The Origin and Goal of the Human Being

GA 53 — 9 February 1905, Berlin

The Origin and Goal of Humanity

Before Christmas, in the first cycle of these lectures, I discussed the basic concepts of theosophy to such an extent that I can now venture to begin discussing the most important question that can arise for human beings — that of their own origin and purpose. In the last two lectures, I attempted to show how what we call the theosophical worldview is the basis of Goethe's work, and in the next lectures I will attempt to deepen this Goethean worldview from the standpoint of theosophy. Today, as a follow-up to the two lectures I gave in the last fortnight, I have inserted a lecture on the theosophical mental image of the origin of man, of the descent of man, in the modern sense of the word.

Anyone who speaks today about the origin of man must, of course, take into account what contemporary science has developed on this subject in the second half of the 19th century. Now one might think that the findings of science are something absolutely certain, that they are something that cannot be challenged. Well, it is precisely this scientific mental image of the origin of man that has undergone such a thorough change in recent years that hardly any of the younger serious researchers today still hold the same position as Darwinian research did. Those who are involved in this science know how profound these changes are. They know that, until recently, the scientific materialistic view found it more or less self-evident that human beings, the whole human being, must be derived from lower animal ancestors, that one must imagine that our earth was once inhabited by imperfect beings and that, through the gradual, slow perfection of these beings — without any other force being involved — gradually developed from these beings to their present level. This purely materialistic way of thinking has now been shaken by natural science.

It was believed that this scientific way of thinking had only one opposite pole. Until the founding of the theosophical movement, only two possibilities were considered: either a natural theory of descent in the sense of a materialistic interpretation of the world, or a supernatural story of creation, as presented in the Bible, for example. The Bible and natural science are still presented as two polar opposites. It was also imagined that the biblical mental image of six days of creation had completely dominated ancient times and that only in more recent times, which had made such wonderful progress, had it become possible to replace this supernatural story of creation with a different, natural one. However, one thing was overlooked in this. It was not known that the mental images that the opponents of our so-called supernatural creation account have formed in recent times, and on the basis of which they have fought against this six-day work, are no more than three, four, or five hundred years old, even for the so-called orthodox Christian doctrine and its followers. All those who have ever engaged in research into these matters in the sense of claiming to be scientific have by no means taken the Bible as it stands today literally before this time. Taking the Bible literally, the view that what is told there should be taken literally, was never shared by serious Christian researchers in earlier centuries.

We can go back to the times when Christianity originated. It emerged from older worldviews. However, we cannot go into that today. I would just like to point out that at the end of the age of Greek philosophy, we have a doctrine of creation that is linked to the name of Plato, and that this doctrine is most beautifully developed in Aristotle. Plato says that God forms the physical world according to his ideas, which are the archetypes. The human body, too, was created from the archetype, the idea of God. And what lives in this body as human consciousness is an image of divine consciousness. The goal of human knowledge is to recognize what God has recognized. In striving toward this goal, humans recognize that their spirit must be eternal, for it is an eternal idea of God. Aristotle, Neoplatonism, Christian Gnosticism—they all live in such ideas about the origin and goal of humans. In Christian Gnosticism, we have a doctrine of creation that I must characterize in order to show you how inaccurate the mental images were that opponents of the supernatural story of creation had until recently.

It was imagined that man had developed over the course of time, since the distant past; that he did not have the same form, the same essence as he does today, that he had only evolved into this essence. Finally, it was imagined that traces of man's earlier forms were present in various lower animal forms. It is somewhat difficult to explain what these mental images were like, because they are unfamiliar to people today. What stands before us as physical human beings was not always as it is today. It was more animal-like, and those animals that are most closely related to humans also show approximately the same condition that humans had at that time, and so on, going back to increasingly imperfect creatures. That was the view of the Gnostics. They did not assume — as the materialistic view does — that humans emerged, as it were, from the lower animal kingdom; rather, they were clear that humans could never have developed from a being that was still ape-like, unless a higher being had taken hold of this being and raised it to a higher form. One could make this very clear if one wanted to talk about it from earlier mental images. But it suffices to show that the Gnostics' doctrine had a different theory of origins than is usually said.

