Outset and End of the Earth
Berlin, 9 April 1908
The human being is distinguished from the
other beings on earth because he does not arrange his life only
according to vague, instinctive impulses, but to clear ideas
and thoughts to get strength, power and certainty for his work
if he is able to look not only at the present, but to determine
his future out of ideas or ideals independently. The human
being attains that only if he is able to survey life in its
entirety. We learn from the past; we work for the future best
of all if we anticipate in our ideas and ideals what we want to
do in the future.
It could seem now that the today's topic
Outset and End of the Earth
extends too far to
the past and to the future, as if we wanted to deal with ideas
that hover high over our everyday existence. However, the
philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte already said a right word
against those people who turn against ideas and ideals out of
their ostensible life praxis because they think that the
practitioners of life have no use for ideals and ideas.
Speaking about the great ideals and about the determination of
the human being to his Jena students, he coined the nice words
against those people: we, as idealists, know as well as the
practitioners, maybe better, that the ideals are not directly
applicable in the real life. However, if they want to state
that life — if it should be practical — must not be arranged
according to ideas and ideals, they show only that one does not
count on them in the further evolution. Hence, a benevolent god
may give them rain and sunshine at the right time, the
necessary food and, as far as I am concerned, clever thoughts,
too.
If we look back at the
becoming of our earth, then the present human being thinks of
the miraculous, immense achievements of the scientific thinking
at first, of course. As well as already at other opportunities
I want to emphasise also here that it can never be the task of
spiritual science — if it understands itself correctly — to
argue anything against the justified findings and results of
the modern natural sciences. Therefore, allow me to say first
something, before we tackle this enclosing issue from the
spiritual-scientific point of view, also here again as with
other considerations.
What has the modern
science to say about our today's issue? I want to answer to the
question only briefly and sketchily. — The natural sciences
reveal the earthly past with great, enclosing astuteness. They
conclude from that what the earth is now, from that what we
have as remains of extinct worlds and beings how it has looked
once on our earth maybe millions of years ago, and which beings
walked on it. You know, history, the historical documents lead
us only a short time back in the evolution, some millennia
only. Then it becomes dark, so to speak, if one wants to count
only on the historical documents. A second time leads us back
to that what could not be committed to the written documents,
also not to other documents, what our ancestors gave their dead
to their graves as burial objects of their culture that they
manufactured and that stayed behind as remains. Then, however,
the natural sciences go back even further.
They show which beings
lived successively on our earth based on the skeletons and
other remains of primeval plants and animals that are included
in the layers of our earth. One can easily realise that that
what lies in the upper layers of our earth has found its grave
at last, that that what lies in the deeper layers which were
covered by later ones must contain the documentary remains of
older, former times. Admittedly, it is not so easy to do
research scientifically in this way. Geology has some
difficulties. For that, what has been stacked within the earth
surface has not so remained, as it has been stacked originally.
Overburdens, faults, any possible mixture of the whole have
taken place, so that sometimes that what lay originally at the
bottom have come with the faults at the top. A great astuteness
is necessary to get an idea of the earthly evolution from that
what the layers of our earth enclose.
We do not want to go more
into details than the spiritual researcher can justify in this
respect; we also do not want to explain in detail what we would
have to say from the spiritual-scientific point of view. There
is still something to be corrected. However, we do not want to
get ourselves into it. On the contrary, we prefer to accept
thankfully as a great achievement for humanity what the
industrious natural sciences have observed and the scientific
astuteness has performed in this field. We would like to think
ourselves back to a former state of the earth with the physical
research where our earth looked very different for the most
part from today, where the simplest living beings must have
lived no remains of which were preserved. We pursue the
development of our earth of the layers and remains that lie at
the bottom and at the top. We find there simple animals, which
are subordinate to the vertebrates, to those which have a
skeleton.
We go on and see how the
various animal classes and plant classes develop gradually, as
well as they seem to appear on the changing earth gradually. We
go back with the naturalist to the time when in our earth
evolution fish appear. Many of them have quite different forms
than the today's ones. If we go back further, we come to a
strange developmental phase of our earth when those monstrous,
miraculous animals that belong partly to the amphibians and
reptiles inhabited it. These animals were gigantic, whose eyes
were maybe as big as a child head, they were provided with huge
teeth, animals that one calls ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs etc.
and whose remains are excavated in the most different regions
of the earth from the Cretaceous layer, the Jurassic layer.
