The Human Being as Body, Soul and Spirit

GA 347 — 20 September 1922, Dornach

VII. About Early Conditions of Earth (Lemuria)

Now, gentlemen, in order to understand the human being even better than we already do, let us also look at the earth for once. When people on earth come together, the life of the human being as a physical human life cannot really be considered in isolation; rather, one must also consider the earth.

When you visit a natural history museum, you sometimes find the remains of animals and plants that lived on earth a long time ago. You can imagine, of course, that all kinds of things happen in the earth until these old animals and plants are destroyed in a certain respect. You can also consider that, for example, of certain animals in the earth, only bones are preserved at most, whereas the muscles, soft tissues, heart and other vessels are lost or destroyed very quickly. Therefore, only the fossilized bones, that is, the bones that fill with other material after the death of the animals , that is, when mud gets into them, that therefore only these hardenings, these petrifications, can be found, dug up, and that, so to speak, from what one has there, which is mostly only bone remains, one has to form an idea of what the Earth once looked like. Because you can also imagine that today's conditions on Earth could not have existed at the time when completely different animals and plants lived, because otherwise today's would not have emerged. So the Earth must have looked quite different at one time. You will be able to deduce that from what I am telling you today.

You see, around 1810, a naturalist named Cuvier, who lived in the first half of the 19th century, was said to be able to visualize what the whole animal looked like when he was given a bone. If you really study the shape of the bones, for example if you only have a single forearm bone, you can get an idea of what the whole thing must have looked like, because every single bone shape changes immediately when the whole body changes. So even from the individual bones, one can determine what the whole body looked like. Apart from the fact that we sometimes have whole skeletons of animals that once lived on earth, we have such individual bones, and one can get an idea from them of what the earth must have looked like.

I will now begin to describe a state of the earth that existed on earth in very early times, many thousands of years ago. I will describe this state to you in narrative form. We will get to know the details more precisely later, but now I will simply tell you how it once looked on the earth that we walk on today. You all know it in its present state.

That was the case. Imagine the earth, I will draw a piece of it here (see drawing); but this earth did not yet have such solid mountains as it has today, but this earth was actually like the outermost surface of the earth is when it has rained for weeks on end, yes, much more muddy. So the surface of the earth was not as solid as it is today, but it was much more muddy. If there had been people of today's kind back then, they would have either had to swim – but then they would have been constantly in the mud, that is, terribly dirty – or they would have had to constantly sink. So people in their present form did not yet exist at that time. It was a muddy, very muddy earth, and all sorts of things were in the muddy earth.

If you go out there today and pick up a stone, a stone like the one Mr. Erbsmehl once brought, or if you go deeper into Switzerland and take even harder stones, you have to imagine that they were all dissolved in the muddy earth at that time, like when you dissolve salt in water. Because in this muddy soil were all kinds of acids that dissolved everything. So, in short, it was a very strange mud that made up this soil. And above this soil, there was not yet an air like today's, not an air that only contained oxygen and nitrogen, but one in which all kinds of acids were in a gaseous state. Even sulfuric acid was in it, sulfuric acid vapors and nitric acid vapors; that was all in this air. From this you can already see that man in his present form could not have lived there. Of course, these vapors were weak, but they were in this air. And this air also had the peculiarity that it was roughly the same as if you were to slip into an old oven today and feel the warmth that is being prepared for baking bread around you. So it would have been a bit uncomfortable for today's people if they had been inside this air, which also smelled of sulfuric acid and was quite warm.

But there was another air above that. It was a bit warmer than the air below and it formed clouds. These clouds that were formed there, they kept producing lightning and huge thunder because they also contained all kinds of sulfuric acid and nitric acid and all kinds of other substances. So it kept flashing with huge lightning. That was approximately the area around the earth.