You will find it clearly expressed in St. Augustine. He did not teach belief in the literal interpretation of the Bible, but he conceives of the development of beings as I have just described. He conceives of the influence of a spiritual world, which brings about a continuous elevation of the being, while the external process is actually that we were first physically imperfect beings, then a spiritual influence took place and we became physically higher beings, then another spiritual influence came and we became higher beings again — until the highest spiritual influence took place and man developed as man. That is roughly the view of St. Augustine. He regards the six days of creation in the Bible as a beautiful symbol. He believes that a view such as the one I have now developed as Gnostic can no longer be passed on in its purely Gnostic form. He imagines that external symbols must be given in the terms of the Bible, because the great multitude cannot understand when one speaks in such abstract, higher mental images. Therefore, the story of creation should be revealed in a pictorial way, in a manner appropriate to the general popular imagination. You can find the same thing in Scotus Erigena, in all the great church teachers of the Middle Ages, also in Thomas Aquinas and into the 14th century. And once you realize this, you can explain the real course of Western scholarship and science.

Then, in the 14th and 15th centuries, this old doctrine of development disappears. It became increasingly clear that belief in the literal meaning of the Bible was becoming the decisive factor in the Church. We must note this fact. In the following centuries, people no longer knew what to believe. All memories of such interpretations of the Bible had been lost, so that in the 19th century people believed they were presenting something completely new with a natural history of creation. However, in accordance with the materialistic thinking of modern times, this creation story became completely materialized, whereas in earlier times it was approached with spiritual concepts. The Darwin-Haeckel creation story has nothing to do with the real scientific facts, nothing to do with what could be researched. There was also a natural creation story in the past, but it was interpreted in a spiritual sense, so that it deals not only with material processes, but also with a spiritual impact.

The facts have spoken clearly in recent years, and numerous researchers have returned to a more idealistic view of development. But now we have another researcher, Reinke, who has made his arguments about evolution in an anti-Darwinian way particularly significant for us by returning to the old mental image, without knowing the old theory of evolution. He speaks of continuous “impacts” of a spiritual nature that development has experienced. He called these impacts “dominants.” This is a modest beginning of a return to earlier mental images. Evolution is no longer supposed to proceed by itself through purely material forces from imperfect to more perfect beings, but a more perfect being can only arise from an imperfect one when a new dominant impact occurs, a new impact of spiritual forces that brings about progress, contrary to the materialistic teachings of Darwin, Lamarck, Haeckel, and so on. For those who look more deeply into the matter, the expression is very reminiscent of something Heine said: “Poverty comes from pauvreté.” It is a paraphrase of the matter in other words. A story of creation that relates to the documents of religious confessions in the same way that researchers related to them in the 13th and 14th centuries is once again the theosophical worldview, and let us now develop this story of creation in a few words.

If one wants to understand human beings in terms of their origin, one must be clear about what the essence of human beings is. Those who take the view that human beings are merely the combination of physical organs—hands, feet, lungs, heart, and so on, up to the brain—will have no other need than to explain the origin of human beings in terms of material forces. This will make the question different for them than for those who view human beings as a whole. They will view human beings as beings that consist not only of the physical body, but also of soul and spirit. We have already seen to what extent human beings are composed of the three elements of body, soul, and spirit. Body, soul, and spirit are the parts of which man is composed. What is called the soul and spirit has been summarized by modern psychology in a single term, the term soul. The confusion of modern soul doctrine lies in its failure to distinguish between soul and spirit. This is what theosophy must repeatedly point out. What on the one hand is soul being, what feels and forms mental images and thinks about everyday things, all of that is also soul for us theosophists. The spirit begins only where we become aware of the so-called eternal in human beings, the imperishable, that which Plato said is nourished by spiritual food. Only the thought that is free from sensual content, that rises to the character of eternity, that is seen by the spirit when the spirit no longer looks outward through the gates of the senses but looks inward, only this thought constitutes the content of the spirit. Western researchers know this thought only in one field, the field of mathematics, geometry, and algebra. There are thoughts that do not flow to us from the outside world, which humans create only from within, intuitively. No one could derive a mathematical theorem from observation alone. We could never recognize from observation that the three angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees.

