IX.
THE EARTH'S PASSAGE THROUGH ITS FORMER
PLANETARY CONDITIONS.
In continuation
of yesterday's sketch on the planetary evolution, let us now
add some further explanations. We have already explained that
our earth once passed through a Saturn, a Sun and a Moon
condition. Let me now describe to you these successive states
of existence, as they are usually described in occultism.
When speaking of the soul's development along the path of
knowledge, we shall be able to understand many things which
can now only be advanced hypothetically.
If we consider
the Saturn state of existence, that condition of our earth
lying millions and millions of years before the present time,
we find that it presented an aspect greatly differing from
the one which is taken for granted through our present
physical conditions. Above all, we should bear in mind that
man, the most perfect being we know, has passed through the
longest course of development. You will therefore hear the
description of a course of development which greatly deviates
from the Haeckel-Darwin theory of evolution, but the
advantages of this purely materialistic theory may be
gathered from my book,
“Haeckel, the Riddles of the World and Theosophy”.
The first thing
to be grasped is that the most perfect beings are those who
passed through the longest course of development, and the
most perfect being of all is man, especially the physical
body of man. All other beings in our environment have not
attained to the perfection of man's physical body, which has
taken longer than all others for its development. If we look
back through spiritual vision, we therefore find that the
first foundation of man's physical body was laid upon Saturn.
The whole universe, with all the beings and objects which it
contained, influenced the first state of the earth's
existence. The present human beings on our planet still
possess all the organs which were formed upon Saturn and they
are the most perfect parts of man's physical body, namely,
the sense-organs. These apparatuses can be grasped from a
purely physical aspect and their first foundation was then
laid. Of course, you must not think that the eye existed on
Saturn in the same form in which it exists to-day. But the
first foundation of the eye, the ear, of every sense-organ
and of all the other purely physical apparatuses of the human
being appeared upon Saturn. The only activities existing upon
Saturn which may still be found to-day, are those which
pertain to the mineral kingdom. (Crystallizations, etc.)
Upon Saturn,
the human being existed in the form which was the first
foundation of his physical body; everything, else, the blood,
the tissues, etc. did not then exist. Physical apparatuses
constituted the first basis of man's physical body. Even as
the emerald, the mica, etc, arise through physical laws and
develop in the form of cubes, hexaeders, etc, so at that time
forms developed which resembled apparatuses and which existed
upon Saturn in the same way in which crystals now exist upon
the earth. The activity of Saturn's surface essentially
consisted in a kind of reflection which went out into the
universal space. The Beings in Saturn's environment who were
scattered in the universal spaces sent down their influences.
Something which we may call the “cosmic aroma”
was also then strongly developed. Only a few phenomena of the
present day may give you a feeling for what took place upon
Saturn: for example, when you hear an echo in Nature, the
sound of this echo can convey to you something which went
streaming out of Saturn as the result of the impressions
which it received. These conglomerations of forces resembling
apparatuses which threw back pictures in the universal space,
formed the first foundation of that which developed later on
as the eye. In a similar way we might follow the development
of everything else. What you now have within your body, was
once upon Saturn a physical kingdom, which sent out into the
world's spaces the reflection of the whole cosmos in a
manifold manner.
Myths and
legends preserved this knowledge far more clearly than one
generally supposes. The Greek myth of Chronos and Rhea,
proceeding from the Eleusinian Mysteries preserved, for
example such a truth; it contains however, a great
displacement of facts due to the way in which the Greeks
viewed the great cosmic connections. This myth tells us that
Chronos sent down his rays and that these rays then returned
to him in many forms: this explains the picture of Chronos
devouring his children.
Now you must
not think that the Saturn mass was as firm and solid as the
physical bodies of to-day; even water and air do not give you
an idea of Saturn's fundamental substance. When speaking of
bodies in occultism, we speak of solid, liquid and gaseous
bodies. And if we speak of the elements in the old manner,
they correspond to that which modern chemistry designates as
the “aggregate conditions” of matter, for you
must not think that the men of olden times, when speaking of
the “elements” meant the same thing as we do.
