EARTH
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What has been split off from any world substance, any world entity from its actual meaning by renunciation, we characterize as earth (the bearer of death). Death is exclusion of any world substance, any world entity from its proper meaning.
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The origin of the planetary seals goes back to the Munich Congress of the Theosophical Society in May 1907. For the program booklet of this congress Rudolf Steiner drew five different planetary seals, also called "vignettes" by him, one for each day of the congress, starting with Saturday - Saturn, then Sunday - Sun, Monday - Moon, Tuesday - Mars, and as last Wednesday - Mercury. Two more seals, Jupiter and Venus, were added four years later, during the design of the Stuttgart Branch House in 1911, where all the seals in the meeting room were painted in gold on a dark blue background. Rudolf Steiner, as with all his artistic works, largely refrained from a more detailed explanation of these planetary seals. They are to be understood as a pictorial-imaginative representation of the successive stages of planetary development, which reveal their meaning through meditative contemplation.
302
The three stages described (Saturn, Sun, Moon) were thus stages of consciousness, the fourth is not merely consciousness, but self-consciousness.
The coming evolution of the earth will, on the one hand, bring the present life of imagination and thought to an ever higher, finer, more perfect development; on the other hand, however, during this time the self-aware consciousness of images will gradually develop. The latter, however, will come to full life in man only on the next planet, into which the earth will be transformed, and which is called "Jupiter" in esoteric science.
The moment man closes his physical sense organs, when he is asleep, self-consciousness ceases; when he opens them to the outside, he has self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is gained by being able to observe the surroundings with one's organs. Only the physical body is so far along that it can open its organs to the outside. If the etheric and astral bodies could observe the surroundings with their organs, man would gain self-consciousness in them, too. But organs are necessary for this. The physical body also has its self-consciousness only through its organs. These organs of the physical body are the senses.
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Life levels - rounds: see details below.
304
In the first elemental realm, being expresses itself outwardly.
During the first elemental realm or round, man's thoughts moved in formless thought matter.
Let us now follow the first round. We can study this best by realizing what is present on our earth, where it is densest. In the first round there are no mineral forms present yet, also no physical natural forces and no chemical forces. The earth has done the work of development up to now only to create the basis for physical existence; it has created these foundations to prepare a physical existence in the fourth round. Like a fiery mass our earth appears here, of such tremendously high temperature that in it none of our present substances could have the form they have now. All substances are mixed together in this fiery primordial mass - let me use this trivial word - in a uniform, undifferentiated matter. Theosophy says: The earth is in the state of fire. - But this does not mean an ordinary fire, but a fire of a higher, spiritual kind. There are no chemical elements yet. But what is inside of this matter is already active. Two kinds of spiritual entities are active in it: those which we call "Dhyani Chohans" and such entities which have not yet descended to physical materiality, which partly have only a spiritual body, partly are wrapped up in astral matter, and which flood through the fire matter with tremendous speed. We see there a continuous coming into being and passing away of forms without rules, also of such forms, which already remind of what is present later on earth. That which continuously arises and passes away appears like a kind of template. Something bubbles up which reminds us of the forms of later crystals and of later plants; yes, even something which already assumes human forms and then again dissipates. The people who will be incarnated later, they lived in this fire, modeling the bodies, preparing them. This is how this state of the first round of the earth appears to us. Then follows the transition of this fiery flowing earth into the sleep state.
305
In the second elemental kingdom, life expresses itself outwardly.
During the second elemental realm or round, human thoughts moved in shaped thought matter.
The second round begins in the same spiritual way. Let us again look at the earth where it is densest. Now this state has a completely different form than before. Now it has a form, which today's physics already knows; today's physicist calls it "ether". Ether is finer than our today's gases, but denser than the earth was in the former round. In this very fine matter is formed what we call chemical elements. You can find this second stage indicated in all religious books in a wonderfully beautiful way, in that it is said that the divine entities ordered everything according to measure, number and weight. What was before disordered, now ordered itself into chemical elements, and these ordered themselves by number. The chemist will understand me because he knows the regular periodic system of the elements. Thus, matter has come into certain relations of measure and number to each other, after it has assumed as matter a certain density, an ethereal form. The individual substances have at this stage still nothing to do with each other. They are strangers to each other. Only now, when matter differentiates, we see the most wonderful forms forming, which remind us of the later ones, only they are not yet fixed: star-shaped forms, angular forms, tetrahedra, polyhedra, round forms and so on. There the forms are indicated, which appear later in the natural kingdom. As in the first round the crystal forms were anticipated, so now in the second round the plant kingdom is anticipated. Then the whole thing ebbs away again; the astral and the devachanic again pass through a pralaya state and then appear again in the third round.
306
In the third elemental realm, sensation or consciousness pushes outward.
In the third elemental kingdom human thoughts could already form themselves up to the stage of wishes; they could take that shape which we can follow as astral rays in the astral world.
