The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] Today we will consider things that are familiar to you from a certain point of view. But it is always the case with spiritual scientific matters that we only fully understand them when they are illuminated from different angles; and within the anthroposophical movement here in our Central European region, there are things to be discussed that have been drawn from the advanced research of occultism and can therefore easily be misunderstood. On the other hand, however, we would not make any progress if we did not dare to speak about such things in a completely unvarnished way.

[ 2 ] Remember that as we trace the development of humanity through the various cultural epochs of the post-Atlantean era back to Atlantis, and as we ascend into ever more ancient times even within Atlantis itself, we find that when we turn our spiritual gaze to the events unfolding there, we encounter ever-changing forms of the human being. In the last third of the Atlantean epoch, the etheric body is, to a certain extent, still outside the physical body; the head of the etheric body is not yet connected to the forces of the physical body, which are the forces of the I, of self-consciousness. If we observe the underlying process, we can say: The further development consists in the etheric head pushing its way into the physical head. If we look at a horse today, the horse’s etheric head protrudes above the physical head. It still extends a considerable distance beyond the physical head. I have also told you what a powerful organization the etheric parts of the elephant form, which extend far, far beyond the physical body. So too, in the Atlantean era, the etheric body of the human being was still outside and gradually pushed further and further inward. Such a pushing inward from a thinner member into a denser one simultaneously signifies a densification of that which is physical. The human physical head, then, looked quite different back then than it did later. If we were to go back even further, to the final Lemurian epochs, one would initially perceive very little of the physical head spiritually; it existed only as very soft, transparent matter. It was only through the gradual inward movement of the etheric head that parts of the head became condensed, initially detached from the surrounding elements. Even in later Atlantis, human beings were still endowed to an immense degree with what has been preserved in a pathological form in the hydrocephalus, in a watery brain. Furthermore, we must also consider a softening of the bones, a complete softening of the upper limbs of the human being. That sounds terrible to people today. From this watery substance, what today forms and encloses the human head has hardened. It is not even a very inappropriate image that I sometimes use—the hardening, the crystallization from the masses of water, from a salt solution in a glass; it reproduces the process quite accurately, this crystallization of the salt from the watery salt solution. What happened to the head at such a late stage occurred much earlier in the rest of the human being. The other limbs, too, gradually formed out of a soft mass.

[ 3 ] So we can say: Where was the human I, the I of today, at that time? Not actually in the human being; it was still in the environment. With the withdrawal of the I, we can also say that the upper limbs of the human being hardened. Because the I was outside the human being, it was still endowed with a peculiarity in another respect, which later changed. By drawing into the physical body, the I was caused to become an individual I, whereas before it was still a kind of group soul. I will give you an image to illustrate this fact. Imagine a circle of twelve people; these twelve people are sitting somewhere in a circle. Through the development that has taken place, every human being has its I within itself. So there are twelve I's sitting around in a circle. But if we consider such a circle of people in the Atlantean epoch, the physical bodies would also be sitting around, but the I would only be in the etheric body, which is still outside. So each person has their ego in front of them. But the ego has a different quality; it is not so centralized, it immediately unfolds its powers and connects with the egos of the other people, so that they form a ring, which in turn sends its powers to its center. So here we have an etheric circular body that forms a unity within itself, and within it the I's, that is, a circle of physical bodies and within it an etheric circular surface that forms a unity by capturing the I's. The individual I is enclosed, and through this image we arrive at a vivid conception of group souls.

[ 4 ] If we go further back, we can hold on to this image, but we no longer have to imagine such a regular circle of people; instead, these people can be scattered throughout the world in the most diverse ways. Let us imagine one person in western France, another in eastern America, and so on, not sitting together, but where the laws of the spiritual world apply, the I's can still be connected, even if the people are scattered across the earth. These people then form this circle. What is formed by the merging of their egos is not a geometrically beautiful etheric body, but it is nevertheless a unified whole. So there was a group of people at that time who were connected by the fact that their egos formed a unity; and there were essentially four such group egos. You must imagine these people again in accordance with the laws of the spiritual world. The group souls of the four groups merged with one another; they were not connected internally, but they merged with one another. These four group souls are named after the four apocalyptic animals: eagle, lion, bull, and human. However, human beings were at a different stage of development than they are today. The names are taken from the organization of the group souls. Why could they be named this way? I would like to explain this to you today from a different perspective.

