The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Tenth Lecture

[ 1 ] In so many places throughout these lectures, we have been able to point out how, if we understand it correctly, the account in Genesis reflects the findings of clairvoyant research. It will now be our task to point out this correspondence in several more places. First, we will need to show more precisely what period Genesis actually deals with, taking into account what spiritual scientific research tells us about the becoming of our Earth. I have, in a certain sense, already pointed this out by, so to speak, placing the beginning of Genesis at the moment when the Sun and the Earth were preparing to separate from one another, but we will still have to examine this relationship in greater detail.

[ 2 ] Those of you who have heard various lectures from past years, as well as those who have studied the description of Earth’s evolution in my *The Secret Science of the World*, will recall the significance attributed to two key moments in this evolution. The first is the separation of the Sun from the Earth. This is a very important point in time. This separation of the Sun from the Earth had to take place at some point, for if the two celestial bodies had remained linked as they were at the beginning of the Earth’s formation, the course of human development could not have given humanity its true significance on Earth. Everything we call the Sun—that is, naturally not only the elemental or physical aspects of the solar body, but also all the spiritual beings belonging to the solar body—all of this had to, so to speak, step out of the Earth, or, if one prefers, it had to push the Earth away from itself, because, to put it simply, the forces of those beings who have shifted their sphere of activity from the Earth to the Sun would have had too strong an effect on human flourishing had they remained connected to the Earth. These beings had to, as it were, weaken their forces by moving away from the Earthly sphere and acting from the outside. Thus we have the point in time when a number of beings, in order to weaken their effects, shifted their sphere of activity outward and now intervene less strongly in human evolution and also in animal evolution. We have thus, from a certain moment onward, left the Earth to its own devices, the Earth with a certain coarsening of its forces, for the finer, the more spiritual forces have separated from the Earth along with the Sun. Humanity, however, remained united with the Earth for a while after the separation from the Sun in relation to the being into which it had developed through the Saturn, Sun, and Moon phases. After all, it was only the most exalted beings who shifted their sphere of activity outward with the Sun.

[ 3 ] But when the Earth was separated, it still contained within itself everything that pertains to the substantiality and the forces of the Moon’s present-day development. Thus, following the separation from the Sun, we have an Earth development that, so to speak, still contains the Moon’s development within its very being. Humanity was thus exposed to conditions that were far coarser than the actual earthly conditions that later came to be, for the Moon possesses, so to speak, a coarse substantiality. The consequence of this was that, following the separation of the Sun from the Earth, the Earth became increasingly lunar in its forces, increasingly dense. Another consequence was that human beings were now exposed to a different danger: the danger of withering away within themselves, of mummifying—albeit astral mummification. If the conditions were, so to speak, too fine when the Sun was still united with the Earth, they now became too coarse. This meant that as Earth’s development continued, human beings were able to thrive less and less while maintaining their connection to the Earth. All of this is described in greater detail in my *Secret Science*.

[ 4 ] We know from yesterday’s lecture that although human beings at that time were spiritual-soul beings, they were unable, in this spiritual-soul state, to connect with what radiated upward from the Earth’s matter into the Earth’s atmosphere, because this was too coarse for them as long as the Moon was connected to the Earth. And so it came to pass that the vast majority of human souls had to sever their connection with the Earth. We are thus pointing to a significant event that took place in the relationship between humanity and the Earth during the period between the separation of the Sun and the Moon. With the exception of a very small number, the human soul spirits took their leave of earthly conditions during this interim period and pressed upward into higher regions. And depending on their stage of development, these human soul spirits now continued their further development on the planets belonging to our Earth-Sun system. Certain soul spirits were predisposed to continue their development initially on Saturn, others on Mars, still others on Mercury, and so on. Only a very small number of the strongest human soul spirits remained connected to Earth. The others, in the meantime, became inhabitants of Earth’s planetary neighbors. This was at a time that, to use the common expression, preceded our Lemurian Age. At that time, what we might call our human soul state underwent a development on the planets neighboring Earth.

