The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] Those of you who have repeatedly heard lecture cycles or lectures in general from me in the field of spiritual science have already been presented with one or another aspect of the facts of the higher worlds from a wide variety of perspectives. And one or another being, one or another fact has appeared to us in one field or another and has then always been illuminated from this or that perspective. It can happen — and I would like to point this out today in particular so that no misunderstandings arise — that, when viewed superficially, there appear to be contradictions when this or that being, this or that fact, is illuminated from one side and then from another. But if you look closely, you will find that it is precisely through such different perspectives that the complicated facts of the spiritual worlds can become clear. I had to say this because I will have to shed light on certain facts, which are already known to the vast majority of today's listeners from a certain perspective, from a new perspective. When we take the deepest document of the New Testament, known as the Gospel according to John, and read the meaningful words with which we concluded our meditation yesterday, it soon becomes clear to us that the almost infinite mysteries of the becoming of the world and of the becoming of man are already contained in these first words of the Gospel of John. Perhaps in the course of our reflections we will have occasion to show why the great portrayers of spiritual events often express the great, comprehensive truths in a short, paradigmatic way, as is the case in the first verses of the Gospel of John. Today we want to return to certain well-known facts of spiritual science in a different way than we did yesterday and see how they reappear in the Gospel of John. We will start with the relatively simplest facts of spiritual science.

[ 2 ] We know that the human being, as he stands before us in his everyday state of life, consists of four members: the physical body, the etheric or life body, the astral body, and the I. We know that human daily life changes in such a way that from the morning when we wake up to the evening when we fall asleep, these four members of our being are organically connected and intertwined. We know that when a human being sleeps at night, the physical body and the etheric body lie in the bed, and that the astral body and the ego carrier, or simply the ego, are lifted out of the physical body and the etheric body.

[ 3 ] Now we must make one thing particularly clear to ourselves today. When we have a human being before us in their present state of development, we have this fourfold nature — physical body, etheric body, astral body, and I — as an interwoven necessity. When we then see this human being lying in bed at night, with only the physical body and the etheric body lying in the bed, this human being lying in bed has, in a sense, the value of a plant. For the plant, as it appears to us in the outer world, consists of the physical body and the etheric or life body; it has no astral body and no I within itself. This distinguishes it from animals and humans. Only animals have an astral body, and only humans have an I within themselves. We can therefore say that from evening to morning, the physical body and the etheric body of the human being lie in bed; there he is, as it were, a being like a plant, and yet not like a plant. We must be clear about this.

[ 4 ] If a free being, an independent being, exists today that has no astral body and no ego, that consists only of a physical body and an etheric body, then it must look like a plant; then it must be a plant. But when a human being lies in bed, he has grown beyond the value of a plant, because in the course of his development he has added to his physical body and his etheric body the astral body, the bearer of pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, of instinct, desire, and passion, and he has added the ego bearer. But every time a higher member is added to a being, everything in the lower members of that being also changes. If we were to add an astral body to the plant as it appears to us today as a being in nature, if an astral body were not merely to surround the plant, but to penetrate it, then what we see in the substance of the plant would have to become animal flesh. For the penetrating astral body transforms the plant in such a way that the substance becomes animal flesh. And the plant would have to be transformed in a similar way if it had an I within itself in the physical world. Therefore, we can also say that when we have before us a being that, like the human being, has not only a physical body but also invisible, higher, supersensible members of its nature, the supersensible members are expressed in the lowest members. Just as your inner soul qualities are expressed superficially in your facial features, in your physiognomy, so your physical body is also an expression of the work of the astral body and the I. And the physical body does not represent itself alone, but also represents a physical expression of the physically invisible members of the human being.