However, there are thoughts that do not merely relate to space, but are pure thoughts, free of sensuality, and relate to everything else in the world, to minerals, plants, animals, and ultimately also to humans. In his morphology, Goethe attempted to provide a kind of botany that has such thoughts free of sensuality. He wanted to explore how nature lives in creation. And those who immerse themselves with feeling and sensation in what Goethe presents in his theory of metamorphosis experience something like a great elevation into the etheric heights. If you then allow yourself to be lifted higher and higher to grasp such thoughts, which are modeled on mathematics in space, you will come to the great mystics who enlighten us about the soul and spirit. The mystic therefore also calls mysticism “mathematics” — Mathesis — not because mysticism is mathematics, but because it is structured according to the pattern of mathematics. Goethe was such a mystic. He wanted to establish a world that lifts us up from the merely soulful to the spiritual. There you have what human beings do with their intellect in everyday life, this intelligent grasp of immediate temporal and transitory reality, raised to a higher realm, to the pure world of thought. And you can experience something within yourself when you rise to pure thought, when you can abstract from sensual thoughts what belongs to the eternal. Theosophy also calls this first element of the spirit Manas. In my “Theosophy” I have tried to translate this expression as “spirit self.” It is the higher self that detaches itself from what is limited to the earthly world.

Just as thought can be elevated to a higher sphere, so too can the world of feelings be elevated to a higher sphere. That which we enjoy, that which we desire, is seemingly a lower world than the world of thoughts, but when it is elevated to the higher regions, it stands even higher than thought. The eternal in feeling is higher than thought. When you elevate feeling to the higher spheres, as you do thought in mathematics, you experience the second entity of the spirit. University psychology knows only the lower feeling. It acts as if everything were exhausted by the lower feeling. But this eternal lives as a seed in our world of feeling, and theosophy calls it the Buddhi. I have given it the name “life spirit” as the second spiritual essence of the human being. Elevate your thoughts to the comprehension of the eternal, and you will live in Manas. Elevate your feelings and sensations to the character of the eternal, and you will live in Buddhi. This life in Buddhi is only present in its potential in present-day human beings. People can sometimes think manasically when their thinking is regulated and subject to the logical laws of the world. But there is also a kind of thinking that is erratic, that is, having one thought and then immediately another, constantly changing. This is ordinary thinking. Then there is higher thinking, which is logical, coherent, nourished by the eternal — according to Plato — and becomes part of the eternal. When a feeling has risen to this realm of the world, to such a world law, then it lives in Buddhi. This means nothing other than a kind of eternal lawfulness of feeling. Those who live ordinary lives can err, can also stray with their feelings. But those who experience the eternal norms of feeling within themselves, just as the thinker experiences the eternal norms of manasic thinking, these feeling human beings have within themselves the same certainty and clarity of feeling as the thinker has clarity of thinking. This is what Theosophy describes as a spiritual person who experiences the spirit within themselves. This is also the deeper content of Christ. The person then experiences Christ, lives with Christ, participates in Christ. Christ is the same as Buddhi.

When the mere outer will, which is the most unconscious part of the human being, rises to the highest universal law, then — it is difficult to speak of this highest development of the human spirit, one can only hint at it — then one speaks of the actual spirit, of the spiritual human being, or, to use a Sanskrit word, of Atma. For even the will of man can be purified of the personal. These are the three members of the spiritual: Manas, Buddhi, Atma. Just as a substance is dissolved in water, so these three members are dissolved in the soul. Where everything is in turmoil, man cannot usually distinguish what is surging up and down like will-o'-the-wisps. Therefore, the modern psychologist describes a real confusion as the soul.

When that which lives out as the highest spiritual in the soul mixes with the lower qualities of the soul, when it appears as a lower feeling, when it lives out in desire and lust instead of in love, we call it kama. Kama is the same as Buddhi, only Buddhi is the selflessness of Kama, and Kama is the selfhood, the egoism of Buddhi. Then we have within us our ordinary mind, which is directed toward the satisfaction of our personal needs. We call this mind, insofar as it expresses itself in the soul Manas, Ahamkara, the I-consciousness, the sense of self. So when we speak of what is commonly called the soul of man, we can also speak of Buddhi, which lives out in Kama, and when we speak of Manas or the actual spirit of thought, we speak of the mind, which lives out in self-consciousness, in Ahamkara.