[ 5 ] Then came the other significant event, which we know took place during the Lemurian period, and through which the lunar substance, along with all the lunar forces, was expelled from the Earth itself. The moon’s departure from the Earth took place. This, however, brought about tremendous changes on Earth. Only now was the Earth brought to a state in which human beings could flourish. While the forces would have been, so to speak, too spiritual if the Earth had remained connected to the Sun, they would have had to become too coarse if the Earth had remained united with the Moon. Thus the Moon moved away, and the Earth remained in a kind of state of equilibrium brought about by the influence of the solar and lunar beings from without. And through this, the Earth prepared itself to become the bearer of human existence. All this took place during the Lemurian epoch.

[ 6 ] Now the process of evolution continues, and little by little there is a return, a flow back down of the human soul-spirits that had fled to Earth’s planetary neighbors. This is something that continued well into the Atlantean era, with souls continually descending from the neighboring planets. And the development during the late Lemurian and Atlantean periods unfolded in such a way that what crystallized as human beings was gradually endowed with soul spirits of various kinds, depending on whether these soul spirits descended from Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and so on. This brought great diversity into the earthly becoming of the human being. Those who are familiar with my recent lectures in Christiania know that in this classification into Martian, Saturnian humans, and so on, there was something primordial that later led to the racial differentiation of humanity. So it is there that we must look for the diversity within the human race, and even today, if one has an eye for it, one can recognize in a person whether their soul has descended from this or that planetary neighbor of our Earth.

[ 7 ] But as we have often emphasized, and as is explained in detail in my *Secret Science*, by no means have all human souls left the Earth. To put it simply, we may say: The most capable souls were able to continue using the material of the Earth and remain connected to it. — Yes, I have even pointed out that, surprisingly, there was a principal pair that survived that coarsening of earthly conditions. We are, though it is hard to believe at first, led by the demands of spiritual research to the very assumption that such a principal human couple existed, as the Bible shows us in Adam and Eve, and that those human types have joined their descendants who came into being through their soul-spirits descending from the cosmos to Earth.

[ 8 ] When we take all of this into account, we will arrive at an analysis that can tell us—in the language of the humanities—what exactly the “time” is that the Bible speaks of. I would like to remind you that after the so-called six or seven days of creation are described in the Bible, there follows that other account which the dilettantism of modern biblical scholarship regards as a second creation story, but which is in reality entirely accurate. I would like to remind you of some findings from spiritual science. I have mentioned this frequently and also discussed it in greater detail in my *Secret Science*. I have shown how the process of Earth’s formation progresses from the Lemurian era to the Atlantean era, and how, so to speak, a kind of cooling of the physical Earth takes place during this progression. During the Lemurian epoch, we must essentially conceive of the Earth as a fiery being, still displaying the element of fire bursting forth everywhere within it, and it was only with the transition to the Atlantean epoch that this cooling began. I have pointed out that during the Atlantean period, what lay above the earth’s surface was quite different from what it was later, that well into the Atlantean period the Earth was not surrounded by a water-free atmosphere. The Earth was covered by an atmosphere entirely filled with masses of water vapor. What we know today as the separation of rain and rain-free air did not exist in those ancient times. Everything was shrouded in masses of water vapor, saturated with all manner of vapors, fumes, and other substances that had not yet taken on a solid form at that time. Much of what is solid today was still in vaporous form back then, flowing through the atmosphere of that time. And well into the Atlantean era, everything was permeated by such masses of water vapor.

