dhyanic spirits. Lucifer was called on whenever people needed guidance to find the way to the spirit in full clarity of perceptive understanding. In the early Christian mystery centres, Lucifer's Mystery was still understood and also put down in writing in those early days. This book is most carefully guarded in the Roman Catholic Church, for good reason, for the Church has declared Lucifer to be the enemy of humanity, though the truth is that he made the automated human being into a free spirit. The book is kept at the Vatican; the Count of St Germain has a copy.⁶⁴

We have now been considering the way heavenly spirits (dhyani), Earthly spirits (the human being in his Earthly body and the lunar soul principle of the pitris) and the luciferic spirits worked together in Lemurian times. Let us now consider a specific line of human evolution.

A cycle will always be descending and then ascending: evolution - involution. This is also how it has been with the evolution of our senses. We did not always have the same senses. The human being of the Polarian age was enveloped in a form of matter that was highly tenuous and indeed shadow-like. He had been developed according to the pitris—etheric. These ether human beings really looked oval, like an egg, and moved in a wholly etheric element. Our present-day senses would have been useless at that time. A sense to give orientation within the etheric matter was sufficient, and that was the sense of hearing. They had only this one sense, to perceive the movement of the ether matter, just as later on, in the 6th root-race, the human being will hear the ‘trumpets’ (Book of Revelation), that is, the sounds of the spheres.

As matter condensed, a principle we must call temperature differences developed within matter. Movements were no longer regular, and this created denser and warmer areas. The Hyperboreans were made of air matter. They were able to detect differences in temperature by means of a sense of feeling. Further condensation of the Earth made bodies more solid at first, and finally incandescent. Outwardly this could look like a flame. The sense of sight developed, and this happened in such a way that the temperature organ of the head, which projected like an lantern from the top of the head, changed into an organ of vision. This was later going to be the pineal body, atrophied today, but incandescent and projecting in earlier times—the single eye of the Cyclops. Further condensation of the Earth caused this eye to go through involution, with two eyes taking the place of the one, though they only developed fully in Atlantean times.

Up to the third sub-race of the Atlantean age there would always still be people who had developed their one eye (the eye of Cyclops) and were using it for clairvoyant vision. Then a new ability developed, and this involved a sense by which the condensed matter could be perceived—the sense of taste (tongue). Matter had to be concentrated to such a degree that it came to be salt-like. The sense of smell developed last of all; it was to gain its real significance only in the rounds that followed.

Evolution continues, and in this round we are called on to develop two new senses. We have already begun to start the cycle actively where before we started it passively. What was passive before, is now becoming active for us. The potential developed in the Atlanteans. Before that, human beings had no speech; this only began to develop with the Atlanteans. In speech, human beings utter what they have heard with their ears. The evolution was an involution before. Talking is the opposite pole to hearing. It must continue to develop. It will gain significance and become a sense when mystic evolution will have refined the human being from inside to such effect that it will be able to take the spiritual element in directly. When the spiritual unites with the larynx, the human being will at last be able to speak in a higher sense (in the presence of the masters).

The first time a human manu, who will be a human ‘master’, will arise will be by the end of the fifth root-race. In the sixth root-race he will be a brother to the human race. Those who will have taken their mystic evolution of the astral so far that they will be able to recognize the master, will have achieved this by developing this sense. ‘Before the voice can speak in the presence of the masters it must have lost the power to wound.’⁶⁵

A seventh sense also needs to be developed in our cycle. Just as the sense of hearing will emerge actively, in speech that no longer wounds, so the sense of feeling will go through a reversal. The individual will no longer consider only the things which come from the outside to be feeling, but will also know how to direct them to the outside. He will be able to let his heart unfold freely for the outside and let his deepest feelings enwrap other human beings. The spiritual soul principle, which lives in the heart today, will then flow out. The individual will lay his soul openly at the feet of others. We will not be able to develop this sense unless we consciously endeavour to meet others and the whole world openly: ‘Before the soul can stand in the presence of the masters its feet must be washed in the blood of the heart.’

The astral body organizes these senses when the human being lives in the spirit of these two rules.

• 63. See lecture given in Berlin on 25 October 1905, in GA 93a, Foundations of Esotericism (see note 13).
• 64. See lecture given in Berlin on 23 May 1905, in GA 93, The Temple Legend (see note 22).
• 65. Mabel Collins, Light on the Way, London 1888. See Rudolf Steiner’s commentaries on this [in German] in GA 264, and in GA 266/1.

We are going to have an example of how the world evolved, concentrating on the point where evolution went through the middle of the Lemurian age, and looking at some of the time that went before and came after. The aim is to show how the sense of the eye developed at that time.