I would like to call what was up there, because it was an awfully warm air, fire-air, because we have names. It was not glowing – that is only a false idea of today's science – it was not glowing, it was not warmer than such an oven. Such a fire temperature was up there; it then became a little cooler the further down you came. So I would just like to call this air up there fire air, and what was down there, earth mud.

This gives us a rough idea of what the earth was like in the beginning. Below was a greenish-brownish mud, which sometimes became as thick as a horse's hoof, but then it dissolved again. What is winter today was back then when the mud became so thick, almost like a horse's hoof, it solidified. And in summer, when the sun shone from the outside, it dissolved again and became liquid mud. And up there was just that warm air, which contained all sorts of things that later fell out. It was only later that the air cleared.

Now, another state has arisen from this state, in which very strange animals lived. So you see, all kinds of animals lived up there in the fire air. They looked like this: they had a scaly tail, but it was flat, so that the tail served them well for flying in the fire air. And then they had wings like a bat, and a head like that too. And they flew around up there in the air when the fire air no longer had such harmful vapors in it. These animals were particularly well suited for this – of course, when the storms were particularly severe, when there was terrible thunder and lightning, then they also felt uncomfortable; but when things became gentler, when there was just a little crackling up there and a soft lightning, they liked to live in this lightning, in this soft flashing. They flew around and were even capable of spreading something like an electrical emanation around them and sending it further down to earth. So that if a person had been down there, he would even have noticed from these electrical radiations: there is a flock of birds up there again. They were small dragon birds that spread electrical radiations around them and actually had their existence in the fire air in there.

You see, these birds, these dragon birds that were there, they were really very, very finely organized. They had very fine senses. The eagles and vultures that later emerged from them, after these guys had transformed, only retained the strong eyes from what these old guys had. But these guys sensed everything, especially with their bat-like wings, which were terribly sensitive, almost as sensitive as our eyes. With these wings they could perceive; they sensed everything that was going on. So, for example, when the moon was shining, they had such a sense of well-being in their wings that they moved their wings; just as a dog wags its tail when it is happy, so these guys moved their wings. They felt good in the moonlight. They roamed around and particularly liked making little fire clouds around themselves, as only the fireflies in the grass have preserved today. When the moon shone, they were up there like glowing clouds. And if there had been people back then, they would have seen such flocks of glowing balls and glowing clouds up there.

And when the sun shone – yes, back then it was the case that they then lost the desire to spread luminous bodies! They withdrew more into themselves, and then they actually processed what they had absorbed from the air – all the substances that they absorbed were still dissolved in the air. They nourished themselves by absorbing. They then digested this in the sun. They were just strange creatures. And they were once really present in the fire air of the earth.

If you now go further back in time, to the point where the earth started to form mud, you will find animals that are characterized by the fact that they were of gigantic size, gigantic... (gap in the text), when you consider these animals that once lived on the earth, half swimming and half wading in the mud. Now, there are already remains of these animals that can also be seen in natural science museums. These giants that once existed are called ichthyosaurs, fish dinosaurs. These ichthyosaurs were animals that can be said to have already lived on Earth. These ichthyosaurs looked particularly strange. They had a kind of head (it is drawn) like a dolphin, but the snout was not so hard - so it was a dolphin's head. Then they had a body like a huge, but slender lizard, with terribly thick scales. And in the head, they had huge teeth like a crocodile. They had crocodile teeth, like all these strange triangular crocodile teeth. Then they had something like whale fins – they moved half-swimming, half-walking; these were very soft, and they could also waddle and wade in the mud with them.