Then there is a higher “aggregate state”,
designated in ancient occultism as “fire”; a
better meaning is however conveyed by calling it
“heat”. Even physics will be obliged to recognise
that what is designated as heat, may be compared with a kind
of fourth aggregate state, with another kind of substance
differing from air and water. The Saturn mass was not even
condensed to the state of air it consisted of purified heat,
and its activity resembled that of the heat your blood, for
it was connected with inner life-processes. The physical
processes upon Saturn were real life-processes. Saturn
consisted of heat-substance, of an immensely fine volume
which may be designated as neutral, if compared with our
present substances.
If we wish to
study the Beings who inhabited Saturn, we must realise that
the Beings whom we now see moving about upon the earth, then
possessed only the first beginning of a physical body; they
were embodied in heat-substance, and their activity consisted
in a current of heat which moved about. These currents
constituted the deeds of the Beings who filled Saturn with
life. Even as to-day you are able to make a table, so these
Saturn-beings did their work by producing currents of heat.
Nothing else could be observed of these Beings. A greeting
exchanged upon Saturn was as if two currents of heat moved to
and fro, exchanging their forces.
The Beings who
passed through the human stage upon Saturn did not possess a
physical body as their lowest member, for they did not
descend into matter so deeply as to require a physical body.
Their lowest member was the Ego, even as to-day our lowest
member is the physical body; then came their Sprit-Self or
Manas, their Life-Spirit or Buddhi, then Spirit-Man or Atma.
In addition they developed an eighth, ninth and tenth
members, which must be included.
Theosophical
literature calls these members which the human being has not
yet developed, the “Three Logoi”; in Christianity
they are called the Holy Spirit, the Son or the Word, and the
Father. We may therefore say: Even as the human beings now
consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego,
Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man, so these Beings
living upon Saturn, who in regard to their connection with
the earth may be compared with the present human beings,
consisted of Ego, Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man; of
the Holy Ghost, the Son or Word, and the Father. The
theosophical terminology designates them as
“asuras”. They are the Beings who from the very
beginning implanted into the physical foundation of man's
body the feeling of independence, of Ego-consciousness, and
of Ego-feeling. You could not use your eye in the service of
the Ego had your eye's foundation not been prepared at that
time, so that now you are enabled to place your eye at the
service of the Ego. These members were therefore prepared by
the Spirits of the Ego, also
named the Spirits of Egoism. They gave us the wisest thing of
all, when developed in the right way. But everything of the
highest nature becomes perverted into its opposite if it is
not developed in the right way, because then it exercises the
most harmful and destructive influence. Man could never reach
that high stage which we designate as human dignity, had not
these Spirits of Egoism implanted in him the Ego-feeling.
There have always been Beings who followed an evil Course,
and consequently we must say: The Beings who implanted the
Ego into man and who are now upon a stage of development
greatly surpassing the human one, those Beings to whom we may
look up as the highest of all, gave their Ego as an offering
of self-renunciation and sacrifice; but the others followed
the development of their Ego in a selfish manner.
In striving
after freedom and human dignity we bear within us the
influences of the Spirits of the Ego who followed the good
path, and we bear within us the seed of evil, because the
influence of the Beings who fell away continued to be active.
This contrast has always been felt. Christianity itself makes
a distinction between God the Father, whom it considers as
the most highly developed Spirit of Saturn, and his opponent,
the Spirit of all the evil Egos and of everything which is
radically immoral, the Spirit who fell away upon the ancient
Saturn. These are the two representatives of Saturn.
Even as after
death we encounter other forms of existence, so a cosmic
body, such as Saturn, passes through a kind of intermediate
state, a kind of sleep-condition, before it enters into a new
condition; it passes through a “pralaya” in
contrast to a “manvantara”, so that we have a
kind of resting, passive condition of the planet, between the
Saturn and the Sun state of existence. The whole planet then
emerges in a new form from its sleeping state, which is,
however, a spiritual one.
Saturn thus
emerged as the Sun, and a considerable transformation had
taken place. Upon the Sun a great number of the germs which
had already developed upon Saturn and which are still
developing within us to-day, were permeated by an etheric
body. During such a planetary transition something evolves
which may be compared with the fruit of a plant which we lay
in the earth; it decays, but it forms the foundation of a new
plant Thus everything which developed upon Saturn arose again
upon the Sun with a new foundation and it became permeated
with an etheric body.
There were also
other beings who had remained behind upon the
mineral-physical stage, and they can be compared with the
present mineral kingdom. The Sun absorbed them as a kind of
subordinate kingdom of Nature, but at the same time another
kingdom was raised to the stage of plant-man.