There we come to the time when more perfect plants have
originated, in a relatively young time, although it comprises
millennia. We arrive at that time when in scientific view the
human being appeared, when he appears for the first time on our
earth, so to speak, according to the documents that the
concerning layers contain, after the higher mammals, related to
him, had preceded him. Briefly, we use that picture again which
we already used recently when I talked about sun, moon, and
earth, and imagine anyone could observe the evolution from a
seat in space for millions of years. He would see the surface
of the earth forming, the distribution of water and earth,
conditions of cold and heat changing, the various classes and
forms of plants and animals appearing, and the physical picture
would be the same for such a hypothetical observer as natural
sciences describe it.
But again I emphasise that one cannot go on from
spiritual science farther than, so to speak, up to the point
where the natural sciences themselves will be obliged to
correct the things in the future.
Where does a conflict exist between the natural
sciences and spiritual science now? One says repeatedly from
the natural sciences, spiritual science does not stand on
scientific ground. Can one stand more on scientific ground than
to admit that everything that the natural sciences knows and
can recognise also finds recognition with us?
However, there are people
who say, they firmly stand on the ground of the scientific
facts. They demand from the spiritual scientist that he should
know nothing else than what they themselves know. They do not
demand only that one concedes to them what they themselves say,
but they also demand that one subjects to the dogma that one
cannot say more than they say. These people do not notice at
all that such inner intolerance was never there in the entire
human development, also not in the times when the outer
intolerance went far. Indeed, as we said already last time
considering the sun, moon and stars: the outer sensuous picture
gives no cause for quarrel between spiritual science and the
natural sciences. — However, does result from this outer
sensuous sight that behind the sensuous, behind the physical no
extrasensory, supraphysical forces are effective? We could
bring in the Plateau experiment already last time where one
shows how a world system originates in microcosm in a liquid
from an oil drop by rotation with a crank. However, the good
man did completely forget that he himself turned the crank! He
did not consider at all that this is quite impossible without
the thoughts of that who turns the crank.
What one sees with the
physical eyes is the outer expression, the outer process of
that which happens internal-spiritually and what the human
being can never get to know looking at the world only with his
eyes and their ancillary tools, only with the outer physical
tools. However, if we want to look back, to the physical
beginning of the world and do not look at the physical only,
then we have to imagine the true nature of the human being
first. Someone who looks from the spiritual-scientific
viewpoint at this true nature of the human being to whom the
human being disintegrates, as I have often stressed, in a
number of members. Above all the spiritual science shows us
that the true reason of those varying states, which the human
being experiences every day within 24 hours between wakening
and sleeping, that a part of the human members separates from
the other part in sleep. We see every night when the human
being falls asleep sinking down in dreamless sleep, in an
uncertain darkness what surged up and down as most manifold
pictures and impressions in the soul during the day. We see
everything sinking down that lives in the human being as
instincts, desires, and passions, as joy, sorrow and pain. For
somebody who stands on the ground of spiritual science, of
course, also for everybody with common sense it would be a big
folly if one wanted to assert that with falling asleep the
bearer of joy and sorrow, of desires and passions would
disappear and would rise again in the morning. Spiritual
science shows that — when the human being lies in the dreamless
sleep in his bed — only the physical body lies there connected
with the etheric body. He has the physical body in common with
the lifeless beings around him and the etheric body in common
with the plants.
Two other members are
lifted out from the human being in the dreamless sleep. Joy and
sorrow, desires and passions, all sensations surging up and
down, all that is quiet at night. The astral body is their
bearer, and this is lifted out in the dreamless sleep from the
physical and etheric bodies that stay behind in the bed. The
astral body and the ego are lifted out.
By which does the
existence of the astral body differ at night from its existence
during the day? We can understand this remembering that the
astral body has its reality outdoors in another world that is
round it. I have explained that in other series of these talks.
