Saturday, March 31, 2012

Anthroposophia: "A Holy Reverence"


Judith von Halle:  "... a holy reverence towards the Christ Being should be present. This is the only possibility for experiencing consciously the meeting of His Being and yours. Only when the most precious element of the soul ... opens itself can the intellect withdraw into the background in favor of an awareness of the spirit. Whoever has the courage to look deep into his own soul, into his own abyss, will open his heart to Him -- to Him and to the mystery of His former, present, and future epiphanies. From this innermost light, from the recovery of this light in our innermost holy places, arises the seed which will unite us with His Being."

Friday, March 30, 2012

Anthroposophia: True Striving for Knowledge: "Learn, Baby, Learn"

Judith von Halle


Judith von Halle:  "The gift of the Resurrection is without doubt a gift that was given for all mankind.... If now mankind wants to respond to this gift, to use it for its future development--for that after all is what it was given for--it has to acquire an understanding for the Christ Being, for the spiritual interconnections of the Resurrection. It has to sharpen its awareness, and let its spirit shine. When at night the human being expands into the spheres of the planets and consciously looks with the eyes of the spirit into the sphere of the Sun, he is penetrated by a truth based on the laws of life: after earthly death the individual self creates from this sphere those forces it will need for the shaping of its future etheric body. However, obtaining these forces is dependent on the level of understanding the individual self in its life on Earth has developed concerning the Lord of the sphere of the Sun and concerning the gift of the Christ impulse. Generallly, it is only possible to find a tree at a particular spot some day if previously a seed has been placed precisely at this spot in the Earth. The human being does indeed plant this seed in his life on Earth, but can find the place in the spiritual world again because true striving for knowledge always takes place in the sphere of the spirit and is written into it. In order therefore to find Christ in the sphere of the Sun I have to work at knowing Him in my life on Earth. Only when I know something, can I find it again. Only if I sow, can I harvest. It is therefore dangerous to wait until death before wanting to know, for in this way the human being will be lost in the spiritual world, without any orientation."
--And If He Has Not Been Raised..., pp. 45-46

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Strengthen the things which remain: Metanoia: Changing your mind after you've died

Rudolf Steiner:   "What someone has engraved in their own etheric body and then carried through the gates of death out into the universal world-ether is destined, however, to undergo gradual changes. These changes are accomplished in the course of successive Earth incarnations, as the person experiences the whole of Earth existence. Just consider how much is contained in what a person thinks! Would it not be the most horrible thing imaginable if all men's thoughts were objectively engraved in the substance of the world and had to remain there eternally? But that is what would happen if, in the course of repeated lives on Earth, humanity were not in the position to be able to make good the thoughts that should not remain — to either improve them, or eradicate them and replace them with something entirely different, and so on. That is one of the things established by an evolution through successive lives on Earth. It gives mankind the opportunity to improve on what it carries with it through the gates of death into the substance of the world, so that a person can strive for a final Earth incarnation which only leaves behind in the ether-substance of the world that which really can remain."

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Anthroposophia: "He that overcometh"


Revelation 2:26 - 3:6

     He that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations:
     And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father.
     And I will give him the morning star.
     He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
     And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write; These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars; I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.
     Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God.
     Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.
     Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white: for they are worthy.
     He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.
     He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

Anthroposophia: "Him that overcometh"


Revelation 3:12-22 
      Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name.
     He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
     And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God;
     I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
     So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
     Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:
     I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.
     As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.
     Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
     To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.
     He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

The Origin and Purpose of Evil; Christ the Redeemer; Human Beings as the Spirits of Freedom and Love




