The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Ninth Lecture

[ 1 ] It is only natural that after such a discussion as yesterday's, questions pile up and some things may remain incomprehensible after hearing such a presentation of such comprehensive truths related to the cosmos for the first time. Now, I emphasized yesterday – and I always ask you to bear this in mind – that the characterization here is not based on some kind of speculation, on a scheme, but on the real facts, which are called the facts of the Akasha Chronicle; and therefore these facts can only be combined into a kind of system retrospectively. But one of the questions that might arise for some should be anticipated here today: What about the finished planet? Yesterday, we followed the formation of the planet to its completion, to the point where it is, so to speak, a single visible planet. And now someone might say: Yes, but the planets that we see in the sky now did not all come into being before the point in time described yesterday, did they? They are not in the process of being formed, are they?

[ 2 ] That is not the case either. We must realize that a new epoch actually begins for the planet when the point I mentioned yesterday is reached. Suppose we wanted to follow the formation of the planet, not as it happened with old Saturn, where only this old Saturn was there, but as it happened with the formation of the earth. In this case, too, old Saturn was formed again as a repetition, so that after the development of Saturn, the sun, and the moon, when the development of the earth began, a mighty body of warmth or fire was formed again, and that everything that I told you about the development of Saturn came into being there. Then there came a time when, through the influence of the zodiacal region of Leo, this single planet, which we call Saturn today, was separated out from this point in the moving fiery sphere, and reached its zenith in this separation. Now the single planet had come into being.

[ 3 ] But you must not imagine that at this point the calming by Leo is to be thought of as if Saturn were now stopped, but rather the matter is this: Saturn has come into being, and the movements that were there earlier have come to rest. Saturn has become a being in itself, which has absorbed everything that was previously distributed throughout its circumference, uniting it within itself. All this has happened through this — as we might call it — Leo influence. But the great sphere out of which Saturn had separated is now contracting and is present within as a smaller ball. Because this entire structure is contracting inwards, Saturn, after this influence has taken place and its movements have come to rest within, retains to some extent the movement that it originally received. Before, he needed his own impulse of movement, because he had, so to speak, a need to continue moving in this sphere, to continue moving as if floating. When this sphere had retreated from him, then, despite the internal movement having been broken, it went on by itself. And this going-on-by-itself after the first impetus had occurred, that is the present movement, the present revolution of Saturn.

[ 4 ] It is similar with Jupiter. When the earth began to form, what has now been described happened; then differentiation occurred in the sphere, which had retracted inwards. Under the constellation of Scorpio, the killing of the individual spheres occurred; they embedded themselves in one another, but in return their own inner life began. After Jupiter, so to speak, was killed as a great living being, the life of the individual entities living on it began, and it moved on when the whole sphere contracted again, having found the impulse within itself in this way. What we observe today as the movement of Saturn, of Jupiter and so on, is a consequence that only arose when the formation process I described yesterday was complete.

[ 5 ] Another difficulty seems to have arisen from my statement that the second planet to separate was our present Jupiter, and the third our present Mars, whereas in the temporal sequence it is said that first the Saturn development was there, then the sun development, then the moon development. This is entirely justified, because, as I said, we are dealing with the present planets in terms of what happened again in the fourth stage, in the evolution of the earth. At the time when Saturn first formed, only Saturn was present. When the sun developed, the conditions in this second body that had formed were such that we must speak of a sun. But when, after the evolution of Saturn, the evolution of the Sun took place, the whole process of the evolution of the Sun was complete. So when we look back at these first planetary evolutions of our Earth, we have to be aware that they were now also complete.

[ 6 ] When we speak of the evolution of the earth, it is not so. First Saturn arises, then, indeed, the Sun as a repetition; but this advances further inward; it is not complete; Jupiter is left behind as the remainder of the repetition of the evolution of the Sun. This is what we must take into account. Then the evolution of the Moon is repeated by the earth. This is when we look back on the whole development, which was completed at that time. In the development of the Earth, the lunar period is not a conclusion; it goes further in; what is left behind in the repetition is Mars.

[ 7 ] So we see that the present planets visible to us in the sky must be thought of as having originated during the time we call the fourth, the time of Earth's evolution, in our Akasha Chronicle system. These are the things we have to consider – it is not possible to talk about the whole world and mention everything. You will have noticed only one thing: that there is a kind of sphere present at first. For example, I spoke of Saturn as a ball of fire or a kind of large fiery egg, and then we actually spoke of revolution.

