Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 29 April 1905, Düsseldorf

3. The Origin of the World and of Man

If we want to look at the origin of the world and man from a theosophical point of view, we have to make a threefold distinction. Man differs according to his physical, mental and spiritual nature. The spirit is the most imperishable, but also that which appears first of all in our world existence, that which is the oldest and has the longest future, that which was there before the existence of the soul and will be there when there is no longer a soul, the actual universal in man.

The human being as a spirit can assume the most diverse forms on the various world bodies. This spirit has emanated from states that we cannot take into account today.

When we go back, we always arrive at new states of existence, but never at a real beginning. Let us consider the states that we call our states of consciousness.

Today we live in bright, clear day consciousness. This consciousness, which people today call normal consciousness, has emerged from three earlier states of consciousness.

The first state of consciousness is a dull one, which could be compared to the dull consciousness of a lifeless mineral today. This deep trance state can be induced artificially, where a person sinks deep down and knows nothing at all, where he is no longer aware of his surroundings. Then he begins to speak of great world systems, to draw them; systems of which he knows nothing at all in his waking state. It is what man went through a long time ago, the deep trance or mineral state.

This is followed by another deep sleep, dreamless. In this state, the clairvoyant also acquires a consciousness: continuity consciousness. He then perceives the spiritual world around him. In a very distant past, the person has gone through this dawning consciousness.

The third state of consciousness is the dream state; it is filled with images; it is already a relatively high state of consciousness, it preceded our present one. It can be compared to our dream sleep today. In our dreams we perceive things from the outside world, but not with our waking senses, but symbolically, as it were. Images arise in us, triggered by things in the outside world. For example, we touch a sharp corner in our sleep and dream that someone is stabbing us in the hand with a sharp instrument. It is an image consciousness, atavism. - This state was once a stage that humans went through.

Now follows the bright, clear day consciousness, the state in which man finds himself today. It is followed in further development by three more states, which are already being trained today in esoteric schools by practical clairvoyants: psychic consciousness; a next hyperpsychic state: continuity consciousness; and finally the seventh state: spiritual consciousness and with it the view of the whole world system.

Man thus progresses through seven states of consciousness, that is the development of the soul, the stages through which the soul passes. Each such stage proceeds in a very specific, self-contained way; the Theosophist calls each of these states of consciousness the development on a planet. Between each stage there is a large space of rest called Pralaya; the state itself is called Manvantara.

The seven planets on which man passes through the various states are designated by the Theosophist with names that are not to be confused with the names of today's planets. Astronomers have taken the names of today's planets from Theosophy, as Theosophy is much older than astronomy.

The first planet on which the soul developed is Saturn, the second is the sun, the third is the moon and the fourth is the earth. These four planets correspond to man's four states of consciousness. On Saturn he was in the deep trance state; on the sun in the state of deep, dreamless sleep; on the moon in dream sleep. For theosophy, earthly existence is made up of two links, which are given two names; the parts of earthly existence form a chain, the first half of which is called Mars, the second half Mercury.

The next planet on which man will be in the psychic state of consciousness is Jupiter; the next is Venus; the last of the seven planets is not yet named. The ancient sages had this order of the seven planets recorded in the seven days of the week for anyone who can read it. The names of the seven days of the week are symbolic expressions for the seven states of the human soul. The first day of the week for the ancients and still today for the Semitic peoples was Saturday, Saturn's day; the second: Sunday, after the second planet, the sun; the third: Monday, after the moon. The Earth is made up of Mars and Mercury, Mars Day or Tuesday, and Wednesday: Mercury Day, the German name for Mercury [is Wotan, i.e.] Wotan Day, English: Wednesday, French: Mercredi. Then comes Jupiter day, Jeudi, German for the god Donnar, Thursday; then last: Friday, Venus day, Vendredi, after the German name for Venus: Freya.

Now the soul incarnates. On the moon it was in the state of image-consciousness, which is similar to today's dream-consciousness; but the dream does not reach the stage of the most highly developed image-consciousness. This consciousness was already once bodily in a certain stage of animality; not of today's animals, but also not yet human, an intermediate stage which, for example, still lacked the forebrain. Now everything physical disappeared and formed anew after a pralaya, and now we come to the state that formed on our earth. Now we have a spiritual human being who is able to develop images from within his consciousness. In each new state, the earlier states must first be briefly repeated; this is called rounding. On earth, therefore, the states of Saturn, Sun and Moon must be repeated; then the human being begins to ascend into the present state of consciousness. But he cannot do this immediately.

We do not find the earth then with its solid crust as we do today, but in a very fine matter. In the theosophical view there are four ethers above the liquid and gaseous state, which become more and more refined; the first, which comes after the gaseous state, the heat ether, [then] the light ether, the chemical ether and, last and most refined, the life ether. Each denser state is created by condensing a thinner one.

When the soul entered the earth, it was in the thinnest matter. This material substance is a very fine, malleable, plastic matter. Now comes the soul with its already acquired ability to form images. From this fine matter the human being creates forms that are still quite different from his present etheric body. They are images of soul life, experiences that the soul has already had. The soul can completely control this most subtle matter.

There is now only this one being on earth; there are as yet no minerals, no plants and no animals. Man is the first-born on earth. The whole earth as it is today is only a conglomeration of these human beings. There are [then] only uniform beings, the earth is composed of them like a blackberry, they are merely souls formed in the finest matter. They needed no food, there was no reproduction, they multiplied by division. They were spheres that grew to a certain limit and then divided into two; these [parts] grew again, divided and so on.