The Spiritual Hierarchies and the Physical World. Lecture 10 of 10.
Rudolf Steiner, Düsseldorf, April 18, 1909:
Apart from the question put at the end of yesterday's lecture, it would be within the scope of this course of lectures to explain much more; but it is impossible to exhaust in ten lectures all there is to be said about our worlds. Therefore I beg you to allow me to make yet a few observations before I touch on our question, especially as these observations are connected with it.
The first observation I have to make is difficult, perhaps even almost impossible of comprehension by the consciousness of the present day; but it is good to know that something of the sort exists. It is the question: In what way do these planetary formations really disappear again? It is clear to you how development spiritually proceeds: beings arise to higher stages, and while they are rising they have to forsake the old place of habitation which afforded them for a time the possibility for developing certain capacities which they otherwise could not have achieved. When in the course of evolution that time approached which we call the Lemurian, man had reached so far in his general development that he had already repeated all that there was to be gained out of the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions. He now appeared on the dwelling-place destined for our  Earth evolution, which had only just been formed. He developed through the Lemurian and Atlantean times on into our times, and he will continue to develop on into the future, as we know — from one incarnation to the other. But after a certain time that human being will have to leave the Earth, to forsake it, because it will not have anything more to give him, and will afford him no more possibilities of development. Now, you might perhaps imagine that our Earth would become a sort of deserted rubbish-heap when man had left it; you might compare it to a town which had been deserted by its entire population. You know what such a town looks like after a short time; it gradually turns into a mound of earth. We get an adequate idea of this in seeing towns which have been given over to nature. But it will not be so in the future of the Earth. The following consideration will give you an idea of what that future will be like: what does such a genius, for instance, as Leonardo da Vinci or Raphael, signify for the earthly development of men? What importance for the Earth's development have those wonderful works of Michelangelo or Raphael, which are still today enjoyed by thousands and thousands of people? Perhaps some of you have felt a certain sadness looking at the ‘Last Supper’ by Leonardo da Vinci, when you have asked yourselves, standing in front of that wonderful work in Milan: How long it would still last? For one must not forget that Goethe, in his first journey to Italy, still saw that work of art in all its beauty and freshness, as we cannot see it any more. But, from the time of Goethe's youth to our time, this work of art has so far perished as regards the external, material world that it calls forth in us feelings of sadness. For people who will live as late after us as we are now after Goethe, that picture will not exist any more. So it is with everything men create upon Earth, with everything which is incarnated into physical matter upon Earth. In reality it is so also with the Earth itself, and with the creations of human thought. Put yourselves now in thought into that time when the spiritualized men will have risen into higher spheres. Thoughts in the sense of today — I do not mean scientific thoughts, for these will entirely lose their importance in three or four hundred years — but thoughts of men in general, as they come forth from a human mind, have naturally no importance for the higher worlds, but have it only for the Earth. But when man shall have left the Earth, what will have happened to all his past creations on Earth, through all the hundreds and thousands of years that are past?
The evolution of the individual is naturally the thing to be first spiritually considered. Leonardo da Vinci has risen higher through what he has achieved; that is his ascent. But we ask ourselves whether the great thoughts, the great impulses, which great men have imprinted on the substance of the Earth, do not have any importance for the future of the Earth? Will the future break and grind the Earth into dust, and will all that man has made out of the Earth disappear together with its existence? You admire the Cathedral of Cologne. In a comparatively short time there will certainly not be one stone of it lying on the other; but the fact that man once expressed his thoughts in stone in this cathedral, will that have no significance for the whole Earth? We are now disregarding that which man takes with him away from the Earth, we are considering the Earth itself. We see that, in fact, a planet grows always smaller in the course of its development. It contracts. That is the destiny of the substance of planets; but it is not all, that is only something which the physical eye and physical instruments can observe in the planets. There is a further development of the material substance — beyond that point.
Let us now consider this further development of matter, and with this I am touching on what I said will perhaps be impossible for you to understand with the comprehension of the present day. It is a fact that the Earth is continually contracting; hence matter tends towards the center from all sides. And now I say — be it understood consciously, not only fully conscious of the law of the conservation of force, but also fully conscious of facts known to every occultist — I say: Matter draws together more and more towards a center — and the strange thing is that in that center matter disappears.
Imagine that you have a piece of something which contracts more and more toward its center. In its center it disappears. It does not get pushed over to its other side, it absolutely disappears into nothing in its own central point! So that you can imagine to yourselves that, as the material parts contract toward the center, the whole of the Earth will some day disappear in that central point. But this is not all: in the same measure in which it disappears in the central point, it reappears again in the circumference. Out there in space it is coming back again. At one point in space matter disappears, and emerges again at another. Out there it is coming forth anew. The substance disappears in one place and from outside it returns again. But it returns in such a way that it brings back with it all that the beings who have worked on the planets have imprinted on its substance — naturally not in its present form, but in a form which this transformation has given to it. In this way you see the Cathedral of Cologne returning from the other side, its material particles having disappeared in the center. Nothing, absolutely nothing, of that which has been accomplished on a planet is ever lost, it all comes back again from the other side.
That which happened in the beginnings of our evolution, before the Saturn development, we must place outside, beyond the Zodiac. Primeval wisdom called it the Crystal Heaven, and in that Crystal Heaven were deposed all the deeds of the beings of a former evolution. They formed, so to speak, the foundation on which the new  beings began to create.
As we said before, all this is extremely difficult for the modern mind to understand, because it is in the habit of considering matter only, and because it is not in the habit of conceiving that outside of three-dimensional space matter can disappear and reappear at another place after it has passed through other dimensions. You cannot grasp this so long as your ideas remain in the space of three dimensions, for this goes beyond the three dimensions. Therefore it cannot be seen until it returns again from the other side into the space of three dimensions. In the meantime, it is in other dimensions.
It is a thing which we have to grasp; for the conditions of our world's origin have manifold connections, and something which is to be found in some one place may often have a complicated connection with something else which is in quite a different place outside three-dimensional space.
We have said that our planetary formation began with ancient Saturn, and it really did begin then. It then advanced to Jupiter. When the whole creation of Jupiter began, all the beings in the surrounding space also took part in it, as you know. But just as all the beings who are active within the whole expanse of our planetary system are developing further, so also are the beings outside our system, those who are sending in their influence from surrounding spaces. As some of the surrounding beings withdrew, so did also some of the beings who were outside in universal spaces; some of these also withdrew; and as Jupiter contracted, something was also withdrawn by the beings who retired, something which had nothing to do with our evolution at all, but which along with the withdrawing beings formed first Uranus, and then Neptune during the Mars development. The names of Uranus and Neptune were, of course, not chosen to suit the subjects in the way the ancients chose names — although in the name Uranus some meaning still is left; it was given when people still had some feeling for the meaning of names; therefore, all that lies outside our circle was generically called Uranus.
Thus we see that the two planets which our astronomers of the present day consider as having the same significance as the other planets stand on a totally different footing, and fundamentally speaking have nothing to do with the creation of our world; they represent those worlds which have come into existence because beings who, during the Saturn period, still had something to do with us, have withdrawn and have found their places of habitation outside our world. We shall gather other facts from this, for instance, that those planets have retrograding moons, and so on.
Thus we have sketched the origin of our solar system and have asked ourselves: What position has man toward those beings of the higher hierarchies who, fundamentally speaking, were his human forefathers? We can begin with the highest — the Seraphim, the Cherubim, the Thrones — and in describing them, get a good idea of man. If we could rise beyond the Seraphim, we should get into the realm of the Divine Trinity. What is it then that the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones have in particular, that is different from all the other beings in the world? They have what is called ‘the direct sight of God.’ That which man has to seek for slowly and gradually, throughout his development, is theirs from the beginning of all time. We men say that we must start from our modern standpoint to acquire ever greater powers of knowledge, of will, etc.; thus we shall rise ever nearer and nearer to the Godhead; Divinity will become ever more present to us. We say to ourselves: We are developing upward, toward something which is still veiled from us, toward the Godhead. This is the difference between the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones and men: that since the beginning of our development these highest beings have enjoyed the direct sight of the Godhead, have been in the near presence of the Divine Trinity. That whereunto men have to evolve has been theirs from the very beginning.
Thus it is immensely important for us to know that these beings came into existence seeing God; that as they live, so also they are in the sight of God.
All they do, all they achieve, they do through the vision they have of God, God does it through them. They could not do otherwise, it would be impossible for them to act otherwise than they do; for the sight of God has such power, such an influence upon them, that with a direct certainty, with immediate impulse, they put into action all that they receive from the Godhead. Anything like deliberation, judgment, consideration does not exist in the sphere of those beings. For them, there only exists the sight of the commands of the Godhead, the reception of the immediate impulse to put into action that which they have seen. And they also behold the Godhead in its original true form; they see the Godhead as it is. But they only see themselves as those who fulfill the will and the wisdom of God. These are the conditions of the highest hierarchies.
When we descend to the next hierarchy, to those beings whom we call the Spirits of Wisdom, of Motion, and of Form, we have to say that they have not such direct vision of the Godhead, they do not see God in His immediate aspect as He is, but in His revelations in the way He — if I may express it so — reveals Himself through His countenance. Certainly it is unmistakable for them that it is the Godhead; they feel the immediate impulse to follow the revelations of the Godhead, just as with the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones. The impulse is not so strong, but it still is a direct one. It would be impossible for the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones to say that they would not put into action that which they see prescribed for them, so to speak, by the Godhead; that would be unthinkable because of their nearness to the Godhead. But it would also be in a certain way quite impossible for those Spirits of Wisdom, of Motion, and of Form to undertake that which the Godhead Itself did not want them to undertake.
Therefore, if development was to progress, something quite particular had to come into action. We now touch on a point which is always difficult for men to understand, even for those who have advanced to a certain degree of the Mystery-Wisdom. In the ancient Mysteries they tried to make it comprehensible in the following way: At a certain stage of initiation into the ancient Mysteries, the neophyte was led by hostile powers, who had a cruel and horrible appearance, and who also enacted cruel and horrible deeds in the sight of the neophyte. Those who performed these deeds were no other than masked priests, masked sages. To bring about the necessary temptations and ordeals, priests had to disguise themselves in devilish shapes, as terrible beings who performed the most terrific and the most abominable deeds which the mind of man could ever imagine. What did this mean? To show to the neophyte how far development could err from the right path, the priest himself, under the guise of the evil-doer, had to represent that evil before his eyes. He had to have the illusion that evil itself stood before him, and only when the evil was unmasked did he see the truth; then the illusion was taken away, and he knew he had had to do with a trial. To make him strong, to arm him against evil, it was represented to him in its most terrific aspect, represented by the wise priests themselves, who certainly did not err in truth. It was only a reflection of that which had really taken place within the cosmic development.
In the time between the Jupiter and the Mars development — if I dare express myself in trivial words — a number of beings from the sphere of the Mights or Spirits of Motion were detached; they were placed in such a manner within the course of evolution that, instead of helping it onward, they had to put hindrance in its way. Thus the deeds of — if I may coin the word — ‘adversely commanded’ Mights were thrown athwart the course of evolution. For the ruling world-powers of the  hierarchies said to themselves: ‘Never could that arise which has to arise if the way were always smooth. Greater things must take place.’ Imagine that you have a car to push. You develop your strength by pushing it. If heavy ballast is put into the car it will be heavier to push, but you would develop greater strength. Suppose the Godhead had let the world's evolution remain as it was: up to the time just after the Jupiter evolution, men could have certainly developed very well; but humanity could have become still stronger if hindrance had been in its way. For the good of humanity, certain Mights or Spirits of Motion had to receive adverse commands. These were not evil at first: one need not consider them as evil powers — one might even say they sacrificed themselves by putting obstacles into the way of development. Therefore these Mights may be called the gods of hindrance, of impediment, in the widest sense of the word. They are the gods of the impediments and hindrances placed in the way, on the high-road of development. And from that moment, the possibility was given for all that was achieved in the future. These ‘adversely commanded’ Mights were not yet evil in themselves; on the contrary, they were the great promoters of development, promoting it through the storms they produced — but they were the breeders of evil; for out of the storms they produced, evil gradually arose.