[ 8 ] And that is indeed the case; originally we can think of a kind of egg or sphere. Now, as that sphere, which corresponds to the most original state of Saturn, rotates, more and more of the following is formed. A kind of belt is formed that does not go around the whole egg, but is just like a kind of wide band. And within this belt, so to speak, the individual forms that are formed all around gather. This belt formation is a very general cosmic law. Among other things, you can see the law that everything is actually based on an accumulation along a kind of equator or belt, formed in the cosmos, as far as you can see it, because the Milky Way owes its existence to this law. If you see this Milky Way like an outermost belt around the sky, with the stars sparsely scattered in between, it is because of the law that as soon as rotation begins, things gather in a belt. Our solar system, as we have it, actually already has a kind of lens shape because of this. It is not directly spherical, as is assumed, but lens-shaped, and the belt is concentrated at the far equator. You also have to imagine such a belt when a planet is formed. If, to put it in trivial terms, you were to take an egg and wanted to draw the various states schematically on it, you would first have to take the whole egg, then, using a red color, you would have to paint a belt like this on the egg. You would not color the whole egg red, but only a belt. The bodies that are destined to form the one world body collect along this belt. At one point one would have to draw the point where everything gathers (drawing as on page 129). Thus we see that the configuration, the distribution of the stars, as it is in the space around us, is a result of the spiritual beings or hierarchies. For when we speak of the contraction of the great mass, we must realize that this contraction does not happen by itself, but through the action of those entities that have been described by us as the beings of the higher hierarchies. And if we summarize what we have described, we must say: While old Saturn was forming, while that mighty fire mass, from which basically our whole solar system originated, was first forming into old Saturn, the spirits of personality were undergoing their human existence; during the formation of the sun, the archangels or fire spirits were undergoing their human existence; then, during the development of the moons, the angels were undergoing their human existence; and on the earth, human beings are undergoing their human existence. But it is the case that this human being has had to do with everything that has happened before. What we call the physical body today received its first formation during the very first formation of Saturn. At that time, this physical body was not yet permeated by an etheric body, nor by an astral body, but it was already predisposed in such a way that, after the transformations it underwent later, it could become the bearer of our present spiritual earthman. Very slowly and gradually, this human physical body was formed during the ancient Saturn development, and as ancient Saturn formed itself and revolved around the individual signs of the zodiac, the human body was created, limb by limb. Just as the heart developed when Saturn was in Leo, so the chest plate developed when Saturn was in Cancer. The human being's symmetrical form, that is, the fact that he is equally formed on two sides, developed when Saturn was in Gemini. And so we could follow piece by piece of the human body. When we look up at the zodiac, where Aries is, we can say: the predisposition for the top of our head was created, was incorporated into us for the first time, when old Saturn was under the sign of Aries. The predisposition for our speech organs was incorporated into us when Saturn was under the sign of Taurus. And if you now imagine that human beings are distributed throughout the zodiac, you can see the formative forces for all human limbs in the zodiac outside.

[ 9 ] This was figuratively presented in the ancient mysteries in such a way that the zodiac was drawn in a similar way to the one on the ceiling of the hall. As chance would have it, we are in a room that is decorated with the zodiac. In the past, the zodiac was not drawn in such a way that it was divided into its corresponding animal forms, but rather in such a way that the individual human limbs were added to the corresponding regions: the head to Aries; what is the area of the larynx to to the bull; what most significantly expresses the symmetry, the two arms, to the twins; the breastplate to the crab; the heart to the lion; and so on, until the lower parts of the legs were drawn to Aquarius and the feet to Pisces. So, if you imagine a human being drawing such a zodiac into the cosmos, you have that which created the original human physical body out of the cosmos, that is, out of the corresponding forces of the hierarchies of thrones, seraphim, and cherubim. This is the great cosmic human being, the human being that runs through all world legends and myths, from which the individual human being on Earth is formed in the most diverse forms. Think of the giant Ymir, who is spread out in the great cosmos, for the microcosmic human being is formed from the giant. You have him everywhere, the great macrocosmic man, who is the creator, who contains on the outside what man contains within him. For there is a deep truth underlying such representations, a truth that comes to light more or less refracted depending on the clairvoyant capacity of the peoples. And it also shines through that wisdom which has found its outer expression in the Old Testament. It shines forth in the wisdom that goes back to the ancient Hebrew secret teaching, to that secret teaching on which the Old Testament is based: in the Adam Kadmon of the Kabbalah. The macrocosmic man is none other than the man we have now drawn into the cosmos. Only we must form the idea of him in the right way.

