The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] If someone grounded in spiritual science, having absorbed some of what anthroposophy has to say about the evolution of our world, is able to penetrate those powerful words that stand at the very beginning of our Bible, then a completely new spiritual world should dawn upon them. There is hardly any document in the history of human development where the possibility of straying from the true meaning is as great as in this document, which is commonly called Genesis, the account of the so-called six- or seven-day creation.

[ 2 ] When modern man, in whatever language he may now be familiar with, evokes words in his soul—such as, say, in the German language, ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,’ then what lies in these words can hardly be called a faint reflection, hardly a shadow, of what was alive in the souls of those who, in ancient Hebrew times, allowed the opening words of the Bible to take effect upon them. For, when it comes to this document, it truly matters very little whether we are able to substitute modern words for the ancient ones. What matters far more is that, through our anthroposophical preparation, we enable ourselves to sense at least something of the mood that lived in the heart and soul of an ancient Hebrew scholar when he brought these words to life within himself: B'reschit bara elohim et haschamajim w'et ha'arez.

[ 3 ] A whole world came to life in those moments when such words flashed through his mind. What kind of world? To what can we compare the inner world that lived in the soul of such a student? We can compare it only to what may take place in the soul of a person who is shown the images that the seer experiences when he looks into the spiritual worlds himself.

[ 4 ] What, after all, is described to us in what we call the spiritual science teachings? We know that the sources of this teaching are the results of clairvoyance, the living visions that the clairvoyant receives when he frees his entire perception from the conditions of sensory perception and the intellect bound to the physical body, when he looks into the spiritual world with spiritual organs. What he sees there in the spiritual world, if he wishes to translate it into the languages of the physical world, he can express only in images—but in images which, if the seer’s ability to depict is sufficient, can evoke a corresponding idea of what the seer himself beholds in the spiritual worlds. Then, however, something comes about that must not be confused with any description of things or events in the physical-sensory world; something comes into being in which one must be constantly aware that one is dealing with an entirely different world, a world that underlies the sensory world, but which, in the strictest sense, does not in any way correspond to the ideas, impressions, and perceptions of the ordinary sensory world.

[ 5 ] If one wishes to picture in one’s mind the origin of our sensory world, including humanity, then one’s imagination cannot remain within the sensory world. All sciences that seek to go back to the origins and bring with them nothing but concepts derived from the sensory world cannot reach the origins of sensory existence. For sensory existence is rooted in supersensory existence, and while we can go back a long way—historically or, if you will, geologically—further and further; but if we wish to penetrate to the origins, then we must be aware that from a certain point in the distant past we must leave the realm of the sensory and ascend into realms that can only be grasped supersensorily. What is called Genesis does not begin with the depiction of anything sensory, nor with the depiction of anything that eyes could see in the external physical world. And in the course of these lectures we shall become sufficiently convinced of how mistaken it would be to apply the words of the first parts of Genesis to things or events that an external eye can see, that we can experience when we survey the world with our external sense organs. Therefore, as long as one still associates the words “heaven and earth” with anything that contains a remnant of the sensually visible, one has not yet arrived at the destination to which the first parts of Genesis point. In the present day, it is hardly possible to shed light on the world referred to here in any other way than through spiritual science. But through this spiritual science, there is also, in a certain sense, a possibility of approaching what one might call the mystery of the primordial words with which the Bible begins, and of sensing something of what lies within these primordial words.

[ 6 ] What, then, is so unique about these primal words? If I may speak in abstract terms at first, I must say that it lies in the fact that they are written in Hebrew, a language that affects the soul in a way no modern language can. Even if this language, in which the earliest parts of the Bible are initially presented to us, no longer has the same effect today, it once had such an effect that when a letter resonated through the soul, an image was evoked within it. Before the soul of the one who allowed the words to take effect upon him with living interest, images arose in a certain harmony, indeed in an organic form, which can be compared to what the seer can still see today when he advances from the sensible to the supersensible. One might say that the Hebrew language—or rather, the language of the first parts of the Bible—was a kind of medium for evoking pictorial images from the soul, images that came close to the visions the seer receives when he becomes capable of looking, free from the body, into the supersensible realms of existence.

