LECTURE XVIII
Berlin, 16th October 1905
If we wish to obtain a more exact knowledge of how Karma comes about,
we must go back a certain way in the development of humanity. If we
transpose ourselves back some thousands of years we find Europe
covered with ice. At that time, the glaciers of the Alps forced their
way right down into the low-lying plain of Northern Germany. The
districts in which we now live were then cold and raw. Here dwelt a
race of human beings who made use of extremely simple and primitive
tools. If we go back about a million years we find in the same
territory a tropical climate such as today is only to be found in the
hottest districts of Africa. In some parts there were huge primeval
forests in which lived parrots, monkeys, especially the gibbon, and
elephants. We should however hardly have met in our wanderings in
these forests anything approximating to present day human beings and
not even to those of periods some thousands of years later. Natural
science can prove from certain strata of the earth which arose between
these two epochs the existence of a type of human being in whom the
front part of the brain was not yet as developed as it is today and
whose brow receded far back. Only the back part of the brain was
developed. We go back further to times in which people did not yet
know the use of fire and made their weapons by grinding pieces of
stone. The natural scientist likes to compare this stage of humanity
with that of savages or of a clumsy child. Remains of such human
beings have been found in the Neandertal and Croatia. They have a
skull similar to that of the ape and the finds in Croatia reveal that
before their death they were roasted, thus proving that cannibals
lived there.
Now the materialistic thinker says: We trace man back into the times
in which he was still undeveloped and clumsy and assume that the human
being has developed from this childish stage of existence up to the
present stage of human culture and that this primitive man has evolved
from animals bearing a similarity to man. In this theory of evolution
therefore he simply makes a leap from primitive human beings to
animals similar to man. The natural scientist takes for granted that
the more perfect has always evolved from the less perfect. This
however is not always the case. If for example we trace the human
being back to childhood we do not come to greater imperfection for the
child is descended from father and mother. That is to say we come to a
primitive condition deriving from a higher condition. This is
important, for it is connected with the fact that already at birth the
child has the predisposition to a later stage of perfection, whereas
the animal remains at the lower stage.
When the natural scientist has gone back to the stage at which man had
no frontal brain and no intellect he should say to himself: I must
assume that the origin of man is to be sought elsewhere.
Just as a child is descended from his parents, so all those primitive
human beings are descended from others who had already attained a high
degree of development. We call these human beings Atlanteans. They
lived on that part of the earth which is now covered with the waves of
the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlanteans had even less frontal brain, an
even farther-receding brow, nevertheless they still possessed
something which differed from later human beings. They still had a
much stronger, more vigorous etheric body. The etheric body of the
Atlanteans had not yet developed certain connections with the brain;
these arose later. Thus over the head there was still an immense
etheric head. The physical head was comparatively small and embedded
in an etheric head of immense size.
The functions which people now carry out with the help of the frontal
brain were carried out in the case of the Atlanteans, with the help of
organs in the etheric body. By this means they could enter into
connection with beings to whom today access is barred to us, just
because our frontal brain has been developed. With the Atlanteans a
kind of fiery coloured formation was visible, which streamed out from
the opening of the physical head towards the etheric head. He had
access to all sorts of psychic influences. A head of this kind, which
thinks as an etheric head, has power over the etheric, whereas a head
which thinks in the physical brain only has power over the physical,
over the putting together of purely mechanical things. He can make
physical tools, while someone who still thinks in the etheric can
cause a seed to grow and bloom.
The Atlantean civilisation was still in close connection with the
growth forces of nature, of the vegetation, a power which present day
man has lost. For instance, the Atlantean made no use of steam power
to bring vehicles into motion, but used the seed power (samenkraft) of
the plants. With this he propelled his vehicles. Only from the last
third of the Atlantean epoch, from the time of the original Semites
until the time when Atlantis was covered with the waters of the
Atlantic Ocean, did the frontal etheric head develop the frontal
brain. Through this man lost the power of influencing the growth of
plants and gained only the capacity of the physical brain, of
intellect. With many things he now had to make a new beginning. He had
to begin to learn mechanical work. In this he was like a child, clumsy
and awkward, whereas before in developing the vegetable kingdom he had
achieved great skill. It is necessary for man to pass through the
stage of intelligence and then to regain what he could do earlier. At
that time, higher spiritual beings had an influence on the unfree will;
through the open etheric head they worked through the intellect.
Going still further back we reach the Lemurian Epoch. Here we come to
a stage in human development at which the union of the maternal and
paternal principles takes place for the first time. This etheric head
naturally branches out into the astral body which surrounds the human
beings with its rays ... [Gap in text ...]. If one had found the means
of lifting the head with the astral body out of such a human being
something quite peculiar would have occurred. He would thereby have
lost the possibility of holding himself upright; he would have folded
up. Just the opposite procedure was taken with man at that time and
through this he gradually raised himself to the upright posture.
In the Lemurian Epoch, however, man was still at a stage at which he
did not yet possess what we are assuming could be lifted out of him.
In this earlier period he did not yet possess this etheric head with
the astral body. At that time, they were not yet there. Man as he
wandered over the earth was then really a being folded together. The
two organs now used for work, the hands, were then turned backwards
and formed additional organs of movement, so that he went on four
legs. One must picture two people of the present day, man and woman,
entwined in one another, think away the upper half of the body,
leaving only the lower half there. The human being was actually
male-female. He also had at that time an astral and etheric body, but
not the one which he had later. This was a different astral body, that
is, such a one as had reached its highest perfection on the Old Moon.
There, on the Old Moon, the astral body together with the etheric body
had acquired the capacity of developing a physical body which then had
a crab-like form. The human being could stand on one pair of legs and
make a kind of leaping movement.