If we look at the physical state in the third round, we find matter already in an essentially different state. It is not yet ordered according to air and water, but it has a kind of mist form, a vapor form. No longer in ether form, but like a kind of water vapor, of fog or like cloud formations are today, so we would have to imagine the earth on this third stage. And within these mist formations, which we find preserved in old sagas - the sagas of Nebelheim, Niflheim, show us this state - matter shows itself to us in a different form, no longer ordered by number, but endowed with powers. The occult researcher speaks here of the law of elective affinities. The chemical substances regulate themselves according to the law of elective affinities. But now, in the third round, force appears which gives the possibility to that which is small can become larger, can expand. The substances can organize themselves from the inside out, they can force themselves through. Not only the beginnings of plant life, which we got to know in the second round, appear, but growth is now possible. The first animal formations appear, which would seem most grotesque to us today. Enormously large, colossal forms formed themselves from this mass of mist. It has something of truth in it for the occultist when he looks up into the clouds and sees that one cloud looks like a camel, the other like a horse. In this third round, the beings are nebulous figures that reproduce themselves by one transforming into the other, one emerging from the other, just like lower present cellular organisms that are a memory of this period. These animal bodies, which have arisen from the mist, can now give the first basis, so that those individualities, which have come over from former worlds, can find a body. Now man can embody himself, he finds an enclosure which allows him to express himself, at first, however, in an imperfect, primitive, clumsy way. Also, unsuccessful incarnations are possible. One can speak of the fact that during the third round there were beings on earth, intermediate beings between man and animal, in which man did not feel completely comfortable, but nevertheless could incarnate.
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In the fourth, the mineral kingdom, being has become objective.
Now imagine yourself in the time when man's spiritual self has begun the work of forming for itself this mineral body which can walk and stand, which has all the growth and reproductive functions that are necessity for man, which has a nervous system and a brain such as man needs. Put yourself back into the time when all this was in a first germinal state, and then put yourself into a time when man will have reached the highest point of his development, when in the middle of his head an organ will have developed through which he will be able to make other perceptions than we can today. In the period of time between these two points the whole mineral development of the present man takes place. Such a period of time we call in theosophical expression a "round." The round which I have now described to you, this period of development, we call the "mineral round."
It is not until the fourth round that man is ready to master the mineral kingdom. Just as in the third round a human astral brain was formed from astral matter, so in the fourth round man was able to form a physical brain in which he can think.
During our mineral round man and the earth were not always physical, but they had first to develop to this state, they had first to assume this state in order to become physically perceptible.
The mineral kingdom, as it is now separated, is present only during the fourth round. After the fourth round the whole mineral kingdom will be spiritualized by man. He cultivates it with his spirit. Everything that man does today, the whole industry, is reworking of the mineral kingdom. When someone removes a rock to use the stones in building a house, when he builds a cathedral, all is artistic reworking of the mineral kingdom. In the fourth round, man can create using the mineral kingdom. With the plant, on the other hand, man can do nothing now. Man will work through the whole mineral kingdom. To a great extent this is done by vibrating electricity, which does not need a wire anymore. There one works down to the molecules and atoms. At the end of the fourth round, man will have worked through the whole mineral kingdom.
This is the round to which we ourselves belong today. So the earth first went through the devachanic state, then went down through the astral and the etheric state, and finally comes to the physical state that we have now reached. During the first round the basis for the mineral kingdom was formed, during the second round the basis for the vegetable kingdom was formed, during the third round the possibility arose that animal formations could appear. And now, during the fourth round, man gets the ability to take the form he has today. Let us look at the condition of our physical earth, our present round, a little more closely. The state of the earth at this fourth stage must be described as much denser than the states in the earlier rounds. First there was a fiery state, then a misty one, then one between air and water. But now, in the beginning of the fourth round, we have a kind of swelling matter, similar to albumen. In this state was the whole earth in the beginning of the fourth round. Gradually, however, everything has condensed, and what we know today on earth as matter is nothing else than the condensed, originally swelling matter - just as ice is condensed water. In the beginning of this fourth round all entities were so constituted that they could live in this swelling matter. Man had a form which was already similar to that of today, but he was still in a completely dull state of consciousness, which can be compared with the state of a dreaming man. He was dreaming away his existence in a kind of sleep consciousness; he still lacked the spirit. Let us look at this state a little more closely. Man was therefore already possible in this swelling matter. Dream-man we call the man of this first race. It is difficult to give a description of the man of the first race. This state was followed by another, in which matter was further condensed and separated into a more spiritual and a more physical materiality, as it were into north pole and south pole. Only I ask you to take into account the difference between the occult conception and the popular conception of Darwinism. So we have in this indicated state of the earth originally man present, and we have the plant kingdom; also the animal kingdom was present, but in those forms where there is not yet sexual reproduction and no warm blood. These beings were not yet able to produce sounds from within. Man, himself is still mute. And he cannot think yet, he cannot even form dull ideas. The spirit has not yet moved into the body. In the following, the second race, matter separates into two poles. Man extracts, as it were, that matter which is useful to him and separates out that which is less useful, out of which the higher animals develop as a kind of side branch. The lower animal species are already similar to the forms of today's mollusks, even fish-like forms are already developing. The human being develops higher and higher and on the third stage of the race formation he separates again matter which he cannot make the carrier of a higher consciousness. He gives it away again as material for the animals, which look now approximately like amphibians, which have gigantic forms. They are described to us in the fables and myths of the peoples as flying dragons and so on. Even now no being that has evolved has sexual reproduction. Only in the middle of the third race, in the middle of the Lemurian time, the beginnings of it appear. The scene of these events was in Lemuria, in the region of primordial India in the Indian Ocean. In the middle of the Lemurian period occurred the great event that made man man. Among the human beings who came over from earlier planetary states, not all were at the same stage of development. Those who had already achieved normal development during the earlier cycle on the Misty Earth were able to incarnate during the third race. Among them, however, were a number who had already attained a higher level; these could not incarnate at all during the third round. In each round, people develop to a normal stage and others to such a stage that goes beyond it. Masters are those who have progressed beyond the normal level. They are higher evolved individualities. These higher developed individualities, who have already advanced beyond the