What does it depend on that one perceives anything? There can
be countless worlds round you, the world of the tones, the
world of the light, the world of the smells, the world of the
tastes etc., if you had no senses for them, these worlds would
not be there for you. It is the most illogical what one can do
— however, the majority of the present human beings does it —
to assert that a world which one does not perceive is not
there. Spiritual science shows that the human astral body is
lifted out at night in the dreamless sleep from the physical
and etheric bodies and lives in another world; not in a
transcendent, somewhere concealed world, but in a world that
penetrates us, as light and air penetrate the space. For the
spiritual-scientific observation that world differs from the
physical-sensuous one only by the fact that it requires other
organs with which one can perceive it.
This astral body is in a
spiritual world that is in our environment as the air is round
us. Who still has no idea of the fact that air is round him,
says, it is nothing round him. Someone says this who has no
idea of the fact that he lives perpetually in spirit, and means
that there is no spirit in our surroundings, that no spiritual
facts, no spiritual beings are there. The astral body, the
bearer of desire and pain, is in this spiritual world at night.
It does not perceive it because it does not yet have organs in
the present evolution, no cognitive ability for this world in
which it is.
It could appear like a
hypothesis if one says that there is an astral body and the
human being is in the dreamless sleep in a spiritual world
except his physical and etheric bodies. But apart from the fact
that somebody whose spiritual eyes are opened by initiation
knows the astral body separated from the physical body by own
observation and own experience, one can show, so to speak,
experimentally that such an astral body exists, even if not
with usual instruments. For the only instrument, which makes
clear the secrets of the higher, supersensible world to the
human being, which really leads him in the spiritual world, is
the human being himself. This instrument, the human being, is
capable of an infinite perfection, an infinitely subtle
development, and just the initiation perfects the human being.
It delivers to that who wants to apply it to himself, so to
speak, the experimental evidence of an astral body that can
become independent of the physical body.
Let us recall some of the
viewpoints that we have discussed in the talk on the
initiation. We have said there that the human being can do
certain exercises of meditation, of contemplation according to
particular methodical instructions by which he makes his worlds
of thought, feeling and will-impulses stronger and stronger
than feelings and will-impulses can be strengthened by any
outer sensory observation. There are just such instructions as
we have heard in the talk on initiation by which the human
being can gain more than he gains by the mere outer observation
of the reality. Something particular appears in a human soul
which applies the instructions to itself. It appears that
really the astral body receives spiritual eyes and ears by the
subtle inner work of the human being. We can show that
meditation of thoughts, feelings, and will-impulses make the
feelings and the will-impulses more powerful. We can show how
they work on this astral body: the astral body shows after some
time, if the human being has patience and perseverance, that it
has acquired the spiritual eyes and ears returning in the early
morning in the physical and etheric bodies and it can
experience now what one calls enlightenment. The human being is
able to work on his astral body — working here in the awake
consciousness by meditation of certain feelings and
will-impulses according to certain methodical regulations — in
such a way that it is able to react on us. Thereby one shows
the reality of the astral body. We work on it and it works on
us. It shows its existence by the fact of the
initiation.
Just as the astral body
is separated from the physical body at night, the bearer of the
ego, of the human self-consciousness is also separated from
him. This also disappears at the present developmental state of
the human being still in an uncertain darkness. With the
sleeping human being, we have the physical body in the bed that
he has in common with all minerals, as well as the etheric body
that he has in common with all plants. From the physical body
and the etheric body the astral body is lifted out which he has
in common only with the animals, and the ego that the human
being, as a crown of the creation on earth, does not have in
common with any other realm of nature. In the present
developmental stage where no higher senses, no “spirit
eyes” and no “spirit ears”, to speak with
Goethe, are developed the impressions of the day disappear
falling asleep, and other do not appear in the world for which
he has no senses. Hence, darkness, lightlessness, and muteness
surround him at night. In the morning while waking, the human
being dives in the physical and etheric bodies. These are
equipped with the physical eyes and ears. The spiritual human
being dives in the physical-sensuous human being, uses the
instruments for the physical-sensuous world, and has this world
around himself. One should understand what Fichte said: one
shall not believe that the eye sees, but that the human being
sees by the eye; one shall not believe that the ear hears, but
the human being hears by the ear. The same applies to the sense
of smell and the sense of taste. They are tools for the inner
human being.