You obtain a
right conception of the Sun-atmosphere if you imagine a
thick, chemical gas, no longer representing a merely
reflecting body, but one which absorbed everything which,
came raying towards it, and after having transformed it,
reverberated it in the same way in which plants now
reverberate colours. The plant forms its green colour and
other substances and returns them to the cosmic spaces. That
which lived upon the ancient Sun cannot be compared with an
echo, nor with a reflected image, as in the case of Saturn,
in regard to the beings embodied upon the Sun, we come across
a phenomena which can only be compared with a kind of Fata
Morgana, with atmospheric phenomena resembling coloured
pictures. Such phenomena which can only be perceived to-day
in certain regions of our globe, can give you an idea of how
these plant-bodies could be perceived. You must imagine that
your bodies revealed certain Fata Morgana-like processes,
through which your present bodies could pass as if through
air. You were then as transparent as a Fata Morgana —
but this phenomenon did not only consist of light, but also
of tones and smells whirring through the gas- sphere of the
Sun.
Whereas the
beings living upon the Sun could shine like the fixed stars
of to-day, the ancient Saturn kingdom of the beings who had
remained behind, could be observed like a dark mass, like
dark forms against the light, like obtuse. caverns in the
body of the Sun, which disturbed its harmony. Particularly in
regard to the “cosmic aroma” these retarded
beings mixed into it sensations which provoked all kinds of
evil smells. Myths have retained a recollection of this, for
they relate that the Devil leaves behind an evil smell. As it
progressed, the Sun really left behind a dark part, and the
sun-spots which are visible now, are the remnants of the
ancient Saturn kingdom which once existed upon the Sun.
Hypothetically these spots should be explained exactly as we
explain them now; for all these explanations are valid.
In a short
sketch you thus have the earth's sun-existence painted, as it
were, from its material aspect. Let us now see who were the
Beings who attained the human stage upon the Sun. They would
have to be described as follows: Their lowest body is the
astral body, then comes the Ego, the Spirit-Self, the
Life-Spirit, the Spirit-Man or Atma, then the Holy Ghost in
the Christian meaning, and finally the Son or the Word. They
did not have the Father, for this member was only developed
during the Saturn era. These Saturn Spirits meanwhile rose to
a still higher stage, and now they stand far above the human
being.
The Leader of
the Sun Spirits, in so far as He exercised the highest,
influence upon the earth, the representative of the Spirits
whose highest member was the Son or the Word, is the Christ,
in the esoteric meaning of Christianity. He is the real
regent of the earth, in so far as the earth is based upon the
Sun state of existence. Upon the Sun, Christ would not yet
have been called by that name. The old form of Christianity
always taught this truth, and the difference between genuine
Christianity and, the exoteric form of Christianity, which is
in so many cases based upon misunderstandings, is that the
older form of Christianity exerted all its thinking power and
applied every conception in order to understand that high
Being Who took on human shape in Jesus of Nazareth. The
ancient form of Christianity wished to gain a conception of
what lay at the foundation of this mystery, and no wisdom was
too high for it, or too complicated: It explained the Being
of Christ within Jesus of Nazareth in accordance with this
truth. Many a passage in the Gospel of St. John can only be
understood if you grasp it from this aspect. It suffices to
draw attention to one point: If you take the words,
“I am the Light of the World”
literally, these imply that
the Christ is the great Sun Hero, and that the Light which
belongs to the Sun constitutes His being. We designate the
whole hosts of Spirits whose Leader is the Christ as the
“Fire Spirits” and we say: The Asuras or
the Ego Spirits reached the human stage during the
Saturn era. During the Sun existence the Fire
Spirits or the Logoi, whose highest
representative is named the Logos or the Word, reached this
stage. For this very reason, Christ is named the
“Word” that existed in “the
beginning”, and the “beginning” designates
in the Bible a definite point of departure in the cosmic
evolution.
Again we have
an intermediate condition, a kind of sleeping condition for
the whole cosmic body, and then it begins to shine forth
again as the ancient Moon.