normal level, are called Solarpitris or Sunpitris in Theosophy. They have already attained a higher spirituality, but they could not embody themselves in the body of the man of that time any more than the man of today could embody himself in the plant. They waited for the further development until the right time had come and in the fourth race their first real embodiment could take place. Only now these higher developed individualities, the Solarpitris, could take possession of existing forms. A spiritually highly developed mankind arose. The legends and myths report that there were personalities at that time, who towered far above their fellow men. Individualities like Prometheus, the Rishis of the Indians, Fire-Rishis, who then became the real leaders of mankind, the Manus, who gave the laws to the later human beings. Only these solar Pitris could incarnate into adepts. I have told you that in the beginning of the fourth round there was still no sexuality. Only in the Lemurian time the separation of the sexes appeared. Only through this incarnation became possible, the taking possession of a body, which did not exist before. In former times one being emerged from the other. With the separation of the sexes in the middle of the Lemurian time birth and death occurred and with it also the possibility of the effect of karma was given. The human being could incur a debt. Everything we know as "human" came into being at that time. The continent of Lemuria perished by fire-like catastrophes, and now the Atlantic continent arose on the bottom of the present Atlantic Ocean. In the Atlantean period, an important event occurred again, to which I drew your attention when I spoke about the feast of Pentecost. I said there that with the exception of the Solarpitris all entities lived in a low state of mind. Only selected bodies could receive the Solarpitris. The other bodies would have offered these beings only the possibility to live in the state of a dull consciousness. Mindless people would have been created if the bodies of that time had been used. The Pitris therefore waited until certain animal forms had developed further. These had sunk on the one hand deeper into the instinct life, but on the other hand the preconditions for the later development of a brain had formed. The matter had differentiated into a nervous matter and a sexual matter. In this deteriorated matter then those Pitris have embodied, which have waited until this later condition. This is what religion has called the fall of mankind: the descent into the worse kind of matter. If this had not happened, they would all have remained in a much less conscious state. They would not have been useful for the clear life of thoughts as we have it today but would have remained in a much duller state. They bought this by letting the body deteriorate on one side in order to refine it to brain matter on the other side, in order to be able to reach a higher consciousness. Thereby, they could rise already at that time to a certain spiritual height. A special result of the development of the Atlantean race was the formation of a phenomenal memory. After Atlantis had perished - by water - as a later continuation our present fifth race developed, which as a special achievement has formed the combining mind, which enables it to bring art and science to the highest development, which was not possible before. In the fifth subrace of the fourth-round man reaches a climax: the mastery by the spirit, which has descended into matter, so that it can now again be carried up to higher and higher stages. We have seen how the cosmos has developed in rhythmic succession of stages up to the point where we stand today. In the earlier rounds were developed:
1. The mineral kingdom,
2. the plant kingdom,
3. the animal kingdom, and then
4. Man.
The theosophical cosmology is a self-contained building, which has sprung from the wisdom of the most highly developed seers. If I had only a little more time, I would be able to show you how just certain facts of natural science press towards developing this world view out of science. Let us look, for example, at the famous family trees of Haeckel, in which all development is interpreted purely materially. But if you take instead of matter the spiritual states, as theosophy describes them, then you can make the family trees as Haeckel made them - only the explanation is different. So that you do not confuse what I have said with what is described in some theosophical books as the various astral or physical states, I call your attention to the following: evolution is often described as if these were states lying side by side; you find spheres placed side by side so that it seems as if life goes from one sphere to another. In reality, however, there is only one sphere, and only the state of it changes. It is always the same sphere that goes through the different metamorphoses: spiritual, astral, physical and so on. Thus, we have seen that the starting point we took from the words of Goethe is fully justified, the words that in the end it is man after all that appears, so to speak, as a goal, as a task of the earthly planet. The occultist knows that every planet has its certain task. Nothing is accidental in the whole cosmos. That what arises for us human beings reaches its goal, that is the task of physical development. You would not find a human being like today's human being on any other planet. Beings - yes, but not human beings. That the human being could arise as an I-conscious being, that's what the earth is for. Through the first four rounds the kingdoms of nature have developed, in order to make in the fourth the human being a self-conscious being, which can reflect itself consciously in the body.
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The plant kingdom: in this, life has become objective.
Our present round will be followed by another, where man will reach an even higher stage of development. He will then be able to think not only in his physical brain, but in that power which we call the astral power. There man will be able to control not only physical matter, but he will also be able to control the astral force. I will give you an example to illustrate this: If I want to move the glass from here to there today, I need a physical mediation - my hand. The human being of the fourth round has come so far that he can act consciously in the physical, in the mineral world. But he cannot yet handle the astral force consciously, he has not yet developed an astral organ of will. But he will be able to do that in the fifth round. The man of the fifth round will be able to control the astral world just as he controls the physical world today.
From the fifth-round man will do the same with the plant kingdom. He will be able to consciously go through the process that the plant is now going through. Just as the plant absorbs carbonic acid and builds up its body from the carbon, man of the fifth round will also create his own body from the substances of his environment. In the fifth round, sexuality will have ceased. Man must then work on his body himself, produce it himself. The same process of processing the carbon, which the plant is now going through unconsciously, man will then do consciously. He will transform the substance as today the plant transforms the air into carbon. This is the true alchemy. Carbon is the philosopher's stone. The man who pointed this out in the 18th century pointed out the process of transformation that the plants are doing now and that will be done by man later. If one studies consciousness on the higher planes, as it works in the beehive, one learns how man will later produce matter himself. In the future, man's body will also be made of carbon; it will then be like a soft diamond. One will then not inhabit the body from the inside but have it in front of him as an outer body. This is how the planets are built today by the planetary spirits. From a being, which needs a body that is produced by others, one changes to an emanating, revealing being. Man will then be a being with three limbs: the man in the evening who walks on three, as the Sphinx says. The original four organs have differentiated. At first, the hands were also organs of movement. Then they became organs for the spiritual. Later, there will be only three organs: The heart as a buddhi organ, the two-leaf lotus flower in the center of the eye, and the left hand as an organ of movement. Blavatsky's statement [of a second spine] also refers to this future. The pineal gland and the mucous gland organize a second spinal column, which later unites with the other. The second spine will go down from the head in front.