Spiritual science
recognises and must recognise this spiritual, inner human as
the original, the first of the human being. The physical and
the etheric bodies do not exist as the first, but the astral
body and the ego existed before them. Indeed, some people who
are influenced deeper suggestively by the very effective
present ideas sticking to the material will argue: do you
imagine in your fantastic spiritual science that this
spiritual, this bearer of joy and sorrow, of desires, passions,
and self-consciousness hovered once freely somewhere without
being tied to a physical body? — Spiritual science answers:
certainly, this is the case! Before anything physical, even
before anything etheric existed, this astral body existed. The
inner life was before the appearance.
With it, we are placed
immediately at the earth's beginning. — Can you imagine that
anybody can deny completely, even under the strong
materialistic suggestions that something underlies like a
spiritual state that condenses only afterward and comes into
being? I have often emphasised here that spiritual science
regards the matter as compressed spirit. We use a comparison
that we have often applied to show how the spiritual researcher
thinks about spirit and matter. Imagine once, somebody has
transparent air before himself, and clouds form in this
transparent air, as the effect of cooling. What was transparent
before is clouded; what was vapour and was not visible once
becomes water. Maybe it goes on: the water freezes to ice. The
ice falls down in pieces. Let us assume that anybody comes and
says, it is nonsense, stupidity that the water was distributed
before in the air. I have seen nothing of it! The first I saw
were the clouds. Then someone comes who can also not yet see
the clouds, he sees something only if the water freezes if ice
originates. If one says to him: what is there as ice today was
there already sooner than water, then he answers: I have seen
nothing, ice is there and nothing else.
From such thoughts, the
answer must be taken if anybody wants to accuse a spiritual
researcher of speculative fiction who says that the human being
did not exist materially at first, also not as an etheric body,
but his astral body and ego existed first. In the beginning of
our earth existence, the astral body and the ego existed. Yes,
there was even, as we see soon, the human being as a spiritual
being on the earth, before animals, before plants, before
minerals existed. At first, the earth existed as an
agglomeration of nothing but such spiritual human beings who
consisted of the ego and the astral body. This is the outset of
the earth. The spiritual researcher goes on describing: as the
water was distributed invisibly in the air, is condensed to
clouds, the astral was condensed once to the etheric condition.
Then human beings existed who had an ego, an astral body, and
an etheric body. At last, the physical body originated, as the
ice from the water, the water from the water vapour forms, as
the densest part of the human being. Thus, we have the course
of the earthly development: the human being is there as a
spiritual being at first, then as an etheric being, and last
the spiritual crystallises the human physical body.
We capture the picture of
the condensing water vapour on camera. Assume that you have a
lump of water. You would treat this lump of water artificially
so that a part freezes in the middle. Imagine, you have many
such lumps with which a part freezes in the middle; there
originate many ice granules. Something very peculiar happens
now: from some of these lumps of water the ice lumps fall out
and remain only with little water coated for themselves, while
the mother substance, the water withdraws, from which the ice
has formed. With the other lumps of water, the ice granules
remain in the water lumps and keep on freezing. More water
changes into ice, bigger ice cores originate there. With a
number of the resulting formations such bigger ice cores
precipitate and keep some water, while the mother substance
withdraws. This goes on that way. Such ice lumps rise to a
higher stage, they develop more ice from the water. Always ice
stages form back on earth, while other lumps transform more and
more of the water into ice, until they have such ice lumps at
last which have transformed all water into ice and whose mother
substance is included, so to speak, only between the pores of
the ice.
Let this picture of the
earth's evolution arise in you from the outset until our time.
Imagine the human being as a spiritual being at the beginning
of our earth's existence and only existing as a spiritual
being. He begins first to densify a small, unimportant part,
which becomes denser. There are certain beings that stop like
the ice granules on an early stage, while they separate from
their spiritual mother substance. These are the most imperfect
animals that originated once from the human mother substance;
from the astral human being only a part became material and
densified. These are the lowest animals. The other human beings
developed to higher stages. Higher animals precipitated again
from the spiritual mother substance. Thus, in the course of the
earth development more and more differentiated and perfect
creatures developed, up to the today's human being who is in
his external physical expression an image of the spiritual
arrangements and possibilities that were included originally at
the earth's beginning in spirit, in the astral body of the
human being. As the ice lumps, which precipitated, represent
the stages of the becoming of the big ice lump, all beings that
are more imperfect than the human being is constitute the
entire animal realm and plant realm, the backward stages of the
human evolution on earth.
