The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Lecture X

[ 1 ] When you consider the human being in their entirety, you first see the physical body, then the etheric and astral bodies. Everyone can see the physical body of a human being. The etheric body becomes visible when you remove the physical body through a sharp act of will. Then the space of the physical body remains filled with the etheric body. The occultist actually considers the etheric body to be the lowest body. It is the body after which the physical human being is formed. According to the descending line, the etheric body is formed in opposition to the physical body; only according to the ascending line are the two the same. The woman has a male etheric body and the man a female etheric body.

[ 2 ] The astral body appears around the etheric body. The astral body is the outer form for all soul contents; for passions, emotions, drives, desires, feelings of pleasure and displeasure, enthusiasm, and so on. It manifests itself in the most diverse forms. Cloud formations appear around it; it shines in a wide variety of colors. Sometimes individual formations hang from it like shreds. The shapes and colors are varied and change. Green indicates sympathy and compassion for fellow human beings. The lower classes of the population show a lot of red in their astral bodies: brownish red, brick red, blood red. Such a red color, indicative of lower passions, is particularly common among cab drivers.

[ 3 ] The entire mass of the astral body is enclosed in an egg-shaped shell in every human being. This has a blue base color and essentially shows a dark purple spot in the middle of the brain. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky calls this egg-shaped shell the auric egg. In small children, the auric egg is predominant; in them, many bright, light-colored clouds appear. However, even small children often have dark clouds in the lower parts, which indicate baseness. This is the inherited karma that they share with their ancestors. These are the sins of the fathers. These sins of the fathers are inherited up to the seventh generation. People's characteristics can be linked back to their seventh great-grandfather. After the seventh generation, the inheritance is extinguished. Three generations are counted during a century. So people today still show something good or bad from the good or bad characteristics of their ancestors from the 17th century. In this way, we can take a look at our ancestors through two hundred years or a little more.

[ 4 ] To see how the auric egg was formed, we must consider the development of a world body. We call the state of the Earth that is closest to our observation the physical state. In theosophical literature, a form state is called a globe, and therefore we speak of the physical globe. As a physical globe, the Earth is the fourth globe in a development of seven states. Three other states preceded the physical globe, and three more will follow. Before the Earth became physical, it was astral. Everything that lived on Earth at that time existed only in astral form. When humanity has passed through the sixth and seventh root races (main ages), it will be so spiritualized that it will once again have an astral form. However, this future astral form will contain all the fruits of development.

[ 5 ] Seven states of form together make up a cycle. The earth is now going through its fourth cycle, which is the mineral cycle. The task of human beings during this time is to work on the mineral kingdom. It is already work on the mineral kingdom when a person takes a piece of flint and hammers it into a wedge with which to work on other things. When they remove rocks and build pyramids from stones, when they make tools from metals, when they conduct electricity across the earth in a network, humans are working on the mineral kingdom. In this way, humans use the entire mineral kingdom in their service. They turn the earth completely into a work of art. When painters combine colors according to their manas, they are also working on the mineral kingdom. We are now in the middle of this activity, and in the next races (main ages) it will be completely reworked, so that in the end there will be no atom on earth that has not been worked on by man. In the past, these atoms became more and more solidified; but now they are moving further and further apart again. Radioactivity did not exist in the past, so it could not be discovered. It has only existed for a few millennia, because now the atoms are increasingly splitting apart.

[ 6 ] When the fourth round comes to an end, the entire mineral kingdom will have passed through the hands of man. When he has worked through the entire mineral kingdom, the earth must pass into an astral state so that the fruits of this labor can appear. In this state, the forms can unfold. After that, the earth will pass into a mental globe and then into the higher mental state, the arupic. Then the earth will disappear completely from these states in a smaller pralaya. It will then pass into a new arupic state of the next, the fifth round, then into a rupamental state, then into an astral state; after that, it will reappear physically. Everything that humans have worked into the mineral kingdom in the fourth round then reappears and grows in the fifth round as the plant kingdom; for example, Cologne Cathedral grows as a plant in the next round.

[ 7 ] Between the last arupic state of the fourth round and the first arupic state of the fifth round, the earth passes through a pralaya. In the fifth round, the former mineral kingdom then appears in all its forms as the plant kingdom. The arupic state of the fifth round contains everything that humans have processed in the mineral round. This reappears first in the arupic state, in pure akasha. This state is called “akasha.” At the beginning of each new round, everything is in the Akasha. Later, only impressions remain in the Akasha. So in these impressions in the Akasha we have the whole Earth with all its beings. At the transition from the third to the fourth round, all the beings that arose in the third round reappear in the Akasha at the beginning of the fourth round.