[ 5 ] Thus, the human glandular system and everything we include in it is an expression of the etheric body in the human being. Everything we consider to be part of the nervous system is an expression of the astral body, and everything we consider to be part of the blood system is an expression of its ego carrier. So in the physical body itself we again have to distinguish a fourfold nature, and only those who adhere to a grossly materialistic worldview can describe the different substances in the human physical body as equivalent. What pulsates through us as blood has become such a substance because an I dwells in the human being. The nervous system is so structured and made of such a substance because we encounter an astral body in the human being. And the glandular system has become what it is because there is an etheric body in the human being. If you consider this, you will easily see that, fundamentally, the human being is a contradictory being from the evening when he falls asleep until the morning when he wakes up. One might say that he should be a plant, but he is not a plant. For a plant does not have in its physical substance the expression of the astral body, the nervous system, nor the expression of the I, the blood system. Such a physical entity as the human being, with its glandular, nervous, and blood systems, can only exist if it contains an etheric body, an astral body, and an I.

[ 6 ] Now, however, as a human being, you leave your physical body and your etheric body at night in relation to your astral body and your ego. You leave them, so to speak, contemptuously, turning them into a contradictory being. If nothing spiritual happened between the moment you fell asleep and the moment you woke up, and you simply withdrew your astral body and your ego from your physical body and etheric body, you would find your nervous and blood systems destroyed in the morning, because they cannot exist without an astral body and an ego within them. Therefore, the following happens, perceptible to clairvoyant consciousness.

[ 7 ] To the same extent that the ego and astral body withdraw, the clairvoyant sees a divine ego and a divine astral body entering the human being. In fact, during the night, from the moment a person falls asleep until they wake up, an astral body and an ego, or at least a substitute for them, are present in the physical body and etheric body. When the human astral body withdraws, a higher astral body enters the human being to sustain them until they wake up, and likewise a substitute for the ego. From this you can see that in the realm of our life, in the sphere of our life, there are other beings at work than those that initially express themselves within the physical world. In the physical world, minerals, plants, animals, and human beings express themselves. These human beings are initially the highest of the beings within our physical sphere. They alone have a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and an I.

[ 8 ] From the fact that at night the astral body and the I withdraw from the physical body and the etheric body, you can conclude that the astral body and the I still have a certain independence today, that they separate themselves, so to speak, and can live for a certain period of everyday life separated from their physical and etheric carriers.

[ 9 ] The following is therefore revealed to us at night. Just as the human physical body and the human etheric body are the carriers of the human ego and the human astral body during the day — that is, of the innermost members of the human being — so at night they become the carriers or temples of higher astral and ego beings. Now we see what lies in the bed differently, for there is also something astral present there, but it is a divine-spiritual astral, and there is also an I, but it is a divine-spiritual I. In a certain sense, we can say that while the human being sleeps in relation to his astral body and his ego, these entities, which now also belong to the realm of our life and which enter our physical body and etheric body when we leave the latter, remain awake within him and maintain the structure of his organization. Such a fact can teach us a great deal; and especially when we hold it together with certain observations of the clairvoyant, it can give us some insight into the development of the human being. Let us now connect this fact of the difference between waking and sleeping with the great spiritual facts of development.

[ 10 ] Although the human astral body and the human I appear to be the highest, the innermost members of human nature, they are by no means the most perfect. Even a superficial observation shows that the physical body is more perfect than the astral body. Two years ago, I pointed out here how the physical body of the human being appears to us more and more admirable in terms of its entire structure the more we look into it. The marvelous construction of the human heart and brain not only satisfies the intellect's refined intellectual need for knowledge when it is examined anatomically, but also elevates the aesthetic and moral feelings of those who approach it with their soul, when they can say to themselves what sublime, wise institutions are contained in this physical body.

