The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday we vividly pictured in our minds the moment alluded to in the Bible’s significant words: “And God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light.” In doing so, we have pointed to an event that, for us, represents on a higher level a repetition of previous stages of development in our earthly existence. Time and again I must refer you to the image of a person who wakes up and draws a certain spiritual content from the soul. In much the same way, we should imagine how, from the soul of the Elohim, that which has slowly and gradually taken shape in the course of evolution through the Saturn, Sun, and Moon periods springs forth in a new form, in a modified form. And fundamentally, everything that is recounted in the so-called six- or seven-day creation account of the Bible is a reawakening of previous states, but not a reawakening in the same form, rather in a new form, in a new shape. And the next question we may ask ourselves is this: How are we to understand the reality of what is told to us in the course of the six- or seven-day creation?

[ 2 ] We will best understand this question if we frame it as follows: Could an eye—such as ordinary eyes—or indeed any sensory organ—such as today’s sensory organs—externally perceive, through the senses, what is described in the account of the Six Days of Creation? — They could not. For the events, the facts, that are reported to us there take place essentially in the sphere of what we might call the elemental realm. So that, in order to observe these processes, a certain degree of clairvoyant insight, of clairvoyant perception, would be necessary. It is indeed quite true that the Bible tells us of the emergence of the sensory from the supersensory, and that the facts it places at the forefront are supersensory facts, even if they lie only one degree higher than our ordinary sensory facts, which have, after all, emerged from these other facts just characterized. So in a certain sense we are looking into a clairvoyant realm with all that we are actually describing there in the context of the six-day creation. What was there before reappeared in etheric and elemental form. Let us bear this in mind very clearly, otherwise we will not be able to orient ourselves sufficiently regarding all that is actually meant by the monumental words of Genesis. Thus, we may expect to see emerge in a new form all that developed gradually during the old Saturn, Sun, and Moon epochs.

[ 3 ] Let us therefore first ask ourselves: What were the peculiar conditions into which evolution had plunged through these three planetary forms? — We can say: On ancient Saturn—as you can read in my *The Secret Science*—everything was in a kind of mineral state. What existed there as the first rudiment of humanity—what constituted the entire mass of ancient Saturn—was in a sort of mineral state. You must not think of the mineral form as we know it today, for ancient Saturn was by no means yet present in the element of water or the solid; it was merely interwoven warmth. But the laws that governed this planet of heat—that is, what brought about differentiation there, what organized the interweaving—were the same laws that govern the dense, solid mineral kingdom today. So when we say that ancient Saturn and also humanity were in a mineral state, we must be aware that it was not a mineral state like today’s, with solid forms, but a state within the weaving warmth, yet governed by mineral laws.

[ 4 ] Then comes the solar stage. We must still understand this in such a way that nothing has yet separated from the solar mass that would later become the Earth. Everything that today belongs to the Earth and the Sun is, so to speak, a single body; in the ancient solar era, it was a cosmic body. Within this ancient Sun, a gaseous substance has formed as a condensation in contrast to the earlier Saturn state, so that in addition to the interwoven warmth, we have a gas or air-like substance flowing through it all, fitting together in a lawful manner. But at the same time, we have a new formation directed upward, as it were, a rarefaction of the warmth-filled substance toward the light-filled, a radiating out of a light-filled substance into the space of the worlds. That which we can now designate as the beings of our planetary evolution has advanced during this ancient solar state to the plant-like. Again, we must not imagine that plants in their present form existed during the old solar state; rather, we must be clear that only the laws operating in today’s plant kingdom—those laws that cause a root-like form to grow downward and a flower-like form to grow upward—were at work within the old solar state in the elements of the airy and the warm. Of course, no solid plant form could have arisen; rather, one must imagine the forces that drove the flower upward and the roots downward weaving within an air-like structure, so that one must picture the ancient solar state as a light-like flashing of flower forms upward. Imagine a sphere of gas and within it weaving light, living light that sprouts, which as it sprouts upward causes the gaseous substance to shoot up like forms of light blossoms and in turn strives to hold down what seeks to flash forth, which in turn holds the old Sun together toward the center: then you have the inner weaving of light, warmth, and air in the old solar state. The mineral laws repeat themselves, the plant laws are added to them, and what exists in the human being is itself only in a plant-like state.