I have now attempted to describe the gradual elevation of the human being, the purification of the human being from the soul to the spirit, in a book I wrote several years ago as my “Philosophy of Freedom.” What I have now described can be found there expressed in the terms of Western philosophy. There you will find the development of the soul from kama to manas life. There I have called ahamkara the “I,” manas the “higher thinking,” pure thinking, and buddhi, in order not to refer to the origin, the “moral imagination.” These are just different expressions for one and the same thing. With this we have recognized what the spiritual-soul nature of the human being is. This spiritual-soul nature is embodied, incarnated in what external natural science describes to us. This spiritual-soul nature is actually the human being. It has something like a shell around it: the external physical body.

Now, the theosophical view is that what I have just described as the spiritual-soul nature of the human being existed before the present form, before the physical body of the human being. The human being did not originate from the physical, but from the spiritual-soul nature. And this spiritual-soul nature, Atma, Buddhi, and Manas, which I have just described, underlies all physical form. Plato also speaks of this when he says that the spirit of man must be eternal, for it is an idea of God. This eternal spiritual part of man is met by what has developed as forms on earth.

Now we can form the mental image that we are at a very distant point in the distant past. On the one hand, we have the spiritual-soul being of the human being. I believe that the materialistic thinking of the present day finds it difficult to form this mental image of the spiritual-soul aspect. This is only because modern thinking has for centuries weaned itself off forming the mental image of the soul-spiritual. On the other hand, we have the sensory life in the distant past. How are we to form a mental image of this sensory life? Natural science teaches us that when we examine the beings in the remains of the earth's layers, we come to a human being of imperfect form. And going further back, we find times when human beings in their present form were not on earth. Only apes and closely related animals were present. Going further back, we find that even the apes were absent and that only lower mammals were present. Even earlier, there were reptiles and birds, and even earlier still, we find animal species of enormous size and power, the dinosaurs and ichthyosaurs. They lived in a different way than today. Then, going further back, we find even more imperfect animals, until we come to an age where we can no longer prove that there were any living animals. Physical life must have existed in a form that was still animal-plant in nature.

Theosophy points to stages in the Earth's development that are also discussed in science: the Earth was not always the solid mineral ground on which we walk today. It used to be in a liquid, soft state. When you look at certain earth formations, mountain formations, you can still see how they hardened from a gushing, liquid state. Even earlier, the entire Earth was in a fiery, hot state, like a huge mass of fire. Theosophy points out that even earlier, the Earth was in a gaseous, ethereal state. Everything that now exists on Earth in a solid, liquid, or gaseous state also existed at that time, but in a very fine, ethereal state. You can get a rough idea of this if you take a piece of ice; that is a solid matter. You melt it, and then you have turned what was previously solid into a liquid, watery state. You evaporate the water by heating it. Then you again have what was solid, what was liquid, in an air-vaporous state in front of you. The whole earth used to be in a much finer, thinner etheric state. Akasha is the finest form in which, in ancient times, everything that now appears to us on earth as solid, liquid, and so on, existed in an etheric state. The solid granite of our ancient mountains, all metals, all salts, all types of lime, everything that is on our earth today — including all plant and animal forms — were present in this fine Akasha at that time. Akasha is the finest form of matter.

The human body that humans have today is composed of all the substances of the earth. All types of matter are found in some chemical composition in the human body. At that time, all these substances were in the Akasha state, and the spiritual-soul entity of the human being incarnated into this Akasha matter. This was a completely different form from that of humans today. In this Akasha matter, everything that later became differentiated was still undifferentiated. Everything that later became mineral, plant, and animal forms was contained within it. In that in which the pure divine human being incarnated, in this Akasha matter, all animal forms were still contained, as well as everything that later became human form.