[ 11 ] The astral body has not yet reached this stage. It is the carrier of pleasure and pain, drives, desires, and pleasures, and so on, and we must tell ourselves that, in relation to his desires, man reaches out to all kinds of things in the world that do not serve to promote the wise and artistic structures of the heart or the brain. Through his lust for pleasure, man seeks satisfaction in things that are, like coffee, heart poisons or the like. In this he proves that the astral body longs for pleasures that are harmful, for example, to the wise institutions in the human heart: for decades the heart withstands such heart poisons that man takes in out of the pleasure-seeking of his astral body. From this you can see that the physical body is more perfect than the astral body. Even if the astral body will one day be incomparably more perfect, today the physical body is at the highest stage of its development. This stems from the fact that the physical body is indeed the oldest of the members of human nature. It is proof that work was already being done on this physical body long before our Earth came into being.

[ 12 ] What today's theory of the origin of the world, which has grown out of mere materialistic ideas, says is nothing more than materialistic fantasy; whether it is called Kant-Laplace theory or some newer 'theory' of this or that kind is irrelevant. These materialistic fantasies are useful for understanding the external structure of our world system, but they are useless if we want to understand what is higher than the external images of the eyes.

[ 13 ] Spiritual research shows us that just as human beings pass from one embodiment to another, a world body such as our Earth also underwent other forms and other planetary states in ancient times. Before our Earth came into being, it was in a different planetary state. It was what spiritual research calls the “old moon.” This is not the moon we know today, but an ancestor of our Earth as a planetary entity. And just as human beings have developed from an earlier embodiment into their present one, so our Earth has developed from the old moon into the Earth. The old moon is, as it were, a previous embodiment of the Earth. In turn, a previous embodiment of the old moon is the sun, not the sun of today, but again an ancestor of our present Earth. And finally, an ancestor of this old sun is the old Saturn. Our Earth has passed through these earlier states: a Saturn state, a sun state, a moon state. And now it has arrived in its Earth state.

[ 14 ] The first seed of our physical body was laid on the old Saturn. We could also say: Nothing of what surrounds human beings today, nothing of our present animal kingdom, plant kingdom, nothing of our present mineral kingdom was present on this ancient world body, which we call the old Saturn, not the present Saturn. But the first seed of the present physical human body was present on it. This physical human body existed in a completely different way than it does today. It existed at that time in its first embryonic state, and then it developed during the Saturn evolution. And when this was over, the old Saturn passed through a kind of world night, just as a human being passes through a devachan in order to come to the next incarnation. And then Saturn became the Sun.

[ 15 ] And just as the plant arises from the seed, so the physical human body arose again on the old sun. Gradually, this physical human body was permeated by an etheric or life body, so that on the sun, the etheric or life body was added to the seed of the physical body. Man was not a plant, but he had the value of a plant. He consisted of a physical body and an etheric body, and his consciousness at that time was similar to the consciousness of sleep or to the consciousness that the entire plant cover of the physical world around us has today. The solar existence came to an end; once again there was a world night, or, if we may say so, a world devachan. After the sun had passed through this world devachan, it transformed into the old lunar state.

[ 16 ] And once again, those parts of the human being that were already present on Saturn and the sun sprouted forth: the physical body and etheric body of the human being. And during the lunar evolution, the astral body was added. Now man had a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body. You can see from this that the physical body, after it had come into being on Saturn, was already undergoing its third state on the Moon. The etheric body was added on the Sun, where it was raised to a second stage of perfection. The astral body, which had just been added, was on the Moon at its first stage.

[ 17 ] Now something happens on the moon that could not happen during Saturn and the sun. While the Saturn and sun evolutions contained human beings as relatively uniform beings, the following occurred in a certain state of the ancient moon evolution. The entire world body split into two parts: into a sun and into a secondary planet of this sun, the moon. So while we speak of a planetary evolution in the case of Saturn, and likewise in the case of the Sun, we speak of an iron evolution in the case of the Moon, but only for the first period of this lunar evolution. This is because at first everything that is our Earth, Sun, and Moon was together in this one ancient world body in one state. Then two bodies arise. What emerges as the sun is not our sun, nor is it the old sun we mentioned earlier. It is a special state that separated from the old moon as a solar state, and next to it a planet emerges outside this sun, orbiting this sun, which we now call the “old moon.” What is the meaning of this division of our Earth's predecessor during the old lunar evolution?