[ 5 ] Where, then, could we find anything today that, even if not entirely, could be compared in some respect to these plant-like formations within the ancient sphere of gas, heat, and light that is the Sun? If one were to let the senses that humans possess today roam through outer space, one would certainly find nothing comparable to it. At a certain time in the ancient Sun, all of this was also physically present—that is, physically present up to the point of gaseous density. Today it cannot exist physically at all. The form of activity that was also physically present back then is today only accessible to humans when clairvoyant perception is directed toward the realm of the supersensible world, where the spiritual root-beings of our outer physical plants are found—that which we have come to know over the years as the group soul of plants. We know, of course, that underlying this outer plant life, which presents itself to the physical senses today, is something we can call the group souls. Today they can only be found in the spiritual realm through clairvoyant consciousness. There, these group souls of plants are not present in individual plant specimens like the external plants that grow out of the ground, but rather there is a group soul for roughly every species—that is, for the rose species, for the violet species, for the oak species. So in the spiritual realm we are not to look for some spiritual being for every single plant, but rather for the species we are to look for the group souls. These species of plants are, for today’s thinking—for this poor, abstract thinking of the present—simply abstractions, concepts. They were already so in the Middle Ages, and because even back then people knew nothing more of what weaves and lives in the spiritual as the foundation of the physical, the famous dispute arose between realism and nominalism—that is, whether what exists as species is merely a name or something truly spiritual. For the clairvoyant consciousness, this entire dispute makes not the slightest sense, for when it looks out over the plant cover of our Earth, it penetrates through the outer physical form of the plant into a spiritual realm, and in this spiritual realm, the group souls of the plants live as real, actual beings. And these group souls are one and the same reality as what we call the species of plants. At the time when the air-heat-light sphere of the ancient Sun was in its full bloom, when the light playing there cast the sparkling, light-filled floral forms of plant existence onto the surface of the gas, at that time these forms were the very same—in physical gaseous form—as what today can only be found in the spiritual realm as the species of plants. Let us bear this in mind very clearly: that back then, during the existence of the ancient Sun, the species of plants—the species of that which today covers our Earth as greenery, as blossoms, as trees and shrubs—permeated the ancient Sun entirely in the sense of group-soul character, in the sense of species.

[ 6 ] As far as human beings had progressed at that time, they were still in a plant-like state. They were unable to summon up what was happening around them as inner images or awaken it in states of consciousness, just as plants today cannot reawaken in states of consciousness what is happening around them. Human beings themselves existed in a plant-like state, and the physicality of humans at that time was also part of the rising and falling forms of light that played within the gaseous solar sphere. For the emergence of the most primitive form of consciousness, something quite special occurs in the cosmos. As long as our earthly nature was still connected to the solar nature—that is, as long as, to put it roughly, the light of the sun did not fall upon the globe from the outside—so long could that which we might call consciousness not form within the beings of the earthly realm. Nor could an astral body, which is the foundation of consciousness, penetrate the physical and etheric bodies. If consciousness is to arise, then a separation, a division, must take place; then something else must separate from the solar realm. And this occurred during the third stage of our Earth’s development, during the old lunar stage. When the old solar stage had passed, having gone through a kind of cosmic night, the entire structure emerged anew, but now in such a way that it had matured to appear as a duality, so that everything solar separated itself as a world body, and the old Moon, on which only the watery, airy, and warm elements of our elemental states were present, remained as something existing outside the solar realm. The old Moon was the Earth-like state of that time, and only because the beings on it could receive the power of the Sun from without—only through this could they take on an astral body and develop consciousness within themselves, that is, reflect in inner experience what was happening around them. An animalic being—an animalic being that is inwardly alive, a being that carries consciousness within itself—is thus bound to the fact that a separation occurs within the Earthic and the Solar. The animalic emerged during the ancient Lunar Age, and human beings themselves were formed in terms of their physicality up to the level of the animalic. You have described the details of this in my *Secret Science*.