Naturally, the path of development of these ‘adversely commanded’ Mights shaped itself quite differently from that of their brothers; their action was quite different, and the result was that, during the Moon development, they became the tempters, the seducers, of those beings we call Angels. The Angels were passing through their human stage during the Moon development. There were Angel-men on the Moon who, so to speak, looked at the way the hindrances acted on development, and who said to themselves: ‘We can now put ourselves in the way of conquering the hindrances, we can plunge into the whole stream of the Moon's evolution — but we prefer to pass it by, we do not want to plunge into it, we want to remain above with the good gods.’ These Angels tore themselves away, at a certain moment of the Moon's development, from the Mights who were throwing hindering influence down into the Moon evolution. But there were other Angels who said to themselves: ‘We will not follow our brothers, for if we follow them, development would turn back, nothing new would be embodied in it.’ Just because of the existence of these hindering influences, something new was infused into evolution, from the time of the Moon onward. Those beings who said to themselves: ‘I shall have nothing to do with that which is going on down there, I shall stay with the Mights who do not wish to be tainted by anything low,’ these withdrew from the mass of the Moon and became part of the followers of all that is connected with the Sun. They would not have anything to do with what was proceeding on the forsaken Moon, when all the hindering powers held sway. But the other beings, who plunged down into it, had now to take into their bodily nature (which they received on the Moon) all the hindering influences that existed there. They had to harden themselves more, as it were, than would otherwise have been the case. Their bodily sheaths became denser than they would otherwise have been. In their bodies were implanted the consequences of the deeds of the Mights, but these deeds were well rooted in the divine plan of the world — we must keep that well in mind. A further result of this was, that as the Moon development passed on into that of the Earth, the whole process was repeated, and those beings who had plunged into the full tide of the Moon's development remained behind those who would have nothing to do with it — and others remained still further back, and were attracted by the retrograding development. The result of all this was that during the Earth evolution Angel-men existed who were advanced — and others who were retrograde.
The advanced Angel-men approached the men of the Earth during the time when, in Lemuria, they were ripe to receive the germ of the human ‘I’ and gave them the choice, as it were, to rise into the spiritual worlds, then, and not to have anything further to do with that which since the time of the Moon had mingled with the course of the world's development. The beings who had stayed behind, whom we call the Luciferic beings, came into touch with the human astral body — they could not approach the ‘I’ — and grafted into that astral body all the results of the fight in heaven. While to the Mights was assigned the fight in heaven — for they were created Gods of Hindrance — the consequences of their deeds now slipped into the human astral body, and there signified something else: they signified the possibility of error and the possibility of evil. Man had now been given the possibility of error and of evil, with the object that he should also have the possibility of rising above evil and error, through his own strength.
Now consider that such beings as the Mights, belonging to the second threefold hierarchy, could not have had the power to become evil of their own free will; they had to be ‘adversely commanded;’ and it was the beings of the third threefold  hierarchy, and only those who stand nearest to man, the Angels, who first had it in their power to follow, or not to follow, the hindering powers. Those who did not follow we always find represented in the pictures which illustrate the victories fought out in heaven. They express what happened during the Moon development, when Man had progressed as far as the organization of his astral body, that is to the human-animal stage. Then those Angel beings who, so to speak, remained good tore themselves away from the course of the Moon development; they escaped from what was going on down there on the Moon. And this picture is represented to the soul of man in different ways. It was originally represented in the fight of Michael with the dragon. You see it also in the symbol of the Bull of Mithra, where it is specially clearly expressed. It is, of course, not meant that in doing this these Angel beings avoided their duty, but they were put forth as an ideal for the future. ‘These beings’ — it was said — ‘preferred to rise into the spiritual worlds, whereas you have descended. Other beings came down with you, those who followed the powers of  hindrance. You must now work upon that which you have absorbed in this descent, and carry it up again into the spiritual world; when you rise again you must become a Michael, a conqueror of the Bull.’ For every symbol of this kind is used in a twofold sense.
Thus we see that because those ‘Mights’ were given certain orders, men first received the possibility of reaching their goal by their own strength, a thing which even the highest Seraphim cannot do of themselves. This is very essential. The Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones cannot do otherwise than follow the immediate impulses given them by the Godhead. The Dominions of the second threefold hierarchy, too, cannot do otherwise. A certain number of the Mights were ordered to oppose, so that those Mights also, who as it were threw themselves into the way of development, could not do otherwise than follow the orders of the Godhead. In what is called the ‘origin of evil’ they could but perform the will of the Godhead, who by means of evil wishes to develop more powerful good.
Now let us descend to those beings we call the Powers, or Spirits of Form. They also could not have come to this of themselves. They could not have grown wicked of themselves, nor could the Spirits of Personality, nor could the Spirits of Fire. For, when these were men on the Sun, the Mights had not yet been ordered to oppose, there was as yet no possibility of becoming wicked. The first who had the possibility of becoming evil were the Angels, for this could only happen after the development of the Moon. There, from the Sun to the Moon, the Fight in Heaven took place. A part of the Angels avoided this possibility: they would not be seduced by the forces which had to introduce hindrances; they held to the way of the old nature. Thus, as far down as the Angels, or part of them, we have  beings who are absolutely unable to do otherwise than follow the divine will. It is essential to remember this.
We now come to two categories of beings. First those Angels who fling themselves into that which the Mights produced during the Fight in Heaven; these are beings who on account of their later deeds we call Luciferic. These beings became united to the human astral bodies during the Earth evolution and gave to men the possibility of evil, and also the possibility of developing through their own free power; so that in the whole sequence of hierarchies we have only men, and some of the Angels, who have the possibility of freedom. In the midst of the ranks of the Angels the possibility of freedom begins, but it is first fully developed in men. When man entered the Earth, he had at the beginning to be assailed by the power of the Luciferic Spirits; they penetrated the human astral body with their force. The ‘I’ was therefore attracted toward those forces, so that during the Lemurian and Atlantean evolutions, and even later, we have the ‘I’ as in a cloud, as sheathed in a cloud, which was produced by the assaults of Lucifer. Man was saved from being overpowered by these forces which penetrated him, only because he was overshadowed by earlier beings, because Angels who had remained above, and also Archangels, came down from the spirit world, incarnated into special individuals and guided men. And this continued up to the time when something quite particular took place: when a being, whose existence up to then had always been united to the existence of the Sun, when a being had progressed so far as to be able to penetrate not only the physical, etheric, and astral bodies of men, as former exalted beings had done, but to penetrate into man even as far as his ego.
You remember how I described that in former times higher beings descended and ensouled the human physical, etheric, and astral bodies. Now at a special time an individual arose who was chosen to receive into him the highest being — a being who was at first united to our Sun existence, but who now entered into and worked inspiringly in all the powers of this individual's ego.
The ‘I’ expresses itself through the blood. Just as the material substance of blood is the expression of the ‘I’, so the warmth or fire of the blood, which is the remnant of the Saturn fire, is the expression of the ego in the elements. This being had to find expression physically in a twofold way — first through fire. It proclaimed itself to Moses through fire in the burning bush and in the thunder and lightning on Sinai. For it is the same being who later was able to penetrate into the human ‘I’ who spoke to Moses in the burning bush and in the thunder and lightning on Sinai. This being prepared its advent, and appeared in a body in which blood flowed — in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Through this, a Sun-Being entered into an earthly individuality. Because the human ego will be filled ever more and more by the force which then entered into it, it will become ever more and more capable of overcoming by its own power the influences which can pull it down. For the being who could penetrate into the ego of man  is of a different nature from those other beings who formerly descended to Earth and ensouled physical, etheric, and astral bodies. Let us take the ancient holy rishis. In their etheric body there was, as we have seen, the spirit of a high  being; they had inherited that etheric body from great Atlantean forefathers in whom that exalted being had lived. It was passed over to them. They could not follow at all with their ego and their astral body the things which their etheric body expressed in the moments of inspiration. And so it happened from epoch to epoch. Men were inspired; it was always as if a power was in them, something that took strong possession of them. From what man was capable of in himself — he was withdrawn, in order to become better. He was inspired by a better being. This was the case with all founders of religions. They were ensouled by a being who was still high above the Fight in Heaven, so that they were not left completely to themselves.
In the Christ there appeared a being of a quite different nature, who did nothing, nothing at all, to force people to come to Him. And this is essential! If you take the whole manner in which Christianity was propagated you will find a living proof that the Christ during His life did nothing of what was done later for the propagation of Christianity. Look at the founders of religion of the ancient times! They are the great  teachers of humanity: they taught from a certain period in our development, and their teaching acted on men in an overwhelming way. Look at the Christ! Does He, fundamentally speaking, work through His teaching? The man who thinks that His teaching is the most important part does not understand the Christ. The Christ did not in the first place act at all through His teaching, but through that which He did. And the greatest deed of the Christ was that which ended with death, was His Death. This is the essential point, that the Christ acted though a deed, and when this deed spread through the world, He was not any more physically present. This is the great difference between the Christ and the other great founders of religions. This difference is not at all understood as yet, but is essential. You can follow all the teachings of Christianity, all that is preached as Christianity, and you can find it all in other religious systems. This cannot be denied. You can say: ‘All the essential part of Christian teaching is included in other teachings.’ But has Christianity been operative in the contents of its teaching? He who at first did what was most essential toward spreading the essence of Christianity, did he rely on its teaching? Look at the Apostle Paul! Was he transformed from a Saul to a Paul by what is written in the Gospels? He persecuted the followers of Christ Jesus. He persecuted them until He who died on the Cross appeared to him from the clouds, until he, Paul, had his own personal occult experience of the fact that Christ lived. It was the effect of that death, the result of that deed, which gave the impulse to Paul — this was the cause of it all. Other religious systems act through their teachings, and their teachings are the same as in Christianity — but the essential thing in Christianity is not the teaching, but what happened, the deed. And this deed is such that it does not act upon man except when man makes up his mind to let it act upon him, that is, when it can be joined to the absolutely free character of his ego. For it is not sufficient that the Christ should be present in the man's astral body: He must be present in his ego if He is to be really understood. And the ego must decide in complete freedom, voluntarily, to receive the Christ. This it is with which we are concerned, this is the point. Just because of this, the human ego, when it unites with the Christ, receives into itself a reality, a divine force which is not a mere teaching. Therefore it can be asserted a hundred times that the teachings of Christianity are to be found in other religions — but this is not the question:  the fact is that the essential thing in Christianity is the deed which can become one's own possession only through free will, through a voluntary ascent into the higher worlds. Man takes the Christ-force into himself, because he voluntarily receives it, and no one can receive it who does not do so voluntarily. This has only been made possible for man because he has become human upon Earth, because he was called to grow into man on Earth.
The fallen Angels who have spread over the Earth as Lucifer are in a different position. These ought really to have become men on the Moon; they have remained behind in their development; hence they can enter the astral body but not the ego. They are in a peculiar position, a position which we can only describe graphically, even if it appears somewhat pedantic.
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Let us suppose, leaving aside the physical and etheric body, that the astral body of man during the Lemurian development was represented by the circle A-B-C, and the ego was the circle enclosed (a) in that astral body. The ego gradually entered the astral body. What happens now? During the Lemurian development the Luciferic forces slip on all sides into the man's astral body and penetrate him with their activities, which find expression in his lower passions. That through which he succumbs to error and evil is rooted in his astral body; the Luciferic spirits have implanted this into him. (If they had not done this he would never have had the possibility of error and evil, he would have been lifted up to the place whence he receives his ego, untouched by all hindering influences.) So it goes on, but the great leaders protect humanity as far as it is necessary so that it should not sink too low.
Now comes the Advent of the Christ. Let us take a man who has voluntarily received the Christ. Christianity is only at its beginning. But let us take the ideal: the man's  ego has voluntarily, with complete free will, allowed the Christ's force to flow into him. When the ego has progressed so far that it has filled itself with the Christ, then this Christ-force irradiates the astral body also. In that same astral body into which the Luciferic powers had formerly implanted their deeds  the Christ power is now radiating from within outward. What happens in the future? Because we have overcome with the help of Christ, and only with His help, all those human qualities which come from Lucifer, we also, as men, gradually release the Luciferic powers; and a time will come when the Luciferic powers — who during the Moon development had to sink downward into a certain lower evolution for the sake of human freedom, and who had not themselves the opportunity of experiencing the Christ-force upon Earth — these Luciferic powers will experience the Christ-force through man, and through him they will be released. Man will save Lucifer, when he takes the Christ-force into himself in the necessary way. And because of this, man will again grow stronger than he otherwise would have been. For imagine: If man had not received the Luciferic powers, and then the Christ-force irradiating him, would not have encountered the hindrances of the Luciferic forces, and it would have been impossible for man to progress so far in wisdom, goodness, and in truth as he may do when he has to overcome these opposing forces.
Thus in man we have a member of the hierarchies who, as we see, is very distinct from the other members. We see that man's position is different from that of the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, the Spirits of Wisdom, of Motion, and of Form, and different too from the Spirits of Personality, from the Fire Spirits the Archangels, and from some of the Angels. He can say to himself, looking into the future: ‘I am called on to search in my own inmost depths for that which gives me the impulse for my actions — I do not receive it from gazing on the Godhead like the Seraphim, but from the innermost depth of my own being.’