[ 10 ] What I have now developed and which culminates in the teaching of the macrocosmic man, is a teaching that contains the deepest secrets of the world, a teaching that will gradually flow into the general education of humanity. Today, we are still far from understanding this teaching, because if someone who is a mere scholar had listened to these lectures, he would probably have thought this auditorium was something other than an intelligent assembly. Today, we are still very far from understanding these things. But we are at the starting point in time where the facts that are being found against the fantastic theories of today's science are pushing people to seek the path to these great truths of primeval world wisdom. And we will never penetrate the secret of the so-called fertilization process, for example, about which people today speculate so childishly, until we can apply the doctrine of the macrocosmic human being to the fertilization process. Precisely that which takes place as a real mystery and, as a real mystery, eludes the instruments and tools most of all, will be illuminated as the smallest point of research, so to speak. For how small the cell is within which fertilization takes place in relation to the cosmos! But only the secrets of the great cosmos will solve what goes on in the smallest cell. Nothing else can solve the secrets of the processes in the cell. In the face of the problem of fertilization, the research of external science is not useless; it has certain merit, but it is all child's play in the face of the great mystery that lies before us and that can only be solved if one understands how the answer to the events in the point lies in the circle, in the circumference. That is why the old mystery teacher said: If you want to grasp the point, then explore the perimeter, because that contains the solution. — That is what matters: that you can only grasp the point if you have grasped the perimeter.

[ 11 ] If you now remember that the individual world bodies maintain their motion after they have, so to speak, found their conclusion for themselves, are finished for themselves, then you will also understand what must be called the karma of these world bodies. From the moment when the planet has come to its conclusion for itself, those entities that belong to it must again reckon with its dissolution, with its disappearance from the cosmic context. So, for example, if we follow the evolution of Saturn, we have to say to ourselves: until the whole heat sphere is joined together, the process of Saturn's evolution is an ascending one, or, if you like, a descending one, because it is a process of condensation. At the moment when Saturn continues to turn – but now in the first evolution of Saturn – the sphere of Saturn is given, the things are present that are involved. When the spirits are involved in this, they must reckon with the dissolution of what has been assembled up to the point of origin, and that is karma. One cannot escape this, things must be dissolved as they were assembled. Thus the karma of the first half of evolution is fulfilled in the second half. What was assembled in the first half is gradually dissolved in the second half of evolution. The origin of the world is the creation of karma; the destruction of the world in the broadest sense of the word is nothing other than suffering under karma and also, in turn, the extinguishing of the karma in question. This is the case for every planet, on both a large and a small scale. This is because each planet faithfully reflects the conditions on a large scale. You can also see the same process at work in a nation. Imagine a nation, rising in its youthful development, full of energy and drive; imagine this nation giving birth to itself, epoch after epoch, the most diverse elements of education and culture: all this must come to a climax, but as all this accumulates, the karma of the nation also accumulates. Just as karma accumulates during the evolution of Saturn, in that one has to reckon with what has come into being, so too does karma accumulate for a people as their culture develops. This karma is present at its highest point, in its strongest form, where, so to speak, the people have given birth to the original, elementary forces from within themselves.

[ 12 ] Now we have seen that there are guiding beings everywhere. We have seen with the earth how higher spiritual beings, angels, archangels, elemental forces, descend and how they guide humanity where humanity cannot yet help itself and lead it to a certain height. These are the spiritual entities of the hierarchies that have attained their perfection and maturity in earlier times. But when this level has been reached, when the spirits that descend from heavenly heights to guide the nations, when the spirits have reached their goal, then other spiritual entities must make themselves into leaders, into guides of the corresponding nations. If the nations are to rise above their peak in a certain way, then leading personalities must voluntarily offer themselves to be the bearers of higher spiritual entities; only then is it possible to continue what was in the original plan, so to speak, to exceed certain levels. But in this case one thing must happen: those who descend into entities, who are supposed to be the leaders of the nations, who are supposed to carry on the culture after a certain point, must, because karma has been accumulated, take this karma upon themselves. This is the significant law of taking upon oneself the karma of nations and races. From a certain point in time, the leading personalities must carry the karma of the people or race within themselves, taking it over in a certain sense. This is the essence: that such individuals, such as Hermes was, had to take over what lay in the karma of their people, what had been accumulated to a certain degree by that time. These things are mirror images on the individual planet of the great cosmic processes.