[ 7 ] Therefore, in order to bring these mighty primordial words of humanity to life before the soul, it will be necessary to set aside all that is shadowy and pale in the effect that any modern language has on the soul, and to gain an understanding of the tremendous vitality, the stirring and creative power that any sequence of sounds possessed in this ancient language. And so it is of infinite importance that, in the course of these lectures, we also try to bring before our soul, even if only a little, those images that arose in the ancient Hebrew student when the sound in question worked creatively within his soul and set an image before that soul. You can see from this that there must be a completely different way to penetrate this document than all the methods chosen today to understand any ancient documents.

[ 8 ] With this, I have outlined some of the perspectives that will guide us. We will be able to advance only slowly and gradually toward what can give us a vivid sense of what lived within the ancient Hebrew sage as he allowed those most powerful words to take effect upon him—words that, at least, still exist in the world today. Thus, our next task will be to draw as little as possible on what is familiar and to free ourselves as much as possible from everything we have hitherto imagined when we speak of heaven and earth, of gods, of creation and making, and of a primal beginning. And the more we can free ourselves from what we have hitherto felt upon hearing such words, the better we will be able to penetrate the spirit of a document that developed out of soul conditions entirely different from those prevailing in the present. Above all, however, we must agree upon what we are actually speaking of in spiritual scientific terms when we speak of the opening words of the Bible.

[ 9 ] As you know, based on what is currently possible through clairvoyant research, we can describe the course and development of our Earth and human existence in a certain sense. And in my book *The Secret Science*, I have attempted to describe, step by step, Earthly existence—the Earth as the stage, as the planetary stage of humanity—based on the three stages of development preceding our Earthly existence: the Saturn, Sun, and Moon stages. And you certainly have in mind, at least in broad strokes, what has been described there. The question now arises: Where should we place what approaches our soul with the mighty B’reschit? Where should we place this in our spiritual-scientific description? Where does it belong?

[ 10 ] Let us first clarify, from a certain perspective, how we can picture the existence of Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon. If we briefly turn our gaze back to ancient Saturn, it stands before our soul as a celestial body that possesses none of what we are accustomed to calling the material existence around us. It is a celestial body that, of all that we have in our surroundings, actually contains within itself only the element of warmth. Heat or fire, a self-weaving element of heat—nothing of air, nothing of water, nothing of solid earth is to be found on ancient Saturn, so that where it is densest, it is living, weaving heat. And we know that existence then advances to what is called the solar state. There we then have a kind of air- or gas-like element added to the weaving, living warmth, and we correctly picture the planetary state of the Sun when we conceive of it—insofar as it comes into consideration as an elemental state—as a weaving and living together of gaseous, air-like elements and elements of warmth. We must then consider the so-called lunar state as the third stage in the development of our Earthly existence. In this stage, what we might call the aqueous elemental state is added to the warmth and the air. Nothing of what we call the earthy, solid element in our present-day Earthly existence is present during this ancient lunar state. But something peculiar occurs during this ancient lunar existence: the earlier unity in which our planetary existence unfolded begins to split. When we look at the ancient Saturn, it appears to us as a unity of heat weaving within itself. Even the ancient Sun appears to us as gas and heat elements weaving within themselves. During the lunar existence, a division occurs between a solar and a lunar aspect. And only then, when we reach the fourth stage of our planetary development, do we see how the solid, earthy element joins the earlier elemental states—the fiery or warm, the airy, and the watery elements. In order for this solid element to emerge in our planetary existence, the separation that had already taken place during the lunar phase had to be repeated. The solar aspect had to emerge once more from our planetary earth-like state. Thus, we have a certain point in the development of our planet where, from a common planetary state in which the elements of fire, air, and water are still interwoven, the denser, earthy element and the finer, airy, solar element separate. And only within this earthiness could that which we today call the solid form itself and condense.