[ 7 ] Thus we see how these three states, which preceded our becoming earthly and which constitute the conditions for this becoming, are lawfully interconnected. And in the lunar state, a liquid, a watery substance, was added to the gaseous on one side, and a clay-like, a sound-like substance on the other side—a sound-like substance, as I characterized it for you yesterday, as a refinement of the light state. This is roughly a representation of the development. What had taken place through these three states now resurfaced like the memory of the Elohim; it emerged, as we saw yesterday, initially in a confused state, which is described in the Bible with the words I characterized more precisely yesterday, with the words tohu wabohu. In the rays of force that radiated outward from a central point and inward from the periphery, the three elemental states—air, warmth, and water—initially united in an interaction. They were now undivided; previously they had already been separated. They had already been separated on the Sun, when a gaseous form had separated from the heat, and also during the ancient lunar state, where the three forms—the heat, the gas, and the water—were separated from one another. Now they were in a colorful jumble during the tohu wabohu, bubbling into one another, so that in that first time of the Earth’s becoming one could not distinguish between the aqueous, the gaseous, and the heat-bearing. It all interacted within one another.

[ 8 ] The first thing that happened was that the luminous began to penetrate this chaos. And then, out of that soul-like, spirit-like activity—which I have described to you as a cosmic sensibility—an activity developed that first separated the old gaseous from the old liquid within the chaos of the elemental. I ask you to take very careful note of this moment, which followed, so to speak, the becoming of light. If we were to translate what happened there into sober prose, we would have to say: After the light had struck the tohu wabohu, the Elohim separated what had previously been gaseous from what had previously been liquid, so that one could once again distinguish what was in a gaseous state from what had previously been in a liquid state. Thus, within the mass that was a jumble of all three elemental states, a separation now took place, resulting in two distinct phenomena: one with the character of airiness, with the tendency to spread in all directions, and another with the character of cohesion, of pressing together. This is the watery state. However, at the time in question, these two states were not yet such that we could compare them to what we today call gaseous or airy and water. Water was considerably denser; we shall see why shortly. On the other hand, what was airy was such that, if we wish to accurately capture the nature of its condition at that time, we can find no better example than when we look up from the earth today, where in the airy state the watery transforms into gaseous, vaporous form and strives to rise in the form of clouds, only to fall again as rain; thus one element as an ascending one, the other as a descending one. We have watery substance in both, only one has the tendency to become vaporous and rise upward as clouds, and the other has the tendency to pour downward, settling in surface form. This is, of course, only a comparison, for what I am describing took place in the elemental realm.

[ 9 ] If we are to characterize what happened next, we must say: Through their cosmic thinking, the Elohim brought about a separation of two elemental states within the tohu wabohu. One had the tendency to rise upward, to become vaporous—that is, watery matter transforming into gaseous matter. The other had the tendency to pour downward, that is, the watery substance coalescing ever more densely. — This is the fact that is usually expressed in modern languages by saying, for example, in German: “The gods made something between the waters above and the waters below.” I have just described to you what the gods did. They caused, within the waters, one elemental to have the tendency to rise upward, and the other to have the tendency to move inward toward the center. What lies in between is not something one can touch with the hand, but rather a separation has been effected with regard to two types of force that I have just described to you. If one wishes to have an external comparison for this, one can say: The Elohim caused the waters on one side to rise upward, to strive toward a cloud-like form, to radiate out into space, and on the other side to gather on the Earth’s surface. — The separation was thus a kind of ideal one.” That is why the word used in Genesis for this separation must also be understood in an ideal sense. As you know, the Latin Bible uses the word firmamentum in this passage. In Genesis, however, the word *rakia* is used. This word by no means refers to something to be interpreted in an outward, sensory manner, but rather signifies the separation of two directions of force.