[ 13 ] But we have further such mirror images. We have seen that the Thrones have become Thrones only by coming to be able to change from creatures into creators, from a state of taking to a state of giving. We have said: The Thrones also once underwent their development in other world systems, they have come so far that they could let their substantiality flow out. That is a higher degree of development, that one can give, make sacrifices, instead of reaping for oneself what is available in the cosmos. This in turn occurs in the mirror image in man. What is this human development like? Look back in spirit through the Atlantean time, through the Lemurian time, and look forward. Man receives a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and I, and then again you have the working back from the I into the other members, the transformation of the astral body, the transformation of the etheric body, the physical body, into Manas, Budhi, Atma, into spirit self, life spirit, spirit man. Thus the wisdom of the primeval world has taught in all ages that man transforms his astral body in such a way that at first this astral body still consists partly of the old astrality and partly of manas, but that little by little it is completely transformed and completely permeated by the I and its work. Take a person who has not yet reached the stage of development where his astral body is completely permeated by the work of the I. In this case, basically, all people are still with very few exceptions. That which the human being has already reworked will go with him through all eternities; that which he has not yet reworked, so that the ego has not yet taken any part in it, that must, when the human being has passed through Kamaloka, like an astral shell, which dissolves in the astral world, not without causing considerable mischief if it consists of bad desires and passions as an astral body. Thus we can say that the development of man consists in leaving less and less of himself in the astral world.

[ 14 ] Let us follow the process. Man dies, soon after death the etheric body detaches itself, an extract remains behind. Man goes through Kamaloka, there the unprocessed shell detaches itself; that which is processed goes in the ego through all eternity, it is brought back for the new incarnation. The more perfect a person is, the fewer remnants they leave behind in the astral world, until finally they leave nothing of their astral body behind in Kamaloka, until they are so far advanced that they can no longer harm anyone on earth with the remnants they leave behind in Kamaloka. Such a person then also has the possibility of looking into the spiritual worlds. For it is indeed impossible to reach this state without having attained a certain degree of clairvoyance in the astral. The entire astral body is then spiritualized, has become a spirit self, the entire astral body is taken along. In the past, what was bad had to be left behind, but now the entire astral body can be taken along into the entire subsequent period. And at the moment when the astral body is so far that it has been completely worked through, the whole new form of the astral body, the spirit self, is imprinted in the etheric body, so that the etheric body is an imprint of this astral body, which has thus been reworked. It need not itself be completely transformed, but what could be worked into the astral body is imprinted in the ether body. In short, you see, we have thus described an especially high entity, which in the most eminent sense has come far by developing the entire spirit-self. This entity is now called a Nirmanakaya in Eastern science, because its astral body, its astral kaya, has reached the stage where it leaves no remnants. That is a Nirmanakaya.

[ 15 ] Let us now move on. Man can always work further and further, he finally transforms his etheric body, transforms his physical body. What happens when the etheric body and the physical body are transformed so that they come under the control of man? When the etheric body is reworked, when man has not only his spiritual self in the astral body, but gradually develops the Budhi or the spirit of life in his etheric body, and when this spirit of life or Budhi is expressed in the physical body, then a next higher stage of development has been reached, a kind of intermediate stage. Through this intermediate stage, the human being comes to the point where he no longer needs to leave anything behind of his etheric body either, and retains this etheric body for all time in the same form in which he has developed it as the life spirit or Budhi.