[ 8 ] As it continues to develop from the Akasha, the whole must condense, it must take on a denser form. This happens in the Rupaz state of the Earth. This more material form is called the ether in occultism, for example in some places in H.P. Blavatsky. In this etheric Earth, everything is contained only in thoughts. All beings were contained in thoughts in this etheric Earth. But behind it, the Akasha remains as a foundation. The ether condenses further into astral light. In the astral light, the third globe (form state), the astral earth, shines forth; it shines in the purest astral light, and this astral light is made of the very same substance in which the human auric egg later shines. This is particularly evident in very young children who are only a few months old. Then the earth transitions into its current physical state. It then becomes the actual earth and becomes more and more physical. But to the same extent that it becomes more and more physical, it separates off the individual auric eggs for humanity. They separate in the same way as when water in a filled vessel freezes into ice on one side and forms droplets on the other. Thus, on the one hand, the physical earth separates, and on the other, the auric eggs for human development form droplets.

[ 9 ] At first, the auric egg appears as an undifferentiated entity. But in truth it is not undifferentiated. It behaves in a similar way to the following: if we have a saline solution, it is a uniform grayish mass; if we leave it standing, the beautiful salt cubes separate out. The forces that the etheric body, the Linga sharira, works out have been predisposed in the auric egg. From what has become solid earth, what had previously undergone development on the moon will later emerge. This has the potential for the lower kingdoms up to the first vertebrates, up to the snake. What follows in terms of animals among the vertebrates was not yet present on the moon; it was only added on earth. The invertebrates thus emerged from the earth as it condensed into the physical earth, as did the plants and the mineral kingdom.

[ 10 ] At the time when all this had emerged, human beings had entered the Lemurian epoch. The increasingly dense human being developed from the first, the Polar race, to the second, the Hyperborean race. This was followed by the Lemurian epoch, when the development of vertebrates began, which only developed from then on.

[ 11 ] We distinguish between: first, Akasha; second, ether; third, astral light; fourth, earth; fifth, the auric egg.

[ 12 ] This is called a vortex. Up to the earth, the fourth state of form, the earth became denser and denser. At the price of becoming more and more dense, the astral light individualized itself after the solid had pushed itself out. The auric eggs of human beings are the individualized astral light. Therefore, one can read in the astral light; not the actions, but the emotions associated with them can be read in the astral light. For example, Caesar conceived the idea of crossing the Rubicon, which was associated with certain feelings and passions. The action at that time corresponds to a sum of astral impulses. The physical actions on the physical plane are gone for all eternity. Caesar's crossing can no longer be seen in the astral light; but the impulse that drove him to do so has remained in the astral light. The kamic (astral) correlates of what happens on the physical plane remain in the astral light. One must accustom oneself to disregarding all physical perceptions and seeing only the kamic impulses. These must be held fast and consciously translated back into the physical. It makes no sense to search for something that would look as if it had been photographed.

[ 13 ] However, the greatest impulses in world history can no longer be read in the astral light, because the impulses of the great initiates were dispassionate. Therefore, for those who read only in the astral light, the entire work of the initiates is not there; for example, the content of the book “Les grands Initiés” by Edouard Schuré could not have been found in the astral light. Such impressions are only recorded in the ether. What can be read in astral light about what the great initiates have done is based on deception, because one can only read the consequences of the actions of the great initiates from the impulses of their disciples. Disciples and entire peoples felt vividly and passionately about the actions of the great initiates, and this has remained in the astral light. However, it is so difficult to study the innermost motives of the great initiates because they are only present in the ether.

[ 14 ] Cosmic events—transformations such as those of Atlantis—are now even higher, no longer in the ether, but in the actual Akasha. This is the Akashic Records. However, in a certain way, this is still connected with the lowest affairs of human beings. For human beings are connected with the great events of the cosmos. Every single human being can be found in general terms in the Akashic Records. What is there continues and functions in the ether and in the astral light. The individual human being becomes more and more clearly recognizable the more one searches for him in the lower realms. And one must study all these realms in order to understand the actual mechanism of karma.