309
The animal kingdom: thereby sensation and consciousness have become objective. In the sixth-round man will be still further. He will then be able to dominate the formative world as he dominates the physical world today and will dominate the astral world in the fifth round. In the fifth round, man will be able to carry out a wish not only in the place where it is wished. He will be able to send his wishes to distant places. In the sixth round, man will be able to create himself. He will then be able to control the rupa power himself. After the sixth round, our earthly development will have reached its completion, and only then will man have absorbed into himself everything he has been able to learn on earth. Only then will he have come to his real, clear self-awareness in the true sense of the word. He will then no longer need any mediation; he will have arrived directly at his goal.
310
In the human kingdom all three degrees become objective (7th life stage). Consciousness and ego have then completely entered objectivity.
In the seventh round, man has reached his goal. He will be formless again. But everything he had to learn, he will have absorbed.
311a
When the state of perfection has occurred, then again follows a pralaya, a state of sleep, and this again is followed by a state of waking and growing. Thus the planet passes through this sequence of states seven times, seven times awakening to a new round of life. The time between one Manvantara and the other passes in such a state in which everything that lives and weaves on our earth sleeps, as it were. But it is not a sleep that can be compared with the ordinary human sleep. In ordinary human sleep, only the mental activity and the sensory activity of man is interrupted, but you see his physical life. You must imagine the sleeping state of the earth quite differently. It is so that from no being on our earth anything is to be seen during this sleep state. Only for the opened eye of the highest developed seer, the so-called Dangma, this state of the earth would be perceptible. Indescribable with our words is this state because our words are not coined for this way of being. I cannot find words for this state in any language. Therefore, the evolved seer, to evoke an idea of this state, says something quite different. He says: Imagine a plant. You see this plant. Now imagine a kind of plaster cast of this plant, but in such a way that everything that is the plant is hollow, empty space, and all around it the plaster mass. Now suppose that all that is plaster is spiritual and noticeable only to certain sense perceptions. The one who can see the plant cannot then see the plaster cast at the same time, that is, the negative of the plant. This is somewhat like what the developed seer is able to perceive from the earth in the pralaya sleep. The earth is not there. It is the hollow, the hollow form, it is as if in a great, mighty sea of supreme spiritual entities, blurring in all directions, gradually ceasing, out of which flows, as it were, the existence of the earth itself.
311b
So, you must think that our earthly planet goes through seven stages, which we call rounds, as it were in rhythmic succession. Everything that is and lives on our earth today was also present before our present earth came into being; but it was present in a kind of germinal state, just as the whole plant is already present in the seed, as it were sleeps in the seed, before it forms itself in the outer world. Such a state of slumber of all human beings we call in Theosophy a "Pralaya". On the other hand, the state in which everything comes to life, gradually comes out and progresses from beginnings to perfection, to a climax, is called a "Manvantara." When the state of perfection has come, then again follows a pralaya, a state of sleep, and this again is followed by a state of waking and growing. Thus, the planet passes seven times through this succession of states, seven times awakening again to a new round of life. The time between one Manvantara and the other thus passes in such a state in which everything that lives and weaves on our earth is, as it were, asleep. But it is not a sleep that can be compared with the ordinary human sleep. In ordinary human sleep, only the mental activity and the sensory activity of man is interrupted, but you see his physical life. You must imagine the sleeping state of the earth quite differently. It is so that from no being on our earth anything is to be seen during this sleep state. Only for the opened eye of the highest developed seer, the so-called Dangma, this state of the earth would be perceptible. Indescribable with our words is this state because our words are not coined for this way of being. I cannot find words for this state in any language. Therefore, the evolved seer, in order to evoke an idea of this state, says something quite different. He says: Imagine a plant. You see this plant. Now imagine a kind of plaster cast of this plant, but in such a way that everything that is the plant is hollow, empty space, and all around it the plaster mass. Now suppose that all that is plaster is spiritual and noticeable only to certain sense perceptions. The one who can see the plant cannot then see the plaster cast at the same time, that is, the negative of the plant. This is how it would seem to the developed seer, who is able to perceive the earth in the pralaya sleep. The earth is not there. It is the hollow, the hollow form, it is as if in a great, mighty sea of supreme spiritual entities, blurring in all directions, gradually ceasing, out of which flows, as it were, the existence of the earth itself.
312
Let us now follow the first round. We can study this best by considering what is present on our earth, where it is densest. In the first round there are no mineral forms present yet, also no physical natural forces and no chemical forces. The earth has only done the work of development up to now creating the basis for physical existence; it has created these foundations to prepare a physical existence in the fourth round. Like a fiery mass our earth appears here, of such tremendously high temperature that in it none of our present substances could have the form they have now. All substances are mixed together in this fiery brew - let me use this trivial word - in a uniform, undifferentiated matter. Theosophy says: The earth is in the state of fire. - But this does not mean an ordinary fire, but a fire of a higher, spiritual kind. There are no chemical elements yet. But what is inside this matter is already active. Two kinds of spiritual entities are active in it: those which we call "Dhyani Chohans" and such entities which have not yet descended to physical materiality, which partly have only a spiritual body, partly are wrapped up in astral matter, and which pour through the fire matter with tremendous speed. We see there a continuous coming into being and passing away of irregular forms, also of such forms which already remind of what is present later on earth. These are like a kind of model arising and passing away continuously. Something bubbles up, which reminds us of the forms of later crystals and of later plants; yes, even something, which already takes human forms and then dissolves again. The people who will be incarnated later, they lived in this fire, modeling the bodies, preparing them. This is how this state of the first round of the earth appears to us. Then follows the transition of this fiery flowing earth into the sleep state.
