The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] When we seek to understand existence, we always approach the development of that existence from a certain perspective, and on many occasions we have come to realize how everything that surrounds us—everything we perceive—is in a state of development. We must also accustom ourselves to adopting this concept of development on a larger scale in those areas where, in today’s consciousness, one thinks even less of development. For example, one thinks little of real development in relation to the human soul life. One does think of such development in an external sense when it manifests so openly as in the individual human existence from birth to death. But when it comes to humanity, one immediately thinks of development from lower animal states and then, even in light of what we already know today, arrives at something quite fanciful—a view as if the higher could have simply developed out of the lower, the human out of the animal. It cannot, of course, be my task within this lecture series to demonstrate in detail, as I have often done, that our human consciousness, as it is today, has undergone a development on a grand scale, that specifically the kind of consciousness, the kind of soul life we have today, was preceded by a different form. We have often called it a kind of lower clairvoyant consciousness, which preceded our present external consciousness. This present-day consciousness, after all, provides us with images of external objects through external perception. But the other consciousness—the precursor to our present consciousness—we can best study by turning our gaze back to the ancient lunar evolution.

[ 2 ] The most characteristic difference between the ancient lunar evolution and our present-day earthly evolution is that consciousness has evolved from a kind of ancient clairvoyance, a kind of pictorial consciousness, to the present-day object-oriented consciousness. Basically, I have been emphasizing this for many years now, and many years ago you could already learn about it from the first essays in *Lucifer-Gnosis* on the development from the Akashic Records. Even then it was emphasized how the ancient, dreamlike pictorial consciousness, which was characteristic of our own being in prehistoric times, has developed into earthly consciousness—that which today gives us awareness of external things, that is, of what we call external things in space, in contrast to what we ourselves are within. This distinction between external objects and our own inner life is also the defining characteristic of our present state of consciousness. When we have any object, for example this rose, before us, we say: This rose is there in space. It is separate from us. We stand in a different place than it does. We perceive the rose and form an idea of it. The idea is within us; the rose is outside. — Distinguishing between this outside and inside is the defining characteristic of our earthly consciousness. The ancient lunar consciousness was not like that. This distinction between outside and inside was not made at all by those beings who possessed the ancient lunar consciousness. Imagine, for a moment, that when you look at this rose, you do not have the awareness that the rose is out there and you are picturing it inside, but rather you have the awareness: When this rose floats there in space, its own essence does not belong solely to the space enclosed within it, but this essence extends out into space, and the rose is actually within you. — Yes, the matter could go even further. Imagine that you turn your gaze toward the sun and do not have the awareness that the sun is up above and you are down below, but rather the awareness that, as you form the image of the sun, the sun is within you, your consciousness grasps the sun in a more or less spiritual way. This distinction between inside and outside would then not exist. If you make this clear to yourself, then you have the first defining characteristic of this consciousness, as it was on the old Moon.

[ 3 ] Another characteristic is that it was a pictorial consciousness, so that things did not appear directly as objects, but rather as symbols, just as dreams sometimes appear in symbols today. A dream, for example, can cause us to perceive a fire outside of ourselves—for my part—under the symbol of a light-radiating being, as in a picture. In a similar way, the ancient lunar consciousness perceived things, let us say, inwardly, but also pictorially. Thus, this ancient lunar consciousness was a pictorial consciousness permeated by the quality of inwardness. And it had yet another essential difference from our present-day consciousness. It did not operate at all as if external objects were present, as they are for today’s Earth consciousness. What you today call your surroundings, what you today perceive in the plant, mineral, and human kingdoms as objects of the senses, was not present at all for consciousness during the old lunar development. Something similar did indeed exist back then on a lower, dreamlike level, as it exists today in the soul when the power of clairvoyance, when conscious clairvoyance, awakens. The first awakening of this clairvoyant consciousness is such that, in the early stages, it does not yet concern itself with external beings. In this lies a source of numerous deceptions for those who, through their, shall we say, esoteric development, cultivate the gift of clairvoyant powers within themselves.

