Jupiter
400
What is connected with birth and death is man's karma. On the next planet, with the increased consciousness, man will no longer be aware only of the effects of karma but will be conscious in karma itself. His inner strength will have grown in such a way that he will have the will to represent this karma. He will bear it in his form, in his physiognomy. Then his physiognomy will show what is in the astral and mental body. Then it will happen that the good will be recognizable outwardly and the evil humans likewise. Such evil then exists only among those who have trained themselves as black magicians. There the great decision occurs, the separation between the good and the evil. This happens on the fifth planet. From the fifth planet on, one can only speak of the evolution of good.
401
Within this state there will not be what is now called the mineral kingdom; the powers of this mineral kingdom will be transformed into vegetative ones. The plant kingdom, which will have a completely new form compared to the present one, appears during the Jupiter state as the lowest of the kingdoms. Higher up is the likewise transformed animal kingdom; then comes a human kingdom, which proves to be the offspring of the evil community that arose on earth. And then the offspring of the good earth-human community, as a human kingdom on a higher level. A large part of the work of this last human kingdom consists in ennobling the souls that have fallen into the evil community in such a way that they can still find the entrance into the real human kingdom.
402
403
404
405
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 even through meditative contemplation.
406
Life levels - rounds: see details below.
407
The further progress consists in the fact that the being is not only structured in itself in such a way as it is in the sense of the forces in the environment, but that it also gives itself an outer physiognomy which bears the imprint of this environment. If a being of the fourth level represents a mirror of its environment, such a being of the fifth level expresses this environment physiognomically. Therefore, this level is called physiognomic in esoteric science.
408
See 134 - 140
409
Man will have to live through these states of consciousness on the next planets, into which the earth will change after its present form. It is not absurd to say something about these future states of consciousness, thus also about the life on the following planets. First of all, the clairvoyant progresses in his development ahead of his confreres - for certain reasons to be explained in another place. In him, therefore, those states of consciousness are already forming to which all mankind must attain as the planetary evolution progresses. Thus in the clairvoyant consciousness one already has pictures of the future stages of humanity. And then three following states of consciousness are already present in all human beings as a seed; and clairvoyant research has means to indicate what can become of these seed states. However, when it is said here that the clairvoyant is already now developing in himself the states of consciousness to which the whole of mankind will progress in the future, this is to be understood with a limitation. The clairvoyant, for example, forms today within the psychic world a seeing which will appear in man in a physical way in the future. But this future physical state of man will be the faithful image of the corresponding present psychic state of the clairvoyant. The earth itself will develop, and thus in its coming physical inhabitants quite different forms will appear than are there today; but these physical forms are preparing themselves in the present psychic and spiritual ones. For example, what the clairvoyant sees today as a cloud of light and color around the physical human body as a so-called "aura" will later transform into a physical form; and other sense organs than those of today will give the future human being the ability to perceive the other forms. The clairvoyant, however, sees the spiritual models of the later sensory beings (for example the aura) with his spiritual senses already today. A view into the future is possible for him, of whose peculiarity, however, it is very difficult to give an idea through the present language and for the present human ideas. The ideas of the present state of consciousness are shadowy, pale in relation to the colored and sounding objects of the outer world. Therefore, man also speaks of the conceptions as of something that is "not real". A "mere thought" is contrasted with a thing or being that is "real" because it is perceived through the senses. But the ideas and thoughts carry the disposition to become real again, pictorial. If today man speaks of the idea "red" without having a red object before him, this idea is, as it were, only a shadow image of the real "redness". Later, man will come to let rise in his soul not only the shadowy idea of "red," but when he thinks "red," there will really be "red" before him. He will be able to create images, not merely imaginations. Something similar will be achieved for him, what was already there for the moon consciousness. But the pictures will not dreamlike rise and fall in him, but he will call them forth in himself like the present-day ideas with full self-consciousness. A thought of a color will be the color itself; an idea of a tone will be the tone itself, and so on. In the future, a world of pictures will weigh up and down in his soul by the man's own power, whereas during the moon existence such a world of pictures filled his inside without his intervention. And the spatial character of the objective outer world will not disappear. The color, which arises at the same time with the idea of color, will not be only a picture in the soul, but it will unfold outside in the space. And the consequence of this will be that man will be able to perceive beings and things of a higher kind than those of his present surroundings. These are things and beings which are of a finer spiritual and mental nature, so that they do not clothe themselves in the objective colors which are perceptible to the present physical sense tools, but which reveal themselves through the finer mental and spiritual colors and tones which the man of the future will be able to awaken out of his soul. Man is thus approaching a state in which he will have a self-aware picture-consciousness suitable for such perceptions. The coming evolution of the earth will, on the one hand, bring the present life of imagination and thought to a higher, finer, more perfect development; on the other hand, during this time, the self-conscious picture-consciousness 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 secret science. Then man will be able to come into contact with beings which remain completely hidden from his present sense perception. It is understandable that not only the life of perception will become completely different, but that also the deeds, the feelings, all relations to the environment will be completely transformed. In the same way as today he can consciously influence only sense beings, man will then be able to consciously influence completely different forces and powers; and he himself will receive influences from completely different realms than he can now fully recognize.
410
Saturn consciousness has the lowest degree of brightness. It is quite dull. It is difficult to give a more exact idea of this dullness because even the dullness of sleep is still one degree brighter than this consciousness. In abnormal, so-called deep trance states, the present man can still fall back into this state of consciousness. And also the man who is a clairvoyant in the sense of the secret science can form an accurate idea of it. But he himself does not live in this state of consciousness. Rather, he rises to a far higher one, which, however, is similar to the original one in certain respects. In the case of the ordinary man of the present stage on earth, this state, which he once passed through, has been extinguished by the "bright day consciousness". The "medium" who falls into a deep trance, however, is put back into the same, so that he perceives in the same way as all men once perceived during the "Saturn period". And such a medium can tell then either during the trance or after the awakening of experiences which are similar to those of the Saturn scene. However, one may only say "similar", not "the same", because the facts which took place on Saturn are over once and for all; only those which have a certain relationship with them are still taking place in the environment of man. And only a "Saturn consciousness" can perceive these latter. - The clairvoyant in the above sense now attains such a Saturn-consciousness like the marked medium; but he retains for this purpose also his "bright day-consciousness", which man did not yet have on Saturn, and which the medium loses during the state of trance. Such a clairvoyant is therefore not in the Saturn consciousness itself; but he can form an idea of it. - While this Saturn consciousness is inferior to the present human consciousness in brightness by some degrees, it is superior to it in the extent of what it can perceive. In its dullness it can not only perceive everything down to the smallest detail what is happening on its own world body, but it can also observe the things and beings on other world bodies which are connected with its own - Saturn. And it can also have a certain effect on these things and beings. (It need hardly be said that this observation of other world bodies is quite different from that which the present man can make with his scientific astronomy. This astronomical observation is based on the "bright day consciousness" and therefore perceives other world bodies from outside. Saturn consciousness, on the other hand, is immediate sensation, a co-experience of what is going on in other world bodies. Not quite, but nevertheless to some extent correct, one expresses oneself when one says, a Saturnian experiences things and facts of other world bodies - and of his own - like the present human being experiences his heart and his heartbeat or similar in his own body).