The Hyperborean and the Polarean Epoch
THE FOLLOWING passages from the Akasha Chronicle
go back to the periods which precede what was described in the last
chapters. In view of the materialistic ideas of our time, the risk we
undertake with these communications is perhaps even greater
than that connected with what has been described in the preceding
passages. Today such things are readily met with the accusation of
fantasy and baseless speculation. When one knows how far from even
taking these things seriously someone can be who has been trained
scientifically in the contemporary sense, then only the consciousness
that one is reporting faithfully in accordance with spiritual
experience can lead one to write about them. Nothing is said here
which has not been carefully examined with the means provided by the
science of the spirit. The scientist need only be as tolerant toward
the science of the spirit as the latter is toward the scientific way
of thinking. [Compare my Welt-und Lebensanschauungen im
neunzehnten Jahrhundert (Conceptions of the World and of Life in
the Nineteenth Century), where I think I have shown that I am able to
appreciate the materialistic-scientific view.*]
For those however who incline toward these matters of the science of
the spirit, I would like to make a special remark concerning the
passages reproduced here. Especially important matters will be
discussed in what follows. And all this belongs to periods which are
long past. The deciphering of the Akasha Chronicle is not exactly
easy in this area. The author of this present book in no way claims
that he should be believed blindly. He merely wishes to report what
his best efforts have enabled him to discover. He will welcome any
correction based on competent knowledge. He feels obliged to
communicate these events concerning the development of mankind
because the signs of the times urge it. Moreover, a long period of
time had to be described in outline here in order to afford a general
view. Further details on much that is only indicated now will follow
later.
Only with difficulty can the writings in the
Akasha Chronicle be translated into our colloquial language. They are
more easily communicated in the symbolical sign language used in
mystery schools, but as yet the communication of this language is not
permitted. Therefore the reader is requested to bear with much that
is dark and difficult to comprehend, and to struggle toward an
understanding, just as the writer has struggled toward a generally
understandable manner of presentation. Many a difficulty in reading
will be rewarded when one looks upon the deep mysteries, the
important human enigmas which are indicated. A true self-knowledge of
man is, after all, the result of these “Akasha Records,”
which for the scientist of the spirit are realities as certain as are
mountain ranges and rivers for the eye of sense. An error of
perception is of course possible, here and there.
It should be noted that in the present section
only the development of man is discussed. Parallel to it, of course,
runs that of the other natural realms, of the mineral, the botanical,
the animal. The next sections will deal with these. Then much will be
spoken of which will make the discussion concerning man appear in a
clearer light. On the other hand, one cannot speak of the development
of the terrestrial realms in the sense of the science of the spirit,
until the gradual progress of man has been described.
If one traces the development of the earth even
further back than was done in the preceding essays, one comes upon
increasingly refined material conditions of our planet. The
substances which later became solid were previously in a fluid, still
earlier, in a vaporous and steam-like, and in an even more remote
past, in the most refined (etheric) condition. The decreasing
temperature caused the hardening of substances. Here we shall go back
to the most refined etheric condition of the substances of our
earthly dwelling place. Man first entered upon the earth in this
epoch of its development. Before that, he belonged to other worlds,
which will be discussed later. Only the one immediately preceding
will be indicated here. This was a so-called astral or soul world.
The beings of this world did not lead an external, (physical) bodily
existence. Neither did man. He had already developed the image
consciousness mentioned in the previous essay. He had feelings and
desires. But all this was enclosed in a soul body. Only to the
clairvoyant eye would such a man have been perceptible.
As a matter of fact, all the more highly developed
human beings of that time possessed clairvoyance, although it was
quite dull and dreamlike. It was not a self-conscious
clairvoyance.
These astral beings are in a certain sense the
ancestors of man. What is today called “man” carries the
self-conscious spirit within him. This spirit united with the
being which had developed from the astral ancestor in about the
middle of the Lemurian period. This union has already been indicated
in the previous essays. In the description of the course of
development of the ancestors of man up to that period which is to
follow here, the matter will be discussed again in greater
detail.
The soul or astral ancestors of man were
transported to the refined or etheric earth. So to speak, they sucked
the refined substance into themselves like a sponge, to speak
coarsely. By thus becoming penetrated with substance, they developed
etheric bodies. These had an elongated elliptical form, in which the
limbs and other organs which were to be formed later were already
indicated by delicate shadings of the substance. All processes in
this mass were purely physical-chemical, but they were regulated and
dominated by the soul.
When such a mass of substance had attained a
certain size it split into two masses, each of which was similar to
the form from which it had sprung, and in it the same processes took
place as in the original mass of substance.