[ 4 ] This development of clairvoyant powers proceeds in stages. There is a first stage of clairvoyance. At this stage, various things begin to develop within the person; they begin to perceive various things in their surroundings. But they would be mistaken if they were immediately convinced that what they perceive in their surroundings—that is, let us say, in the spiritual realm—is also spiritual reality. Johannes Thomasius in our Rosicrucian Mystery Play goes through this stage of astral clairvoyance. I need only remind you of those images that appear before Johannes Thomasius’s soul when he sits meditating at the front of the stage and feels the spiritual world opening up within his soul. Images appear there, and the first is that the Spirit of the Elements brings before his soul images of beings whom he already knows from life. The play unfolds in such a way that Johannes Thomasius has come to know Professor Capesius and Doctor Strader in life. He knows them from the physical plane; he has formed certain impressions of these two personalities on the physical plane. There, where his clairvoyant powers, so to speak, break through after the great pain, Johannes Thomasius sees Professor Capesius again, and Doctor Strader again. He sees them in strange forms. He sees Capesius rejuvenated, as he was around the age of twenty-five or twenty-six, and not as he is at the moment when Johannes Thomasius is sitting in meditation. Likewise, he does not see Dr. Strader as he is at this moment, but rather as he will become when he grows old in this incarnation. This and many other images pass before Johannes Thomasius’s soul. Dramatically, this can only be portrayed in such a way that the images, which actually come alive in the soul through meditation, play out on stage. The mistake cannot lie in Johannes Thomasius mistaking this for an illusion. He would be entirely mistaken in that. The only correct attitude toward all this is for him to say to himself: he cannot yet know to what extent this is illusion or reality. He does not know whether what is represented in the images is an external spiritual reality—for my sake, whether it is what is inscribed in the Akashic Records—or whether he has expanded his own self into a world. It could be either, and he must accept that it is both. What he lacks is the gift of distinguishing between spiritual reality and visual consciousness. He must tell himself this. And only from the moment when devachanic consciousness begins, when Johannes Thomasius experiences spiritual reality by perceiving in the Devachan the spiritual reality of a being he knows on the physical plane—that is, Maria—only then can he look back again and distinguish reality from mere pictorial consciousness. So you can see that in the course of his esoteric development, a person must pass through a stage where he is surrounded by images, but where he has absolutely no power of discernment between what reveals itself as spiritual reality and the images themselves. In the images of the Rosicrucian drama, real spiritual realities were, of course, allowed to reveal themselves. For example, what appears as Professor Capesius is the real image inscribed in the Akashic Records of Capesius’s youth, and what appears as Doctor Strader is the real image inscribed there of Strader’s old age. They are meant to be real in the drama; it is only that Johannes Thomasius does not know that these figures are real.

[ 5 ] This stage that is being experienced was, during the old Lunar consciousness, experienced on a lower, dreamlike level, so that this distinction could not possibly arise at all. It is only later that the power of discernment begins, and one must become thoroughly familiar with what has just been said. Let us note that the clairvoyant immerses themselves in a kind of pictorial consciousness. During the ancient Lunar period, however, the images that appeared there were, for the most part, something quite different from the objects of our Earth consciousness, and they are the same in the early stages of clairvoyance today. In genuine early clairvoyance, the clairvoyant does not initially see external spiritual beings at all; they see images. And we must now ask ourselves: What do these images that appear actually mean? — Well, you see, at the first stage of clairvoyance, these are not at all expressions of external, real spiritual beings; rather, what appears there is, if I may put it that way, a kind of organ consciousness. It is a pictorial representation, a projection into space of what is actually taking place within ourselves. And when the clairvoyant begins to develop these powers within himself, then—to mention a real example—he may perceive it as if he were seeing two brightly glowing spheres far out in space. These are thus two images of spheres glowing in certain colors. If the clairvoyant were now to say, “There are two beings out there somewhere,” he would probably be thinking something quite wrong. In any case, that would not be the correct state of affairs at first; it would be something entirely different. It will be that the clairvoyant projects forces working within himself out into space and perceives them as two spheres. And these two spheres, for example, may represent what is working in the clairvoyant’s astral body and is internally bringing about the power of sight in his two eyes. This power of sight can project itself out into space in the form of two spheres. So, in reality, these are inner forces that manifest as external phenomena of the astral space, and the greatest possible deception could occur if one were to mistake this, for example, for the manifestation of external spiritual beings.

[ 6 ] It is even more mistaken to be led, from the very beginning, by some sort of remedy—let’s say—to hear voices, and to immediately interpret these voices as inspirations from outside. That is the most mistaken thing one can fall into. It will be little more than an echo of an inner process. And while what appears as images of colors and shapes generally represents fairly orderly processes within one’s own inner being, voices generally represent rather chaotic stuff going on in the soul. And it is best if anyone who begins to perceive voices first develops the greatest mistrust toward the content of these voices. — You see, the onset of this pictorial imagination must under all circumstances be received with great caution. It is a kind of organ consciousness, a projecting of one’s own inner self out into space. Quite normally, however, this consciousness was such an organ consciousness during the old Moon evolution. People themselves at the old lunar stage hardly perceived anything other than what was happening within them at that time.