In those ancient times the earth was still a completely different body, it was united with the sun and the moon. These three formed one body; only later did a separation take place. First came a great upheaval, a great cosmic event, which also meant a great upheaval for human beings. The most subtle, creative force pulled itself out of the earth and formed the sun. With this separation, the impossibility of reproduction through division arose. From now on, one being forms within the other, only to be expelled. The substances gradually condensed so that they separated themselves from the mass. This condensation provided the matter from which beings are formed that stand below the human being; certain animal species are rejected. Since the nobler matter had retreated to the sun, it was no longer possible for souls to form a body for themselves. Lower beings than human beings emerged, matter had been coarsened. Man either had to wither away or could only develop further at the expense of others; he had to reject the coarser matter, the animals, they were pushed down into a lower existence; they were stunted, decadent human beings. From now on, only coarser matter was available. Everything became more and more condensed, everything became more and more compartmentalized; but imprints from this time are still impossible, since everything was still very fine, soft matter.

In later times, the plant kingdom was also divided up. Of course, new animal forms continue to emerge at the same time, so that we now have a human kingdom, an animal kingdom and a plant kingdom on Earth, all of which were of a completely different nature to our kingdoms today.

Now the earth cools down more and more; more and more solid, denser parts come into the fine matter, the earth gets a solid skeleton as it were; the mineral kingdom is formed, which now gradually gives the earth a solid crust. During this time, the moon also separates from the earth.

With this separation of the moon a great catastrophe occurs again for the earth and for all beings living on it, because the heat ratio becomes completely different. Until then, man was an alternately warm being - that is, he adapted to his environment with his own warmth, as fish, amphibians and so on still do today. The beings now develop their own warmth, they form organs, take on different shapes, get warm blood. The earth is [there] at the time of Lemurian development. The first warm-blooded beings appear. Great, enormous changes are also taking place. Animals, plants and minerals are changing, granite and the oldest rocks are forming. The previous plant and animal forms must die out, everything takes on new forms, all kingdoms change; only now do the human, animal, plant and mineral kingdoms emerge. - Man is still very dissimilar to the present human being; he has a fantastic form, still consisting of very soft matter, which he could change as required; for example, he could make his hand longer and wider. He could not yet think or calculate, he had no language, no memory, but an extraordinarily developed will.

The body gradually condenses and hardens, thereby separating the soul from the outside world and confining it to an inner space. - The sensory perceptions, and thus the senses, develop; they cause the consciousness of images to gradually transform into the waking consciousness of today. The possibility of seeing colors already existed. Now man covers what he sees with color, the image consciousness becomes the truth consciousness; because it is still at a very low level, it still has the power to shape the images into reality through the strongly developed will.

It is very significant that man has not yet entered the male and female sex; he was still a dual-sex being. In the Bible, this history of the creation of the earth and man is described in detail. The seven days of God's work are the seven states. The correct translation of the Bible says of man: God created man male-female - not a male, a female, as Luther mistakenly translated. Only then did the sexes separate; not in such a way that different kinds of beings were formed, but some people developed more towards the male side, others more towards the female.

This marked a significant stage in the development of mankind. He had lost the ability to use a certain productive power, which he had previously possessed, outwardly. The power which he had hitherto used solely for procreation was, as it were, halved; the half which had become free was now used for the formation of those organs which could develop the higher powers in man. - Now the spirit penetrates the soul, and organs must be created for the spirit. With the emergence of bisexuality, man received the senses through which the spirit could penetrate him, which until then had only been able to act on him from the outside. Man now became aware of his spirit. Man could not yet speak, nor did he have a memory, but he had already developed certain skills. His imagination was still imbued with the old consciousness of images. He had the ability to create large, architectural forms that are completely incomprehensible today (from a consciousness similar to the way beavers or ants build their structures today). That was at the end of the Lemurian period.

Lemuria was a continent of which hardly any traces remain today and which is now covered by the Indian Ocean; part of the islands in the Indian Ocean form the remains of Lemuria. Remains from the latest period are still preserved on the Easter Islands, enormous, gigantic constructions that are now incomprehensible and impossible for today's clever minds to recreate. Canal structures, such as Lake Moeris, for example, which can no longer be produced and imitated today, they were created from a powerful intuition, from a completely different kind of mental image.

Lemuria perished through volcanic eruptions; and there is no trace of it left because the matter was still far too thin and soft; the human body shape was still not solid, it could be changed as required; the will still determined the form. A part, the most developed [part] of these humans was rescued at the fall of Lemuria to [the] Atlantis, a newly forming continent, which is now largely covered by the Atlantic Ocean.

Now language and memory were formed; both had to form together, as one is not possible without the other. But it was not yet developed, the logical mind

was not yet present, nor could humans count or calculate. - The Atlanteans went through the following stages of development: The seven races emerged one after the other:

1. Rmoahals
   2nd Tlavatli
2. toltecs
3. Turanians
4. Ursemites
5. Akkadians
6. Mongols

The first four races still had very little memory, which meant that other forces were active in them: they were able to control the life force in a very special way.

Today we take the power that drives our machines and so on from coal; it is a fossilized, inanimate force. The Atlanteans were still able to use the living power, the germinating power. From accumulated fruits they used seed power to propel their ship-like vehicles through the air. This was the case with the Toltec race.

Counting began in the fifth race, with the Ursemites, when the logical mind asserted itself. The actual Atlantean culture perished through flooding, and almost nothing of it has survived. Plato's Poseidonis is the last remnant of it. Atlantis memories of this flooding can be found among all peoples of the earth in the many legends of the Flood. Then our present population, which we call the Aryan race, emerged from the Atlantean population; it also has seven sub-races and begins with the ancient people of the Indians, who were spiritually highly developed; secondly: Persians; thirdly: Semites, the ancient Greeks, Romans and Egyptians; fourthly: later Greeks and Romans; fifthly: Germanic, Anglo-Saxon peoples.