Each new form was as much endowed with soul as the
mother being. This was due to the fact that it was not a certain
number of human souls which entered upon the earthly scene, but
rather a kind of soul tree which could produce innumerable single
souls from its common root. As a plant sprouts ever anew from
innumerable seeds, so the soul life appeared in the countless shoots
produced by the continual divisions. It is true that from the
beginning there was a narrowly circumscribed number of kinds
of souls, of which fact we shall speak later. But within these kinds
the development proceeded in the manner which we have described. Each
kind of soul put forth innumerable off-shoots.
With their entry into terrestrial materiality, an
important change had taken place within the souls themselves. As long
as the souls were not connected with anything material, no external
material process could act on them. Any action upon them was purely
of the nature of soul, was a clairvoyant one. They thus shared in the
life of everything pertaining to soul in their environment —
All that existed at that time was experienced in this way. The
actions of stones, plants, and animals, which then existed only as
astral (soul-like) forms, were felt as inner soul experiences.
With the entering upon the earth, something
totally new was added to this. External material processes exercised
an effect on the soul, which now appeared in material garb. At first
it was only the processes of motion in this material outside world
which produced movements within the etheric body. As today we
perceive the vibration of the air as sound, these etheric beings
perceived the vibrations of the etheric matter which surrounded them.
Such a being was basically a single organ of hearing. This sense
developed first. But one can see from this that separate organs of
hearing developed only later.
With the increasing densification of terrestrial
matter, the spiritual being gradually lost the ability to mold this
matter. Only the bodies which had already been formed could produce
their like out of themselves. A new manner of reproduction arose. The
daughter being appeared as a considerably smaller form than the
mother being and only gradually grew to the size of the latter. While
before there had been no organs of reproduction, these now made their
appearance.
At this time, however, it is no longer merely a
physical-chemical process which takes place in these forms. Such a
chemical-physical process could not effect reproduction now. Because
of its densification, external matter is no longer such that the soul
can give life to it without mediation. Therefore, a certain portion
within the form is isolated. This portion is withdrawn from the
immediate influences of external matter. Only the body outside of
this isolated portion remains exposed to these influences. It is in
the same condition in which the whole body was before. In the
separated portion, the soul element continues to act. Here the soul
becomes the carrier of the life principle, called Prana in
theosophical literature. Thus the bodily ancestor of man now appears
endowed with two organs. One is the physical body, the physical
envelope. It is subject to the chemical and physical laws of the
surrounding world. The other is the sum of the organs which are
subject to the special life principle.
A portion of soul activity is freed in this
manner. This activity no longer has any power over the physical part
of the body. This part of the soul activity now turns inward and
forms a portion of the body into special organs. With this an inner
life of the body begins. The body no longer merely participates in
the vibrations of the outside world, but begins to perceive
them within itself as special experiences. Here is the starting point
of perception. This perception at first appears as a kind of sense of
touch. The organism feels the movements of the outside world;
the pressure which substances exercise, and so forth. The beginnings
of a perception of heat and cold also appear.
With this an important stage in the development of
mankind is reached. The immediate influence of the soul has been
withdrawn from the physical body. The latter is totally given over to
the physical and chemical world of matter. It disintegrates at the
moment the soul can no longer dominate it with its activity.
Thereupon occurs that which one calls “death.” In
connection with the preceding conditions, there could be no question
of death. When a division took place, the mother form survived wholly
in the daughter forms. For in these the entire transformed soul
energy acted as it did before in the mother form. In the division
there was nothing left which did not contain soul. Now this becomes
different. As soon as the soul no longer has any power over the
physical body, the latter becomes subject to the chemical and
physical laws of the outside world, that is, it dies away. As
activity of the soul there remains only that which acts in
reproduction and in the developed inner life. This means that
descendants are produced by the force of reproduction, and at the
same time these descendants are endowed with a surplus of
organ-forming energy. In this surplus the soul being is constantly
reviving. As previously at the time of division, the whole body was
filled with soul activity, so the organs of reproduction and
perception are now filled with it. We are thus dealing with a
reincarnation of the soul life in the newly-developing
daughter organism.
In theosophical literature these two stages of the
development of man are described as the first two root races of our
earth. The first is called the Polarean, the second, the Hyperborean
race.
One must imagine the perceptual world of these
ancestors of man to have been a quite general and indefinite one.
Only two of the types of perception of today had already become
separated: the sense of hearing and the sense of touch. Because of
the changes that had taken place in the body as well as in the
physical environment, the entire human form was no longer capable of
being, in a manner of speaking, an “ear.” A special part
of the body remained capable of reverberating to delicate vibrations.
It furnished the material from which our organ of hearing
gradually developed. However, approximately the whole remainder of
the body continued to be the organ of touch.
