The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] In order to understand the task of our time and our future development, we must take a look at the facts we already know. When we speak of the Earth, we mean everything that belongs to spiritual beings. At the beginning of its development, it was not yet separated from the other bodies of our solar system. We include everything up to Saturn in our solar system, and just as physical science speaks of an ancient, large globe from which the other stars separated, so spiritual research speaks of the ancient, large Saturn, which extended far beyond the present Earth and encompassed the entire solar system, consisting of undulating heat. There was no air; the space in which this ancient sphere existed was permeated by regular streams of heat. These were the ancestors of us humans; our bodies consisted at that time of streams of heat.

[ 2 ] We can form an idea of this if we imagine removing from the human being what bones, nerves, and muscles are, and then retaining only the warmth of the blood. At that time, therefore, the substance of heat was present in human beings; there was no mineral kingdom, but human beings themselves were subject to mineral laws. This is what we must clearly perceive today as one epoch in the evolution of our Earth.

[ 3 ] Then there was an epoch when the Earth shed the old Saturn, but the Sun, Moon, and Earth remained connected and remained one body. At that time, human beings existed in an airy physical form. All the power that comes from the Sun came from within the Earth at that time. Everything came from within, and the Earth radiated out into the universe. Only when the sun separated from the earth did it begin to shine on it from outside. Thus we have a second epoch in human development in which human beings, although still in an airy form, nevertheless had a plant-like existence. ... [Large gap in the transcript; the lunar state and the polar and hyperborean ages are described.]

[ 4 ] Now comes the third period, the Lemurian period, when the moon emerges from the earth and the beings of the moon act upon it from outside. It would be impossible to imagine a plant cover on the earth without the sun and moon forces acting on each other from outside. If the moon had remained inside the earth, the earth would have become so rigid that human beings would have hardened. Only because the moon separated itself was the earth placed in the middle between the sun and the moon; otherwise, under the sole influence of the sun's forces, the earth would have developed too quickly. So we owe our position between the sun and the moon for the right pace of development. We now have a third stage, where the moon is already outside.

[ 5 ] These three stages are reflected in post-Atlantean human development. What took place externally on a large scale during the Earth's existence is reflected on a small scale in the post-Atlantean period. Thus we see how the external cosmic processes of the so-called polar period are reflected in the first post-Atlantean culture, in ancient India. At that time, in the polar age, everything was internal, inside the warm body of the Earth; and we see how the ancient Indians felt all this within themselves. Therefore, their minds did not look out into the world, but they felt at one with Brahman.

[ 6 ] The polar age was followed by the Hyperborean age with a human race that became part of an air-like body. The sun had separated from the earth and now worked from outside. This separation is reflected in the ancient Persian cultural epoch, when Zarathustra proclaimed Ahura Mazdao, the spirit of the sun. The sun spirit is the guiding and directing principle in the ancient Persian cultural epoch.

[ 7 ] And the third, the Lemurian age, is reflected in the Egyptian period in the entire religious view. The teachings of Osiris and Isis can be characterized from many different sides and points of view. But the most characteristic feature of these teachings was the following: In the ancient Lemurian age, birth and death did not yet exist. Man initially repeated the state in which he had been when the sun had not yet separated from the earth. At that time, he was in a spiritual body. Then, when the sun was no longer united with the earth, he brought it into an air-like body; but then the human body became filled with watery vapors. Before the Lemurian era, the human being existed only as vapor and mist, hardly distinguishable from what flooded around as vapor or fog, changeable like clouds, constantly changing like today's clouds. In those ancient times, therefore, human beings did not yet exist on Earth at all, but floated above it. Pieces of this fine matter continually left human beings, welling up from within them. A densification of human bodies did not occur until the Lemurian epoch. With the densification of human beings, what we call successive incarnations began. Only then did the soul and the body separate in such a way that one can say that man began to regard the outer as opposed to the inner. Today, man distinguishes between his inner and outer worlds as the opposition between soul life and outer life. During the Sun era of the Earth, man perceived as his outer world what existed as spiritual beings in his environment. Then came the time of the separation of the moon, when the outer began to separate from the inner. Thus the difference between waking and sleeping arose: human beings alternated between states in which they were exposed to the sun and states in which they were turned away from it. And so the time came when human beings began to perceive the objects illuminated by the sun. During the night, the power of the moon stimulated the soul life in such a way that human beings distinguished between a time when they perceived the outer world and a state in which they felt the forces working through the moon in such a way that they became clairvoyant. Human beings then said to themselves that through the spirituality dwelling in the moon they could perceive the spiritual world that flowed inwardly into them through the forces of the moon. Thus, the forces of the moon, as reflected solar energy, were what conveyed the spiritual world to him, while during the day the external world became more and more perceptible to him.

[ 8 ] This was reflected in the emotional life of the ancient Egyptians. Osiris was the name given to the spirit of the sun, and Isis to the soul seeking the spirit of the sun. In this way, all of this was reflected in the worship of Isis in ancient Egypt. Thus, religious life was a worship of the moon. Osiris is a sun being who dwells on the moon. He could be seen clairvoyantly by the souls who sought him. But as human beings descended more and more into physical corporeality, this corporeality became like a box for Osiris. When humans became earth beings in the true sense, Osiris withdrew more and more.

[ 9 ] The Lemurian period was followed by the ancient Atlantean period, which is reflected in the fourth, the Greek-Latin culture. This culture had a view that had already been lived out cosmically in the Atlantean age. Humans became increasingly denser. At the beginning of their development, bones are only hinted at as lines of force in humans; then humans are airy beings, later gelatinous beings. The forms of the skeletal system now develop more and more. In contrast, the soul force was stronger at that time. The Lemurians, who in ancient times had thick bodies, had much greater soul forces than the races that followed. It was similar with the Atlanteans. If cannonballs had existed at that time, an Atlantean, for example, could have simply reflected a ball fired at him by the power of his soul, even though his physical body was not as dense as it is today. The Atlanteans were therefore much thinner in terms of their physical body.

[ 10 ] Now, among the Atlanteans there were beings who did not need to go through the development into our dense physical bodies. They were similar to humans, only more highly developed. These beings were able to go through their entire human stage in these thin Atlantean bodies. They are one degree higher than us humans, while humans have to go through the descent into dense physical bodies in order to develop their ego consciousness.

[ 11 ] A memory of all these beings is reflected in the ancient Greek pantheon and in the entire thinking and feeling of that epoch.

[ 12 ] The god figures of northern Europe are, as it were, former companions of humanity, but not beings so strongly condensed. The skalds still knew about them when they let their own inner selves speak. In ancient times, there was no need for the Edda or any other writings to prove that such things had existed. But if God had not descended in our fourth epoch, human beings would have forgotten their ancient companions, who were still vividly remembered by many people until the 13th and 14th centuries.

[ 13 ] Now we come to our own period. But now we have nothing more to repeat. People have no memory of earlier times. We have seen how the old culture is always reflected in repetition. Now, however, in the fifth period, there was nothing left for humanity to repeat; the world would have been empty if the Yahweh-Christ deity had not come in the fourth period and dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. The fifth period would have become a godless period if Christ had not descended into the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth.

[ 14 ] Thus we see reflected in the ancient Indian period the polaric time, in the ancient Persian period the hyperborean time, in the Egyptian-Chaldean period the Lemurian time, and in the Greek-Latin period the Atlantean time. And now we will see what is happening in the etheric body and astral body of human beings who are taking in the knowledge of the Christ event in our period.