[ 18 ] The purpose of this division is that with the sun that separated, the higher beings and the finer substances left the whole mass and emerged as the sun. The coarser substances and the lower beings remained with the old moon. Thus, during the old lunar development, we now have two bodies instead of one world body: a sun body, which houses higher beings, and a moon body, which houses lower beings. If the whole had remained together and the division had not taken place, certain beings that developed on the separated moon would not have been able to keep up with the pace of the sun beings. They were not ready for it. They therefore had to separate the coarser substances and build a separate arena for themselves. But even the higher beings could not have remained united with these coarser substances; that would have hindered their faster progress. They too needed a special arena for their development, and that was the sun.

[ 19 ] Let us now look at the beings that are found on the old sun after the separation, and those that inhabit the old moon after the separation. We know that during the Saturn state, the physical human body was formed, that the etheric body was added on the sun, and the astral body on the moon. Now these human beings, or if we may say so, these primitive humans on the moon, had indeed gone with the separated moon. It was they who could not participate in the rapid development of the sun beings, those beings who had separated from the sun and now lived within the finer substances and matter on the sun. Therefore, these human beings also became coarser during the lunar evolution. So during the lunar evolution, we find human beings in a state where they consist of a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body. They had reached the stage of development that animals have today. Animals also have a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body. But you must not imagine that human beings on the old moon were really animals. The form of human beings on the old moon looked completely different from the animals on Earth today. It would seem very fantastic to you if I tried to describe it to you. So we find, as it were, ancestors of our present human beings on this old moon who had physical bodies, etheric bodies, and astral bodies, and who, after the whole thing separated from the sun, hardened these members and made them coarser than they would have been if they had remained with the sun.

[ 20 ] Now, however, what had separated from the sun had also undergone this threefold development: Saturn, sun, and moon development. Only, all this went, so to speak, in the direction of the sun, while the ancestors of human beings went in the direction of the moon. In these beings that went with the sun, we can also distinguish a threefold nature that runs entirely parallel to the threefold nature of human beings. There were also beings on the sun that had, so to speak, developed into three members. Only instead of driving these three members toward coarsening after the separation, the three members had now come to refinement. Think of the process like this: after the separation, the human ancestors become coarser beings than they were before; they harden. The corresponding beings on the sun, on the other hand, become more refined.

[ 21 ] What has become of human beings as a result of acquiring an astral body during the lunar evolution brings them down, in a certain sense, to the level of animality. The beings that do not go along with this, that draw the finer substances up to the sun, become more refined. Just as humans harden on the moon, so beings of a high spirituality arise on the sun. In spiritual science, this spirituality is described as the counter-images of what developed on the moon.

[ 22 ] On the moon, humans developed, so to speak, to the level of animals, even though they were not animals. Now, where animal life appears, it has always been justified to distinguish between animals of different stages. The animal-humans on the moon appeared in three very different stages, which spiritual science refers to as the stages of the “bull,” the “lion,” and the “eagle.” These are, as it were, typical forms of animal nature. So there were three different groups on the old moon: bull-humans, lion-humans, and eagle-humans. Even though we cannot use these names to refer to today's animals, bulls, lions, and eagles, the degenerate nature of those primitive humans who must be called lion-people on the moon is expressed in a certain way in the cat species. And the character of the hoofed animals expresses the degraded nature of those humans who are called bull-people, and so on. This was the coarsened nature after a three-stage development. But on the sun, the spiritual counterparts of these existed. There were also three groups. While the development of the astral on the moon formed these three different animal-men, the corresponding spiritual men arose on the sun, namely as angelic beings, spiritual beings, which are also called—but now as spiritual counterparts—the lion, the eagle, and the bull. So when you look at the sun, you see spiritual beings of whom you say: They represent the beautiful, wisdom-formed archetypes! And on the old moon you have something like hardened images of what is up there on the sun. But there is something else that lies behind it as a mystery.