313
The second round begins in the same spiritual way. Let us again look at the earth where it is densest. Now this state has a completely different form than before. Now it has a form, which today's physics already knows; today's physicist calls it "ether". Ether is finer than our today's gases, but denser than the earth was in the former round. In this very fine matter is formed what we call chemical elements. You can find this second stage indicated in all religious books in a wonderfully beautiful way, in that it is said that the divine entities ordered everything according to measure, number and weight. What was disordered before, now ordered itself into chemical elements, and these ordered themselves by number. The chemist will understand me because he knows the regular periodic system of the elements. Thus, matter has come into certain relations of measure and number to each other, after it has assumed as matter a certain density, an ethereal form. The individual substances have at this stage still nothing to do with each other. They are strangers to each other. Only now, when matter differentiates, we see the most wonderful forms forming, which remind us of later ones, only they are not yet fixed: star-shaped forms, angular forms, tetrahedra, polyhedra, round forms and so on. There the forms are indicated, which appear later in the natural kingdom. As in the first round the crystal forms were prefigured, so now in the second round the plant kingdom is prefigured. Then the whole thing ebbs away again; the astral and the devachanic again pass through a pralaya state and then appear again in the third round.
314
If we look at the physical state in the third round, we find matter already in a substantially different state. It is not yet divided into air and water, but it has a kind of mist form, of vapor form. No longer in ether form, but like a kind of water vapor, of fog or like cloud formations are today, so we would have to imagine the earth on this third stage. And within these mist formations, which we find preserved in old sagas - the sagas of Nebelheim, Niflheim, show us this state - matter shows itself to us in a different form, no longer ordered by number, but endowed with powers. The occult researcher speaks here of the law of elective affinities. The chemical substances regulate themselves according to the law of the elective affinity. But now, in the third round, force appears which causes the small to become larger, to expand. The substances can organize themselves from the inside out, they can permeate themselves with forces. Not only the beginnings of plant life, which we got to know in the second round, appear, but growth is now possible. The first animal formations appear, which would seem most grotesque to us today. Enormously large, colossal forms formed themselves from this mass of mist. It has something of truth in it for the occultist when he looks up into the clouds and sees that one cloud looks like a camel, the other like a horse. In this third round, the beings are nebulous figures that reproduce themselves by one transforming into the other, one emerging from the other, of which the lower cellular organisms of today are a memory. These animal bodies, which have emerged from the mist, can now provide the first basis for those individualities, which have come over from earlier worlds, to find a body. Now man can embody himself, he finds an enclosure that allows him to express himself, at first, however, in an imperfect, primitive, clumsy way. Unsuccessful incarnations are also possible. One can speak of the fact that during the third round there were beings on earth, intermediate beings between man and animal, in which man did not feel completely comfortable, but nevertheless could incarnate.
During the Lemurian time we must think of the earth as a fiery being, which still shows the element of fire everywhere, and only with the transition to the Atlantean time did a cooling down occurred.
So we could characterize the course from the Lemurian to the Atlantean time in this way: The earth was covered all around with dense masses of fog, in which the smoke masses of the different substances, which later changed into those of the earth's crust, were still dissolved, and the beings of the species, which were visible to the clear-sighted consciousness, had not yet reached the physical condensation. There had not yet had occurred what one can call a fertilization of the earth's soil with that which floated as water in the air. That occurred only later.
315
During the first round the basis for the mineral kingdom was created, during the second round the basis for the plant kingdom was created, during the third round the possibility arose that animal formations could appear. And now, during the fourth round, man gains the ability to take the form he has today. Let us consider the condition of our physical earth, our present round, a little more closely. The state of the earth at this fourth stage must be described as much denser than the states in the earlier rounds. First there was a fiery state, then a misty one, then one between air and water. But now, in the beginning of the fourth round, we have a kind of up-welling matter, similar to albumen. The whole earth was in this state in the beginning of the fourth round. Gradually, however, everything has condensed, and what we know today on earth as matter is nothing else than the condensed, originally up-welling matter - just as ice is condensed water. In the beginning of this fourth round all entities were so constituted that they could live in this swelling matter. Man had a form which was already similar to today's, but he was still in a completely dull state of consciousness which can be compared with the state of a dreaming man. He was dreaming away his existence in a kind of sleep consciousness; he still lacked the spirit. Let us look at this state a little more closely. Man was therefore already possible in this swelling matter. Dream-man we call the man of this first race.
During the Atlantean times what was above the ground of the earth was still quite different from later, that far, far into the Atlantean times the earth was not surrounded by a waterless circle of air. The earth was covered with an air completely filled with water-mists. That, what we know today as separation of rain and rain-free air, that did not exist in these old times. Everything was wrapped in water-mist masses, which were saturated by all possible vapors and smoke and other substances, which at that time had not yet taken the solid form. Much of what is solid today was then still in vapor form, flowing through the present air circuit. And until long into the Atlantean times everything was interspersed with such water-mist masses.