[ 11 ] Let us pause for a moment to consider this instant when the solar aspect emerges from a shared planetary relationship and, from that point on, sends its forces from the outside to our earthly realm. Let us bear in mind that at that time there was also the possibility that within the earthly realm, the solid—what we today call the solid in a material sense—was preparing itself, condensing, as it were, within the earthly realm. Let us hold fast to this moment, and we have the point in time at which Genesis, the Bible, begins. It speaks of this state. We must by no means associate the first words of Genesis with that abstract, shadowy quality that people have in mind today when they utter the words “In the beginning” or “In the very beginning.” To do so would be to express something unspeakably meager in comparison to what the ancient Hebrew sage felt. Everything that one can only imagine in that duality which arose through the separation of the solar and the earthly, everything that was present, so to speak, at the moment of this separation, which was just dividing into duality—all of this must arise before our soul when we wish to place Bereshit, the “In the beginning,” “In the very beginning,” in the right way. And not only that must arise in our soul, but we must be aware that in this entire development, which we call the Saturn, Sun, and Moon development, spiritual beings were the guides and leaders and also the bearers of the entire development, and that what we call the elements of heat, air, and water are always only the outer expression, the outer garment, for the spiritual beings who are the reality of this evolution. Even when we look back at that state which existed at the separation of the solar from the earthly, and imagine it in an image filled with material concepts, even then we must be aware that in all that we paint before our soul under the image of elemental water, air, and fire, we have only the means of expression for weaving spirituality, for weaving spirituality that has ascended through the preceding three stages—the Saturn, Sun, and Moon stages—and has reached a certain stage of development in its existence at this point in time, which I have just described.

[ 12 ] Let us imagine in our soul this image of watery, airy or gaseous, and fiery elements intertwining within themselves, like a vast cosmic sphere that splits apart into a solar and an earthly element; but let us imagine that everything we conceive of in this elemental-material realm is merely the means of expression for the spiritual. Let us imagine that from this material shell, woven from watery, airy, and heat elements, the faces of spiritual beings gaze upon us—beings who weave within it, who manifest and reveal themselves in this element represented to our soul through material concepts. Let us imagine that we have spiritual beings before us who, as it were, turn their faces toward us and who are working there with the aid of warmth, air, and water to organize world bodies through the power of their spiritual-soul nature. Let us imagine this picture for a moment!

[ 13 ] Here we have the image of an elemental shell, a shell that we might imagine, for example, as a snail shell if we wish to form a rather rough sensory conception of it—but a shell that is not formed from solid matter like a snail shell, but is woven from the finest watery, airy, gaseous, and fiery elements. Within it, we imagine a spiritual being that gazes at us like faces that reveal themselves precisely through this shell and are themselves a power of revelation—a power that, so to speak, thrusts itself out of the supersensory hidden into the manifest, if I may use that word.

[ 14 ] Call to mind the image I have just tried to paint—this living interweaving of the spiritual within the material—and call to mind the inner spiritual power that brings about this interweaving and organizing within the material, and for a moment set aside everything else: then you will have before you what lived, so to speak, in the soul of an ancient Hebrew sage when the sounds of B’reschit penetrated that soul. Bet, the first letter, brought forth the material weaving of the vessel; Resh, the second consonant, brought forth the facial features of the spiritual beings weaving within this vessel; and Shin, the third sound, brought forth the prickly force that works its way upward from within to reveal itself.

[ 15 ] This is roughly how we arrive at the principle underlying such a description. And when we get to the heart of this principle, we can at the same time sense something of the spirit of this language, which, as I said, possessed a creative quality in the soul—something of which modern people, with their abstract languages, have completely lost track.

[ 16 ] Let us now truly immerse ourselves in that moment which lies, so to speak, before the physical coagulation, before the physical densification of our earthly existence, for that is the moment I have in mind. If we imagine this moment vividly, then we will have to say: If we want to describe what is happening there, we must not use any of the concepts we employ when we want to describe external sensory processes today. — Therefore, it is infinitely amateurish to interpret the second of the words we are dealing with in Genesis in such a way that one associates any external fact—no matter how much it may resonate with what we understand today by “making” and “creating”—with the word. This does not bring us close to the second word of Genesis. Where, then, can we turn? This word refers to something that indeed comes very close to the boundary where the sensory realm immediately transitions into the supersensory-spiritual. And the person who wishes to form a conception of what is usually translated as “created”—“In the beginning the gods created”—must in no way associate this word with anything that can be seen with the eyes, with ordinary sensory eyes, as a creative activity, as a productive activity.