[ 10 ] This corresponds to what is described as a second moment in Genesis. So that, if we were to translate it into our language, we would have to say: The Elohim first separated the air from the watery element within the swirling elemental states. — This is also the very precise rendering of what is meant. That which strives toward the air—which naturally encompasses the gaseous-aqueous—and that which coalesces into the solid, the Elohim separated these. This is the second moment in the story of creation.

[ 11 ] Now let us move on to the next moment. What happens there? That which has been sent out, that which radiates outward, that which strives toward cloud formation, has reached a state that is, in a certain sense, a repetition of an earlier state—a state in a coarser form than it was on the ancient Sun. That which has striven inward, which in a certain sense reflects the watery condensation of the old moon-like state, is now further differentiated, and this further separation constitutes what appears as the third moment in the becoming of the Earth. We can say that in the second moment the Elohim separated the airy from the watery. Thus, in the third moment, they separate within the watery substance that which we now know as water, and something that was not there before: a new condensation, the solid. Only now is the solid present. During the old lunar state, this solid, this earth-like substance, did not yet exist. Now it is separated from the watery substance. So in the third moment of the Earth’s becoming, we have a process of condensation, and we must say: Just as the Elohim separated the airy elements from the watery ones in the second moment, so now, in the third moment, within the old lunar substance, they separate the new watery from the Earthly, which now appears as something entirely new. — Everything I have described to you so far was, in essence, already present earlier, albeit in a different form. What is new is the earth-like, the solid, which now appears in the third moment of Genesis. The earth-like separated from the watery, that is the new. That alone makes it possible for what existed before to manifest in a renewed form.

[ 12 ] What, then, forms first? It is that which had already formed in the ancient Sun—what we have described in the thin, gaseous element of the solar realm as a sprouting, plant-like substance—which was then repeated in the aqueous realm on the ancient Moon, where plant forms in the modern sense did not yet exist. And only in the third stage does it repeat itself within the Earth element itself. The plant-like form repeats itself within the Earth element first. This is now described in a wonderful way in the Bible. I will explain later what the days signify; for now I am speaking of the impact of light, of the impact of air, of the separation of water from the solid. The solid now brings forth from within itself a repetition of the plant-like. This is described to us in a wonderfully vivid way by being told that the plant-like springs forth from the earthly realm after the Elohim have separated the earthly from the watery. The sprouting of the vegetative on the so-called third day of creation is thus, within the solid, a repetition of what already existed during the old solar state—a cosmic memory, as it were. In the cosmic consciousness of the Elohim, what had existed in the old sun in a gaseous state as vegetative now emerged in a solid state.

[ 13 ] Everything repeats itself in a different form. It is still in a state where it is not yet individual, as it is on our Earth today. I have therefore expressly pointed out that the individual plant forms we perceive today in the sensory world were not yet present during the old Sun stage, nor during the old Moon stage, nor even now in the Earth stage, where this plant-like quality is repeated in the earthly realm. What existed there were the group souls of the plants, what we today call the species of plants, which for the clairvoyant consciousness is not something abstract, but something that exists in the spiritual realm. At that time, it manifested itself in a supersensible realm as a repetition. That is why it is described to us in this way. It is remarkable how little the Bible interpreters know what to make of the phrase that is usually translated in the German language as: “The earth brought forth all kinds of herbs and shoots according to their kind.” One should say: according to their kind! Here you have the explanation for it. It existed in the form of group souls, according to their kind, not yet individually as today. You will not understand the entire description of the sprouting of the plant life on the so-called third day of creation unless you take this group-soul nature into account. You must be clear that no plants in the modern sense sprouted there, but rather that the species forms sprang forth from a spiritual, cosmically oriented activity; in other words, that a group-soul aspect of the plant kingdom sprang forth. Thus we find that at the moment described to us on the so-called third day of creation, when the Elohim separate the solid, the fourth elemental state, from the watery, within this solid state—which, admittedly, in its elemental basic form would not yet have been visible to the outer eye, but only to the clairvoyant eye—the plant forms repeat themselves.