This astral body with the etheric body was then of quite another
nature. It had a form which was not entirely egg-shaped, but more like
a bell which descended like a dome over the human being who went on
all fours. The etheric body provided for all the life functions of
this Lemurian human being. In his astral body he had a dull twilight
consciousness similar to that of our dreams. His consciousness was
however unlike the reminiscences inherent in our dreams, for he dreamt
of realities. When he was approached by another human being
unsympathetic to him, there arose in him a sensation of light which
indicated what was unsympathetic.
Already on the Old Moon man had some slight power of using both his
front limbs for the purpose of grasping, so that now the time came for
assuming the upright posture. His other living companions were, in the
Lemurian Age, of the nature of reptiles; animals of grotesque shapes
who have left no traces behind them. The ichthyosaurs and so on are
descendants of these animals. It is a fact that at that time the earth
was inhabited by beings reptilian in character; human bodies too were
reptile-like. When eventually this reptilian human being assumed the
upright posture, the formation of the head, quite open in front, out
of which gushed a fiery cloud, became visible. This gave rise to the
tales about the winged serpent, about the dragon. Such was man's
grotesque form at that time, reptile-like. The Guardian of the
Threshold, the lower nature of man, frequently appears in a form of
this kind. It represents the lower nature with the open formation of
the head. At that time, the union took place between these forms on the
earth and the other beings already described. The astral body with the
head formation united with the winged-serpent body with its fiery
opening. It was the fructification of the maternal earth with the
paternal spirit.
In this way there proceeded the fructification with the Manas forces.
The lower astral body merged with the higher astral body. A great part
of the astral body, as it then was, fell away. One portion formed the
lower parts of the human astral body, and the other newly acquired
astral body, connected with the head, united with the upper parts of
the human being. What was then peeled off abandoned this astral body
which was bound up with the form of the winged-serpent; it could no
longer have any further development on the Earth. It formed, as a
conglomerate substance, the astral sphere of the moon, the so-called
eighth sphere.
(50)
The moon actually provides shelter for astral
beings which have come into existence through the fact that man has
thrown something off.
This union of the paternal spirit with the maternal substance was
described in Egypt as the union of Osiris and Isis. From it came forth
Horus. The merging of the serpent form with the etheric head, with the
newly acquired astral body and head formation, led to the conception
of the form of the sphinx. The sphinx is the expression of this
thought in sculpture.
There were seven kinds or classes of such forms, all of which differed
somewhat from each other, from the finest, approximating to the highly
developed formation of the human form down to those which were utterly
grotesque. These seven kinds of human forms had all to be fructified.
One must conceive the descent of the Sons of Manas in this pictorial
way. Only then can one understand how the astral body of man came into
existence. It is composed of two different members.
If we consider human development we shall find that the one part of
the astral body is continually endeavouring to overcome the other
half, the lower nature, and transform it. In so far as man today
consists of astral body with etheric body and physical body, it is in
fact only the physical body which in its present state is a product
which has reached completion. In the case of the etheric body also
there are two parts that seek to merge into one another.
Now when man dies he gives over to the forces of the earth his whole
physical body, but the etheric body divides itself into two members.
The one member is derived from the upper formation and this man takes
with him. The remainder falls away, for over this he can exert no
mastery; it came to him from outside. He can only exert mastery over
it when he has become an occult pupil. This part of the etheric body
therefore in the case of the ordinary person is given over to the
etheric forces of cosmic space.
What clings to the person from that astral body which came with him
from the Old Moon compels him to spend a period of time in Kamaloka
until he has freed himself from this point as regards that particular
life. Then he still has that part of the astral body which has found a
state of balance; with this he makes his journey through Devachan and
back to physical life. This is why one sees bell-like formations in
astral space rushing about with terrific speed. These are the human
souls again seeking incarnation. When here with us such a bell-like
human being darts through astral space and an embryo in South America
is karmically connected with it, this human bell must immediately be
there. So these returning souls rush through astral space. This bell
formation is reminiscent of those which appeared in the Lemurian Age,
only it has already found its state of balance with the higher astral
body. We know that the human being develops by working from the ego
upon the three other bodies. The ego is nothing other than what worked
at that time in a fructifying way; the upper auric part with the
etheric head. The members which the human being has developed are the
physical body, the etheric body, the astral body.
Upper Etheric or Mental body
Astral body as Buddhi
Astral body
Lower Etheric body
Physical body
The physical body has arisen through a transformation and ennobling of
that serpent-like body which we meet with in the Lemurian Age. This
was male-female. The present day human being is also male-female. In
the case of a man the basis of the upper members is female, with a
woman the basis of the upper etheric body is of male formation. So
actually the physical nature of the human being is also male-female.
The etheric body consists of two members, that part of human nature
which originally came over from the Old Moon and its opposite pole.
They were at first not yet joined together; later they approached one
another and became united. The one is the pole of animality, the other
the pole of the spiritual. The pole of animality is called etheric
body, the pole of the spiritual, mental-body. The mental body is
materialised ether.
Between them is the astral body and this too has arisen out of the
union of a duality. Fundamentally it is also a two-fold formation. We
have to differentiate in it a lower and a higher nature. The higher
nature was originally connected with the mental body. This part of the
astral body which has its seat in the mental body what
therefore has come into it from above is the other pole of the
lower astral body. One of the characteristics of the lower astral body
is that it has desires. The upper part has instead of these, devotion,
love, the giving virtue. This part of the astral body is called
Buddhi. The description here given of the human being is as seen in
this way in the Cosmic Light. When man himself works into his sheathes
it is different. The one portrays his cosmic structure, the other how
he himself works into it.
Thus Buddhi is the ennobled astral, the Mental the ennobled etheric
and the Physical has its opposite pole in Atma.
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