The Christ is a God whose action is such that one is not absolutely forced to follow His Impulse; one follows it only when one understands it, and in freedom. He is, therefore, the God who never seeks to hinder the free development of the ego in this or that direction. The Christ says in the very highest sense: ‘You will know the Truth and the Truth will make you free.’
And those beings of the next hierarchy who had the possibility of doing evil, the Luciferic beings, these will again be released, liberated, by the power of man.
We therefore see, my dear friends, how in fact world development does not simply repeat itself, but that new things enter. For a human stage such as is lived by men at present was never met with before, not with the Angels, nor the Archangels, nor the Spirit of Personality. Man had a completely new mission to fulfill in the world, the mission we have just characterized. For the sake of this mission he has descended into the world of the Earth. And the Christ came into the world as a free helper for him, not as a God acting from above, but as a first-born among many.
Thus at last we understand all the dignity and all the importance of Man as a member of our  hierarchies, and when we glance upward to all the nobility and the glory of the higher hierarchies we say to ourselves: Be they ever so great, so wise, so good that they never err from the right path, yet the great mission of man is to bring freedom into the world, and with freedom firstly that which one calls love in the true sense of the word. For love without freedom is impossible. A being who blindly follows an impulse, just follows it; but for a being who can also act otherwise, there exists but one force which he could follow, and that is love. Freedom and love are two poles which belong to each other. If love is to enter into our cosmos, it can happen only through freedom — that means, only through Lucifer and those who conquer him — and at the same time through the Savior of men, through the Christ. Therefore the Earth is the Cosmos of Freedom and Love — and therefore the essential thing is that we, without tempting man away from humility, must learn to reckon the hierarchies as they ever have been reckoned in Western esotericism. Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones:  these follow the direct impulse of the Godhead, having the sight of God. The Spirits of Wisdom, of Motion, and of Form (Dominions, Mights, and Powers):  these are as yet so bound to the higher powers that they have to be given ‘adverse commands’ in order that evolution should have the possibility of proceeding further. The Archangels and the Spirits of Personality also cannot fail — cannot, through their own free will, sink into evil. Therefore, the spirits of the hierarchies next above man were called Messengers and Arch-Messengers, to show that they did not fulfill their own tasks but the tasks of those who stand immediately above them. But in men a hierarchy is maturing which will fulfill its own tasks.
Through the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan developments man will be always maturing toward  accomplishment from out his own impulses. Even if today he is not yet so far advanced, he will attain to it in time.
Which are the  hierarchies? We begin: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones; the Spirits of Wisdom, who exercise their dominion only so far as they act in the direction of the impulses they receive from the gods; then the Mights or Spirits of Motion, who have their power only because they receive it from above; it is the same with the Spirits of Form. Were they to become evil, they could become so only according to the decision of Divinity. We come then to the Spirits of Personality, to the Arch-Messengers, and Messengers, and have now descended almost as far as to men. And what can be said of Man if we place him in the ranks of the hierarchies? After the Archangels and Angels, the Arch-Messengers and Messengers, we will have to rank the Spirits of Freedom or the Spirits of Love — for this, beginning from above, is the tenth of the hierarchies, which although in process of development, yet belongs to the hierarchies.
In the universe we have not to do with repetitions: each time that a cycle is passed, something new is added to the world's evolution. And to introduce the new element is always the mission of that Hierarchy which is at its human stage of development.
In these lectures we have endeavored to prove the significance of Man through the significance of our Cosmos; we have, to a certain degree at least, questioned ourselves today as to the spiritual significance of man, and we have endeavored to explain man — this point in the center of the universe — in accordance with the teaching of the Mysteries, by explaining him, the point, from the circumference!
In doing this our knowledge gains reality; for it is most essential that all true spiritual knowledge should be a concrete true knowledge. This means that the knowledge gained through spiritual science should itself give a direct presentation of the cosmos and of the spiritual hierarchies.
We stand at the central point of the world. Everything around us loses significance for us, because we have to say: The external world of sense cannot solve the riddle for us. It is as if everything were to draw together to a center, and when this is done — then from the circumference, the solution of this world problem comes back to us in actual reality, just as is the case with matter itself, which is a reflection and symbol of the spiritual. It draws together in the center, disappears there, and then emerges again out of the circumference. This is a reality. And our knowledge is real when it thus stands before our eyes like the construction and the process of the whole cosmos. Then it is no speculation, no fancy: it is born out of the cosmos itself. This is the feeling we should develop. Wisdom must become an ideal for us, born out of the periphery of the cosmos and capable of filling us with great strength, with the strength that enables us to fulfill our own destiny and to achieve our own cosmic ideal. With this strength, we shall also be able to realize the human ideal that awaits us in the future.