So they had something like whale fins, a huge body, then a head like a dolphin, with a pointed snout forward, crocodile teeth. And the strangest thing was that they had huge eyes that now glowed. One would have seen electrical points there in the clouds. The glowing birds flew especially in the moonlight. And when dusk came, if one could have seen it, one would have been able to make the encounter, which is highly unpleasant for today's people, with a giant light that would have come towards one, with a body larger than today's whales, with fins that swam on in this muddy water and sometimes stood up when it was harder. This muddy water sometimes became as hard as the hooves of horses. You could stand on it. They moved on like this: they formed these fins into hands; they were so internally mobile. They splashed over these horny layers, which were like deserts, and swam over them again where they were softer. Then they groped over them again, and afterwards, when they came to something softer again, they moved away by swimming. And if any human being had traveled in those days in any kind of boat – he couldn't have walked, it wouldn't have been possible – he might have encountered a giant animal like this, which he could have climbed up on with a ladder. It was like climbing a mountain today. You could have encountered a whole herd of cattle! There was something completely different there once.

All this can be seen; just as Cuvier recognized an entire animal from a single bone, today we can see how these ichthyosaurs, of which remains still exist, alive, and what they could do with their huge fins, that they had such a huge eye that shone like a giant lantern from afar, so that one could have avoided it. So they moved up and over the muddy earth and in the muddy earth.

And still a little deeper, so that they waded and bathed with real pleasure in the mud and always looked terribly dirty, so greenish-brownish dirty, were other animals. These other animals sometimes just stuck their huge heads out into the softer mud, but otherwise they waddled around in it, relying mainly on the mud having hardened a little. Only sometimes did they come to the surface, sticking their heads out. And that was something quite remarkable.

These other animals, those with the huge eye, are called ichthyosaurs today in their remains. But then there were those that were a bit more terrestrial, the plesiosaurs. The plesiosaurs also had a kind of whale-like, belly-like body, heads like lizards, so a kind of whale body and heads like lizards; but their eyes were more on the sides, while the ichthyosaurs had their huge glowing eyes right at the front. The plesiosaurs had a whale body, but it was also completely covered with scales. And the strange thing was that, because they were already more sluggish, they tended to settle more and more on what looked like somewhat firmer giant boats in the muddy earth. They already had four legs, clumsy four legs, with which they could even walk quite comfortably. They no longer had fins like the ichthyosaurs, on which they leaned. The ichthyosaurs braced themselves on their fins when they came upon something hard, and where they braced themselves, the fins spread out; so they used them as feet. But these plesiosaurs had hand-like feet. And from the remains, we can see that they must have had terribly strong ribs.

This was the state of things as they once were on Earth, how the plesiosaurs led a lazy life down there, how the ichthyosaurs swam around on the Earth and flew – for the animals with the fins could also fly quite low – and above them, in the twilight and in the moonlight, these ever-shining luminary clouds, which were actually dragon-bird stars. So that's what it looked like.

Now, the plesiosaurs were lazy creatures. But, you know, there was a reason for that. The Earth itself was lazier back then than it is today. Today, the Earth rotates around its axis in twenty-four hours. Back then, it took much longer; the Earth itself was lazier. It moved more slowly around itself, and that's how everything else came about. The fact that the air is so pure today depends entirely on our earth rotating on its own axis in twenty-four hours, which means that it has become more industrious over time.

The most uncomfortable time – if you judge it from today's human point of view – the most uncomfortable time should have been for these dragon-birds, because they had a hard time. They did not see it as a bad time, but they had a huge desire and longing for what you could actually understand when you hear it told today, as if these dragon-birds had had a very bad time. That was the case. Imagine the ichthyosaur with its huge eye crawling, flying, swimming through the very warm air; but the eye, it glowed very brightly. This glowing eye attracted these birds up there like a lamp attracts a midge. You have the same phenomenon on a small scale. If you light a lamp and there is a mosquito in the room, it flies towards it and is immediately burnt. Now, these birds up there were completely mesmerized by the giant eye of the ichthyosaurs, and they plunged down, and the ichthyosaurs could eat them. So the ichthyosaurs lived on what was buzzing around in the air above them.

If a person could have walked around on this strange earth in those days, they would have said: These are giant creatures and they eat fire. — Because that's what it looked like, exactly what it looked like, like giant creatures rushing around, flying around and eating fire that would have flown to them from the air.