[ 14 ] The animal realm cannot yet repeat itself. We have already noted that it could only emerge during the old lunar phase, when a duality had set in and the solar principle was acting from the outside. A repetition of this process of lunar separation therefore had to occur first before development could ascend from the plant realm to the animal realm. That is why, after the third day of creation, it is now indicated how, within the sphere of the Earth, the outer solar, lunar, and stellar forces begin to act—how that which radiates in from the outside, that which sends its forces in from the outside, begins to take effect. Whereas we previously saw the effect as a sprouting forth from the planetary state itself, we now have, in addition to this effect, something radiating in from the outside that comes from the celestial realm. In other words, the corresponding process would now have to be described further something like this: To the forces of the Earth itself, which could only repeat from its unity as much as it had previously brought forth as a unity, the Elohim, in their cosmic sense, made effective the forces that streamed down upon the planet from outer space. The cosmic was added to earthly existence. For the time being, let us see nothing else in what is described in the so-called fourth day of creation.

[ 15 ] What, then, had come about as a result of this external irradiation? Well, naturally, the processes that had already existed during the old lunar state were able to repeat themselves, albeit in a modified form. During the old lunar state, after all, whatever was possible in terms of animal life within the airy and watery elements had developed. Whatever could live in air and water had developed as animal life; this could now initially repeat itself. In a wonderfully appropriate way, therefore, the so-called fifth day of creation in Genesis recounts how the teeming life begins in air and water. Here we have the repetition of the old lunar era, only on a higher level, emerging from the earthly realm, in a new form.

[ 16 ] You see, these are the kinds of things where our anthroposophical striving transforms into a profound sense of awe toward these ancient documents, where one would like to move, entirely from within anthroposophical perspectives, to a feeling of heartfelt veneration and adoration toward these ancient documents. What the clairvoyant consciousness discovers is rendered in a magnificent, primal language in these ancient documents. We find confirmed what we first knew through clairvoyance: that, once the external radiation has taken effect, what existed in the ancient lunar state within the airy and watery elements can be repeated. What do all the intellectual objections, so often raised against these things, mean in the face of such a realization that stirs all our soul forces! What, above all, does the objection mean that aims to suggest these documents were created in primitive ages and that human knowledge at that time was actually at a childlike level? What a beautiful childlike perspective, when we find in these documents the highest to which we can aspire! Must we not attribute the same spiritual insight—which today is the only thing capable of ascending to this revelation—to those who gave us these documents? Do not the ancient clairvoyants speak a clear language by bequeathing these documents to us? The realization of what lies within these documents provides us with proof that ancient, inspired clairvoyants were the authors of these records. We truly need no historical proof. We can only provide proof by learning to recognize what is written in these documents.

[ 17 ] If we look at it this way, we realize: It was only in everything that followed this fifth moment—the so-called fifth day of creation—that something new could come into being. For what had to be repeated had now been repeated. The earthly realm itself, which had emerged as a new element, could now be populated by the animal realm and all that unfolded as a new formation. Thus we see, described with magnificent objectivity, how on the so-called sixth day of creation that which is, so to speak, bound to the earthly realm by its very existence appears as a new element. That animal realm, of which it is again said that it came into being in the world on the sixth day of creation, is bound to the earthly realm; it appears as a new element. Thus we see that up to the fifth day of creation we have a repetition of what came before on a higher level, in a new form; but that it is only with the sixth day of creation that the essential nature of the earthly truly enters, that what is added is what is made possible only by the conditions of the earthly.