The human being is the
first-born of the earth as a spiritual being, and he has
densified as a spiritual being if I may use the expression the
material gradually from himself. On every stage subordinated
beings stopped, so that we have to see in the whole range of
the more imperfect earthly beings not ancestors of the human
being, but on the contrary descendants of the spiritual human
being who did not come along. These are the backward brothers,
backward beings on the preliminary stages, which continued
their life until our time and that is why they became
decadent.
Thus, considering the
evolution we see members falling out. If anybody could put a
chair in the space and watch the Hyperborean human being, he
would see if the premises of spiritual science were right the
external-physical picture that the spiritual researcher shows:
how the human being first left behind the imperfect animals and
then the more and more perfect ones. Really the human being
originated externally latest in his today's figure, as the
latest one of the creatures; spiritually he is the first-born;
spiritually he leads the way of all beings. From the human
being all the other beings have developed who fall out on an
imperfect stage of the human being as it were, which represent
the repelled ones of the human evolution. Thus, in the earth's
evolution everything imperfect goes back to the higher. The
higher, the original is not in our physical figure, but in the
spirit. The modern natural sciences suffer almost from the
question, which they put repeatedly and which is so intimately
connected with our topic of the outset of our earth: how can
anything living develop from the lifeless? If on our earth only
lifeless material is, how could life develop from it? The only
answer is that one puts the question wrongly. Life has never
developed from the lifeless; however, everything lifeless has
originated from life.
You can easily realise
how the lifeless arises from the living if you look at the hard
coal, which is dug out like a rock even today. Once the coal
was plants, ferns and horsetails which have stood on certain
regions of the earth, and sank in the ground and which you can
dig out now after millions of years, after they have become
stone. For the spiritual researcher not only the coal
originated from plants, but everything mineral leads back to an
original plant, even if the materialistic researcher cannot
imagine a plant realm without mineral basis. Such a researcher
cannot imagine that the denser, coarser processes arise from
the subtler processes.
There is an example how
such a materialistic view strikes in the face of any common
sense how materialism haunts in some European scholars. There
is, for example, the materialistic theory of soul phenomena by
William James (1842–1910, American philosopher and
psychologist) which even wants to be idealistic with which the
materialistic ideas mingle in the entire thinking. I have
already quoted the symptom that is contained in the sentence:
“The human being does not cry because he is sad, but he
is sad because he cries.” There the person concerned
supposes that the existence works materially on the human
being: it works on the lachrymal glands, and then the human
being feels the process and becomes sad. This is in our present
this way: the inventor of this theory is consequent in his
materialism, also if it strikes in the face of common sense. In
truth, the processes are in the mental-spiritual world, and the
material processes are the results of them. The
mental-spiritual processes are the original ones. Everything
solid, everything material-mineral around us has originated
from the spiritual. The question is not how life has originated
from lifeless but how the lifeless has originated from the
living. However, as something lifeless originates from the
living the living was there before the lifeless, the spiritual
was there before the living. Thus, we come back to the outset
of our earth and see that our earth was a spiritual being even
at its starting point. It was a spiritual being, the material
developed successively from itself that from the spiritual the
living, and from the living the dead has originated. The dead
is the latest product.
Thus, we look back to the
outset of our earth and feel as human beings as the first-born
of the earth, spiritual at the starting point of the earth
evolution. Now we let the spirit look from here at the future.
We can understand the easiest how the spiritual researcher
achieves a picture of the future perspective if we realise what
has also already arisen briefly from other indications in this
series of talks that in the today's human being the single
organs are of quite different value. It is not in such a way as
it appears to the materialistic anatomy with the investigation
of the human being. For the materialistic anatomist everything
is there only in such a way as it presents itself after its
physical peculiarity. However, for that who pursues the human
organs with spiritual sight there are those which are in
decadence, in withering, as the tree forms the bark, as well as
others, which are at the beginning of their development as they
look today. Certain lower organs that today serve the
reproduction of humanity are dying away. However, we have an
organ which is in the beginning of its development, and which
attains a much higher stage in the future. This organ is the
human heart. Not only the spiritual part, but also the physical
organ, the heart, is a wonderful perspective for our future.