[ 9 ] But those were also the times when what had previously existed in a much more spiritual state first took on a physical form. I have already pointed out that, in the conditions we find described for the so-called third day of creation, we must not imagine that individual plant forms sprouted from the ground as we see them today, but that we must take note of the expression “according to their kind”; that we are dealing here more with generic souls that existed in an etheric-astral state within the Earth’s body. Everything that is described to us from the third day of creation as the emergence of plants would not have been visible to the external senses; it would have been perceptible only to the clairvoyant organs of perception. As that nebular state around the Earth developed from the Lemurian to the Atlantean era and the mists gradually cleared, what had previously been ethereal also transformed into a state approaching what we know today. The ethereal became more and more physical, and as wonderful as it sounds—for geology, too, is today often permeated by materialistic views—the plant beings visible to the outer eye did not develop until much later than the time designated as the so-called third day of creation. It was not until the Atlantean era that they developed. We must not place the geological conditions necessary for today’s plants in the very early stages of our research.

[ 10 ] We could thus characterize the transition from the Lemurian to the Atlantean era as follows: The Earth was then covered all around by dense masses of fog, in which the vaporous masses of the various substances that later transformed into the Earth’s crust were still dissolved, and the beings of that kind, who were visible to clairvoyant consciousness, had not yet reached the stage of physical condensation. What might be called a fertilization of the earth’s soil with what floated in the air as water had not yet occurred. That did not happen until later. — So how could the Bible describe this at the beginning? Well, it had to state at a very specific point: Even after the seven days of creation had passed, after the period corresponding to the Lemurian Age, our present-day physical plants had not yet sprouted from the earth; the earth was still covered with masses of mist.

[ 11 ] The Bible describes the facts. If you read on after the seven days of creation, you will find a reference to the fact that, although it had already been mentioned earlier that plant forms had arisen according to their kind, there were still no herbs or shrubs on the earth. The first mention refers to the generic soul aspect, the second to what sprouts from the earth in physical individuality as plant growth. And appropriately, the mist of Atlantis is described after the days of creation. That the condensation of air-water into rain occurs only then is indicated by the words “For Yahweh-Elohim had not yet caused it to rain.”

[ 12 ] There is, then, a profound wisdom underlying these matters. But I can assure you that none of what is written in this document has found its way into my presentation of “esoteric science.” I have deliberately kept my distance from the Bible, and I would like to say that there have been times when I have made a sincere effort to find these things from sources other than this document. It is, so to speak, a necessity given today’s materialistic views of the Bible that one does not take lightly the task of interpreting into the Bible the facts of spiritual science. But it is the imperative of spiritual science that led us to find in the Bible precisely what we have been able to say in these days, and even if we ourselves resist, we are ultimately compelled to see in the Bible what is first discovered through clairvoyant research.

[ 13 ] Given these premises, we may ask ourselves: At what point in the account of Genesis must we now place the departure of the spiritual-soul element—the departure of the soul-spirits of human beings to the planetary bodies or beings neighboring the Earth—which was brought about by the coarsened state of the Earth? — We must place it where we are told that through the formation of the sound ether—I have described this to you in great detail in the account of the so-called second day of creation—the higher substantialities are separated from the lower ones. And when one follows everything that is meant there with the eye of the seer, one says to oneself: With that which ascends, which moves away from the Earth—of which it is said that the Elohim called it “Heaven”—the soul-spirits of human beings moved away at the same time. — Thus, the second day of creation coincides with a very specific time between the separation of the Sun and the Moon from the Earth, with the departure of the soul-spirits of human beings into the surroundings of the Earth.

[ 14 ] But now we must face the fact that this has a very significant consequence. What, exactly, was it that went out into space back then? In other words: Where do we find this in human beings today? In which parts of the human being should we look for what went out into space back then? — Of course, it is not present today in the same way it was back then, but we can still draw a parallel with certain members of the modern human constitution. Let us therefore take a look at the human being. Today we divide the human being into the four familiar members: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I-bearer. We know that of these four members, the physical and etheric bodies remain in bed during the state of night sleep. When we speak of the ancient times to which the descriptions of the second and probably also the third day of creation apply, we must not yet speak of the physical and etheric bodies as they are today. These only later developed out of the substance of the Earth. What existed in human beings at that time essentially belongs today to what emerges from the denser members of human nature during the state of night sleep—that which we call the astral being of the human being. What acts as forces within our astral body is what we must first address when we consider the soul-spirit of the human being who, at that time, took leave of the Earth in order to flourish better on the surrounding planets. Thus, what belongs to our powers when we have stepped out of the physical and etheric bodies with our astral body—this is what we must seek on the planets neighboring the Earth after the second day of creation.

