The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Lecture Fifteen

[ 1 ] When attempting to convey an idea of planetary development, one must resort not to abstractions but to images. For images possess an invigorating, creative power that is not inherent in mere concepts. What appears symbolic in one world corresponds to a reality in a higher world.

[ 2 ] We know that before our Earth reached its present state, it went through a phase that is called lunar or simply moon. But this ancient moon, the state that preceded our Earth, refers to something completely different from our present satellite or any other planet that astronomy could ever discover. The celestial bodies that humans see today are those that have mineralized. Our eyes can only see objects that contain mineral substance and reflect light, that is, those that have a physical body. When occultists speak of the mineral kingdom, they are not referring to stones, but to the sphere in which human consciousness is developing today. Many scholars regard a living being as a simple machine and reject the idea of a life force. This way of thinking comes from the fact that our organism cannot perceive life directly. In contrast, the occultist says that humans today live in the mineral world.

[ 3 ] Let us consider the eye. It is a complex physical apparatus, a kind of darkroom with the pupil as its window and the lens as its magnifying glass. The entire body is formed from a sum of physical apparatuses that are as delicate as they are complex. The ear is like a spinet with a keyboard, and the fibers take the place of the strings. And the same is true of every sense organ.

[ 4 ] The consciousness of modern man is only awake in relation to his physical or mineral body. But once it has awakened on this level of existence, it must nevertheless gradually appear in the other regions of the human being: in the one that is determined by the life forces — the plant nature of the human being — in the one that is mainly determined by the forces of sensitivity — the animal nature of the human being — and finally in the actual human nature.

[ 5 ] At present, human beings only know what is of a mineral nature in the universe. They do not know the instinct and sensory life of animals or the growth power of plants according to their inherent laws, but only according to their physical appearance. Imagine if a plant existed only in its supersensible substance, thus losing its mineral substance; it would be invisible to us.

[ 6 ] But even if humans only know minerals, they at least have them under their control. They work, model, melt, and calculate them. They reshape the face of the earth. He is still only capable of shaping this face with the help of mechanical means. If we go back to prehistoric times, when no human hand had yet touched the earth, we find it as it emerged from the hand of the gods. But since man took possession of the mineral kingdom, the earth has been changing, and we can foresee the time when its face will be shaped entirely by human hands and no longer by the hands of the gods.

[ 7 ] From the beginning, the gods prescribed a certain form for every thing. For minerals, this ability to shape form has been transferred from the gods to humans. In ancient traditions, it was taught that humans should accomplish this work of transforming the earth with the threefold goal of realizing wisdom, beauty, and virtue. On this threefold basis, humans should build a temple out of the earth. Then the beings who appeared later than humans in the course of evolution will look upon the work of humans as we look upon the mineral kingdom that came forth from the hands of the gods. The cathedrals, the machines—they were not created in vain. The crystal that we extract from the earth today was formed by the gods, just as we erect our monuments and construct our machines. Just as they created the mineral world out of a chaotic mass in the past, so our cathedrals, our inventions, indeed our institutions in general, are seeds from which a future world will emerge.

[ 8 ] After transforming the mineral world, man learns to transform the plant world. This is a higher degree of skill. Just as humans today build buildings, they will be able to create and shape plants by working on plant matter. Yes, in the future, humans will rise even higher by forming not only living beings, but even conscious beings, and they will extend their abilities to the animal kingdom. When humans are able to recreate themselves through their conscious will, they will realize on a higher level what they accomplish today in the mineral world of the senses.

[ 9 ] The seed of this reproduction of themselves, freed from all sensuality, is the word. The first consciousness was given to humans with their first breath. Consciousness will reach its completion when humans are able to infuse their words with the same creative power that their thought life is endowed with today. At present, they only entrust their words to the air. When they have risen to a higher creative consciousness, they will be able to communicate images to the air. The word will then be a living imagination in the full sense of the word. By giving these images physical form, they will make the word the physical carrier of the image. When we no longer simply embody our thoughts in objects, such as in the manufacture of a watch, we will give the images physical substance. The watch, for example, will be as alive as a plant.

[ 10 ] And when man understands how to transfer life to the highest that is within him, these images will attain a life of their own, comparable to animal existence. Then man will ultimately be able to reproduce himself. At the end of the transformation of the earth, the whole atmosphere will resound with the power of the word. Thus, man must develop until he is able to model his environment in the image of his inner being. The initiate precedes him only in this way. It is obvious that even today the earth cannot yet produce such human bodies as it will be able to at the end of its development. At that point, the bodies will be so far advanced that they can be considered an expression of what is called the Logos. The great missionary who alone, in a human body like ours, revealed this power of the Logos, this “Word became flesh,” is Christ. He appears in the middle of our evolution to show us its goal.

[ 11 ] Let us now ask ourselves: In what form did the human spirit live before it entered us through respiration? - The Earth is the reincarnation of a previous planet, which in occultism is called the Moon. On this Moon, there were no pure minerals yet. It still consisted of a wood-like substance, something between a mineral and a plant. Its surface did not have the hardness of a mineral; at most, it could be compared to peat. Half-plant, half-mollusk creatures grew on this globe, and a third kingdom inhabited it, an intermediate realm between humans and present-day animals. These were precisely the beings who were gifted with a dreamlike, imaginative consciousness. One can imagine the matter of which they were composed by comparing it with that which today constitutes the nerve mass of crabs or nerves in general. In fact, it is the condensation of this matter that has given rise to the present brain mass. But while it could live in a gelatinous state on the Moon, it must now be surrounded by a protective shell on Earth: the shell of crustaceans or the skull. Thus, all the substances of which we are composed have emerged from the macrocosm. And this universal preparation was necessary so that the I could sink into human beings.

[ 12 ] But we have seen that human beings were only able to receive the seed of their ego on Earth when they could breathe the air surrounding them. What did they breathe on the Moon?

[ 13 ] The further back we go in evolution, the higher the temperature becomes. On Atlantis, everything was shrouded in hot vapors. In these ancient conditions, the air first becomes hot, then fiery: fire takes the place of air. The Lemurians still breathed fire. That is why the occult writings say that humans were first taught by the fire spirits. When physical humans gained a foothold on Earth, air became their life element. But humans spoil this air by converting it into carbon dioxide, and so the process of respiration further increases the density of our globe by one degree. The activity of plants restores the balance. After all, the physical body, which needs to absorb oxygen from the air, causes carbon dioxide to increase on the surface of the earth, and as a result, human bodies become anemic. A time will come when the physical body will disappear and humans and the earth will be of an astral nature. For physical nature destroys itself through its own forces. But before this transformation is complete, a cosmic night will intervene, similar to the one that marked the transition from the old moon to our present earth.

[ 14 ] The atmosphere of the moon contained nitrogen, just as the Earth's atmosphere today contains oxygen, and it was the predominance of nitrogen that brought about the end of the lunar period and the beginning of cosmic night. What reminds us on Earth of the last conditions of existence on the moon are nitrogen compounds. This has a destructive effect on Earth, because these nitrogen compounds are out of place here. They are harmful residues from the living conditions of another world age. The combination of carbon and nitrogen had roughly the same effect on the Moon as that of carbon and oxygen on Earth (see note).

[ 15 ] The animal-human who lived on the moon is therefore the ancestor of the physical human being on Earth, just as the fire spirits of this lunar epoch are the creators of the present human spirit. What incarnated in fire on the moon incarnates in air on Earth.

[ 16 ] But where do we find a memory of the activity of these fire spirits in present-day human beings? — On the moon, living beings did not have warm blood. What caused the warmth of the blood and, in its wake, the revival of the passions? It is the fire that the beings on the moon breathed in and that now regains life in their blood on Earth. And the spirit of the air now surrounds this body, which preserves the legacy of the lunar state, with a light garment of the senses: the warmth of the blood, the brain, the spinal cord, the nerves.

[ 17 ] These examples show us that we must study the transformation of substances very carefully in order to understand a transformation such as that which took place during the phases of development that preceded the Earth. If we were to go back further, we would see that in previous states our planet had a purely gaseous body, and, even further back, a body of pure sound substance. Human development originates from this sound, which is the word of the world itself, and subsequently progresses to light, fire, and air. Only in the fourth state does the human spirit become conscious. From this point on, the orientation that had previously been given to it by the Word comes from within, and its consciousness becomes its own guide. Its original essence realizes itself in the I. The becoming conscious of the I means the realization of the Christ principle in the human being.

[ 18 ] If we were to go back to the first elemental form, we would be absorbed by the word, by the flowing sound. With the second elemental stage, we would move over to the flowing light. The third elemental stage would permeate us with warmth. Finally, at the fourth elemental stage, in the earthly atmosphere, we would see the emergence of self-consciousness, which allows human beings to say “I” to themselves. (See the schematic representation on p. 104.)