You must
imagine that in the beginning the present Earth and the
present Moon formed one body with the Sun. Only when the Sun
began to shine forth again, one part of the Beings separated
from it with their own environment, so that two celestial
bodies arose. One of these bodies, the Sun, begins to develop
into a fixed star, and the body which separates from it
begins to circle around it. The ancient Sun thus divided
itself into two parts; the more highly developed substance
remained behind upon the Sun, and the less perfect substance
was eliminated. Consequently, that which once pursued the
same course, because there was only one body, now followed
two separate course: the Sun path and the Moon path. The Sun
path was the one which developed upon the Sun-body, whereas
the Moon developed its own world. You could reconstruct the
ancient Moon by mixing together the present earth and the
present Moon; this would enable you to form a conception of
the way in which the ancient Moon was constituted. Both
physically and spiritually the present Moon is far below the
Earth in regard to its quality, and the Earth separated from
the Moon just because it needed better conditions of life for
Beings who lived upon it. The Earth developed beyond the
stage it had reached during the Moon existence; but its best
part remained behind upon the Sun.
What was the
aspect of things upon the ancient Moon? The Beings who had
passed through a preparatory stage upon Saturn by developing
the physical foundation of the sense-organs, transformed
these organs upon the Sun by permeating them with a etheric
body; the sense organs thus became centralised, and the first
basis of the organs of growth reaching as far as the glands
could unfold upon the ancient Sun under the influence of the
etheric body; this was a final product of the Sun
existence.
Upon the Moon,
the astral body was added in a similar manner. Everything
astral first existed in the surroundings; the Fire Spirits
had an astral body as their lowest member. The Beings upon
the Sun resembled plants; for instance, they could not move
from their fixed places. Although the whole body of the Sun
was gaseous, you must imagine air-strata of greater density
which were the bodies of these human plants. But now the
astral body of man was added; this gave rise to the first
foundation of a nervous system. The kingdom which had reached
the plant stage of development upon the Sun, passed over to
the animal stage, to a stage resembling that of animals. The
physical ancestors of man upon the Moon thus possessed three
bodies: the physical body, the etheric body and the astral
body, yet they greatly surpassed the most highly developed
apes of our planet; they were human animals which no biology
can describe, an intermediate kingdom between man and animal.
Our present vegetable, animal and mineral kingdoms only
developed later, but even as there were human animals; so we
must admit the existence of an intermediate kingdom between
plant and animal; plants with a kind of sentient capacity,
plants which literally squeaked if one touched them. These
plant-animals could never have grown upon a mineral soil,
such as the present soil of the Earth; in fact, this mineral
soil did not exist upon the Moon. Its mass did not consist of
the present rocky substances, not even of loose soil.
Comparatively speaking, the Moon's foundation consisted of a
mass resembling a mash of cooked spinach or salad, and in it
a kind of mineral plant, The whole foundation of the Moon was
therefore of vegetable nature. A peat bed of to-day would
resemble the kingdom which existed at that time as an
intermediate kingdom between our plants and minerals. There
were no rocks, and anyone walking over the ground would have
walked over such a peaty ground or vegetable foundation, and
analogously you may think of rocks in the form of woodened
portions within this mass.
The
plant-animals grew out of this whole foundation, and above
them, in the Moon's environment which may be designated as
“fire-air”, moved those beings who were
man-animals. Imagine the whole atmosphere filled with
saltpeter, carbon and sulphur gases; the Moon-men lived in
this fiery air which you would thus obtain. Occultists always
knew of the existence of this fire-air, and under older
conditions of the Earth it was even possible to produce this
fire-air artificially. This is only possible to-day in a very
restricted circle, but this knowledge has been preserved in
genuine alchemy. Consequently, if you read in Goethe's
“Faust”, “Let me produce a little
fire-air”, this touches the depths of occultism.
Fire-air enwrapped; the Moon; this was its atmosphere.
We can
understand this Moon-existence even better if we add another
fact. Upon the Moon there was a kingdom of plant-minerals, of
animal-plants growing out of this vegetable-mineral soil, and
then there were the animal-men moving about upon it. But upon
each stage there are beings who remain behind — you
may, if you like, say that they did not “pass”.
This is the case not only at school, but also in the great
course of development, where a pupil may have to repeat a
class. These beings who did not “pass”, appear in
future stages of development in very peculiar conditions.