And these plesiosaurs – I told you, they stuck their heads out like that; their eyes also glowed, and when a bird was swooping down, they also got something.

So it all fits together when you look at the reality. A dog that you feed poorly will also show you its strong ribs. The ichthyosaurs ate all the fire from the plesiosaurs; the plesiosaurs only got the worst firebirds and therefore had such prominent ribs. You can still see today that these plesiosaurs were poorly fed in ancient times.

But I said you would think: the birds up there, those beautiful, glowing birds – because they were beautiful – those beautiful glowing birds, they didn't have it comfortable. But that was what they liked, and they felt good when they could plunge into the jaws of an ichthyosaurus. That's what they considered bliss. Just as the Turks wanted to go to paradise, so these birds considered it their bliss to plunge into the jaws of an ichthyosaurus.

But really, gentlemen, I would say, it almost became more uncomfortable for the fire-eater itself – it had to eat them because it needed them for food – but it almost became more uncomfortable for the fire-eater itself than for the others that entered its belly. The firebirds plunged into it as if into their bliss; but the ichthyosaurus became quite uncomfortable in there in his belly because all kinds of electricity developed in there. And under the influence of this fire-eating and this electricity that developed in the giant stomach that almost filled the entire Ichthyosaurus—it had almost nothing else on the surface, mainly it was filled by a giant stomach—the Ichthyosaurs gradually became weak. It took quite a long time – even the fish nature can endure a lot; I said the other day about the human nature that it can endure a lot, but also the fish nature, especially an ichthyosaurus, can of course endure even more – but little by little the ichthyosaurs became more and more weak. They developed all kinds of weaknesses. Their eyes no longer shone as brightly. They were no longer as attracted to birds. And eating hurt them more and more. These ichthyosaurs got more and more stomach aches. What did that mean? In the world, everything means something.

You see, while these ichthyosaurs were developing on Earth and eating this fire, and this fire was being digested in their stomachs, their stomachs were transformed; eventually they were no longer a real stomach. And finally it came to the point that all these ichthyosaurs themselves took on a different form. They transformed.

Modern science will only tell you: There were once other animals, and they changed. That is no better than telling people: Once upon a time, a god came down and took a piece of earth and formed Adam out of it. You can understand one as well as the other.

But what I am telling you now is easy for you to understand. Because the fact that the ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs ate the dragon birds has completely transformed their insides and they have become different animals. This was also the case because the earth was turning faster and faster - not as fast as it is today, but faster than before, when it was very sluggish - and because the air was letting more and more harmful substances fall down, which were then combined with the earth. In particular, everything sulfurous was absorbed into the earth. The air became increasingly purer, not like today's air, but already considerably purer. It only became a kind of watery air in the later state, always interspersed with dense water vapors, with fog vapors. In the early days, the air was actually much purer because it was warmer. Later it cooled down and was terribly foggy. It was actually a fog over the earth that never really stopped, not even under the influence of the sun; it was a foggy layer over the earth. The mud gradually became a little thicker, and the later stones began to crystallize out. The mud became thicker, but it was still there. At the bottom there was still some thick stuff, and in between there was always some thin stuff, brownish-greenish muddy stuff, and above it was a foggy air.