[ 7 ] I have often recalled an important statement made by Goethe: “The eye is formed by light for the sake of light.” — These words should be taken quite seriously. All the organs that humans possess are formed by the environment, out of the environment. And it is a superficial philosophy that emphasizes only one side of the truth, which says: Without the eye, human beings could not perceive light. For the other important side of this truth is this: Without light, an eye could never have developed, and likewise, without sound, no ear, and so on. — From a deeper point of view, all Kantianism is superficial, because it presents only one side of the truth. The light that weaves through and floods the space of the worlds—that is the cause of the organs of the eyes. During the ancient Lunar Age, the main work of the beings who participated in the formation of our worlds was the building up of the organs. First the organs must be built up; then they can perceive. Our present concrete consciousness is based on the fact that the organs were built first. As purely physical organs, the sense organs were already formed during the ancient Saturn era; the eye, for example, was like a camera obscura that a photographer uses. Such purely physical apparatus cannot perceive anything. They are composed according to physical laws. During the ancient Lunar period, these organs were internalized. So when we consider the eye, we must say: On ancient Saturn, it had been formed in such a way that it was at most a physical apparatus. On the Lunar stage, it was transformed by the sunlight falling in from the outside into an organ of perception, into an organ of consciousness. — The essential aspect of that activity during the ancient Lunar stage is that the organs are, so to speak, drawn out of the beings. During the Earth period, the essential aspect is that, for example, light acts upon the plants, sustaining plant development. We see the product of this light’s action in the external flora. Light did not act in this way during the ancient Lunar stage. Instead, it drew the organs out, and what the human being perceived at that time was this work on his own organs. It was thus a perception of images that, however, seemed to fill the world-space. It seemed as if these images were extended in space. In truth, they were nothing other than expressions of the work of the elemental beings on the human organs. How he formed himself, how the perceiving eyes developed, as it were, out of his own being—this work upon himself, his own inner becoming—this is what the human being perceived during the old Moon period. Thus the outer world was an inner world to him, because the entire outer world was working upon his inner being, and he made no distinction whatsoever between the outer and the inner. He did not perceive the sun as something external at all. He did not separate the sun from himself, but felt within himself the becoming of his eyes. And this work on the becoming of his eyes extended outward for him into a pictorial perception that filled space. This was for him the perception of the sun, but it was an inner process.

[ 8 ] The defining feature of the ancient lunar consciousness was that people perceived a world of images around them; but these images represented an inner becoming, an inner building up of the soul’s existence. Thus the lunar human was enclosed within the astral realm, experiencing his own becoming as an external world. Today, perceiving this inner becoming as an external world—so that one could not distinguish the images of the external world, which one perceives only as a reflection of one’s own becoming—would be a disease. During the old lunar consciousness, it was the norm. Thus, for example, the work of those beings who later became the Elohim, he perceived within his own being. Just as if you were to perceive your blood flowing within you today for my sake, so did humanity perceive the activity of these Elohim. It was within them; it was merely reflected in images from the outside.

[ 9 ] But such a consciousness was, in fact, the only thing possible on the ancient Moon. For what happens on our Earth must occur in harmony with the entire cosmos. A consciousness such as that which human beings have on Earth, with this distinction between outer and inner, with this perception that external, real objects exist out there and that we are an inner reality alongside them—this required that the entire development transition from the ancient Moon to Earth, that a completely different form of separation enter our cosmic system. The separation, for example, between the Moon and the Earth, as we have it today, did not exist at all during the time of the ancient Moon. You must imagine what we call the ancient Moon as if today’s Moon were still connected to the Earth. As a result, all the other planets, including the Sun, were shaped quite differently. And under the conditions that prevailed at that time, only such an image-based consciousness could develop. Only after the entire cosmos that belongs to us had taken on the form it now has as the Earth’s environment could object consciousness develop as we have it today.

[ 10 ] So we must say: A consciousness such as that which human beings possess as earthly consciousness was reserved for them until the time of the Earth. And it was not only human beings who did not possess it; neither did all the other beings whom we describe as belonging to this or that hierarchy. It would be superficial to think, for example, that because the angels went through their human stage on the ancient Moon, they must have had the same kind of consciousness on the ancient Moon as humans have today on Earth. They did not have that, and what distinguishes them from humans is that they went through their humanity with a different consciousness. A direct repetition of what was already there never takes place. Everything that is a moment of development happens only once and happens so that it is simply there, not to repeat anything else. So, for this state of consciousness—which we today call the consciousness of the Earth human—to arise, all the processes that actually brought this Earth into being were necessary; for this, the human being as a human being was necessary. And the Earth beings could not possibly have developed such a consciousness at the earlier stages of evolution.