Such stragglers of the plant-minerals who did not
“pass” still exist in parasites, for instance in
the mistle-toe. It cannot grow upon mineral soil, because it
was accustomed to grow upon a vegetable-mineral soil. It
proves a fact resembling that of a pupil who did not move on
to a higher form; except that the case of the beings who
remain behind in the cosmic development is far worse.
Particularly in the North we come across a myth which
describes this; you are all acquainted with the northern myth
of Baldur and his death through Loki.
The Gods were
frolicking about in the Aesir's home and in there games they
hurled about all kinds of objects. Baldur had just before had
dreams foreboding his early death, and the Gods were
therefore afraid to lose him. The Mother of the Gods had
taken an oath from all the living and inanimate beings and
they all had all promised that they would never hurt Baldur,
and so the Gods enjoyed the game of throwing all manner of
weapons against Baldur. Loki, the opponent of the Gods, had
discovered that one being, who was considered to be
harmless, had not made any promise, and this was the
mistle-toe, which lay in hiding somewhere in the distance.
Loki obtained the mistle-toe, gave it to the blind god Hodur,
who threw it at Baldur: the mistle-toe wounded Baldur, for it
had not sworn the oath, and Baldur died.
This myth
indicates that that which is invulnerable upon the Earth can
only suffer harm through that which has remained behind from
another existence as something evil. In the mistle-toe people
saw something which had entered the present state of
existence from an earlier one. All the beings now living upon
the earth can only suffer harm through that which has
remained behind from an earlier one. All the beings now
living upon the Earth are connected with Baldur. But it was
otherwise upon the Moon; consequently that being which had
remained behind from the Moon was able to kill Baldur. All
the various customs connected with the mistle-toe arise out
of this foundation.
We should also
consider the Moon existence from another aspect, from the
Spiritual one. The Moon Beings who had reached the human
stage must be described as beings whose lowest member was the
etheric body, their second one the astral body, then the Ego,
Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man or Atma, and then they
also had the Holy Ghost. They no longer had the ninth member
pertaining to the Fire Spirits upon the Sun. The highest of
the Moon Spirits who had reached the human stage is called
the “Holy Ghost” in Christian
esotericism. In the early original form of Christianity, the
threefold Godhead was therefore intimately connected with the
evolution of the earth. The Holy Ghost is a Spirit who is
above man and Who is able to inspire him in a direct way.
Thus you may
see that the Moon Spirits now stand above the human being.
They are also called “Lunar Pitris”, “Moon
Fathers” and “Spirits of Twilight”. The
whole host belonging to the Holy Ghost is called in Christian
esotericism the Host of Angels. The Angels are the Spirits
immediately above man, who passed through their human stage
upon the ancient Moon.
The life of the
animal-men and of the plant-animals upon the Moon, differed
from that of the beings who developed out of them upon the
Earth. The movement of the Moon, which had already severed
itself from the Sun, was quite different from the movement of
the present earth around the sun. The ancient Moon circled
around the Sun in such a way that it always turned the same
face towards it, even as the Moon to-day always shows the
same side to the earth. The Moon thus turned only once around
its own axis, while circling around the Sun. The Moon Beings
were therefore dependent upon the Sun in quite a different
way than is the case with the present earthly inhabitants.
During the Moon's whole epoch of revolution around the Sun,
it was always daytime on one of its sides, and a kind of
night upon the other. The Moon Beings, who were already able
to move about, wandered in a kind of circle around the Moon,
so that they passed through one epoch in which they stood
under the influence of the Moon. The time in which they stood
under the Sun's influence was their time of procreation. For
there was already a kind of procreation. The Moon-men could
not as yet express joy and pleasure through sounds; their
expressions had a more cosmic significance. The sun-epoch was
the time of ardour and passion, and it was connected with a
great screaming on the part of the Moon Beings, This exists
to-day in the animal kingdom.
Many other
things have remained from that time. You know how one tries
to investigate the true reason for the birds migration, why
they circle around the globe in a certain manner. Many things
which are mysteriously concealed to-day, can be understood if
the whole course of earthly evolution is borne in mind. There
was a time when the lunar beings could only procreate when
they wandered towards the Sun; this may be called their epoch
of sexual life. General processes of lunar life expressed
themselves in sounds at certain seasons of the and at other
times, the beings upon the Moon were dumb.
We have thus
learned to know time earth' s passage through the three
preceding conditions of its existence: that of Saturn, of the
Moon and of the Sun.
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