[ 17 ] Look within yourselves, my dear friends. Try to imagine a situation in which, for example, you have been asleep for a while, then wake up and, without focusing your gaze on any external reality, awaken within yourself—through the inner activity of the soul—certain images in your soul. Bring to mind this inner activity, this creative thinking that conjures up a soul content from the depths of the soul. For my sake, use the word “conceiving” for this conjuring up of a soul content from the depths of the soul into the conscious field of vision of your soul, and now imagine what a human being can do with his ideas as an activity that is truly cosmic-creative. If you imagine, instead of your own thinking, instead of your inner mental experience, a cosmic thinking, then you have what lies within that second word of Genesis, “bara.” As spiritual as you can conceive it to be, as close as you can bring it to the mental realm that you bring before your eyes in your own thinking—as close as you can bring it!

[ 18 ] And now imagine that, while your soul is engaged in this contemplation, you bring two distinct groups of ideas before your soul, as it were. To illustrate such a distant concept as clearly as possible, let us take the example of a person who wakes up and thinks of two different things—that is, who conceives of two different things. Let one of the things he conceives be the image of some activity or an external object or being; this enters the field of consciousness not through external observation, not through perception, but through thinking, through the creative activity of the soul. But let the second complex of ideas that arises in such a person upon waking be a desire, something that the person can will in accordance with their entire disposition and state of mind. Thus we have an imaginative and a desiring element that arises before our soul through inner contemplation. Now imagine, instead of the human soul that thus contemplates within itself, that which is called the Elohim in Genesis. Imagine, instead of the unity of the human soul, a multitude of contemplating spiritual beings who, however, in a similar way evoke from within themselves through contemplation two complexes that I would like to compare to what I have just described to you: a purely imaginative complex and a complex of desire. So instead of the contemplating human soul, we imagine a cosmic organization of beings who evoke within themselves in a similar way—only that their contemplation is a cosmic one—two such complexes: one of an imaginative nature, that is, one that reveals something, which thus expresses itself outwardly, which appears outwardly, and another complex that is desirous, that lives through inner activity, an inner stirring, an inner permeation of activity. We thus imagine those cosmic beings designated as the Elohim; we imagine them as pondering in this way, and we visualize this pondering in the word “they created,” bara. And then we imagine that through this creative contemplation two such complexes arise: one complex that tends more toward being something that manifests itself outwardly, something that reveals itself to the outside world, and another complex, an inner activity, an inner life; then we have roughly those two conceptual complexes that arose in the soul of the ancient Hebrew sage when the words that today stand for “the heavens and the earth,” hashamayim and ha’aretz, resounded through his soul. If we try to forget what modern man thinks of as heaven and earth, let us attempt to bring these two conceptual complexes before our soul: the complex of that which manifests itself outwardly, that which reveals itself; the complex of that which urges to produce some effect outwardly; and that other complex of the inwardly active, of that which wishes to experience itself within, of that which stirs vividly within—then we have the hashamayim and the other word, ha’arez.

[ 19 ] And the Elohim themselves—we will come to know them more closely as the lectures progress and translate them into our spiritual-scientific language, but for now let us try to grasp, to some extent, the meaning of the original words—the Elohim themselves, what kind of beings are they? Anyone who wishes to form an idea of what lived in the soul of the ancient Hebrew sage when he used this word must realize that in those days there was a very vivid sense that our earthly evolution has a specific meaning, a specific goal. What is this meaning, what is this goal of our earthly evolution?