[ 15 ] Now we know, however, that when a person today, in the state of sleep, has stepped out of the physical and etheric bodies with their finer members, they are, so to speak, integrated into the astral environment of our Earth, into the forces and currents of the members of our planetary system. In the state of night sleep, human beings are connected to the planetary beings. But we can also say: In those ancient times, human beings were not merely connected to these outer planets in some state of night sleep, but were always connected to them after their flight from Earth. They dwelt on these planets. — We must therefore bear in mind, regarding the period described to us as the third day of creation, that with the exception of those enduring human soul-spirits of which I have spoken, the human soul-spirits were not at all on Earth, but in the vicinity of the planets, where they had taken up residence and continued to develop with them. Meanwhile, on Earth, those who had remained behind as the strongest and most capable were developing. And their development consisted in the fact that they increasingly clothed themselves in the material substance of the Earth, so that, so to speak, what we now have during the day as our etheric body and our physical body was also preformed down there on Earth. So that this etheric and physical body could experience all the stages of Earth’s development, certain soul spirits were preserved on Earth. In this way, what was to be formed for the etheric and physical body was perpetuated even while the lunar forces were still connected to the Earth.

[ 16 ] If we truly bring to mind that state following the separation from the Sun, we must say: The greater part of the human soul and spirit resides in the vicinity of Earth, on the neighboring planets. — The Sun had already separated from the Earth, but if a human being had been able to stand on the Earth at that time, he would have seen dense masses of mist, smoke, and vapor above the surface. He would have seen nothing of any Sun. The Sun, whose forces were at a distance, only gradually began to act upon the Earth in such a way that these masses of smoke and mist began to clear and gradually took on the form necessary for the Earth’s environment and for the development of humanity. And only gradually would such a person, who had, so to speak, observed the development from the outside, have seen how the mists began to grow lighter, how the masses of smoke became thinner, how the sun’s forces not only acted through the dark veil of smoke, but how they became truly perceptible—one might say, visible. Thus we are moving toward the fourth day of creation, and with it we are drawing ever closer to the event we must call the separation of the Moon. So that indeed a human being who had lived on Earth at that time would have witnessed the sunbeams penetrating through the masses of smoke and vapor. And as these conditions took hold, the Earth gradually acquired the conditions conducive to human development, where human beings could once again live on Earth, where, so to speak, bodies could be formed from the physical descendants of those who had survived, for the soul-spirits now returning from the Earth’s orbit.

[ 17 ] So, I would say, you have two kinds of reproduction. What later became the human etheric and physical body descends from those who have survived. The soul-spiritual aspect comes in from the surrounding sphere. At first, this influx from the circle of Earth’s planetary neighbors was a spiritual influence. At the moment when, so to speak, the Sun had penetrated the masses of vapor and smoke surrounding the Earth, and the Moon had emerged, the urge arose in the soul-spirits of the neighboring planets to descend once more into this earthly realm. As the Sun became visible from Earth on one side and the Moon on the other, the forces of the souls streaming down to Earth also entered the Earth. Therein lie the realities behind what is described in the so-called fourth day of creation with the words: “The Elohim formed the greater light and the lesser light, the Sun-being, the Moon-being, and the stars.” For the stars refer to nothing other than the planetary neighbors of our Earth. Thus, the work that established a kind of balance was prepared on one side by the Sun and on the other by the Moon, and at the same time it prepared the way for the descent of the human soul-spirits who were striving to reincarnate on Earth.

[ 18 ] We have thus placed the fourth day of creation at the point in the Lemurian epoch, following the departure of the Moon, when the conditions described in my *Secret Science* came into being—conditions we might characterize by saying: The human soul-spirits are once again striving down toward the Earth.