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In the middle of the Lemurian period, the great event occurred that made man a human being. Among the human beings who came over from earlier planetary states, not all were at the same stage of development. Those who had already achieved normal development during the earlier cycle on the Misty Earth were able to incarnate during the third race. Among them, however, were a number who had already attained a higher level; these could not incarnate at all during the third round. In each round, people develop to a normal stage and others to such a stage that goes beyond it. Masters are those who have progressed beyond the normal level. They are higher evolved individualities. In Theosophy, these more highly developed individualities, who have already progressed beyond the normal level, are called Solarpitris or Sunpitris. They have already attained a higher spirituality, but they could not embody themselves in the human body of that time any more than the man of today could embody himself in the plant. They waited for the further development until the right time had come and in the fourth race their first real embodiment could take place. Only now these higher developed individualities, the Solarpitris, could take possession of the existing forms. A spiritually highly developed mankind arose. The legends and myths report that there were personalities at that time, who towered far above their fellow men. Individualities like Prometheus, the Rishis of the Indians, Fire-Rishis, who then became the real leaders of mankind, the Manus, who gave the laws to the later people. Only these solar pitris could embody themselves to adepts.
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Thus, we have the seven rounds as the seven days of creation in the Bible. The first three days of creation have passed, we are now in the fourth day of creation, and the last three days of creation are yet to come. The three first days of creation of the Genesis represent the past rounds, in the three last is indicated what will come in the future. Correctly understood, Moses wants to say with the description of the fourth day of creation that we live in the fourth round; he also describes the fourth day of creation in particular. That is why you find a twofold creation in Genesis. Those who measure the Bible only with the mind can never understand this. The man of the seventh day of creation is not yet created. That man is made of clay and mud is a symbol of our fourth round. The twofold creation tells us in figurative form about what has been created, about the state we are in now and about the state at the end of the seventh round. When we look at what has been handed down through the Bible in this way, suddenly a meaning comes out of these documents that we could not have suspected before. Now mankind will finally see that there is such a deep meaning in it that you almost have to become a different person to understand it.
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The arupa form, the form in its very first indication, where it is not yet an actual form, but already presses outward.
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The rupic form, the spiritual form, the most delicate suggestion of an external form.
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The astral form, it starts to become visible externally.
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The physical form.
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The plastic form that is no longer rigid, but asserts itself from within, in which life pushes outward into form.
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The intellectual form, which has become even more mobile, wherein the spirit pushes outward.
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The archetypal form. This form masters itself completely, is completely mobile in itself. Everything presses outward, it can give form everything, it is active.
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In order to be able to be creative in the outer world, the soul itself must first become mature. It must first experience inwardly what it is later to develop outwardly. Until the soul, for example, possessed the ability to imprint the physical body with organs for the waking day-consciousness, it had to go through a series of stages of development in which it gradually acquired this ability. Thus, the soul first had to experience the first state of consciousness in itself before it could create it; and so correspondingly for the other forms of consciousness. These stages of development of the soul, which precede the creation of the forms of consciousness, are called stages of life in esoteric science. Accordingly, there are seven stages of life just as there are seven stages of consciousness. Life differs from consciousness in that the former has an inner character, the latter is based on a relation to the outer world. Thus, the sequence of stages of life is divided in the following way:
1. dull experience of matter
2. experiencing inner movement
3. experiencing inner form
4. experiencing a fixed boundary
5. experience of remodeling
6. experiencing the effects of the outside world as sensation
7. feeling at one with the outer world.
See also 134 - 138
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These seven globes are not really separate globes; the objective process is not that one leaves one globe and comes to another, but rather the globes together form a sphere in which these different states of form interpenetrate and on which the same being undergoes seven metamorphoses. This development of the form states is called phase states in the older esoteric language. This is connected with something that can be described by the following train of thought. A being that passes through the various forms gradually becomes visible, from the arupic form downward, and gradually disappears again to the primordial form.That is why we also call these form states phases. The earth has passed through the arupic, rupic and astral states before it became physically visible. After the physical state, it will go through the malleable, intellectual and archetypal states.
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In the fifth period the supersensual facts, which were seen in the third period in a dim consciousness, are revealed again, but now interpenetrated with the intellectual and personal emotional powers of man. They are also permeated with what can be given to the soul through the knowledge of the mystery of Christ. Therefore, they take on a completely different form than they used to have. Whereas the impressions from the supersensible worlds were felt in old times as forces which drove man from a spiritual outer world in which he was not inside, through the development of the newer times these impressions will be felt as those of a world into which man grows, in which he always stands more and more inside.
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All the wonderful wisdom of ancient India, which the great teachers of that time could proclaim, will be able to be there again as the truth of life for the souls of men in the seventh period.
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After the expiration of the seventh period the earth will be afflicted by an upheaval which can be compared with that which happened between the Atlantean and the post-Atlanean times. And the subsequently transformed states of the earth will again continue to develop in seven periods of time. On a higher stage the human souls, which will then embody themselves, will experience that communion with a higher world, which the Atlanteans experienced on a lower level. But only those human beings will show themselves to be equal to the newly formed conditions of the earth who have embodied in themselves such souls as they can become through the influences of the Greco-Latin, and the following fifth, sixth and seventh periods of the post-Atlantean development. The inner life of such souls will correspond to what has become of the earth up to that time. The other souls will then have to stay behind, whereas before it would have been their choice to create the conditions for coming along. Those souls will be ripe for the corresponding conditions after the next great upheaval who will have created for themselves the possibility to penetrate the supersensible knowledge with the powers of the mind and the emotions just when passing from the fifth to the sixth post-Atlantean period. The fifth and the sixth period are, so to speak, the decisive ones. In the seventh, the souls that have reached the goal of the sixth will develop accordingly; the others, however, will find little opportunity to make up for what they have missed under the changed conditions of their environment. Only in a later future will conditions arise again which will allow this.