Ex Deo Nascimur       In Christo Morimur       Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus

Source: http://wn.rsarchive.org/GA/GA0110/19090418p01.html

Monday, March 26, 2012

Evolution and the Cosmic Human Being: Adam Cadmon; Nirmana-Kaya; Dharma-Kaya

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The Spiritual Hierarchies and the Physical World. Lecture 9 of 10.
Rudolf Steiner, Düsseldorf, April 18, 1909:


It is only natural that after such an exposition as that of yesterday, numerous questions should arise, and that with regard to representation of such universal all-embracing truths about the cosmos, heard for the first time, some things should remain incomprehensible. I beg you always to remember that I have already said that here things explained are not the result of any speculation, or of any sort of artificial scheme, but are derived from real facts, which are called the facts of the Akashic Record; and it is only later that these facts can be gathered together into a sort of system. But one question which may arise in many minds must be answered today: the question as to the planets which have accomplished their task. In a certain way we traced yesterday the origin of the life of a planet up to its end, up to the time when it became a separate, visible planet. Now someone might affirm that some of these planets we see in the heavens did not originate from the time described yesterday, or are not now coming into being. We must clearly realize that a new epoch begins for a planet when it has reached that point which we described yesterday. Let us suppose we wished to follow the origin of a planet, not as it was with ancient Saturn when it alone was there, but as it was when the formation of our Earth took place. Ancient Saturn was then formed again, as a repetition; so that after the evolution of ancient Saturn, when ancient Sun and ancient Moon were all three finished, the evolution of the Earth first began in the form of a huge warmth or fire-body, on which was repeated all that had happened during the ancient Saturn evolution. Then came a time when, under the influence of the Zodiacal region called the Lion, the single planet Saturn (that which we call Saturn today) detached itself from that mighty self-revolving globe of fire, thus reaching its highest point. It was in this manner that the single planet Saturn originated.
Now, you must not picture to yourselves that the pacifying influence of the Lion brought the forward motion of Saturn to an end when that point of time was reached. No, only the inner movements which existed formerly were then stopped. Saturn had grown into a being which drew into it all that was formerly distributed in the circumference, and united it all within itself. All this happened though the influence of the Lion; but the large globe, from which this Saturn was detached, contracted and became a smaller globe. While this whole globe contracted inwardly and after the influence (from the Lion) had been able to work and the inward motions been brought to rest, Saturn retained to a certain degree the movement which it had originally received. Formerly Saturn used its own impulse for its movements, for it was necessary for it to continue the movement, to move on further as by a swimming motion. When that globe had withdrawn, it continued to move by itself, although the inward motion was stopped. And that self-movement, after it had received the first impulse, is the movement according to which Saturn is revolving today.
It happened in a similar way with Jupiter. For what had just been described happened when the Earth began its formation. Then differentiation in the globe took place when it began to contract inwardly. Then also occurred the killing of the single globes under the constellation of the Scorpion. They crowded on top of one another. Through this began for each their own inner life. After Jupiter, as a mighty living being, had been, so to speak, killed, there began within him the life of the single being belonging to him, and the whole globe, having contracted, now moved on, after having found by this means the impulse for movement within itself.
That which we have been considering today as the movements of Saturn, of Jupiter, etc. was a result, a consequence, which arose after the formative process — which I described yesterday — had come to an end.
Another difficulty seems to have arisen because I said that the second planet which detached itself from our Earth in the course of its evolution was Jupiter, the third Mars, whereas the sequence in time which I described was that the Saturn development came first, then the Sun development, and then the Moon's. But, this is completely justified; for with the planets of the present day we have to do with what took place as a repetition, during the fourth evolution of the Earth. When the first Saturn was formed, Saturn was there alone; during the Sun development (the second globe) the conditions were such that we have to speak of a Sun. But when after the Saturn development the Sun developments continued, the whole process of Saturn came to an end with the Sun, so that when we look backward at those first planetary developments of our Earth — the ancient Saturn, Sun, and Moon — we must realize that they were finished with once and for all. But when we speak of the Earth's development it is not so. Saturn first arises, then, by way of repetition — the Sun; but everything progresses further inwardly, it is not yet finished. Jupiter is left behind as a relic of the repetition of the Sun development. Then the Earth is a repetition of the Moon development, which — if we regard the whole of evolution — was then at an end. But as regards earthly evolution the Moon is not finished. Mars remains behind after this repetition.
Thus we see  that the planets of the present day which are visible to us in the heavens must be thought of as having originated during the time which we call the fourth period of the evolution of the Earth. These are the things over which we must ponder. It is impossible to touch on everything, when one speaks of the whole world.
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In speaking of Saturn, I spoke of a globe of fire or of a large fiery egg, and then of a revolving motion. And it was in fact originally a sort of ball or egg. While  that globe, which corresponds to the very first Saturn condition, is revolving, the following is gradually formed: it acquires a sort of girdle, which does not surround the whole egg, but which is there as a sort of broad band. And within that belt these single forms collect which are being formed all around.
This belt formation is a general cosmic law. This law — which rests on an accumulation in the form of an equator or belt — you can see exemplified in the cosmos, as far as your sight can reach, in the Milky Way, which owes its existence to that law. When you look at the Milky Way, stretching like an external belt around the heavens, with the stars shining sparsely in between, you must think of its being the result of that law which causes things to draw together into a belt as soon as a rotatory process begins. Our world system, as we have it, has really the form of a bean; it is not round, as is usually accepted, and the belt is drawn around as a distant equator.
You must also think of such a belt when a planet originates.
If — trivially speaking — one took an egg, desiring to make a diagram on it of these various conditions, one would have first to paint such a belt around it, with red if you like. One would not paint the whole egg red, but only just a belt. Along this belt those bodies assemble which were selected to form later a heavenly body. One would have to draw on it a point where all these were gathered together.
Thus you see that the configuration and the distribution of the stars as we see them in space is a result of the action of the spiritual beings or hierarchies. For when we speak of the contraction of large masses, we must realize that this does not happen of itself, but that it is brought about by the action of those beings of the higher hierarchies which we have described. And when we take a general view of all that has been described, we may say: When ancient Saturn was in formation, when all that mighty mass of fire out of which all our solar system has arisen organized itself into ancient Saturn, the Spirits of Personality were passing through their human stage of existence; during the Sun formation the Archangels or Spirits of Fire were passing through their human stage; during the Moon evolution, the Angels; and on the Earth, Man is passing through his human existence. But it must be realized that this Man had also taken part in all that happened before. What is called the physical body today had its first foundations during the very earliest Saturn formation. That physical body was not as yet interpenetrated by an etheric body or an astral body; but it was already so organized that after passing through all the transformations it experienced later, it could become the bearer of the spiritual Earth-man of today. Very slowly and gradually was this physical body organized during the ancient Saturn evolution, and while ancient Saturn itself was being formed  the different signs of the Zodiac slowly revolved, and the human body, member by member, took on its earliest form. When Saturn stood under the sign of the Lion the beginning of the heart was formed; the ribs or the thoracic cage were started while Saturn was under the sign of the Crab; the foundation of the symmetrical shape of man  — that is, the reason for his being symmetrically built on two sides — arose while Saturn was under the constellation of Gemini. Thus we follow piece by piece the formation of the human body, and when we look up to that part of the Zodiac where Aries the Ram is we can say: The upper part of our head originated when ancient Saturn stood under the sign of Aries; the foundation of our organ of speech, when Saturn stood under the sign of the Bull. And when you think of man distributed thus, you can see in the Zodiacal circle the creative forces for each of the human organs.
This was represented pictorially in the old Mysteries, and the Zodiac was drawn as you see it here on the ceiling of this hall. By chance — but there is no such thing as chance — we have met in a hall which is adorned above by the signs of the Zodiac. Formerly the Zodiac was not designed by depicting the animal form corresponding to each sign, but the different human members were drawn in the corresponding region of the heavens: for instance, for Aries a head; further on, for the Bull, the region of the throat; that which most of all expresses symmetry — the arms — for Gemini; the thoracic cage, for the Crab; the heart, for the Lion; and thus they came to the lower parts of the legs, for the Waterman; and to the feet, for Pisces. Think of such a Zodiacal circle as a man designed out there in the cosmos, then you have that which corresponds to the powers of the Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim, who created the first beginnings of the physical human body. This is the great Cosmic Man, the Man who is found in all the world myths and all the national legends or sagas, out of whom single individuals of the Earth are composed in the most varied forms. Think of the giant YMIR who is spread out in the great cosmos; microcosmic man is formed out of this giant. Up above is the macrocosmic man who is a creator, who, out there, comprises all that man has within him. Profound truth lies in the depths of such representations, truth which comes to light more or less imperfectly, according to the degrees of the clairvoyant power of the nations. It also shines through that wisdom which finds its outward expression in the old Testament. It shines in that wisdom which, as the old Hebrew Mystery-teaching, leads back to that Mystery-teaching which was the foundation of the Old Testament: to Adam Cadmon of the Kabbala. The macrocosmic Man is none other than the one we have now designed in the cosmos; only we must form our conceptions of him in the right way.
What I have now explained to you, and which culminated in the teaching of the macrocosmic man, is a teaching which in fact includes the deepest cosmic mysteries, and which in the future will gradually flow into the general education of humanity at large.
Today we are still far from understanding this teaching; and if anyone who is merely a scientist had listened to these lectures he would have surely held this audience for something other than an intelligent company of people. We are very far from understanding these things today. But we are now at the beginning of an epoch when the facts which are discovered in accordance with the fantastic theories of modern science will compel men to seek these truths of the great primeval wisdom. The mystery, for instance, of the process of conception, about which people speculate so erroneously today, will never be known until the teaching of the macrocosmic man regarding that same process is understood. Precisely that into which true mystery enters, and as a real mystery eludes the instruments of modern research, will receive illumination to the minutest detail. For how small, in relation to the cosmos, is the cell wherein fructification takes place! The mysteries of the great cosmos will alone solve that which takes place in the smallest cells; nothing else can solve the problems they contain. The investigations of external science in relation to this problem are not without use, they have a certain merit, but they are childish in comparison with the great mystery which is contained there, and which will only be solved when people realize that the answer to the happenings in a center is to be found in the great circumference. Hence, all teachers of the Mysteries said: If you want to understand the center, investigate the circumference, for it contains the key.
When you remember that each world globe retains its movement after it has, so to speak, come to a conclusion, when it is complete, you will also understand what must be called the karma of each of these globes.