[ 20 ] The evolution of our Earth has meaning and purpose only if something occurs within it that was not there before. An eternal repetition, a return of what was already there, would be a meaningless existence, and the ancient Hebrew sage, above all, would have perceived the genesis of the Earth as such a meaningless existence had he not been able to conceive that the Earth, having developed from other states, must bring forth something new—something new in relation to all that came before. Through this earthly existence, something new became possible: namely, that human beings became precisely as they appear within earthly existence. Just as human beings appear within earthly existence as the beings they already are today, as the beings into which they will develop in an ever-advancing future, so were these human beings not present in all earlier stages of development, nor were they possible in those earlier stages. And of a different nature than the human being—we do not wish to introduce the concept of the lower and the higher here—were those spiritual beings who guided and sustained the outer development, which we designate as the Saturn, Sun, and Moon developments. Those beings who wove in the elemental stages of existence—the fiery, gaseous, and aqueous—who wove a Saturn, a Sun, and a Moon existence, who wove at the beginning of Earth existence—how do we best come to know them in terms of their essence? How do we draw near to them?

[ 21 ] We would, however, have to describe many, many things if we wanted to come even somewhat close to these entities. But we can begin by getting to know them from one aspect, and that will suffice to bring us at least one step closer to the profound meaning of the original biblical words. Let us consider these beings, who were, in a certain sense, closest to humanity when it itself emerged from what had developed out of the ancient Saturn, Sun, and Moon existences. Let us ask these beings what they actually wanted. Let us ask them about their will, their intention, so to speak. Then we will at least be able to gain a small sense of their nature. What did they want, these beings? — They were capable of many things; in the course of the evolution they had undergone, they had acquired abilities in one direction or another. One could do this, another that. But we can best imagine their nature if we say to ourselves: At that point in time we have just considered, a common goal, a common motive, was at work within a group of such beings. — On a higher level, it is somewhat like a group of people coming together today, each of whom possesses a certain skill. Each of them can do something, and now they say to one another: You can do this, I can do that, the third can do the other. Let us now bring all our activities together to accomplish a common work, where each person’s activity can be put to use. — Let us therefore assume such a group of people, each of whom can do something different, but who have a common goal. What is to come into being there does not yet exist. The unity they are working toward initially exists only as a goal; it does not yet exist at all. There is a multiplicity present; unity initially lives as an ideal. Now imagine a group of spiritual beings who have developed through Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon, each of whom can do something very specific, and who, at the moment I have described, make the decision: We want to group our activities toward a common goal; we want to give ourselves a unified direction. — And before the eyes of each one, the image of this goal appeared. And what was the goal? The human being, the earthly human being.

[ 22 ] Thus did the earthly human live as the object of a group of divine-spiritual beings who had resolved to combine their various arts in order to achieve what they themselves did not possess, what was not inherent in them, but which they could bring forth through collaborative work. If you take all that I have described to you as an elemental shell, as spiritual beings acting within it and thinking in cosmic terms, as two complexes—one desirous and inwardly active, and one manifesting itself outwardly—if you take all that and then attribute to those spiritual beings, who gaze forth, as it were, from the elemental realm with their faces, and ascribe to them this common goal that I have just characterized, then you have what lived in the heart of an ancient Hebrew sage in the word Elohim. And now we have gathered together in a pictorial way what lives in these almighty primal words.

[ 23 ] So let us first set aside everything a modern person might feel or think when uttering the words “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Taking into account everything that has been said today, let us try to conjure up the following image in our minds: There is a weaving elemental substance, within which fire, gas, and water weave. Within this elemental, active, weaving substance live spiritual beings—a group of spiritual beings who think. They are engaged in productive thinking, and through their productive thinking the goal emerges of directing all activity toward the human form. And the first thing to emerge from this thinking is the idea of something that reveals itself outwardly, that manifests itself, and of something that is inwardly active, inwardly animated: within the elemental shell, the primordial spirits conceived what appears outwardly and what is active inwardly.

[ 24 ] Try to use these words to reflect on what is said in the first line of the Bible, and you will have the foundation for what we must keep in mind in the days ahead as the true meaning of these all-powerful primordial words, through which the greatest thing of all—namely, humanity’s own origin—has been revealed to mankind.