If we were able to look at the world as it was at the time of the first, the Polarian race, we would find it to be an ether orb. Soon, meaning several millions years later—which can mean ‘soon’ in world evolution—matter condensed. We see the beginnings of what we call ‘air’. In the air itself, the first beginnings evolved of what we call ‘fire’ and ‘water’. At the time, however, the water in the air was a fiery mist. At that time, in the beginning of the Lemurian age, the Earth was a dense, smoky, fiery mist. Real water as we know it today only developed later as the Earth cooled down; solid matter came even later.

We have to realize that human beings were involved in some form or other at every one of these developmental stages. Human evolution is always dependent on the surroundings.

Let us now look at the human being as he began to evolve at the time when those fiery mists were developing. He had his sense of hearing at the time, and a sense of feeling for temperature differences; he was a highly differentiated, mobile creature flying around in the fiery mist. He needed an organ for feeling if conditions were favourable, not too hot nor too cold. The Cyclops-like organ developed at this time, which had initially served as an organ for feeling the ambient temperature, to tell him if he might enter into it or not.

Then the whole mass in which he was moving started to grow fiery. Before, this element we now call ‘flame’ was not present; the level of the temperature was much higher than the temperature of fire today. The feeling organ sensed that the state of heat was turning into flame and thus gradually condensed into an organ of vision. We see, therefore, that this feeling organ evolved from the inside, arising initially from an inner need of the human being; it was to tell him if he felt well or not. Initially, the organ therefore existed for the sake of the human being himself, so that he might evolve as a life form in conditions that would allow this. At the same time—initially as an attendant phenomenon—the organ developed the ability to perceive the flame which had grown cold, which was light. The organ was at the top of the human head, like a glowing lantern. As matter condensed further it changed from an organ of feeling into an organ of vision.

The mobile human body was getting progressively denser. The result was that this feeling eye lost significance in the encounter with denser objects with external boundaries. Now the attendant phenomenon of being able to see the cold flame came into its own. The organ grew able, as matter was growing denser, to see the object with its boundaries; it was thus given a new role, as it were, as the surroundings changed. The original function has remained and will come into its own at a later stage.⁶⁶

The new quality had thus entered into the entity from the outside, to be given its function later on. Every entity first absorbs from the surroundings what it will later need for its conditions for life. Human beings would never have been able to perceive things through their eyes if these had not been created into them out of the surroundings. Organs need to be created out of the surroundings first, so that these surroundings may then be perceived. Through the organs which the surrounding world has created in him, he can in turn bring influence to bear in the surroundings.

Human beings can never give anything to the world unless the world has first created the conditions for it. Thus interaction between human being and world created the eyes, and through them human beings will later be able again to influence the world. We always have the same process; the human being first absorbs something from the outside which he will then later give out again. Everything in us has resulted from an activity. There is nothing in existence that has not originally been activity. All existence is the result of activity. This applies in all areas of existence, on all planes.

If we consider the dhyanic spirits in their revelatory activity, this is the outcome of an activity they had previously absorbed. This is the law of karma in its most comprehensive sense. All that is results from activity. To be a fortunate individual, you must have created your good fortune yourself in an earlier existence. The good fortune someone enjoys is the outcome of some activity on that individual’s part that had proved a blessing.

Consideration given to the karma of eye development differs from other [studies of karma] in that the individual remains perfectly calm and objective in giving his consideration. Emotions come into it when he considers the karma of his essential nature—idea of just and unjust. In the Vedantic and Pythagorean schools it was therefore the custom to discuss karma by choosing objects that would not arouse emotions. This first of all purified the thoughts, so that nothing by way of passions and feelings would enter into them. This was ‘study’, the aim being to get to know the laws of the world in a way that did not involve emotions. It was called ‘catharsis’, leaving aside anything personal. After this the individual concerned could become a mystic. For as long as human beings have reflected on the destiny of their souls, they have been very interested to know if it is mortal or immortal. They therefore had to go through catharsis in those times before they could study the soul’s destiny without emotion. Calm, emotionless study would free them from fear and self pity, above all egotistical compassion. Aristotle therefore defined drama as a cleansing through fear and compassion.⁶⁷

We can see, therefore, that evolution involves a sequence of stages. At one level an entity will absorb something, then to be active on the outside at another. To begin with, the entity comes face to face with the outside world; then interaction develops. This would continue if circumstances did not change. When condensation occurs, the activity is struck back and the entity is transformed from inside.