The heart is a crux for the anatomist because, otherwise, every
voluntary organ has fasciated muscles. The heart is an organ,
which is a voluntary muscle according to its structure,
although it is used as an involuntary organ. Where from does
this come?
No physical anatomy can
explain this! The reason is that the heart is intended to be a
much higher organ in the future. It is fasciated because it is
a voluntary muscle in the future. We correspond voluntarily
with a movement of the heart in the future to that what the
soul feels as an impulse. The human being will perform his work
not only by the tools of the hand, but the heart will be the
tool of the soul in a way, as the human being does not at all
anticipate it even today.
Take another organ, the
human vocal organ. What is it capable of today? If I speak to
you what happens there? My words that I speak to you live in my
soul at first. If I did not pronounce them, they would not
penetrate into your soul. I pronounce them, set the tools of my
larynx in motion. The air here in this room is set in
vibration, and there are the oscillations of each of my words
in this hall that penetrate you. What is language? It is an
aerial embodiment of the thoughts. If I have pronounced
anything, the thought sounds there, it is embodied in the air,
and someone who could see the aerial waves in this room would
see the physical creation of my thoughts bustling about in the
room. Spiritual science shows that the future human being gets
around to producing not only aerial-shaped figures by his
words, but also denser matter as image of that what lives in
his soul. He will learn to shape denser and denser this way,
and he will produce his equals by his transformed vocal organ,
by his word. If the human being keeps on developing, important
changes of his corporeality take place. Certain organs decline,
other organs keep on developing. The heart becomes an important
tool of the soul. The vocal organ becomes the reproductive
organ of the future human being who will produce his equals
from his thoughts.
As he embodies his
thoughts in the air today, he will embody himself by the organ
that is becoming the future reproductive organ. Like a shade of
that what our head will be is that what he is today. The
coherence between the human vocal organ and the reproductive
organ is indicated by the fact that with the male individual
the voice changes with the sexual maturity.
May the human beings
better consider such changes which spiritual science imparts!
What the spiritual research says points to that what humanity
will have later to the creation of its equals: it is the word.
A human being speaks the word, and the word will be a human
being. This happens when the human being has spiritualised
himself more and more. For he spiritualises himself and returns
to the spirit at the end of the earth because he puts his
physical tools at the disposal of the spirit, as we have seen
it with the heart and with the larynx. With the predecessors of
the human being, the creators who started their earth's
existence at that time who stood at the earth's beginning where
the human being will stand at the earth's end one recognises
that it was with them the same way. The human being will
originate by the word at the end, he will speak the word at the
primeval end, and the word will be a human being. Of those
beings, the divine-spiritual beings which already stood at the
earth's beginning at the height to which the human beings will
develop once it is said to us in one of the deepest religious
documents, in the John's Gospel, properly and appropriately: in
the primeval beginning the word was, and the word was a God. —
As the word was in the primeval beginning, and the word was a
God, the word will be a human being at the primeval end, and
the human being will be the word.
If we look at the
beginning that way and see how the human being has originated
from the spirit and has become the today's human being in the
sense of the earth's evolution, and look at the changes of our
earthly human being, the perspective of the spiritualisation of
the earth presents itself to us. There we have spirit at the
beginning and spirit at the end. Spirit was the origin and
spirit is the goal. This is the secret of the earth's
evolution. If we see the more and more condensing matter in the
middle, we know that this matter is a converted and transformed
spirit if we regard it not as an outer vision, but go into its
being. It is nothing else than that what has developed from the
spirit and what becomes spirit again. If we look forward,
everywhere we look at spirit. According to Jacob Boehme, we
originate in the spirit, and we strive for the spirit. The
activity of the spirit is that knowledge of the spirit that
raises the human being really which makes him a useful being
because he will be a hopeful, spiritually and physically
healthy being. It is the knowledge that everything is rooted in
spirit and that that what we perceive and see in the world
evolution is the actions of the divine spirit.
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