[ 11 ] When an object appears before us, it is outside of us; it appears to us as a being separate from us. All earlier consciousness of the entities we can speak of is such that it does not distinguish the inner from the outer; it would be nonsense to say: something appears to us as standing before us. Even the Elohim could not say that; it did not exist for them. They could only say: We live and weave within the universe. We create, and in this creation we perceive our own creation. Objects do not stand before us; objects do not appear before us. — This fact, which lies in the statement “Objects appear to us as standing before us; it expresses, in an external, let us say, spatial arrangement, an essence from which one is oneself separated, which one faces”—this fact, which can reveal itself in this statement, did not arise for the Elohim until the Earth period. If these Elohim had felt themselves, during the ancient lunar era, weaving and working in the light that flowed from the ancient Sun onto the Moon, they could have said: “We feel ourselves within this light; we feel how, with this light, we sink into the beings living on the ancient Moon as human beings. We are, as it were, rushing through space with this light.” But they could not have said: “We see this light outside of us.” That did not exist during the old lunar state; it was a completely new earthly fact. When we encounter the monumental words in Genesis at a certain stage of development: “And the Elohim said, ‘Let there be light!’,” then a new fact must be added: that they do not merely feel themselves flowing with the light, but that the light reflects back to them from objects, that objects appear to them from the outside. The writer of Genesis expresses this by adding to the words “And the Elohim said, ‘Let there be light!’” the phrase “And the Elohim saw the light.” Indeed, nothing in this document is superfluous; nothing is mere rhetoric. And one might wish that, among the many other things people can learn from this ancient document, they might also learn this: not to write anything that lacks substantial content, not to write anything that is mere rhetoric. The writer of Genesis wrote nothing superfluous, nothing that, in a narrow-minded sense, might be considered an embellishment to add something beautiful to the creation of light—not in the sense that the Elohim now say to themselves: “Yes, we see the light and are pleased with ourselves that we have done it right.” — That something new came into being—that is the significant point conveyed by this brief sentence.

[ 12 ] And there is more to it than that. It does not simply say, “And the Elohim saw the light,” but “They saw that it was beautiful, or good.” — I note that the distinction between “beautiful” and “good” is not made in the same way in the Hebrew language as it is today. The same word stands for “beautiful” and for “good.” What, then, is meant by what we call beautiful or good? In the ancient Sanskrit language, and even in the German language, the meaning of this still resonates. The word “beautiful” encompasses all words that, in every language, signify that an inner, spiritual essence appears in an outer form. “To be beautiful” means that an inner quality appears outwardly. And we still associate the highest concept with the word “beauty” today when we hold to the idea that in a beautiful object, an inner spiritual essence is represented in the physical form, as if on the surface. We call something beautiful when, so to speak, we see the spiritual shining through the outer, sensory form. When is a marble sculpture beautiful? When its outer form creates the illusion that the spiritual lives within it. The appearance of the spiritual through the outer form—that is beauty.

[ 13 ] Thus, when we encounter the phrase “The Elohim saw the light” in Genesis, we can say that it alludes to the specific nature of Earth’s development, but also that what could previously only be experienced subjectively now appears from the outside—that the Spirit manifests itself in its outward form. We can therefore express the passage usually translated as “And the Elohim saw the light, and they saw that it was good” as follows: “And the Elohim experienced the awareness that what they had previously been immersed in now stood before them as an external reality, and in this manifestation they experienced that the spirit was in the background and expressed itself in the external”—for this is what lies behind the word that it was “good.” You will best understand a text such as Genesis not by searching for filler words, but by seeking everywhere for the mysteries that are truly hidden within the words. Then you will advance in your inquiry on a grand scale, whereas a whole host of explanations is otherwise nothing more than mere philistinism.

[ 14 ] But let us go a step further. We saw that the characteristic nature of the lunar state could only arise through the separation of the solar from the lunar. We then recognized the necessity that, during the Earth’s development, the solar would once again separate from the Earthly, that a duality, so to speak, is necessary for the life of the consciousness-filled being. An emergence of the Earth-like had to take place. Such an emergence, however, is linked to something else. It is linked to the fact that the elemental states in what becomes the Moon-like and in what becomes the Sun-like, so to speak, change their nature and become something else. If you consider the sun today even just physically, you must realize that the states we have on Earth—which we call solid and liquid—are not to be found in the physical sun. At most, you can say that the sun extends down to the gaseous state. This is how even our physics views the sun. Such a separation takes place whenever what was once a unity is divided.