From the moment when each of these planets has come of itself to an end, the beings which belong to it have to take part in its dissolution, in its disappearance from all connection with the world. Thus if we follow up the ancient Saturn evolution, we have an advancing process up to the fusion of the whole globe of warmth — or you might consider it a descending one, for it is a process of condensation. In the moment when Saturn begins to revolve — we are speaking of the first Saturn development — the Saturn globe is completed, all the conditions are accomplished with which it is concerned. The spirits who are assigned to it have to consider, at this moment of its dissolution, what has been built up during its formation, and that is karma. This cannot be escaped; things have to be dissolved again in the same way in which they were put together. The karma of the first half of evolution fulfills itself in the second half. The formation of worlds is the preparation of karma; the passing away of worlds, in the broadest sense of the word, is nothing else than pain under the action of karma, and again the wiping out of that same karma. As in big things, so it is also in small things, with every planet. For each planet mirrors faithfully the conditions of the great world. You can see the same process in a nation. Think of a nation rising in its youth, full of strength, of activity, of energy; think of this nation as producing in epoch after epoch the most varied elements of civilization and of culture. This has all to reach its highest point — but while all this is accumulating, the karma of the nation is also accumulating. Just as karma accrued during the Saturn development, and we have to take into consideration what had been brought about, so karma accrues to a nation during the time its civilization is being built up. This karma is at its highest point, at its strongest, when the nation has given birth to all the primeval, elemental forces.
Now, we have seen that guiding beings are everywhere. We have seen with the Earth how the higher spiritual beings — Angels, Archangels, Archai — descended, and at a time when humanity could not as yet help itself, they guided it until it reached a certain height. These are the spiritual beings of the hierarchies who had reached their maturity in earlier times; but when this height is reached, when those beings who had descended from the heights reach their goal, then other beings have to become the leaders and guides of the said nations. When nations have to rise in a certain way still higher than their highest point, leading personalities have to give themselves up of their own free will to become the bearers of higher spiritual beings; only then does it become possible to lead the nation a few stages beyond that which was originally planned for it. But in such cases one thing must happen: those who descend into the beings who have to lead the nation to a still higher point of civilization must take upon themselves all the karma which the nation has been accumulating. This is the important law as regards taking upon oneself the karma of nations and of races. From a definite point of time the guiding personalities have themselves to bear all the karma of those nations and races. That was the essential reason that such individualities as Hermes, for instance, had to take upon them their nation's karma which had accumulated up to then. On each planet, such things are the reflected images of great cosmic processes.
But we have reflected images which go further still. We have seen that the Thrones became Thrones only because from created beings they themselves became creators, that they were enabled to pass from a condition of taking to one of giving. The Thrones had once upon a time passed through their development in other world systems, and had progressed so far that they were able to let their own  substance stream out from them.
It is a higher grade of development to be able to give, to bring sacrifices, than merely to store up for oneself all that the cosmos gives. This is again mirrored in human life. What is this human development? Look backward in spirit to the Atlantean and Lemurian times, and then look forward! Man receives the physical body, the etheric and astral bodies and the ego; and then again the ego works back on the other members, transforming the astral body, the etheric and physical bodies, into Manas, Buddhi, and Atman, into Spirit Self, Spirit-Life, and Spirit-Man. Primeval wisdom has always taught that man transforms his astral body in such a way that this astral body consists at first partly of Manas and partly of the old astrality, but that later it becomes completely transformed, completely penetrated by the work and action of the ego. Let us take a man who has not yet reached that grade of development when the astral body is completely penetrated by the work of the ego; almost all men, with very few exceptions, are in that condition. That which man has already transformed goes with him through all eternity; that which he has not yet changed, in which his ego has had no part, must leave him, as a sort of astral shell, after he has passed through Kama-Loka; that shell dissolves in the astral world, not without its having brought about considerable mischief if as an astral body it had bad desires and evil passions. Thus we can say that the development of man consists in his leaving always less and less behind him in the astral world. Let us follow the process: the man dies; soon after death the etheric body is dissolved; and the extract of it remains; the man passes through Kama-Loka, and the untransformed shell detaches itself; that which has been reworked goes with man through all eternity, it is brought back into each new incarnation. The more perfect the man is the less there will be of those remnants left in the astral world; till at last he will have progressed so far that he leaves nothing of his astral body in Kama-Loka — so far that he can injure no living being on Earth through the remnants he leaves in Kama-Loka. Such a man has then the possibility of seeing into spiritual worlds. For it is not possible to reach this condition without having reached a certain degree of clairvoyance in the Astral. The whole astral body has then been spiritualized, it has become Spirit-Self, and the whole of it is taken with him by the man to the spiritual world. Formerly that which was bad was left behind; now the whole astral body can be taken with him into all futurity. And in the moment when the astral body is so far advanced that it is completely transformed, in that moment the whole of this new astral shape is impressed upon the etheric body, so that the etheric body becomes a counterpart of the astral body. The etheric body does not need to be as yet quite transformed, but that is impressed upon it which has been refashioned in the astral body. You see that we have here described a particularly exalted being, one who is eminently far advanced, because he has developed the whole of the Spirit-Self. This being is called Nirmana-Kaya in Eastern science; for his astral body, his astral Kaya, has reached the stage when it leaves no remnants in the astral world.
Let us now go further. Man can always develop further and further; at last he influences or transforms his etheric body, then his physical body. What happens when the etheric and the physical body are transformed so that they are ruled by the man? When the etheric body is thus changed, when man has not only ‘Spirit-Self’ in the astral body, but Buddhi or ‘Life-Spirit’ has also been gradually developed in his etheric body, and when this Life-Spirit or Buddhi impresses itself upon the physical body — then yet a further stage of development is reached.
Man then reaches the point when his etheric body also leaves nothing behind it, so that he retains this etheric body in the same shape through all time, the etheric body in which he has formed the Life-Spirit or Buddhi.
Through such transmutations man becomes more and more ruler over his astral and his etheric bodies. Such control enables him also to direct in a certain way his astral and etheric bodies. One who has not yet brought his astral body under the rule of his ego must certainly wait until he has come thus far; but the man who already is lord of his astral and etheric bodies has them at his free disposal. He can say: ‘Because with my “I” I have passed through so many incarnations which have taught me to transform my astral and etheric bodies, I am now enabled, when I have to return to Earth again, to form for myself out of astral and etheric substances an astral and an etheric body which will be equally perfect.’ He is also enabled to sacrifice his own astral and etheric bodies, to pass them on to others. You now see that there are individualities who, because they have become rulers of their astral and etheric bodies, are able to sacrifice these bodies, because they have learnt how to build them. If they wish to return to Earth again, they will themselves form them anew out of the existing material. The perfection to which they have attained they pass on to other personalities who have to perform certain tasks in the world. Thus personalities of later days have woven into them, organized into them, the astral and etheric bodies of these who lived in times of yore. You see that when this happens the personality of olden times did not only influence the time in which he lived, but that his influence works on also into the future.
Thus for instance Zarathustra, who was capable of governing his astral body, and who later passed it over to Hermes, could say to himself: ‘I live, but in the future I will not only work as I do now, as a person in the outer world, but, I will penetrate the astral body of the Egyptian Hermes, he in whom the Egyptian epoch of civilization has its beginning.’ Such a personality has a body, a Kaya, which does not only operate in the place and time when it lives but which acts into the future and gives law unto the future. Law for the future is called Dharma. Such a body is called Dharma-Kaya. These are names, expressions, which one often meets with in Eastern science. You have here the true explanation as it is always given in primeval wisdom.
Now, if we look back at the many things which have passed before our minds during these days, our souls might well put the question: What is that which up to now we have really called man? Man is a name given to a certain stage of development. We have found that the Spirits of Personality were men on Saturn; that even the Thrones must have been men once upon a time; we have learnt that man progresses further, and rises to higher beings; we have learnt to know the first stages of the ascent in the Angels, Archangels, etc.; we have learnt to know in them  beings who are sacrificing something; we have seen the beginning of the sacrifice which is found at its highest point in the Thrones. The first gleam of creative activity we have seen in those who are the leaders of nations and races, who know how to influence their own bodies in such a way that they can let some of their influence stream out. As the Thrones let their essence flow out, so in another way the Nirmana-Kayas let their own bodies flow out into the future, for the sake of future individualities, who could not have reached such a far point in their evolution if they had not received, embodied into them, what the former beings gave out for them.
Thus we build up our idea of evolution from the point when it begins up to the time when one can give out, can create. The idea of the creator rises before our spiritual sight, and we say to ourselves: Each separate being develops from the creature to the creator. The Archangels developed to the human stage on ancient Sun, the Spirits of Personality on ancient Saturn, the Angels on ancient Moon, we men, upon the Earth; and so it will continue always, in all times, Beings will be developing into men. Does all that continue endlessly? Is it really only a succession of circles, in which is repeated on the Sun that which previously took place on Saturn, only that a number of beings are added to the former ones with each circle? Is it really all, that out of originally helpless creatures beings should ever be developing into those who can sacrifice themselves? This is not at all the case! But the great question arises: Is the humanity which was experienced on Saturn by the Spirits of Personality, the humanity experienced on the Sun by the Archangels, and that experienced by the Angels on Mars, are these all the same kind of humanity as that which we are now experiencing upon Earth? When we consider the nature of the Angels, for instance, do we see in them the image of what we shall be in our next Jupiter epoch? Do we see in the Spirits of  Fire only the image of those beings we shall ourselves be in Venus? Can it really be said with reason that, in reaching to higher stages in the evolution of the world, and rising even into the hierarchies, we shall develop only into  beings which exist already? Has our path of evolution been trod already by others? These are the great questions which each of you may ask who has let these lectures act impartially upon his soul. Have we only to do with a humanity which is externally repeated in the same way, so that we are now as the Spirits of Personality were on the Saturn, the Fire Spirits or Archangels on the Sun, the Angels on the Moon? For us this might be important, but for the higher Gods it would only be a multiplication of their own creations, and they would not have achieved any special progress. But there is another question: Will men, just because they have become men upon the Earth, be enabled some day perhaps  to develop into beings capable of something of which the Angels are incapable, something of which also the Archangels and the Spirits of Personality are incapable? Has the whole of Creation learnt something through having produced men after the Archangels, and after the Angels? Has Creation made progress through that? Is it possible that man, because he was fitted to descend deeper, will, therefore, have gained the possibility, the right, to rise still higher? We ask ourselves this as a sort of consequential question. The remainder of our considerations must be dedicated to this question: What is the whole significance and importance of man in the cosmos and his relation to the  hierarchies? What will man become in the succeeding stages of the  hierarchies?