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There will come a time when the development of the earth and of mankind will have progressed so far that the forces and entities which had to detach themselves from the earth during the Lemurian period in order to make the further progress of the earth beings possible, will be able to unite with the earth again. The moon will then unite with the earth again. This will happen because then a sufficiently large number of human souls will have so much inner strength that they will make these lunar forces fruitful for further development. This will be in a time, in which beside the high development, which will have reached a corresponding number of human souls, another will accompany it, which will have taken the direction towards evil. The souls left behind will have accumulated so much error, ugliness and evil in their karma that they will at first form a special community of the evil and erring ones, striving sharply against the good community of men. The good humanity will acquire through its development the use of the lunar forces and thereby also transform the evil part in such a way that it can go along with the further development as a separate earth kingdom. Through this work of good humanity, the earth, then united with the moon, will be able, after a certain time of development, to be united again with the sun (also with the other planets). And after an intermediate state, which is like a stay in a higher world, the earth will change into the Jupiter state.
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The earth state contains that which has developed within the preceding Saturn, Sun, Moon states. The earth man finds "wisdom" in the processes which take place around him. This wisdom is in it as the result of what had happened earlier. The earth is the descendant of the "old moon". And this earlier one had formed itself with what belonged to it into the "cosmos of wisdom". The earth is now the beginning of a development, through which a new power is inserted into this wisdom. This is the power of love. In the man of the earth this power of love must take its beginning. And the "cosmos of wisdom" develops into a "cosmos of love". Out of all that the "I" can unfold in itself, love will develop. As the comprehensive "model of love" the high sun-being reveals itself as what could be characterized as Christ development. The seed of love is thus sunk into the innermost core of the human being, and from there it is to flow into all of evolution. The seed of love is thus lowered into the innermost core of the human being and from there it shall flow into all of evolution. As the previously formed wisdom reveals itself in the forces of the sense perceptible outer world of the earth, in the present "forces of nature," so in the future love itself will reveal itself in all phenomena as a new force of nature. This is the secret of all development into the future: that the realization that also everything which man accomplishes out of a true understanding of evolution is a planting of that which must mature as love. And as much as arises as the power of love, so much creative work is done for the future. In what will have developed out of love will lie the strong forces which will lead to the final result of spiritualization described above. As much spiritual knowledge flows into the evolution of mankind and earth, just as many viable germs for the future will be present. Spiritual knowledge transforms into love through what it is. Wisdom is the precondition of love; love is the result of wisdom reborn in the "I".
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Where was then actually the human I, the today's I? Actually not in the human being; it is still in the environment. Through the drawing in of the ego, we can also say that the upper limbs of the human being harden. By the fact that the I was outside of the human being, it was in another respect still afflicted with a peculiarity, which later became different. By moving into the physical body, the I was caused to become an individual I, whereas before it was still a kind of group soul. I want to give you a picture here for the facts. Think of a circle of twelve people; somewhere arranged in a circle these twelve people would be sitting. Through the development as it is today, every human being has his I in himself. So, there are twelve I's sitting around in a circle. But if we look at such a circle of people in the Atlantean time, the physical bodies would also be sitting around, but the I is only in the etheric body, which is still outside. So, in front of everyone there is his I. But the I has another characteristic, it is not so centralized, it immediately unfolds its forces and connects with the I's of the other people, so that they form a ring, which in turn sends its forces towards its center. So, we have here an etheric circle body which forms a unity in itself, and in it the I's, thus a circle of physical bodies and within it an etheric circle area which forms a unity, by the fact that the I's are captured, the single I is enclosed and by this picture we come to a vivid idea of the group souls. If we go further and further back, we can hold this picture, but we no longer have to imagine such a regular circle of people, but these people can be scattered in the world in the most manifold ways. Let us imagine one person in the west of France, another in the east of America, and so on, thus not sitting together, but where the laws of the spiritual world are concerned, the I’s can nevertheless hang together, even if the people are scattered over the earth. These people then form this round dance. That which is formed by the flowing together of their I's is then indeed not such a geometrically beautiful etheric body, but it is nevertheless a unified one. So, there was a group of people at that time, who were connected by the fact that their I's formed a unity; and indeed there were essentially four such group I's. You must imagine these people again according to the laws of the spiritual world. The group souls of the four groups passed into each other; they were not connected inwardly, but they went into each other. These four group souls are called by the names of the four apocalyptic animals: Eagle, Lion, Bull, Man."
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If we cast a glance over to Asia, we find there first of all as the first subrace of the fifth root race, the old Indian race, that group of people which later migrated more to the south and there formed the progenitors of the later Indians. The most essential characteristic of this tribal people living towards the northern India was that they did not develop a right appreciation with regard to material culture. It had spiritual views of the highest kind with a completely undeveloped sense for material culture. The ancient Indians were far removed; their soul was still completely similar to the Atlantean in that it could develop within itself an infinitely splendid world of images. Through yoga practice, from within, they later developed a finely developed view of the world, which appears sophisticated to us today. Only fragments of this are still present in the external tradition. The Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita no longer give a correct picture of the tremendous views of the Indians, but only echoes. Also in the Vedanta philosophy only a very abstract echo of the view of the Indians has been handed down.
Think of the meaning which then came out in later Kabbalistics in a form which extended to other things, more to intricate trifles, think of this meaning applied to elevated world thoughts. If later Jew could think about it in Kabbalistics, it was because the later Jewish secret doctrine is only a degenerated image, an echo of that highly detailed system of thought of the ancient Indians. And that which became Brahman teaching is not only religion in the sense of the later systems, but science, poetry, and religion in one large whole. All this was like a refined selection, like the extract of what had developed in the ancient Atlantean culture.