It can be seen that up to this point the entire
process of the development of man is connected with a change in the
temperature conditions of earth. It was the heat in man's environment
which had brought him to the level we have described. But now the
external temperature had reached a point where further progress of
the human form would no longer have been possible. Within the
organism a counter-action against the further cooling of the earth
now begins. Man starts to produce his own source of heat. Up to this
point he had shared the temperature of his environment. Now organs
develop in him which make him able to create the degree of heat
necessary for his life. Previously, the circulating substances which
passed through him had been dependent on the environment in this
respect. Now he himself could develop heat for these substances. The
bodily fluids now became warm blood. With this he attained a much
higher degree of independence as a physical being than he had
possessed before. The whole inner life became more active. Perception
still depended entirely on the influences of the outside world.
Filled with its own heat, the body acquired an independent
physical inner life. Now the soul had a basis inside the body
upon which it could develop a life which was no longer merely a
participation in the life of the outside world.
Through this process, the life of the soul was
drawn into the realm of the earthly-material. Previously, desires,
wishes, passions, joy and grief of the soul could only be produced by
something that was itself soul-like. That which proceeded from
another soul-being awakened sympathy or aversion in the soul, excited
the passions, and so forth. No external physical object could have
had such an effect. Now only did it become possible for such external
objects to have a significance for the soul. For the latter
experienced the enhancement of the inner life, which had awakened
when the body produced its own heat, as something pleasant, the
disturbance of this inner life as something disagreeable. An external
object suitable for contributing to physical well-being could be
desired, could be wished for. What in theosophical
literature is called Kama — the body of wishes —
became connected with earthly man. The objects of the senses could
now become objects of desire. Through his body of wishes man became
tied to earthly existence.
This fact coincides with a great event in the
universe, with which it is causally connected. Up to this point there
had been no material separation between sun, earth, and moon. In
their effect on man these three were one body. Now the separation
took place; the more delicate substantiality, which includes
everything which had previously made it possible for the soul to act
in an immediately vitalizing manner, separated itself as the sun; the
coarsest part was extruded as the moon; and the earth, with respect
to its substantiality, stood in the middle between the two others.
This separation was of course not a sudden one; rather the whole
process proceeded gradually while man was advancing from the stage of
reproduction by division to the one described last. It was indeed by
the universal processes just mentioned that this development of man
was brought about. The sun first withdrew its substance from the
common heavenly body. Thereby it became impossible for the soul
element to vitalize the remaining earthly matter without mediation.
Then the moon began to form itself. Thus the earth entered the
condition which made possible the capacity for perception
characterized above.
In association with this process, a new sense
developed. The temperature conditions of earth became such that
bodies gradually took on the fixed limits which separated the
transparent from the opaque. The sun, which had been extruded from
the terrestrial mass, received its task as light giver. In the human
body the sense of seeing developed. At first this seeing was not as
we know it today. Light and darkness acted upon man as vague
sensations. For instance, under certain conditions he experienced
light as pleasant, as promoting his physical life, and sought it,
strove toward it. At the same time his soul life proper still
continued in dreamlike pictures. In this life, colored images which
had no immediate relation to external objects arose and vanished. Man
still related these colored images to spiritual influences. Light
images appeared to him when he was affected by pleasant soul
influences, dark images when he was touched by unpleasant soul
influences.
Up to now, what was caused by the development of
bodily heat has been described as “inner life.” But it
can be seen that it was not an inner life in the sense of the later
development of mankind. Everything proceeds by stages, including the
development of the inner life. As it was meant in the preceding
essay, this true inner life begins only with the fertilization by the
spirit, when man begins to think about that which acts upon him from
the outside.
Everything which has been described here shows how
man grew into the condition pictured in the preceding chapter.
Essentially one is already moving in the period which was
characterized there when one describes the following: The soul learns
more and more to apply to external bodily existence that which it had
previously experienced within itself and related only to the
soul-like. This now happens with the colored images. As before, a
pleasing impression of something soul-like had been connected with a
luminous image in the soul, now a bright impression of light from the
outside became connected with such an image. The soul began to see
the objects around it in colors. This was connected with the
development of new instruments of sight. At previous stages, for the
perception of light and darkness, the body had had an eye which no
longer exists today. (The legend of the Cyclops with one eye is a
recollection of these conditions-) The two eyes developed when the
soul began to connect the light impressions from the outside more
intimately with its own life. With this, the capacity for the
perception of the soul-like in the environment disappeared. More and
more the soul became the mirror of the external world. The outside
world is repeated within the soul as image.
Hand in hand with this went the division into
sexes. On one side, the human body became receptive only to
fertilization by another human being; on the other side there
developed the physical “soul organs” (the nervous system)
through which the sense impressions of the outside world were
mirrored in the soul.
With this, the entry of the thinking spirit into
the human body had been prepared.
* In 1914 a new edition of this work appeared, which
was completed by a Vorgeschichte über abendländische
Philosophie und bis zur Gegenwart fortgesetst (Previous History
of Occidental Philosophy and its Continuation to the Present), the
work appearing under the title, Die Rätsel der Philosophie
inihrer Geschichte als Umriss dargestellt (The Riddles of
Philosophy, etc.), two volumes, Stuttgart, 1955.
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