[ 15 ] We have seen that the earthly realm develops in such a way that a kind of downward condensation takes place from the warm to the earthly, the solid, and that what appears to penetrate from the outside is what constitutes the elemental realm above: the light-etheric, the sound-etheric, and the life-etheric. But with regard to what radiates outward as the solar realm, we must not assume the same process. Rather, we must say: We have, as the first and finest state, that which encompasses and brings about life; then what we might call the numerical or sound ether; then the light ether; then the warmth ether; then we have air or the gaseous, the watery, and the earthly or solid. These are the seven states of elemental existence. In the realm of the earthly, we will mainly have to seek that which extends down to warmth. Warmth permeates our earthly realm, whereas regarding the luminous, we must say that the earth participates in it only to the extent that the beings of the surrounding environment—call them, if you will, bodies of the surrounding environment—take part in earthly life. Light radiates from the sun to the earth. If we were to, so to speak, localize the three higher elemental states—light ether, sound ether, life ether—then we would have to say: we will have to look for them more in the solar realm. — In the earthly realm, we must seek the earthly, the fluid, and the airy; but warmth is distributed between both, the earthly and the solar. We will have to place the luminous, the spiritually sonorous, and also the life-giving more within the solar realm. We must seek the life-giving more in the solar realm.

[ 16 ] This solar element first separated during the ancient Lunar Age. Back then, during the ancient Lunar Age, the light from outside was active at first, but not as light. As I have just explained, the statement in Genesis, “And the Elohim saw the light,” could not possibly have been made in reference to the development of the Lunar Age. It would have had to be said: And the Elohim rushed through space with the light, were within the light, but did not see it. — Just as, for example, someone swimming in water today does not actually see the water but moves forward within it, so the light was not seen, but it was a vehicle for work in cosmic space. With the Earth, the light began to appear, reflecting back from objects.

[ 17 ] Given what existed for light during the Lunar period, it was only natural that a somewhat higher state would have to come into being during Earth’s evolution. We must therefore expect that what existed for light during the ancient Lunar evolution will exist for the sound-etheric during Earth’s evolution. In other words, the situation with the sound-ether during Earth’s development is the same as that with the light-ether during the Lunar period. — This would imply that for the Elohim, what we spiritually call “sound” cannot be perceived in a reflective manner in the same way as the light-ether. So if Genesis were to suggest to us that development proceeds from the activity of the light-etheric to that of the sound-etheric, then it would have to say something like: “And the Elohim saw the light in the becoming of the Earth and saw that it was good”—but then it could not continue in the same way: “And the Elohim perceived the sound-etheric during this phase,” but rather it would have to say: “They lived and wove within it.” Nor should it be said of the so-called second day of creation that the Elohim perceived that vibration which divides the substances into upper and lower realms. One should not say, for example, of this work of the Elohim that they perceive it; rather, the word “perceived” and “good” should be omitted from Genesis. Then it would correspond to what we can establish through spiritual science. Thus, the seer who wrote Genesis would have had to omit the sentence “And the Elohim saw…” on the second day of creation.

[ 18 ] Take Genesis. On the first day, it says: “And the Elohim saw the light, and behold, it was good.” On the second day of creation, the most common translations state, after the first day of creation has passed: “And God said, ‘Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters’—and it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven... And there was evening and morning, the second day.” And that sentence, which appears on the first day of creation, is absent on the second day of creation! Genesis tells the story just as we must require it to, based on what we can establish through spiritual science.

[ 19 ] Here again you have a crux that nineteenth-century commentators simply didn’t know how to handle. Some commentators have said: Well, what if the sentence is omitted a second time? The writer simply forgot it. — From Genesis, people should learn that they should not only refrain from adding anything that does not belong, but also from omitting anything that does belong. The writer of Genesis did not forget anything. There is a profound reason why these words are not present on the second day of creation. This is yet another fact—as I have already mentioned many—that fills us with such immense esteem and respect when we look into an ancient document such as Genesis. We could learn much from these ancient writers, who truly had no need to swear an oath to this effect, but who followed the principle of their own accord: to add nothing and omit nothing of what they recognized as truth. They were deeply imbued with the conviction that every word written there must be sacred to us, and that we must not omit anything essential.

[ 20 ] Thus, for inner reasons, we have, so to speak, come to understand the structure of these so-called first and second days of creation. Anyone who, through spiritual research, discovers what lies behind things and then approaches the Bible will likely say to themselves: It would be wonderful, overwhelmingly wonderful, if these subtleties, which can be discovered through conscientious spiritual research, were to be found in the ancient seer who worked on Genesis. — And when this overwhelming realization is confirmed, a wonderful feeling comes over him—a feeling that should penetrate human souls so that they, in turn, may truly sense the holiness that dwells in this ancient document we know as Genesis.