[ 18 ] With this, I have, so to speak, given you an outline of the six days of creation. I have shown you how those who enshrined their great wisdom within these six days of creation must truly have been aware of what was sprouting forth as something new. And they were also aware of how only within this earthly realm could that which constitutes the essence of the human being take hold. We know that everything the human being went through during the old Saturn, Sun, and Moon states were preparatory stages for the actual becoming of the human being. We know that during the ancient Saturn stage, the rudiments of the physical body were first formed in the human being. During the ancient Sun stage, the rudiments of the etheric or life body were added, and during the ancient Moon stage, those of the astral body. What was repeated up to the end of the so-called fifth day of creation had an astral character. Everything substantial had an astral character. To infuse the ego—the fourth member of the human being—into a being within this entire developmental complex was only possible after the conditions of the earthly realm had been fully created. Thus, throughout the five so-called days of creation, the Elohim repeated the earlier states on a higher level and, through this repetition, prepared the earthly realm. Only then, because the repetition took place in a new form, did they have a vessel of being into which they could imprint the human form, and that was the crowning achievement of the entire development.

[ 19 ] Had it been a mere repetition, the whole process could have progressed only as far as the astral-animal realm. But since, from the very beginning, something was poured into the repeating moments that ultimately revealed itself as earthly, something eventually emerged into which the seven Elohim could pour everything that lived within them. I have already described how it lived within them: just as when you have, say, seven people in a group; they have all learned something different, differ in what they can do, but all work toward a single goal. They want to accomplish a single thing. Each is to contribute what he does best. This results in a joint work. The individual alone does not have the strength to accomplish this work; together they have the strength. What might we say of such seven people who are forming some kind of joint product? One could say: they shape this product in such a way that it corresponds to the image they have formed of their work. — We must also bear in mind as a thoroughly characteristic feature that the seven Elohim worked together to ultimately bring about the crowning achievement of this work: to infuse human form into what could arise from the repetition of the past, because something new had been imprinted upon everything. That is why a completely different language is suddenly spoken in Genesis. Previously, everything is expressed in a very specific way: “the Elohim created,” “the Elohim said,” and so on. We are dealing with something that gives one the feeling: it is predetermined from the outset. Now a new language is spoken where the crowning moment of the creation of the earth is to take place: “Let us”—if we render it in the usual translation—“let us make man.” This sounds like a consultation among the Seven, just as one does when one wishes to accomplish a common work. Thus it follows that in what ultimately appears as the crowning achievement of the work of development, we must see a product of the cooperation of the Elohim; that they contribute to this joint work what each of them can do individually, and that ultimately the human etheric form appears as an expression of the abilities and powers the Elohim have acquired during the ancient Saturn, Sun, and Moon epochs.

[ 20 ] We have thus touched upon something of extraordinary importance. We have, so to speak, touched upon what might be called human dignity. The religious consciousness of various eras, through the feelings it associated with certain words, sensed much more accurately than we do today what the matter actually is. And the ancient Hebrew sage felt this as well. When he directed his feelings toward the seven Elohim, it was as if, in all the humility and reverence with which one looks up to them, he still had to say to himself: Man is something mighty in the world, because seven activities had to converge into a single group to bring him into being. A goal for the gods is the human form on Earth. — Feel the full weight of these words: A goal for the gods is the human form on Earth! For when you feel the full weight of this statement, you will say to yourself: This human form is something toward which the individual soul bears an immense responsibility, an obligation to make it as perfect as possible. — The possibility of perfection was given at the moment the Elohim made the joint decision to let everything they could flow together into a single goal. That which is the heritage of the gods has been entrusted to humanity, so that it may develop it ever higher and higher into the distant future. To feel this goal with patience and humility, yet also with strength—this must be one of the results flowing from the cosmic contemplation that we can link to the monumental words at the beginning of the Bible. These words reveal our origin to us; at the same time, they point out our goal, our highest ideal. We feel that we are of divine origin, but we also feel what has been attempted to be suggested in the Rosicrucian drama, where the initiate has crossed a certain threshold, where he feels, so to speak, the “Man, experience yourself.” There he certainly feels his human weakness, but before him lies his divine goal. He no longer fades away, he no longer withers inwardly, but lifted up, he feels himself experienced inwardly by experiencing himself, when he can experience himself in the other Self, which is permeated by something akin to his soul, because it is his own divine goal.