[ 19 ] But now we must consider the accompanying spiritual states a little more closely. We have now considered more of what later became physical. We must become increasingly clear about the fact that underlying everything grosser is something finer, and underlying everything that strives toward the physical is something spiritual. With the Sun, the Elohim essentially departed from the Earth to shift their sphere of activity outward, to work from the periphery. But not all of them. Something of the Elohim, so to speak, remained united with the Earth, even when the Earth still had the lunar forces within its body. And that which remained united with the Earth from the spiritual Elohim forces at that time is what is, in a certain way, connected with all the beneficial effects of the lunar forces. For we must indeed speak of the beneficial effects of the lunar forces. After the separation from the Sun, everything on Earth—especially humanity—would have been driven into mummification, into hardening, into lignification. Humanity would have died out on Earth. The Earth would have become desolate if it had retained the lunar forces within its body. Within the Earth, these lunar forces would not have become a blessing. Why, then, did they have to remain with the Earth for a time? For the reason that humanity had to endure, so to speak, all earthly conditions; for indeed, humanity, in its most capable representatives, had to pass through this lunar condensation. But then, when the Moon had separated from the Earth, the forces that would otherwise have brought about the death of humanity on Earth became beneficial. After the lunar forces had departed, everything was refreshed once more, so that even the weaker souls could descend and incarnate in human bodies. Thus the Moon became the benefactor of the Earth by becoming its neighbor. What it could never have been within the Earth itself, it became as its neighbor. Those beings who directed this entire series of events are the great benefactors of humanity. What beings were they? Well, those who were connected to the Moon, who then, as it were, tore the Moon out of the Earth in order to guide humanity further within Earth’s evolution. We recognize from the account in Genesis that the Elohim were the great, directing forces. And whatever it was among these Elohim forces that brought about that great, momentous event of the moon’s emergence—and thereby brought about the very essence of humanity—was nothing other than what had also brought about the cosmic advancement of the Elohim to Yahweh-Elohim, what had elevated the essence of the Elohim to Yahweh-Elohim. This remained united with the Moon, and it was this that then led the Moon out of our Earth. Therefore, we may say: What we find as the lunar body within our creation is intimately connected with what we call Yahweh-Elohim.

[ 20 ] Let us now consider more closely what these conditions actually mean for human beings in their earthly existence. If human beings had remained connected to an Earth that contained the Sun within itself, they would have become beings that were essentially nothing. They would simply have remained connected to the essence of the Elohim; they would not have been able to separate themselves into independence. But since the Elohim had separated themselves from the Earth with their Sun, human beings were able to remain connected to the Earth and sustain their soul-spiritual life. But if it had remained that way, then humanity would have become hardened within itself; it would have met its death. Why did humanity have to enter a state that even creates the possibility of death? So that it could become free, so that it could sever itself from the Elohim, so that it could become an independent being. In the lunar aspect, human beings have something within them that actually brings about this dying, and they would have received, so to speak, too much of the dose if the Moon had not separated from the Earth. Yet you can see from this that it is this lunar quality that, as a cosmic substance, is intimately connected with human independence.

[ 21 ] If you consider the conditions on Earth today, you must realize that these circumstances actually arose only after the separation from the Moon. So there is not as much of these lunar forces in it as there once was. But in terms of the constitution of his physical and etheric bodies, the human being has also outlived the lunar era, the connection between the Earth and the Moon, and through this he possesses within himself what has been taken from the Earth. He carries within himself something of what is up there on the Moon. He has preserved it beyond that time in his physical and etheric bodies. Thus, the human being has something lunar within him; he is connected to this lunar quality. The Earth could not have sustained this lunar quality within itself, but the human being possesses it in a certain sense. He therefore has the potential to be something other than a mere earthly being.