[ 5 ] Let us imagine ourselves back in the early days of Lemurian life. The souls that are embodied in human bodies today had not yet descended to the physical bodies; they did not yet have any tendency to connect with physical matter. Even the bodies that would later become human bodies were still very, very animal-like. On Earth, the most grotesque physical beings existed, which would have seemed grotesque even compared to what we today call the most grotesque animals. Everything was still in a soft, slippery matter, watery or fiery boiling, both the humans and their surroundings. Of course, the ancestors of the physical human body were already present among these grotesque figures, but they had not yet been taken possession of by the I's. In fact, the four group souls we have characterized already existed as four group souls before the spirit entered into the physical organization, so that four egos were waiting for their embodiment, egos that were predisposed to very special forms that existed down there. Some were predisposed to be drawn to organizations that already existed in physical form in very specific shapes, others to other organizations; the shapes that were below had to correspond in their forms in a certain way to the types of egos that were waiting there. There were forms that were particularly suited to receiving the lion egos, others to the bull egos, and so on. This was in a very early stage of Earth's development. Now imagine that the group soul we have called the Taurus soul is drawn to very specific forms that are down there. These forms look a certain way; likewise, the Leo soul was drawn to specific forms. So the physical world on Earth also shows us a fourfold picture. One group developed particularly strongly the organs whose functions corresponded more to the functions of the heart; they were organized one-sidedly toward the heart; there was a particularly aggressive, courageous, attacking element in them. They are courageous, want to assert themselves, want to overcome others, are, so to speak, already conquerors, born conquerors, already in their form. These are people in whom the heart, the seat of the ego, has been made strong. In others, the organs of digestion, nutrition, and reproduction are particularly developed; in the third group, it is particularly the organs of movement; in the fourth group, however, things are evenly distributed, both the courageous, aggressive, and the calm, which comes in through the development of the digestive organs; both were developed. The group in which the aggressive, which belongs to the organization of the heart, was developed were those people whose group souls belonged to the lion; the second group was that of the bull, the third group, with the mobile element that does not want to know much about the earthly, belongs to the group soul of the eagle. These are the ones who can rise above the earthly. And those in whom things remained in balance belonged to the group soul of “human beings.” Thus, we have a formal projection of the four group souls in the physical realm.

[ 6 ] At that time, a very peculiar sight would have presented itself to the observer. One would have found a kind of race of which one could have said with prophetic insight: These are physical beings that resemble lions, that reflect the character of the lion, even if they looked different from today's lions. They were lion-hearted people, aggressive human germs. Then there was a group of bull-like people, all viewed on the physical plane. You can easily imagine the third and fourth races. The third race was already highly visionary. While the first was combative, and the second cultivated everything related to the physical plane and the processing of the physical plane, you would have found a third class of people who were very visionary. As a rule, they had something that was malformed in relation to the other bodies. They would have reminded you of people who are very psychic and believe in visions, but who, because they do not care much about the physical, have something withered about them, something stunted compared to the vigor of the other two groups. They would have reminded you of the nature of birds. “I want to hold back my spirit” was the tendency of the eagle people. The others had something that was, so to speak, mixed from all parts.

[ 7 ] There is something else: if we go back so far that we encounter such conditions on earth, then we must also suggest to ourselves that everything that happened in the course of earth's evolution happened in order to regulate the affairs of the earth from the spiritual realm. It was all just a detour to get to the human being of today. Anyone who could have looked deeper into things would have experienced that these lion natures, which reminded us of what we see today in a completely different way in the lion's body, formed a special attraction for the male figures of the etheric bodies. They felt particularly drawn to these lion-men, so that these beings had the outward appearance of a lion's body, but inwardly had a male etheric body. It was a powerful etheric being with a male character, and a small part of this etheric being condensed into the physical lion's body. The physical body was literally the core of the comet, while the etheric body formed the comet's tail, which was the actual creator of the core. The bull race, however, had a special attraction for the female etheric body. So the bull's body had the power to attract the female etheric body and connect with it. And now think about how this works continuously, with the etheric bodies constantly penetrating and transforming each other.