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The sixth subrace will develop a superpsychic manas. What is now merely a kind of knowledge in man, will become immediate reality, social power, in the sixth subrace. The sixth subrace has to penetrate the social organism socially with that which all previous development has brought forth. Only then will Christianity come forward in a socially formative way. The sixth subrace becomes the fundamental germinal race for the sixth root race. The fifth root race descends from the primal semites, the fifth subrace of the fourth root race. They have developed the individual ego, which gives birth to egoism. Mankind owes the becoming independent to the primal semites. Man must first find himself, but then he must also give himself again. He must give himself to that which makes thoughts real. The sixth subrace is destined to replace the kinship of blood by the kinship of manas, the kinship in spirit. The thought that is altruistic will develop the disposition to overcome egoism. In the sixth subrace the disposition will be given to overcome egoism, but in such a way that balance is kept between selfhood and unselfishness. The man of the sixth subrace will neither lose himself outwardly nor close himself off inwardly. In the seventh subrace a kind of hypertrophy occurs. Man then pours outwardly what he now has within himself: his egoism. The members of the sixth subrace, on the other hand, keep the balance. The seventh subrace hardens the egoism. Later on, the English-American people will protrude into the sixth root race as something rigid, just as today the Chinese are a rigid remnant of the Atlantean time, the fourth root race.
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On the fourth stage a material appears, formed by the forces of the environment, which on the third stage merely regulated the outer relations and which now work into the interior of the beings. This is the realm of the physical. A being standing on this level is a mirror of its environment; the forces of the latter work on its structure.
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See 134 - 140
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Forces had to be planted on the earth during the first half of its evolution, which were not yet there from the three preceding world bodies. The leading beings of the Earth's evolution took such forces from Mars during the first half of this evolution; they take them from Mercury during the second. Through the Martian forces the sentient soul (astral body) experiences a freshening. It becomes what in my "Theosophy" is called the intellectual soul.
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Forces had to be planted on the earth during the first half of its evolution, which were not yet there from the three preceding world bodies. The leading beings of the Earth's evolution took such forces from Mars during the first half of this evolution; they take them from Mercury during the second. Through the Martian forces the sentient soul (astral body) experiences a freshening. It becomes what in my "Theosophy" is called the intellectual soul. By the forces taken from Mercury this intellectual soul is renewed again in such a way that it does not stop at its own evolutionary stage but opens up to the consciousness soul. And within the consciousness soul the "spirit self" (Manas) is born. This will be the ruling principle of man on Jupiter. It will be the same way with the life spirit (Budhi) on Venus and with Atma on Vulcan.
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If we want to express this clearly, we have to say: All reproduction of man did not happen in the consciousness of waking, but in the consciousness of sleep. - When man was out of his physical body and in the spiritual world, he set in motion, so to speak, in this state of consciousness, where everything appeared to him in pictures, that which had to happen in facts for procreation, and the whole act of procreation was wrapped in spiritual, appeared to him in the picture of throwing stones behind him. The whole act of procreation was wrapped in spiritual consciousness, lay behind the day consciousness. Man knew nothing of the sexual. In the day-consciousness he did not see himself as if he existed in two sexes, and his soul was untouched by any thought of the sexual. Not as if it was not present. It was present, but it rested in the darkness of a spiritual consciousness. It was not present for man during the day consciousness. With the attainment of the first disposition to ego-consciousness, man first becomes aware of sexuality. This is the moment that is presented to us in the Bible, when Adam and Eve become aware that there is something like sexuality. This significant dramatic moment, here we have to put it in the development of the earth. And if you look back clairvoyantly to the time that preceded it, you see of man only that which is the tools of the spirit. The rest was not to be seen at all. Man could be seen only in his upper form. And from that time on, one began to see the human being completely. It is now understandable to us why the people now covered themselves. Before they saw nothing what they should have covered. Thus man gradually stepped out into the outer world.
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At this level of consciousness, man no longer perceives only images in a dreamlike way, which rise in his soul as an effect of his environment, but objects appear for him "outside in space". On the moon and also still during the repetition stages on earth, for example, a color image rose in his soul when a corresponding object came close to him. The whole consciousness consisted of such images, sounds and so on, which rose and fell in the soul. Only when the fourth state of consciousness occurs, the color no longer appears only in the soul, but on an external spatially limited object, the tone is no longer only an inner sounding of the soul; but an object in space sounds. Therefore, this fourth, the earthly, state of consciousness is also called "objective consciousness" in secret science. Slowly and gradually it has developed in the course of evolution, as the physical sense organs have gradually come into being, making the most diverse sensual qualities perceptible on external objects. In addition to the senses already developed, others are still in their infancy, which will come to development in the following earth time and will show the world of the senses in a much greater variety than is already the case today. In the foregoing, the gradual growth of this earth-consciousness has been described, and in the following explanations, this description will experience essential extensions and additions. The colored world, the sounding world, etc., which the former man perceived in his inner being, will not appear to him outside in space during his life on earth. But instead of this, a new world appears in his inner being, the world of imagination or thought. One cannot speak of ideas and thoughts in the lunar consciousness. It exists only in the marked images. About the middle of the earth's development - the thing actually prepares itself a little earlier - the ability to form ideas and thoughts about the objects appears in the human being. And this ability is also the basis for memory and self-consciousness. Only the imagining human being can form the memory of what he has perceived; and only the thinking human being reaches to distinguish himself as an independent, self-aware being from his environment, to get to know himself as an "I". The first three stages described were thus stages of consciousness; the fourth is not merely consciousness, but self-consciousness.
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