[ 23 ] These images down on the moon are not unrelated to their spiritual counterparts on the sun. On the old moon we have a group of primordial humans, the Taurus humans, and above them on the sun a group of spirit beings called the Taurus spirits, and there is a spiritual connection between the archetype and the image. For the group soul is the archetype and acts as an archetype on the images. The forces emanate from the group soul and direct the image below: the lion spirit directs the beings who are its image as lion-men, the eagle spirit directs the eagle-men, and so on. If these spirits up above had remained united with the earth, they would have remained bound to their images, they would have had to dwell in their images, and they would not have been able to move or exercise the forces they needed to exercise for the salvation and development of their images. They had to say to themselves: We must now care for what must develop on the moon in a higher style! The spirit of Taurus said to itself: I must care for the Taurus people. On the moon below, I cannot find the conditions for my own advancement. To do so, I must dwell on the sun and send my powers down from the sun to the Taurus people. It was the same with the lion spirit and the eagle spirit. Such is the meaning of evolution. Certain beings needed a higher sphere than the beings who were, so to speak, their physical images. These physical images needed a lower, lesser stage. In order for the spiritual beings to be effective, they had to carve out the sun and send their forces down from outside. So we see how, on the one hand, a development descends, so to speak, and on the other hand, a development ascends.

[ 24 ] Now the development of the old moon continues. By acting on their images from outside, the spiritual beings spiritualize the moon so that it can later reunite with the sun. The archetypes take up the images again, absorbing them, as it were. A world devachan, a world night, is formed again. This is also called a “Pralaya,” while those states such as Saturn, Sun, and Moon are called “Manvantaras.” After this world night, our earthly state emerges from the darkness of the world womb, called upon to bring human beings to the point where they can add the I or the I-bearer to the physical, etheric, and astral bodies.

[ 25 ] But now everything that has already developed must be repeated once again. This is a cosmic law: if any higher state is to arise, what was there before must be repeated. First, the Earth had to go through the old Saturn state once again. Once again, the first beginnings of the physical body developed as if from the world germ. Then comes a repetition of the solar state and a repetition of the lunar state.

[ 26 ] The sun, earth, and moon are still united in one body. Then a repetition of what had happened before occurs: the sun splits off again. Once more, those higher beings who need this higher stage of development go out with the sun. They take with them the finer substances so that they can establish their world arena within them. Thus, the sun separates from the earth, which at that time still had the moon in its body, and takes with it those beings who are ready to find their further progress on the sun. You can imagine that among these beings were above all those who had previously functioned as archetypes. All these beings, which had attained the right maturity during the old lunar period, moved forward and consequently could no longer dwell in the coarser substances and beings that the Earth plus the moon contained. They had to detach themselves and establish a new existence on the new sun, the present sun.

[ 27 ] What were these beings? They were the descendants of those beings who had already developed on the sun during the old lunar state as bull spirits, lion spirits, and eagle spirits. And the highest, the most advanced among them, were those who had united the nature of the eagle, the lion, and the bull into a harmonious unity. The most advanced spiritual beings who now took up their dwelling place on the sun were the beings who can be described as “human archetypes,” as “spirit-humans” in the true sense of the word. So imagine that among those spiritual beings that were to be found on the sun during the ancient lunar period as bull spirits, eagle spirits, and lion spirits, there were some who had attained a higher stage of development. They are the actual spirit-men who now reside primarily on the sun. They are, so to speak, spiritual counterparts of what is developing down there on the separated Earth and Moon. Down there, however, the descendants of those beings who were on the old Moon are developing. Now you can imagine: since a certain condensation, a hardening of these beings had already taken place on the old moon, the descendants of these beings of the old moon had to appear with an even greater tendency toward condensation, hardening, and drying up. Indeed, a sad, desolate time began for the separated part that once contained the Earth and the moon. Above, on the Sun, there was an ever fresher and more active development, an ever fuller life; below, on the Earth, there was sadness, desolation, and an increasingly prominent hardening.