In this foggy air, huge plants appeared, really huge plants. If you go into the forest today and look at the ferns, they are tiny today. But many, many thousands of years ago, similar to these ferns, there were huge plants, with weak roots in the muddy, spongy earth, plants that towered high and formed a kind of forest where the mud of the earth had already become somewhat thicker. So that later a state of the earth came, which was already a bit thicker. There were already all kinds of rocks – they had become solid, not very strong, a bit coarser, like wax – and in between there was mud everywhere, and out of that grew these huge fern trees, these giant trees. Where there was quite a bit of rock below, such giant forests with giant trees emerged. Then there was free space again – then it was different again. With these giant forests with huge trees that had emerged in nature for the Earth, the Ichthyosaurus and the Plesiosaurus would no longer have been able to do much. It was already too hard for the Plesiosaurus down there, and although it was still soft enough, it was too hard for the Ichthyosaurus and the Plesiosaurus would have become even more dirty: a crust would have formed around the scales. They could no longer have lived. But all these animals had already been contaminated by their fire-eating. When they came to this later Earth – but the later always means thousands and thousands of years – yes, it looked quite different. There were animals in the mud (it is drawn) that are also preserved in remains, so that we can get an idea of what these critters looked like. These critters, first of all, had a huge belly and a huge stomach, but they had a head that looked something like this, but much more clumsy, like the head of a modern-day seal. The eyes had already turned blackish, while the eyes of the earlier animals were luminous. They already had four feet, quite clumsy feet. But in addition, these creatures were completely covered with very fine hair, and the feet were actually more like clumsy hands.

And these critters led a strange life in this earth. They were on the solid earth at certain times, but deep down in the mud, and in this mud they moved. And mainly their breasts moved. They had huge breasts that were half lungs and half breasts. It was as if the lungs were still all the way out. At certain times they came and waddled and swam up to these forests and ate the fern trees. So the animals went from being fire-eaters to being plant-eaters. These animals were here (it is being drawn) and were covered as if by women's hair, they had giant heads, heads like clumsy seal heads. If you had gone for a walk back then, you could have seen these animals, as they always lived down there, breathing under water, always coming out, sitting on the banks, going to the forests. There they ate quite a lot with their huge mouths of what today you could not have eaten as food in one meal; they mainly ate a lot away from these giant forests. These are the animals that, as I said, are still around today and are called manatees today... (gap in the text).

And how did these animals actually come about? Yes, you see, it was because the earlier animals ate the air-breathing animals. And through the electrical forces, their bodies were transformed. The sea cows did not exactly develop from the ichthyosaurs I have described, but they did develop from similar animals. What they used to eat has become their outer form. What they took in internally has become their external form. Through eating, these animals have transformed.

This must now be said about today's natural science. You see, everything used to be much softer on the earth than it is today; these animals have taken on the forms that were formed in them by what they ate from the air animals.

And these dragon birds, for their part, had to change their shape again because the substances in the air were no longer the same as they used to be. They fell closer to the ground, and that is where the later birds gradually emerged.

But down below, another form has always emerged through eating. For example, from such an animal, as this Plesiosaurus was, an animal emerged that had four legs, like four huge columns (it is drawn), but on it there was also a huge belly, a head that was also similar to a seal head, Plump, it had a tail. It was also a giant animal. It was really very large. If you step on a very small wren with your feet, it is naturally underneath. This animal could have stepped on an ostrich, it was that large, it could have simply stepped on it to death. The largest animals of today would have behaved towards these animals then as the mice do now towards the larger animals. There are also remains of this animal. This animal is called Megatherium.

These animals also moved slowly, according to their constitution, just as one also moves on four pillars, and they fed on what happened to fly into their mouths, into those huge mouths, which also had crocodile teeth, but somewhat weaker ones. Some animals still survived, so there were still animals crawling around that looked like dinosaurs, like crocodiles. But these megatheriums simply trampled them to death when they came. Yes, that's how it once was!

And only now, after all this had happened, did the air gradually free itself from these water vapors - because everything that lived in water vapors - and the time came when the sun was actually sun could really have an effect on the earth, because the sun's rays were stopped earlier because the air was like an ocean, albeit a thin one, but it was like an ocean; the sun's rays were stopped. So that it was only in later times that the sun's rays came down on the earth.