[ 16 ] Thus, through such influences, man will increasingly be able to gain control over his astral body and his etheric body. Such control then makes it possible for man, in a certain respect, to direct these astral and etheric bodies. He who has not yet brought the astral body under the control of the ego must naturally wait until he has progressed so far. But he who has control over the astral and etheric bodies can now use them freely. He can say to himself: “Because I have gone through all these embodiments with my ego, which have taught me to reshape my astral and etheric bodies to such an extent, I have become able, when I am to go to earth again, to form a new astral and etheric body out of etheric and astral substance, which are just as perfect. And thus he is able to sacrifice his own astral and ether body, as it were, to transfer it to others. So you see that there are individuals who, by becoming masters of their astral and etheric bodies, are also able to sacrifice these astral and etheric bodies because they have learned to build these things. When they want to return to Earth, they will build a new astral and etheric body from the available material. But what they have achieved in perfection, they hand over to other personalities who have certain tasks to accomplish in the world. Thus, such astral and ether bodies of personalities of the past are interwoven and incorporated into later personalities. When this happens, you see that the personality of the past does not merely work where it stands, but that it continues to work into the future with what is within it. Thus, for example, Zarathustra, who was able to treat his astral body and who later guided it into Hermes, could say to himself: “I live, but I will not only work as I myself now work as an outer personality, but I also interweave the astral body of Egyptian Hermes, the one with whom the Egyptian cultural epoch begins. Such a personality has a body, a kaya, which not only works in the place where it is, but which also works into the future, which provides the law for future development. Law into the future is called dharma. Such a body is called dharmakaya. These are certain expressions that often recur in Eastern science. Here you have the true explanation, as it has always been given in the wisdom of the ancient world. And now let us look at the whole diversity of what has passed before us in these days. Then a question may truly weigh upon our soul: What have we actually called man? We have called a certain stage of development man. We have found that the Spirits of Personality were men on the old Saturn; we have found that even the Thrones must once have been men; we have found that man develops further, that he ascends into higher entities; we have even come to know the first stages of ascent in the Angels and Archangels; in these entities we have come to know beings who make sacrifices. We have seen the beginning of sacrifice, which in the highest sense is present at the Thrones. We see the first glimmering of creative activity in those who are the leaders of nations and races, who knew how to work their own bodies so that they could radiate something. As the thrones emanated their essences, so the Nirmanakayas, to a different extent, poured out their own bodies into the future for later individualities, who would not get so far at the particular point of their development if they did not receive what the preceding entities emanated.

[ 17 ] Thus we arrive at the concept of evolution from the point of taking to the point of giving forth, of creating. We see the concept of the creator arising before our spiritual eye, and we say to ourselves: Thus from the creature to the creator, each being develops. Now, however, archangels, they developed into humans on the old sun, spirits of personality on the old Saturn, angels on the old moon, we humans on the earth, and so it will continue; beings will always, always develop into humans. Does it all go on endlessly? Is it really just an eternal cycle of cycles, through which, for example, what was already present on Saturn is repeated on the Sun, only that a number of entities arrive later? For the fire spirits come one step later than the spirits of personality. Is it really always the case that beings develop from helpless creatures of the beginning to those that can sacrifice themselves? That is not the case, it is absolutely not the case! The big question arises: Is the humanity on Saturn, which the spirits of personality have developed, the humanity of the archangels on the sun, that of the angels on Mars, is it the same humanity as the one we develop here on Earth? Do we see, when we consider the nature of the Angels, for instance, only the image of our own next epoch, the Jupiter epoch, in them? Do we see in the Fire Spirits only the image of those beings that we will become on Venus? Is there really any reason to say to ourselves: We are standing on our Earth, we will reach higher levels in the evolution of the world, we ourselves will ascend in the Hierarchy, but the beings we can become are already all there, and our own level was trodden by other beings before us! Is that so? That is the big question of consequence, which must arise in the soul of anyone who has listened to the lectures without prejudice.

[ 18 ] If we are dealing merely with a process of becoming human that repeats itself eternally, then we are like the spirits of personality on ancient Saturn, like the archangels on the ancient Sun, like the angels on Mars. This may be important to us, but for the higher gods it would merely be an increase in their creatures, and they would have achieved nothing particularly significant in terms of progress. But there is another question: Might human beings, precisely by becoming human on Earth, develop into beings capable of something that the angels cannot do, something that even the archangels and the spirits of personality cannot do? Has all of creation learned something new by bringing forth human beings after the archangels and angels? Has creation made progress? By deigning to descend deeper, does humanity perhaps thereby gain the right to ascend even higher? Let us pose this question as a kind of consequential inquiry. The remainder of our reflections must be devoted to it: to the full significance of humanity in the cosmos and humanity’s relationship to the higher hierarchies—what will humanity become within the sequence of hierarchical levels?