[ 28 ] Now something happened that alone made further development possible: what is now the moon split off from the common world body of Earth and moon, and what is now Earth remained behind. With this, the coarsest substances that would have driven the Earth into complete hardening were removed, and the Earth was freed from what would have led to its complete desolation.

[ 29 ] At the beginning of our Earth's development, the Earth was united with what are now the Sun and the Moon. If the Earth had remained with the Sun, human beings would never have been able to develop as they have today; they would not have been able to keep pace with the development required by the beings on the Sun. Human beings did not develop up there as they live on Earth; what developed there was a spiritual archetype of human beings, of which today's human beings, as they appear to us in their physical form, are only a reflection. If, on the other hand, the moon had remained in the Earth, human beings would have gradually dried up, become mummified, and found no possibility of development on Earth. The Earth would have become a barren, dry world. Instead of human bodies as they are today on Earth, something like dead monuments would have arisen, which would have grown out of the ground like dried-up human beings. This was prevented by the Moon splitting off and going out into space with the coarsest substances. This made it possible on Earth for the ego to be added in a corresponding way to what was present in the descendants of the figures of the old moon as physical, etheric, and astral bodies, so that human beings could experience fertilization with the ego precisely because the forces of the sun and moon were working from outside and were in balance there.

[ 30 ] Human beings found their further development on Earth. What had come over from the old moon represented, in a certain sense, a downward development into a lower state. Now, however, it received a new impetus, a drive upward. During this entire period, the corresponding spiritual beings that had separated from the sun continued to develop further and further.

[ 31 ] What had become possible as a result of the moon separating from the earth? You can easily imagine this if you use a comparison. Imagine that we have a block of hard iron in front of us, and let us say that we are people of average muscular strength. We knock and knock and want to knock the iron flat, but we cannot give it any shape. Only when we soften the substance by melting it can we shape it. Something similar happened to the earth after the coarsest substances had left with the moon. Now the earth beings could be formed. Now those beings who had their sphere of activity on the sun intervened again, beings who had already intervened from the sun on the old moon during the old lunar state as group souls. Before the separation of the moon, the substances were too dense. Now these beings, who had their scene of activity on the sun, made themselves felt as forces that gradually shaped and formed human beings into their present form.

[ 32 ] Let us consider this a little more closely. Imagine that you could have stood on this old world body, which consisted of the Earth and the Moon. You would have seen the Sun outside. If you had also been clairvoyant, you would have seen the spiritual beings we described earlier. On the Earth, you would have seen a kind of hardening, a desolation, and you could have said to yourself: All around is nothing but desolation. Everything on Earth seems to be dead. The forces of the sun cannot influence what is preparing to become a great field of corpses. And then you would have experienced how the mass of the moon separated from the Earth. The substances of the Earth would have become soft, malleable, and plastic, and now you could have said to yourself: Everything has become malleable and plastic; the forces coming down from the sun now find the opportunity to work again. You would have seen how the Taurus spirits were now able to regain their influence over human beings, who were the images of these Taurus spirits, and likewise with the lion spirits and the eagle spirits. And you would have said to yourself: The moon is outside. It has dampened its harmful influence by moving away and now only works from a distance. In this way, it has enabled the spiritual beings to work on the earth again.

[ 33 ] Tomorrow we will see what kind of picture presents itself to the clairvoyant when he traces the more distant images of past development in the Akashic Chronicle.