Sunday, March 25, 2012

"One Stupendous and Harmonious Whole": The Spiritual Hierarchies, the Zodiac, and the Human Being

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The Spiritual Hierarchies and the Physical World. Lecture 8 of 10.
Rudolf Steiner, Düsseldorf, April 17, 1909:


Today we have reached a point in our description of the higher beings and their relations to our world and solar system which, to the men of the present day who have received their ideas about the world from ordinary popular science, would seem the most impossible of all; for we shall have to touch on things of which the modern scientist can have no idea. This is naturally not the result of any feeing of opposition; but if one is firmly grounded in occultism one can survey from this standpoint the facts of modern science. In what has been said in these lectures you will nowhere find anything which contradicts the facts of modern science, but naturally the harmony is not always easy to establish. But if you have the patience to follow it all, you will gradually see how all the separate facts combine to form one stupendous and harmonious whole.
Much that has been mentioned in these lectures has been also demonstrated from different standpoints, in lectures held in Stuttgart and Leipzig; and if you take those lectures and compare them superficially with each other, you may indeed find some contradiction between this or that expression. This happens only because it is my task to speak in these lectures not of speculative theories but about the facts of clairvoyant consciousness, and because facts appear in a different way when they are considered from one side or from another. To use a comparison: a tree you are painting from one side will appear different when you paint it from the other side, yet it will still be the same tree. It is the same with descriptions of spiritual facts, when light is turned on them from different sides. Certainly, if one starts with one or two ideas only, and builds a whole system upon them, it is easy to form an abstract system; but we are working from below upward, and the unity of the whole will first be revealed in the crown. With each statement you must reflect in what sense, and in what direction it has been made.
When it is said, for instance, in a popular work, that the air and gas on Jupiter are as thick as tar or honey, and that from the point of view of spiritual science this is a grotesque idea — the turn of phrase which I used was intended to convey its grotesqueness — one can from the standpoint of the science of the present day certainly answer: Do you not know that modern physics can produce air of such thick condition that it will be as thick as tar or honey? Certainly, this is a self-understood fact in science; but this is not the point, for these studies do not move along these lines. That which science calls air can certainly be thickened to that extent; but for the observations of spiritual science it is nothing more nor less than that other fact, that water can be made to become as hard as a stone — to become ice. Ice is certainly water, but the point is whether one considers the things in their living functions or in the lifeless, inanimate sense of modern science. It is self-understood that ice is water; but if someone who is accustomed to have his mill turned by water throughout the whole year was advised to move it by the means of ice, what would he say? Thus, we have not to do with the abstract idea that ice is water, but what we have to do is to comprehend the universe in its activity. Here quite different standpoints have to govern as to what one entertains in the abstract about purely material metamorphoses in relation to density. Just as one cannot move a mill by means of ice, one also cannot inhale air which is as thick as honey. This is what we have to consider in the study of spiritual science. For we do not look on the world globes in the way they are considered today as lumps of matter of different sizes moving about out there in universal space; and in which the modern astronomical mythology sees only material globes. We consider them in their living soul and spirit existence, in other words, we consider them in their completeness. Thus in this completeness we have to consider that which we call, in the spiritual scientific sense, the origin of each single globe.
As an example of the origin of a heavenly body, we shall choose that ancient Saturn from which, we know, our evolution started. I have already told you that ancient Saturn was, fundamentally speaking, as large as the whole of our solar system. We must imagine ancient Saturn not merely as a material globe, for we know that it had nothing as yet of the three conditions of matter which are called today solid, liquid, and gaseous, but that it consisted only of warmth or fire. And now let us imagine that this primeval globe of warmth is the circle a, b, c, d.
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You remember that we said: when the Saturn globe had evolved to the Sun globe, there distinctly appear, encircling it, those beings who form the Animal Circle, or Zodiac, but I indicated at the time that, even though they did not surround it so compactly as they did in the Sun existence, they were already there on ancient Saturn. Thus, around ancient Saturn we must think of the Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim wielding their power, and they are to us, in the spiritual sense, the Zodiacal Circle. Thus the line A-B-C-D represents for us the Zodiacal Circle, in a spiritual sense.
You will ask how this agrees with the modern definition of the Zodiac. We shall see that it agrees with it completely. But you must represent it to yourselves as follows. Imagine that you could place yourself on some definite spot of that ancient Saturn globe. If you now lift your hand and point upward with your finger, over that place is the region of certain Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim. If you move on, and point to some other place, it will be another region of other Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim; for these three groups of beings form a circle around ancient Saturn. Suppose that you wanted to indicate the direction in which certain Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim are to be found. They are not all alike; but each one is very distinctly different from the other, they are all individualized, so that one indicates different beings when one points with one's finger to different places. And to be able to indicate the right Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim one marks the spot by a certain constellation of stars. This is then a mark or sign. In this direction one would say are the Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim called Gemini, in another those called Leo, and so on. These are signs to show the direction in which certain beings are. We must consider those separate constellations as such signs. They are something more, but we must first be clear that when we speak of the Animal Circle or Zodiac, we have to do with spiritual beings.
The Thrones were the first to exercise their activity upon that fire formation which was ancient Saturn. The Thrones had progressed so far in their development that they could let their own substance stream out. They let their warmth substance percolate, as it were, into that Saturn mass. Through this, those forms originated around it which we have called, somewhat grotesquely, eggs — but they really had that shape.
You may now ask: How is it really with that substance? Did warmth substance exist from the beginning? What was there already, we can only describe as a kind of neutral universal fire, which is, fundamentally speaking, one with universal space, so that I might as well say: formerly there was only the space which had been separated off, and then onto its surface percolated that which can be called the warmth substance of ancient Saturn. In the moment when this warmth substance was infused into Saturn, the beings with which we are concerned came into action on both sides. We have shown that in the interior of Saturn we find the Exusiai, or Powers, or Spirits of Form; the Dynamis, or Spirits of Motion, or Mights; and the Kyriotetes, or Dominions, or Spirits of Wisdom. These are active in the interior; from outside, the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones are active; and the result is a conjoint action of the beings inside and outside Saturn. It was said in an earlier lecture that we can distinguish the inner soul's fire, which is felt as an inner comfortable warmth, from the outwardly perceptible fire. This neutral warmth is really within the egg forms. Opposed to it we find the soul warmth, spread around it, radiating into it from outside, but as if holding itself back. It is as if the soul's warmth radiated from outside, but held itself back from the neutral fire within. The really perceptible warmth is pushed back from within. So that the egg of warmth which is drawn in Diagram I is really shut in between two currents: an external (x) stream of soul-warmth, and a stream of inner (y) warmth, which could be perceived by external senses. Only that which is in the interior is warmth, physically perceptible. And now through the action of the inner and outer warmth, each of these Saturn eggs begins to rotate. Each of them circles round, and comes in turn under the influence of each of the Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim, which are out in space. And now something very strange happens.
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Each egg in its wanderings comes back to the point where it was first formed. When it reaches this point it remains stationary, it cannot go any further. Each egg has been formed on some definite spot, then wanders round the circle and is stopped when it returns to the place where it has been created.
The production of those eggs of warmth lasts, however, only up to a certain time; it then ceases and no more eggs are formed. Now when all those eggs are stopped at a certain place, they fall over each other. When they have covered each other up, they form, so to speak, one single egg. Thus on the point where the eggs were originally created, they come to rest. And, naturally, from the moment when no new ones are formed any more, they all meet and in the end, cover each other. Thus a globe is formed. This globe is naturally formed only by degrees. It is the densest part of the fire substance, and is that which in a narrower sense is now called Saturn (for it stands on the spot where the Saturn of today is). And as in a certain sense everything is a reflection, the whole process has been repeated in the origin of our own Earth. Even the Saturn of today originated in such a way that it was actually stopped at a certain place — not exactly at the spot where the ancient Saturn was stopped, because for certain reasons things always shift a little, but the process of formation of the present-day Saturn is the same. Thus a small Saturn globe is born from the large all-embracing one, through the joint action of the universal powers who belong to the hierarchies.
Now let us consider that point at which all those globes came to a standstill on primeval Saturn. About this the sages of primeval wisdom taught the following: On ancient Saturn the first foundation of the human physical body was formed. That first foundation was really formed of warmth, but in that body of warmth were already contained the germs of all the future organs. At the point where the first movements which had been produced were brought to a stop was formed the germ of that organ of the human body which, when its movements were adjusted, later changed the whole mechanism of the human body from rest to movement — this is the heart. Here, from the first stimulation to movement, arose the beginning of the heart; but this could only originate because at that same point the movement was brought to a standstill. Through this, the heart is that organ by which, when it ceases to beat, the whole physical body and its functions are brought to rest.
Each member of the human body was given a distinct name in ancient speech. The heart was called the Lion within the body. Primeval wisdom said: to which direction of the Zodiac must one point, if one wishes to indicate the region out of which were laid the first foundations of the human heart? They pointed upwards, and named the Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim who acted from the region of Leo (Lion). Man received the first outline of his physical body projected from out of universal space, and the region of his body which he was accustomed to call inwardly Leo was also called the region of Leo out in the Zodiac Thus are these things connected.
Thus also have all the other foundations or germs of the human organs been formed by the Animal Circle or Zodiac. The heart was formed by Leo the Lion. Near the heart, the cage of the ribs, which is necessary for the protection of the heart, was called the breastplate. In the beginning a region had naturally to be formed before the inclusion of the heart. Another name for the breastplate arose, which was taken from an animal who had received such a breastplate from nature: Cancer, the Crab; that which is out in space is really called ‘breastplate,’ a protection which the Crab has from nature, hence that region was called ‘the Crab.’ It lies on one side of the Lion. The other regions of the Zodiac were named according to the same principle. In fact, it is man projected outward into universal space who has given these designations to the Zodiacal circle. But it is not always so easy to discover the original intention, in the transformed names, as for example, with the Crab. The name has not always been transmitted in a direct line, so that one has to return to the original sense if the meaning is to be made clear.