In the development of the eyes, we have first of all the feeling eye in direct contact with the surrounding world. Then the eye was delimited by the denser matter which formed a layer in between. This physical layer separated the fire of the inner eye from the fire outside. Denser layers form in the following way. If there is a uniform orb to begin with, a spherical shell will first of all develop and this separates from the inner sphere because a layer forms in between. This is how the original atom arose.⁶⁸ Initially, therefore, we have equally subtle matter inside and out, separated by a fine membrane of denser matter. Imagine that the process continues. Imagine the membrane of denser matter divides again in a similar way, as if it developed a more recent, denser membrane around itself. A separate entity thus develops, surrounding itself with progressively denser membranes, like the way an atom develops. We therefore have to think of the way atoms form—part of an existing form of matter being separated off by matter that grows progressively denser.

A difference then exists between inner and outer. This will have to show itself in some way. Consider sensation, as we call it. It may be caused by a pin prick, for example. But there has to be something which causes the sensation and something which has it—something active and something passive. Everything in the world comes into existence like this. All that is results from activity. All activity depends on there being something that is passive. These are the two poles we must look for with any activity. Even with the smallest atom we have something active and something passive. In the case of the atom, the forces acting from outside invert the membrane which encloses it. It grows concave from the outside, and convex, the opposite, from the inside.

In relation to the world we are the passive part, for we receive and feel impressions all the time. These continuous impressions are sensed by the astral body. We have to distinguish between activity and passivity in the astral world. Every sensation has to be produced, or rather caused. Nothing can be caused in the world of sentience without having an effect in that world. You have to visualize the whole of sentient space. If there were only a single astral body, we would never be able to ascribe sensations to the activities of other entities. Yet the ability to sense things could not have developed in us if we had not differentiated it out from a whole astral world in this way. Astral existence presupposes astral activity. In the same way mental existence presupposes thought activity, and physical existence physical activity.

Having understood this, we also understand something else. The human being thinks. This is his existence. Cogito ergo sum (Descartes).⁶⁹ Our passive thinking about things presupposes active thinking, presupposes that the things have first been created through the thought. Our human passive thinking presupposes one that is active. For every passive thought there must have been an active and creative thought before. Every feeling, every sensation, all passive experience in the astral body presupposes that this astral experience has been actively brought about. Anything which appears in the world all around us presupposes that the phenomena were first called into existence. Light would not exist if light had not been brought about; existence would not exist if it had not been brought about; sensory perception presupposes that the phenomenon is first revealed.

Everywhere in the world we find these three:

Active and passive thinking
Active and passive life
Active and passive existence.

Everything which is passive existence for the human being, is called the physical plane; it is the essence of all passive existence.

The essence of all passive life is called the astral plane.

The essence of all passive thinking is called the rupa mental plane.

The essence of all active thinking is called the arupa mental plane.

The essence of all active life is called the budhi plane.

The essence of all active existence is called the nirvana plane.

These are the five [six] planes known to us. Activity is most intensive in the nirvana plane, for existence itself is created there.

If we consider the human being in terms of these planes, we see that every thought which a human being thinks is followed by another active thought on the corresponding plane, which is the reaction. If you have a thought on the lower mental plane, this causes a counter image on the higher mental plane. If you have a feeling, this produces a counter image on the budhi plane. If you are active in the physical plane, this produces a counter image on the nirvana plane. Just as earlier an active thought created our passive thinking, so does an active thought creative its passive counter image on the higher mental plane, and so on. We thus cannot take a single thought but that this has its counter image, and the same holds true for a feeling or action.

The sum of all those counter thoughts, counter experiences and counter actions is called the akashic record. It is therefore possible to read every human thought on the higher mental plane, all feelings and experiences on the budhi plane, and all actions in the nirvana plane. The spirits which regulate the relationship between those counter images and human beings play an important role. Human beings live out their thoughts on the mental plane. What they deal with in their thoughts, all happens on the mental plane. When they are there, in the devachan, between death and rebirth, they build the character of their thought body for the next life. That is where the counter images of their former thoughts are. The individual draws them to his mental body, which has been freed from anything physical or astral, and thus creates his future mental body according to the thought images he has created. However, he would not be able to connect the counter images of his experiences and actions with himself on his own. This needs spirits who regulate things from the outside, the lords of karma, the lipikas. They connect the counter images of the human being’s feelings and actions with him when he is on the budhi and nirvana planes—with kamic and other elements already enveloping him—to provide for the incarnations that will follow.

• 66. See lecture given on 30 September 1905, in GA 93a, Foundations of Esotericism (see note 13).
• 67. Aristotle (384–322 BC), in Poetics, 6th section. See also Rudolf Steiner’s essay ‘Aristoteles ueber das Mysteriendrama’ in Lucifer-Gnosis, GA 34.
• 68. See the lectures given in Berlin on 16 & 23 Dec. 1904 and 21 Oct. 1905, in The Temple Legend (see note 22).
• 69. René Descartes (1596–1650), French philosopher and mathematician. Principia Philosophiae Part 1, paragraph 7.