Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 14 April 1910, Rome

28. The Occult Planetary Conditions and Earth Evolution

It will be necessary to say something in advance about the whole evolution of the world system. First, let us think of the present solar system as we see it spread out in space before us. Looking back into the present manvantara of the evolution of this system, we find the various bodies in ever more spiritualized states and arrive at a phase in which all the bodies of our solar system, including the present sun and the present earth, form a single globe whose circumference extends as far as Saturn. In the occult sense, this globe is called the earth and the sun is located within it. In the course of development, the individual planets differentiate and separate from this original sphere. Through a contraction of this original body, Uranus first detaches itself, then Neptune enters our system, but it appears to come from another system. Everything else then contracts again, and Saturn, Jupiter and Mars are released, each time through a previous contraction.

A mass then remains that contains our Earth and our Sun in an undifferentiated state. In this phase, the Earth undergoes its first period of development, the so-called polar period, the second is the hyperborean period. During this period the sun detaches itself from the earth and after it Mercury, Venus and so on, which are the present planets, detach themselves. In the hyperborean period we have the etheric, in the polar the astral. Then comes the Lemurian period for the earth, in which the physical body of man develops and the present moon separates itself from the earth, whereby the three members of the human entity - physical body, etheric body, astral body - become capable of absorbing the I into themselves. Then comes the Atlantean period, then the post-Atlantean period, our period, and so on.

Now we return to the undifferentiated state, that is, before the detachment of Saturn. This phase was preceded by a pralaya; before this pralaya there was another manvantara in which the earth and the moon were together. This phase of our earth with the moon is the lunar state of our earth. The sun was already separated, but the planets were distributed differently than during our present manvantara, and man then only had the physical, etheric and astral bodies.

If we go back even further, we come to another undifferentiated phase, that is, to another Pralaya, which was preceded by another Manvantara, in which the sun, moon and earth formed a single whole. The sun and the earth were not separated, they formed one whole, and the other planets were distributed quite differently than they are now: This is the Earth's solar state. Today's sun is hardly a part of the sun of that time. Back then it was in the planetary state and now it is in the solar state. A planet can become a sun when it separates the coarser and lower components from itself. This phase of the Manvantara is the solar embodiment (of the earth), during which man had only the physical and etheric body.

If we now go back to another undifferentiated state, that is, another pralaya, we come to another manvantara in which there was no differentiation of sun and planets at all, but only a single fine mass that extended to the circumference of Saturn, and that is the Saturnian state of the earth, in which man had only the physical body, which consisted only of heat and was perceptible only as heat in space.

For the occultist (secret researcher), heat is not just a special vibration of matter, but an essential aggregate in itself. On the sun the physical body is air, on the moon water, on the earth flesh. During the present Manvantara, Saturn first detached itself and then Jupiter as a repetition of the solar incarnation; then Mars detached itself, giving a repetition of the lunar state. Venus and Mercury are precursors of the future phase. And people who precede the great mass belong to the Mercury revolution. The different chains are only phases of a single chain.

The few initiates of the Lemurian period came from the ancient Manvantara of the Moon. They belonged to a completely different humanity and followed a different kind of evolution. Only in the Atlantean period do we find initiates who belong to our humanity.