Yes, gentlemen, you also have to look at this story a little more inwardly! These animals that were down there, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs – later on, manatees, megatheriums – well, they were pretty stupid animals. The ichthyosaurus was still the smartest, but the others were actually really stupid. But you can't say that about these dragon birds that were up there. I have already told you: they had an extremely fine sense. You may say: we humans are clever, we would not fly into the jaws of the ichthyosaurs like those dragon birds. But I don't think so. If you had lived in the time of the dragon birds, you would have flown into it too. But these birds were intelligent. And these birds, they had a very fine sense of the moon and the sun, just like our eyes, and these dragon birds felt it with their whole body, especially with their wings, which - only on a small scale - are imitated today in the wings of bats, which are also extraordinarily sensitive.

Now, these animals perceived the sun and the moon; the moon, as I have already explained, in such a way that they created something like an electromagnetic shell around it that was luminous. And when the moon shone on this fiery air, they also began to shine, shimmer, and flicker in the air with their own luminosity, like a St. John's nightingale. But they felt all that. And you don't need to use your imagination, but can proceed quite scientifically and thus also know that these animals perceived the starry sky as something different than if there had been no stars. They felt so at home in the starry sky that they felt very comfortable in their wings when the stars shone on them, and that's how those wings became speckled.

Today, we can even verify this story to a certain extent if we pay close attention. Of course, very little of these birds, which had very soft bodies, has been preserved, and they are almost impossible to find in fossils; but wing imprints can be found. Those who are really good at studying fossils, especially limestone fossils, softer fossils, will find such wing imprints. But of course you have to be open-minded, not as uptight as a professor. So if it's a dragonfly wing that has made an impression – of course there's nothing left of the wing, but the imprint in the limestone – if you look more closely, you can see that there are all kinds of stars that have been imprinted. They are the traces of the impression made by the stars in the night sky on these bat wings. They sensed whether it was day or night.

Now I don't need to describe much more to you, so you will say to yourself: Yes, the whole story here looks an awful lot like what I recently described to you about the liver and kidneys! — Man still carries in his present belly a kind of replica of what has happened on the whole earth. And these dragon birds were like the eyes that the earth itself had. That is to say – I can only tell you this at the end today – the whole Earth was a fish, an animal, and all these giant animals lived in the Earth and walked around and waddled around, like the white blood cells in us. We are still such an Earth. The white blood corpuscles, which, by the way, although they are small, are not even dissimilar in shape to these animals in the past, sometimes look almost like these animals in their smallness. So the whole Earth was a giant fish, a giant animal, and these dragon birds were the movable eyes with which the Earth looked out into the space of the stars, the space of the sun, the space of the worlds and perceived it.

That the Earth is dead today is only a later development. Originally, the Earth was alive, as we are alive. And what I have described to you as megatheria, sea cows, plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs and so on, yes, that looked an awful lot like what goes around in our bodies today as white blood cells, only in giant sizes. And what I have described as dragon-birds, again looks very much like what goes on in our eyes, only it is immobile.

And so we can say: the Earth was once a giant animal that, in keeping with its size, was rather lazy, only turning slowly on its axis in space, but which looked out into space through these dragon birds, which were only movable eyes, and looked at all this. And what I have described to you, this fire-eating and so on, that also looks very similar to what happens in the stomach and intestines. And the dragon birds, they look very similar to the opposite of the white blood cells, the brain cells, as I have described them, which extend into the eyes.

In short, you can understand the earth if you see it as a dead animal. The earth is a dead animal. And only when the earth had lost its own life could the other beings, to which, as I will describe to you, man also came, live on earth.

It is just as if we as humans were to die and the white blood cells were to change into independent entities. That is how it was with this huge animal, with the earth, once. And today we stand before this huge corpse. You need not be surprised if today's geologists, who can only study the dead, merely study the corpse. Today's geologists only study the corpse of the earth. Science everywhere does the same, studying only the dead. It lays the corpse on the dissecting table. But if you want to understand something, you really have to go back to the living. The earth was once alive, flying through space, albeit very sluggishly, like a giant animal, and able to see out through the eyes it had everywhere, which were the mobile little kite birds. With them, it looked out into space.

We will continue our examination of this next time. It is a very interesting subject.