[ 22 ] When you reflect on all this, you come to realize that, so to speak, we humans have the Earth among us, and that the Moon had to be cast out of this Earth. But it was only cast out after the right measure of its essence had been instilled in humanity itself. The Earth does not carry the lunar within itself; we carry it within ourselves. What would have become of the Earth if the Moon had not been torn from it? — Try looking at this Moon with a slightly different perspective than the one so often adopted today. The entire constitution of its matter is different from that of the Earth. In a grossly material sense, the astrophysicist says that the Moon has no air, hardly any water—that is, it has been thrust much more deeply into the dense than the Earth. It therefore contains the forces that would, so to speak, carry the Earth even further beyond the state of hardening in which it finds itself, forces that would make this Earth physically even harder. These lunar forces would make the Earth physically harder and more rugged. To get a picture of what the Earth would become if the lunar forces were within it, just imagine a piece of Earth’s matter out on the street, saturated with water—something like mud, for example. Imagine the water gradually draining away. This earth material will then become increasingly dusty. You can, so to speak, observe this entire process in the image when, after a rain, you see the muddy street material gradually turning to dust. Something like this would have happened on a grand scale with the Earth—its fragmentation into masses of dust—if the lunar forces had remained connected to it. Something like this will also happen to the Earth one day, once it has fulfilled its task. It will be shattered into cosmic dust. The Earth’s matter will dissolve into cosmic space as cosmic dust once humanity has completed its development upon it.

[ 23 ] So we can say: The Earth would have turned to dust; it possessed within itself the potential to become dust, to disintegrate into dust particles. It was spared this premature disintegration into dust solely because the Moon was separated from it. — But in human beings, something remains of that which actually possesses the potential to become dust. Through all the conditions I have described to you, human beings take into their very being something of the lunar earth dust. Those qualities associated with the Moon have thus actually imbued the human physical being with something that, strictly speaking, does not originate from the Earth’s mass that we have immediately around us after the Moon separated, but rather they have imprinted something of the lunar Earth dust into human physicality. But since Yahweh-Elohim is linked to this lunar aspect, this means that Yahweh-Elohim is the one who has imprinted the lunar, earth-dust-like quality upon human physicality. And we must say that there had to come a point in the course of Earth’s development that is rightly described as follows: In the cosmic advancement of the Elohim, the time came when Yahweh-Elohim imprinted the Earth dust—the lunar-like Earth dust—upon human physicality. — Therein lies the immense depth of that Bible passage where it says, “And Yahweh-Elohim formed man from the dust of the earth.” For that is what it says. And all the translations that speak of Yahweh-Elohim having formed man from a lump of earth are sheer nonsense. He imprinted the dust of the earth upon him.

[ 24 ] While we have already found many things that have filled us with awe and reverence for what the Bible tells us through the ancient seers and what we rediscover through spiritual scientific research, here in the words “And Yahweh-Elohim imprinted the moon-like dust of the earth upon human physicality,” we have a passage where our reverence must become great, indeed overwhelming, before what the ancient seers tell us in the Genesis account. And if these ancient seers were aware that they received the communication of what enabled them to say such things from the regions in which the Elohim and Yahweh-Elohim were active, if they were aware that they received their wisdom from the regions of the world-creating beings themselves, then they could say: Within us flows, as knowledge, as wisdom, as thought, that which shaped the very becoming of the Earth by weaving and working within these beings. — And so we can look up in timid reverence to the ancient seers and to the timid reverence with which these ancient seers, in turn, looked up into the regions from which their revelation came, into the regions of the Elohim and the Yahweh-Elohim. How could they have named the beings that underlay creation and their own knowledge? What word could there have been for them, if not the one with which their whole heart must have been filled when they received the revelation of the world-creating powers? When they looked up to them, they said: Our revelation flows down to us from divine-spiritual beings. We can find no other word for them than that which expresses our feeling of awe: “Those before whom we feel awe.” — Let us translate that into ancient Hebrew. How does that sound: “Those before whom we feel timid reverence”? It sounds like: “Elohim”! That is the word for those before whom one feels timid reverence. Thus you have the union of the feelings of the ancient seers with the name of the world beings to whom they attributed creation, to whom they attributed their revelation.