[ 34 ] We look back to the old Saturn state and say to ourselves: there the first beginnings of the physical body of the human being were formed. What we regard today as the physical body was first formed on Saturn as if out of the chaos of the world. Then came the Sun state. The etheric body was added to the first form of the physical body. On the old Moon, the astral element was added, both to the forms that continued to develop on the separated Moon and to the spirits on the separated Sun. The images corresponding to the animal kingdom live on the Moon, and the spiritual archetypes live on the Sun. Finally, on Earth, a state gradually developed through which human beings became capable of taking back into themselves what had developed on the Sun as the astral element during the Moon's evolution and was now working in them as a force. And now let us follow these four states as they are described to us in the Gospel of John.

[ 35 ] The writer of the Gospel of John calls the high power that emerged from the chaos of the universe during the Saturn evolution and provided the spiritual seed for the physical human form the “Logos.” He calls what was added on the sun and integrated into what had been created on Saturn “life” — what we correspondingly call the etheric or life body. What was added on the moon he calls “light,” for it is spiritual light, astral light. This astral light causes hardening on the separated moon and spiritualization on the sun itself. What had arisen as spiritualized matter was able to develop further, and did develop further. And when the sun split off again on the earth, what had developed on the third stage shone into human beings. But human beings were not yet able to see what was shining in from the sun. It shaped human beings, worked as a force, but human beings could not see it.

[ 36 ] What we have clarified as the essence of Saturn's development, we now express in the words of the Gospel of John:

“In the beginning was the Logos.”

[ 37 ] Now let us turn to the sun. If we express the fact that what had arisen on Saturn continued to develop on the sun, we say: The etheric body was added:

“And the Logos was life.”

[ 38 ] On the moon, the astral entity was added, both in its physical and spiritual form:

“In the living Logos, light became.”

[ 39 ] Light continued to develop, on the one hand into clairvoyant light when the sun separated from the earth, and on the other hand into darkness with the human being. For when it was time for him to receive the light, he who was darkness did not understand the light.

[ 40 ] Thus, when we examine the Gospel of John from the perspective of the Akashic Records, we read the following about the development of the world:

[ 41 ] In the beginning, during the Saturn evolution, everything arose from the Logos. During the Sun evolution, life was in the Logos. And from the living Logos, light arose during the Moon evolution. And from the luminous, living Logos, light arose during the Earth evolution on the Sun in an elevated form, but humans were in a state of darkness. And from the sun, the beings that were the advanced spirits of the bull, lion, eagle, and human beings shone down as light onto the earth into the forming shapes of human beings. But these were darkness and could not comprehend the light that shone down upon them. — But we must not imagine this as physical light, but as the light that was the sum of the radiations of the spiritual beings, the bull, lion, eagle, and human spirits, which were the continuation of the spiritual development of the moon. — What streamed down was spiritual light. People couldn't take it in or understand it. It helped them in their whole development, but they weren't aware of it:

“The light shone in the darkness, but the darkness couldn't understand the light.”

[ 42 ] This is how the writer of the Gospel of John presents these great truths in a paradigmatic way. And those who knew this were always called the “servants” or “priests of the Logos as he was from the beginning.” Such a priest or servant of the Logos as he was from the beginning is the one who speaks. In the Gospel of Luke, we find basically the same thing in the introduction. Try to read with a proper understanding what the writer of the Gospel of Luke says. He wants to give news of the things that happened from the beginning, “as those who saw them from the beginning and were servants of the Word have given them to us.”

[ 43 ] And we believe that servants of the Word or of the Logos wrote these documents. We learn to believe this when we see from our own spiritual research how things were, when we see how our earth's development came about through Saturn, the sun, and the moon. When we then see in the comprehensive words of the Gospel of John and in the words of the Gospel of Luke that we can find this again independently of any document, then we learn to appreciate these documents again and say to ourselves: They are a document for us that they were written by those who could read in the spiritual world, and they are a means of communication for us with those who lived in ancient times. In a certain sense, we look them in the eye and say: We recognize you! — because we find what they recognized in spiritual science.