[ 8 ] The relationship between lion-like people and bull-like people is particularly important in earlier times. The others are less important. The male etheric bodies, which crystallized a physical lion's body out of themselves, had the ability to fertilize the physical lion's body itself, so that the propagation of the human race was literally ensured by the lion-like race. It was a kind of fertilization from the spiritual realm, an asexual reproduction. However, the bull-like race could also achieve the same thing. What had become physical had an effect back on the female etheric body. In the course of development, things took a different turn. While the lion nature retained its mode of reproduction because the fertilizing power came from above, from the spiritual realm, and this process intensified, the other process was increasingly suppressed. The bull-like humanity became more and more infertile. The result was that on the one hand we had a humanity that was preserved through fertilization, and on the other hand another half that became increasingly infertile. One side became the female sex, the other the male. Today's female physical nature has a male etheric body, while the etheric body of the man is female. The physical body of the woman emerged from the lion nature, while the physical bull body is the ancestor of the male body.

[ 9 ] The spiritual in human beings has a common origin, is neutral, and only entered the physical body once the sexes had already differentiated; only then was the spiritual aspect addressed, only then did the head harden. Only then did the etheric body of the head connect with the physical body; it was completely irrelevant whether it was attached to a male or female body, as both sexes are equal. We must say that, apart from what goes beyond differentiation, women have something lion-like in their nature as a result of their development. This hidden courage can already be found. Women can develop the courage of inner strength, for example, in war, in nursing, and in certain services to humanity. The male physical body has what we can truly call the nature of the bull. This is connected with the fact that men, as they are otherwise organized, are more engaged in activities based on physical creation. From an occult point of view, this is how things appear, even if it sounds very strange. So you see how these group souls have worked together. They work in such a way that they combine their work, the lion and the bull group souls. These divine beings work together, and the work of the various divine group souls is present in human beings today.

[ 10 ] These images that I have sketched out for you here will already have their effect. If you trace human beings back to the time when reproduction was not yet possible, we must say that the outer physical body of women was transformed into something lion-like, while the male body was bull-like. Such things must only be taken in a sacred, serious sense if we want to understand them correctly. Those who have studied human anatomy would find it easy to deduce the anatomical differences between the physical bodies of men and women from the natures of lions and bulls. Physical science will remain completely sterile, merely reporting external facts, as long as it does not penetrate into this spirit of facts.

[ 11 ] Now it will no longer seem so strange to you that there was once a race of people who had the body of a lion. They took on the nature of the I, and through this the nature of the lion was increasingly transformed into the female body. Those who received nothing of this spiritual element were transformed in a completely different way, namely into the lions of today and their relatives. Why these animals are also hermaphroditic is a topic for another time. Those who received nothing of the spiritual nature developed into today's lions, while those who did receive something developed into today's female bodies.

[ 12 ] Over time, many, many other aspects of these things can be revealed. Anthroposophical learning is not like mathematical learning. First, attention is drawn to the fact that there are, for example, four group souls; initially, only the names are given. Then a particular point of view is chosen, and the matter is examined from the outside. And so we approach it again and again from a different angle. We circle around what was initially presented and examine it from various angles. Anyone who accepts this will never be able to say that any anthroposophical ideas contradict each other. This is true even for the greatest things we consider. The differences arise from the different perspectives from which things are viewed.

[ 13 ] Let us take away from this gathering what might be called inner tolerance. May we succeed, especially within our special anthroposophical stream, in bringing this inner spirit of tolerance into the anthroposophical movement. Let us take this with us as a feeling and try to work on it again outside, so that this spirit of innermost understanding can take root. Even from different places, we can let our souls and hearts turn toward what connects us all, toward the great anthroposophical ideals. And we can then bring forth what a spiritual organism should be, something that grows and flourishes: the life of our anthroposophical cause, to which we should radiate our strength from many different sides.