We shall pass over the disappearance or dissolving of Saturn; we shall now describe how its evolution progressed after it had passed through the pralaya. After the Saturn formation had dissolved, a new evolution, or new formation, began. What first took place was exactly the same as that which had formerly taken place on Saturn. When the whole formation of Saturn had been repeated in this way, a second formation began, after the center had been reached. We are now advancing toward that stage of development which we generally designate as that of the primeval Sun. Just as, formerly, the Thrones sacrificed themselves, so now  another grade of the hierarchies are making the sacrifice, namely, those beings whom we call Spirits of Wisdom. The Thrones are beings of greater power; they could let their own physical substance stream from them, their warmth substance. They could pour out the substance of Saturn from their own bodies — as has been described. The spirits of Wisdom were only able to give an etheric body, which is not so dense. Man already had the foundation of the physical body; the Spirits of Wisdom gave him now his etheric body. This happened, as it were, in a second circle. I shall now draw this in Diagram III.
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This represents the original size of the ancient Sun. It has shrunk in comparison to the former larger circumference. Because it has shrunk it has grown denser; inside the Sun there is not only warmth substance, but also condensed warmth substance:  gaseous-air substance. Now, from the surrounding circumference, along with the previously mentioned beings, the Spirits of Wisdom are working upon the Sun: together and within the globe of the Sun the Spirits of Form and the Spirits of Motion are carrying on their activity. The following now happens, which is similar to what happened on Saturn. Certain currents are created by the surrounding spirits — the Spirits of Wisdom and the Thrones. These currents are somewhat denser than those which were produced by the Thrones alone. Inside, the mass contracts, and a ball of mist is now compressed between those two streams.
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This globe is different from the Saturn globe, because in reality Saturn with all its beings consisted only of warmth, but this globe is now interpenetrated by ether, by a body of ether. Although it is as dense as gas, it is interpenetrated by an ether-like body. Therefore the whole of this globe is alive; it is a being inwardly alive. While Saturn was a being which was in motion inwardly, which was full of mobility, until its motion was brought to a standstill by the Lion, Jupiter (one can also call it Jupiter, for the planet seen in the heavens as Jupiter is a reproduction of that which was formed at that time as part of the Sun) Jupiter is inwardly living. Such was the ancient Sun. The balls which now begin to circle round it are living balls, living creatures.
Now, instead of the Lion, imagine another region of the Zodiac where those balls were originally stimulated and called into being; I called this region that of the Eagle. In this region occurred the first stimulation into life of the Sun globe, of that living being within cosmic space. Now, when this living globe had once completed its circle and returned to its starting point, to the region of the Eagle, something else came into operation. While the globe had first begun to be inwardly alive at this point, when it reaches the same point again it is killed through the same influence which originally called it to life. One ball after another was killed. When they all had been killed, and no new ones were produced, the life of the ancient Sun also came to an end. Its life consisted in the production of new balls, which, after circling round, covered each other at the point they started from and were killed by forces entering from universal spaces.
This ‘sting of death,’ which the life of the ancient Sun received from universal space, was felt as the sting of the scorpion. Therefore that region where they were killed is called the ‘region of the Scorpion.’ At this point the constellation can be seen which rouses dead matter to life — the Eagle — and also that wherein work the forces which kill: the constellation of the Scorpion.
We can therefore say: in the region of the Lion are those forces of the Zodiac which brought the original life of the germinal physical human body to rest; in the region of the Scorpion are these forces which had the power to kill life as such. We shall get to know the correspondence to modern conditions, which are differently constituted, but this can only be explained gradually. A thick veil or maya has been drawn over the original conditions.
Let us proceed. We need not describe the next conditions so much in detail, for the meaning of these designations and the whole procedure has now grown clearer. But one thing must yet be recalled to your mind, which is the following.
When you consider Saturn, you would be quite mistaken if you imagined it to be a globe such as could be compared with any other world's globe, with Jupiter or Mars, for instance. What is there is nothing more than a space of warmth. And you can see it in the way you do only because you are looking at it through an illuminated space of light. Just think, how would a thing that is unilluminated appear if you looked at it through a space full of light? It would appear bluish to you. You can observe this with common candlelight; it looks blue in the middle and around it there is a kind of radiance. I say this, being conscious that I run the danger of appearing to be talking nonsense in the opinion of the whole school of mechanical optics of modern times. But it is a fact. Modern physics does not know why the whole space of heaven appears blue. It seems blue  because in reality it is dark, is black, and is seen through illuminated space. All that is dark, seen through light, appears blue. Therefore, Saturn seems a blue globe when you look at it. All that has been said agrees completely with the facts of science, but not with the fanciful theories which are imagined. It would lead us too far if I explained to you why the ring formations of Saturn also arise because of this, because with each Saturn we have to do with a neutral space of warmth, a stratum of soul's warmth, and with one of physically cognizable warmth. Thus the illusion arises, when one observes those different strata through illuminated space; it is as if one saw a globe of gas with a sort of ring of dust around it; it is but an optical delusion, for Saturn is today but a body made of the substance of warmth.
These things can naturally only be said when speaking to Anthroposophists; elsewhere they would be incomprehensible. Each Saturn must be regarded as a being consisting of warmth substance, and everything connected with it is to be explained from that standpoint. Each Jupiter, which is nothing else than a solar stage of development, is a form consisting of gas and warmth. So it is with the Jupiter of today, which is a repetition of the former Jupiter, the ancient Sun. Certainly the conditions of space and motion do somewhat change. For the Jupiter of today is not on the same spot as the former one was; but essentially it is the same.
Now we go further and must explain Mars in the same way. We must explain it as a large globe cooled down to the density of waters, and we must also see in it a point  where a ball of compressed water has formed and become differentiated from the surrounding much thinner water. It is formed by the same process as Jupiter;  all the single balls of water which are produced on its circumference are at a certain point again brought to a standstill. Just as the movement is hindered on Saturn by the Lion, on Jupiter or the Sun by the Scorpion, which brings death, so on Mars these balls of water are also stopped; only the details are a little different on Mars. The Mars of today is a repetition of the ancient Moon. It stands on the same place to which the boundary of the ancient Moon extended. It is the other part of the ancient Moon; one part is our own Moon, which is but a shell; but the living part of it, which represents its other pole, is Mars. When speaking of Mars as the third condition of our planetary development, this condition corresponds to that of the ancient Moon. Mars was essentially a body of water. On Mars, or the ancient Moon — call it as you will — the astral body was organized into man, so that he received his first consciousness. The body of that man consisted of the Moon substance or Moon water. Just as the body of the man of today is formed out of the substance of the Earth, so was the body of the man of that day formed of fire, air, and water. According to the densest substance in him, you might have called that man the Waterman. He became this especially, because the astral body was infused into him. He was not yet a man with an ego, but a man with astral endowments. This entrance of the astral took place because, at a certain place, the stimulus was again given. Then what was on the circumference moved round and returned to the place where it had started from. This was the region of the Zodiac which is designated as the Waterman. So that you have to see in the Waterman that sign of the Zodiac which gave consciousness to man on the ancient Moon, or ancient Mars, after he had circled once around its circumference.
And now we pass on to the Earth; this is the fourth evolutionary condition. The first three are a repetition one of the other; a Saturn is formed, then a Sun is formed, and leaves behind it a Jupiter; a Moon is formed, and leaves behind it a Mars; and last the Earth appears, and all those things I have described: the departure from it of the Sun, and of that dross-like part which is our present Moon. You know that the first foundation for the ego was prepared in old Lemuria, when the present Moon separated from the Earth. This was only possible because once again from the surrounding circumference the impulse to rotation was given. Then that which had received the stimulus, after having rotated once, was ripe to receive the earliest beginnings of the ego germ. This happened in Lemurian times, and we here point to that part of the Zodiac which is called the Bull, the reason for this being, that man, during the time these names were given, had very concrete and very clear feelings. This name originated in the Mystery teachings of Egypt and Chaldea. It is there that the origin of this designation is to be found, and it is only in real occultism that the consciousness of the true significance of the word exists at the present day. The first stirring of ‘I am’ finds expression in speech, in tone; but all tone-formation is related in a certain way — which cannot be touched on here, but which every occultist knows, and which may be explained some time in more intimate lectures; all tone formation has a very definite relation to the processes of propagation, which you can perceive in the fact that the voice of the male changes when sex maturity is reached. There is here a hidden correspondence. All that is associated with these faculties and processes of the human being was comprised, for ancient consciousness, in the bull nature of man. And the name given to that particular constellation has its origin in the fact that it has now the same importance for the Earth which Lion had for Saturn, Scorpion for the Sun, and Waterman for the Moon. With the Egyptian age came the third post-Atlantean period of civilization. The first was the old Indian, the second the old Persian, the third the Egyptian. These periods of civilization are the corresponding repetitions — as we have often repeated — of the whole processes of development of the Earth. The Lemurian epoch was the third epoch of the Earth. Therefore Egyptian occultism repeats in a spiritual reflection the essential parts of the occurrences of Lemurian times. That which happened in Lemurian times was best known by the Egyptian Mystery priests, for it is reflected in the special features of the Egyptian civilization. Therefore the culture of Egypt was closely related to the constellation of the Bull, and to the cult of the Bull generally.
Thus you see  that it is not all so easy to indicate the real events which happened during the origin of our heavenly bodies, and all connected with them. For how do celestial bodies originate? Our Saturn, our Jupiter, our Mars have in fact originated thus: that at first spheres were formed on them. One after the other of these is killed, and when nothing more is called into life, all the spherical forms, which previously constituted the shells, finally mass together into a body, and this becomes the visible planet. In fact, any such celestial body as Saturn, Jupiter, Mars originated thus, that at first a kind of shell was formed. This shell, through the agglomeration of the special forms, was condensed to that formation which then is revealed visibly in space. You have here no mechanical process taken from the dreary Kant-Laplace theory about the world's creation, but you have the living origins of those formations springing from the spiritual interaction of the hierarchies, as we see them today in the heavenly bodies, in Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars.