The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Theosophy and Rosicrucianism X

[ 1 ] Today we want to consider the transformation of the old moon into our Earth. But before that, we must point out an important phenomenon of the moon's evolution itself. When this was coming to an end, when everything that I described yesterday had more or less taken place, a reunification of the old moon with the sun itself took place. This old moon, so to speak, fell back into the sun again, so that there was now the unified body again. Then this body again went into a kind of dormant state of planetary existence, and the fourth metamorphosis emerged once more; this was not quite the same as what our earth represents, but the state of our earth was only slowly preparing. We can best understand a cosmic law by looking at our Earth: that the later states must, in a certain respect, repeat what was already there before. Before our Earth, after awakening, could truly become our Earth, it had to briefly repeat the state of Saturn, the Sun and the Moon. Admittedly, this development took place in a slightly different way than with the three planets themselves.

[ 2 ] We have heard that the first rudiments of the sense organs that we carry within us were present on Saturn. During the first repetition, these sense formations had already progressed so far that a kind of human form emerged; but during this metamorphosis, the automatic sense apparatus did not yet have an etheric body. During the repetition of the solar condition, the etheric body was incorporated, and during the third transformation, the repetition of the lunar condition, the astral body. In the third phase, we again have the sun and moon floating separately in space. The beings were somewhat more highly developed because they were increasingly approaching the preparation of what they were to undergo on earth. The fourth body, the I, was added to the three bodies that animal mankind had on the moon. But this did not happen so quickly. While the earth was going through its Saturn time, the whole human automatic sensory apparatus had to develop the form that would enable the I to be received. During the repetition of the sun, the etheric body was transformed in such a way that it could become the carrier of the I; and during the repetition of the moon, the astral body was also transformed in such a way that it could receive the I. These members were, as it were, waiting to receive an I.

[ 3 ] What we have already been able to follow was a separation of the sun and moon. Then, as we approach our own development, we find ourselves dealing with a splitting apart of the Moon and the Earth. The old Moon became two bodies: the one consisting of the most inferior material of all the beings and substances present was thrown out into space; the other is our present Earth. Whatever might have prevented the beings from undergoing further development had to be expelled, and that formed the present moon. Only then did the earth come into existence as an independent world body. We are thus confronted with tremendous cosmic events: the separation of the sun from the earth plus moon; and then again the separation of the earth from the moon. These two events prepared our present development.

[ 4 ] I have led you to the point where our Earth became an independent sphere. I would now like to lead you to this point from a different direction, so that you are precisely oriented as to where this point lies for our Earth.

[ 5 ] Let us now go back from the immediate present to the past; let us therefore start from the shape of the earth, which you all know. Even science points to considerable differences between the earth's appearance in the past and today. Although it is all based on hypotheses, we can be pleased that today natural science and spiritual science are already meeting in this. Natural science says: In the areas where we live today, there were huge primeval forests with a climate similar to that at the equator today; mighty animals were to be found there. According to what natural science says today, the face of the earth looked quite different. After the tropical climate that prevailed at that time, before today's temperate climate, was the glacial or ice age, and so on. These are things that you can already find in any geology book. I am telling this to point out to you how we must be fully aware that the face of the earth changes dramatically and looks quite different over certain periods of time. Natural science, which has only the combining intellect, its apparatus and so on at its disposal, can only look back on a series of millennia of the outward appearance of our earth. But when the seer looks back, he has to describe it in a slightly different way, but that harmony between natural science and spiritual science will come in time. Natural science already points out to us the fact that the seer must assert with determination that the face of the earth has not only changed in relation to plants and so on, but that completely different areas of our earth were covered by land or sea than is the case today. Huxley, for example, pointed out that a whole part of Great Britain has been under water four times. Accordingly, the face of our earth looks quite different again and again. For example, in Kosmos, issue 10, you will find an essay about the so-called ancient Atlantis, where a scholar who is firmly grounded in the natural sciences proves from the configuration of the plant and animal kingdoms in Europe and America that what is now the Atlantic Ocean must have been land in the past, and that in those times large parts of Africa must have been sea, not land. But to the west of us was the land of Atlantis, which stretched between Europe and America.

[ 6 ] The scholar only comes to speak of a flora and fauna, but that is only natural. Even if there were remains of those ancient humans, our ancestors, they would have to be found on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, and the seabed cannot be searched that thoroughly yet. The spiritual researcher looks back to the turn of time and knows that the old Atlantis, of which even Plato still reports, really existed back then. The whole area that is now ocean was the old Atlantis, and the physical ancestors of today's human race lived there. Admittedly, they looked rather different from what today's science imagines. But we must not compare them with today's ape race; the Atlanteans were very different from today's humans, both mentally and physically, but they were not apes. The simian race did not yet exist at that time; it only came into being at a later time, and not otherwise than in the way that certain human forms at that time remained at the level of development at that time, and then descended to an even lower level. Darwinism makes a mistake, but it is very easy to see. If someone sees two people and hears that they are related, one is an imperfect person while the other, who has used his abilities well, is an excellent person, he will not say: they are related by blood, so the perfect person descends from the imperfect one. — But that is the conclusion of the Darwinists. However, the perfect and the imperfect stand side by side: only one has developed upwards by making good use of his abilities, while the other has driven them down and fallen into decadence. So it is also with the apes, which have branched off from humans, and humans themselves. The ape that encounters man appears to him like a caricature of a human, not like a human. Thus, in the time of Atlantis, there was a completely different breed of human being. This one developed higher. Certain beings remained behind. And because the Earth is changing, they did not remain at that level either, but came down, atrophied and became the caricature of man, the ape race. Thus, the lower beings have degenerated into higher ones, and have fallen into decadence.

[ 7 ] If we look at the people of Atlantis themselves, we will best understand how they lived if we look at their mental characteristics.

[ 8 ] Everything that modern man can do – think logically, do arithmetic and so on – all of this developed later. Logic and judgment were still completely foreign to the Atlanteans. Instead, the Atlanteans had a quality of the soul that has considerably declined today, namely an almost incomprehensible memory. It was impossible for him to calculate in such a way that he would have learned the rule: two times two is four, and would have carried out this calculation again and again based on his judgment. But he could remember what happens when you add two and two together, and recall it again and again. This is connected with a completely different physical nature of that old continent itself. If you want to imagine this continent in terms of its physical nature, the best way to get an idea of it is to think of a mountain valley filled with dense water vapors and masses of fog. There was never any water-free air for the Atlanteans. The air was always saturated with water. The ancient Atlanteans retained the memory of this when they came to Europe; that is why they call the land where their ancestors lived Niflheim. It was only towards the end of the last third of the Atlantean era that people began to realize that they had an ego. The potential for this has been present for a long time, along with a certain sense of it. But to express it clearly and distinctly: “I am an I” - that is something we only learned in the last third of the Atlantean era. This is connected to the relationship between the etheric body and the physical body. If you look at these two bodies, you can see that they roughly match, except that the etheric body extends slightly beyond the physical body. There is now a point between the eyebrows that is a center for certain forces and currents of the etheric body. A very specific point in the physical brain now belongs to it. Both must coincide, and the ability to perceive oneself as an ego is based on this; the ability to calculate, to combine, and so on, is also based on this. In the case of the idiots, for example, the touching of these points in the head is not present, they do not overlap. The moment they fall apart, the person's judgment is no longer properly present. In the case of the Atlantean, it was still normal for these two points to be apart. It is still the case today with animals; if you look at a horse's head, you will find that the two points are still far apart. The Atlantean's ether head protruded, and the physical head had a receding forehead.

[ 9 ] But the Atlantean had something else, which was lost with the integration of the physical body into the ether body. They had developed an ancient, vague form of clairvoyance, while they really could not count to five. All their judgment came from their memories of incredibly distant times. And that ancient clairvoyance was a certain increase of our present dream life. Imagine this dream-life intensified to the highest degree, and you will have a conception of the ancient, dull, dream-like clairvoyance of the Atlanteans. When the Atlanteans walked the earth, they saw man within his physical limits, much as we see him today, but in some respects it was still misty and blurred. When you meet a person today, you see nothing special about his inner being, only what his expression expresses: if his expression is dark, you conclude that he is sad and can guess something about his soul from that. But when the Atlantean met a person who had something bad in mind against him, a brown-red vision appeared to him, for example; if that person loved him, a bluish-red vision. A kind of color vision corresponded to the state of mind of the other person; one could see something of what was happening inside the person. If the Atlantean walked and a terrible reddish-brown fog appeared in front of him, he ran away, because he knew: a dangerous animal was coming – it was perhaps still miles away – that definitely wanted to eat him.

[ 10 ] Even a physical basis had the old Atlantean clairvoyance. Man regarded only the closest blood relatives as belonging to him, but to a much higher degree than was later the case; only very small communities that hardly went beyond the family circle. And it was the main thing that people married within these small blood relationships. This marrying within the closest blood relationship resulted in such a blood mixture that the etheric body could remain receptive to the spiritual. If the Atlanteans had tried to marry outside their blood relationship, their clairvoyance would have been suppressed; in the astral sense, they would have become idiots. Remaining within the blood brotherhoods was something that was morality. Before one felt one's individual self aright, one said in general to the whole blood brotherhood: That is I. Like the individual finger on the hand, the individual person considered himself to belong to the blood relationship. But there is something else that is based on this. The Atlantean not only remembered what he himself experienced, but also what his father, grandfather, great-grandfather and so on had experienced, far back into the generations, all the way to the founder of the family. Everything that came from there was felt as one unit. This shows you how enormously developed the memory of the Atlanteans was. Everything was based on memory. We will hear later how mankind lost its memory precisely by breaking the close marriage.

[ 11 ] A completely different physical nature is needed for such a soul, and a different environment is also necessary, such as the old Niflheim, which the ancient Germans remember. By no means are legends and myths based on what is called folk poetry or folk fantasy. You can now see where these legends come from. Among the Atlanteans there was still an old, dull clairvoyance; these events really took place there, and were later retold and preserved, albeit in a much stunted form, in the legends and myths of the peoples.

[ 12 ] The migration of the Atlanteans to the east has been preserved in a wonderful way in a cycle of legends in Europe. On the continent of ancient Atlantis, man could not say “I” to his individual personality. Therefore, there was also not the same egoism there that later formed the basis of the social order. What the entire blood relationship possessed still belonged to the Atlantean, and he felt only as a link within this blood relationship. Then the migration to the east began. More and more, the sense of self emerged in man, and with it, selfishness. Man previously lived much more in the outside world than within; nature still belonged to him. Man felt as if he belonged to nature. Now, with the attainment of self-awareness, it became narrower and narrower around him, more and more he separated himself out, more and more alien he became there, and more and more strongly the ego emerged. This was simultaneously linked to a natural process. When the ancient Atlantean looked up at the sky, he could not see the sun as we see it; dense masses of fog filled the air. He saw a mighty halo of rainbow colors when he looked at the sun or the moon. Then came the time when the Atlantean saw the sun and the moon as such. But there was one phenomenon the Atlantean did not know at all: that was the rainbow itself. It was only when the waters of Atlantis left the air, when a distribution of rain and sunshine formed as it does today, that people became acquainted with the fact of the rainbow. In that waterlogged atmosphere there was no rainbow. Now, remember that the ancient Atlantean flood uncovered great stretches of land; this uncovering of great distances is preserved in a magnificent way in the saga and especially in the Bible. Just think of the profound truth contained in the Bible when you read: “And Noah saw the rainbow when the waters had receded.” With the clearing of the air from the old Atlantic mists, the sun had emerged in its present free form for man. This occurred at the same time as the constriction, the contraction of man to his selfhood, his ego. For profound reasons, spiritual wisdom regards the light flooding the universe as ethereal gold, and gold is regarded as condensed sunlight. The ancient Atlanteans knew from their Atlantean teachers that sunlight and gold are connected, and this was the image they received: the sunlight, the solar gold is coming out! It wraps you in the ring that releases the self, that makes you no longer feel selfless in nature. - With the Atlanteans, the self was still scattered in the clouds of fog; now it wraps itself around the person like a ring.

[ 13 ] The mists of Atlantis leave the air, are pushed down and appear as the rivers in the west. For the Atlantean descendant, the Rhine itself is nothing more than the masses of fog that have sunk and are now flowing down. In the Rhine, he sees the water masses that were still permeated with sunlight; he sensed the solar gold in the Rhine, the solar gold that worked in the selfless, original way in ancient Atlantis. That was the treasure of the Nibelungs in the Rhine to him, and he is hostile to anyone who wants the treasure of the Nibelungs for himself.

[ 14 ] Not clearly aware of this, but inspired by this mighty, all-encompassing fact, was Richard Wagner, who represents this in his music as well. Do you remember the prelude in Rheingold: what is the mighty pedal point in E-flat major if not the point of the impact of the self on humanity? But just as the plant is unaware of the laws by which it grows, so the poet has no need of knowledge. This is how we must understand the creative artist, who is inspired by forces that lie behind him. Here an important artist has sensed what must be re-incorporated into humanity. Thus we see how it is ensured that the same spirit flows into culture in art that underlies 'theosophy'. It happens from two sides. So you have to look at life as a whole.

[ 15 ] We have now traced man back to Atlantis. Let us consider a few more details. In those days, houses were not built as they are today, but much more use was made of what was available in nature itself. Masses of rock, which had been reshaped by using the trees that were there, were joined together so that the dwellings of the people were houses that looked natural. The further back we go, the more we find that people were endowed with clairvoyance; the more we find that they had a pictorial consciousness. In visions, they saw the feelings of the beings around them arise before their soul. In the early days, the will of the Atlantean was also developed quite differently. Today you can spread your fingers with your will; this is something that is connected to the power of imagination today. In the first Atlantean era, the body was still a much softer mass. The Atlantean could not only stretch out his fingers, but also make them longer or shorter; he could easily have made his hand grow. If he had a plant that was small, he could make it grow larger through an effort of his will. He had a kind of magic at his disposal. He also had a peculiar relationship with the animal world: he perceived something that could no longer be perceived later. With his gaze, he could exert a fascinating power over the animals.

[ 16 ] Going back even further, we come to a time when even the Atlanteans had not yet arrived, when people lived on a continent called Lemuria. South of present-day Asia, this continent extended all the way to Africa and Australia; our ancestors inhabited it when they were still Lemurians. They had a much softer body than the Atlanteans, and their will was much more powerful than that of the Atlanteans. But the ground under the Lemurians was quite unstable: it was constantly being thrown into turmoil by eruptions and volcanic forces. Ancient Lemuria was a kind of fire land. If we go back even further to its beginnings, we come to a point in time when the bone system was just beginning to emerge from the boneless mass. Then we come to the time when the earth had not yet formed the present mineral kingdom: everything that is in the mountains today, we had in an ongoing flowing and running.

[ 17 ] And the further back we trace the path of the earth's development, the higher the temperatures we encounter. We come to times when the formations that are now solid land flowed like mercury or lead would flow at a higher temperature. Solidification only developed with the Lemurians. The nebulous masses become denser and denser. We are no longer dealing with just a sea of fog, but with a dense glowing sea of water vapor in which all kinds of substances are dissolved and swirl back and forth. Indeed, in certain parts of this water vapor, the possibility was already offered for the human ancestor of that time to live; only then were the beings quite different in nature. We come up to a point in time when man lived in a kind of primeval sea, in a warm, watery-fiery element. The core of the earth was surrounded by a primeval sea containing the germs of everything that developed later. This is how it looked on earth immediately after the moon had flown out and become independent.

[ 18 ] We have gained insight into an evolution up to the point where the Sun first separated from the Earth and the Moon, then the Moon separated from the Earth, leaving the Earth in the state that I have just described.

[ 19 ] Tomorrow we will take another look at this process, which we have just pieced together from two sides, and also at the further progress of man and the earth into our time.