If one wants to form a picture of the processes within the Earth's development that took place in these primeval times of the Earth, one must strictly distinguish between the duality. Man is a duality, he is composed of two beings. Above is the divine-spiritual core of the human being: Atma, Buddhi, Manas. Within this divine-spiritual human being lives the desire to become human. This desire drives him down. And in his descent, he forms a shell from this desire, an astral body. Down on Earth, beings have formed, animal-like, arising from the still undetermined Earth mass. These beings came from an even earlier state of the earth, the old moon state, an earlier incarnation of the earth. When this old moon had completed its cosmic existence, something remained of it like a seed of beings that had lived on the old moon; these were beings that were neither animal nor human, but stood between animal and human. They were a kind of animal-human. They emerged again when the Earth began to form. These animal-humans were driven by the wildest urges, instincts, and desires. At first, they were unable to absorb higher spirituality; they first had to undergo a purification of their astrality in order to be able to absorb the higher principles. These are the physical ancestors of humans referred to by Gnosticism, Augustine, and the Scholastics. They were animal-like creatures that lived in a much softer bodily material than today's physical matter, much softer than that of the lowest animals, such as jellyfish and mollusks. These were beings that lived in a translucent physicality, some very beautifully formed, others in quite grotesque shapes. They did not stand upright, but lived in a floating, suspended posture; they had no spinal cord, which only developed later, no warm blood, and were not yet hermaphroditic. They lived with everything that later became plants, minerals, and animals, as if in a common astral state of the earth. At that time, the astral body of the earth contained all the beings distributed across the earth. This astral earth was composed of the astral bodies of the human-animals. This astral earth, which consisted of the astral bodies of the human-animals, was surrounded by a spiritual atmosphere in which the monads, the spiritual human beings, lived. These spiritual human beings waited above until they could unite with the astral bodies below. But at first, these astral bodies were still too impure; all the animalistic drives, instincts, and passions had to be separated out in their crudest form. They were separated out as special astral formations. These separations took place again and again. These separations solidified, and from them emerged the other realms of our Earth.

We must form the mental image that there were two astralities, an upper, purer one and a lower, denser one. The upper one, descending ever deeper, acts upon the lower one. As a result, the lower one separates the coarser elements from itself more and more. The separated elements become denser. This is how the other natural realms that now surround us come into being. Human beings themselves retain the finest for themselves. Thus, the entire environment was once connected to human beings; they have separated it from their being.

Below, the astral matter condensed into reptilian animal forms; these were still cold-blooded. They were not formed like, for example, an ichthyosaur, of which we still find remains today. There are no remains of these creatures at all, for their bodies were delicate and soft — bones did not appear until much later. The spiritual-soul being from above first unites with these creatures; both fertilize each other. Matter becomes increasingly condensed. It transitions into a fiery-liquid state. This was around the middle of the period we call Lemurian. This period preceded the Atlantean period. This fiery-liquid mass is permeated by currents that gradually condense more and more into the later bones; from these currents, the respiratory and heart organs with the blood circulation, the various organs of the human body, are formed. Everything that is too coarse for humans is repeatedly pushed out. For example, the ferocity of the lion is separated out. Outside, an animal form is created from coarser material: this becomes what later became the lion. What remains in the human being are his courageous and aggressive qualities. Cunning and craftiness are separated out; the fox entity is formed outside, and the human being retains for himself what he can use in terms of cunning.

This is followed by a further stage in the development of the earth. It became more compact, more solid. This forced humans to adapt to this more solid form of physical life on earth. Humans could only do this by giving up part of their being to the coarser material world. And from this part of the human essence that was given over to the coarser material world, the first, most imperfect animal world arose. This is, as it were, a shell that humans once cast off. It arose from human nature. But human nature itself thereby ascended to a higher level. Humans were thereby freed from the influence they had received from the lower animal world. We see these last creatures, which man has cast off, deposited in the first layers of the earth. They are crustaceans, shellfish, which man has cast out of himself. Through this, he has become a purer being. It is like a solution in which a coarser part has settled. And so further development takes place as a result of man again giving up part of his being to materiality. This gave rise to what we call worms and fish. This is again a shell that man has cast off.

In the second state, man had taken on a matter similar to our present-day air matter. Human beings were incarnated there as air beings. This may seem strange to the materialistic thinker, but those who familiarize themselves with theosophy will find that the rest of the story of creation is fantasy and that this theosophical story of creation can already be understood by the ordinary mind. Because humans embodied themselves with their souls in finer matter, in air matter, it was possible for them to shed a new shell, to create animals from themselves. At that time, the earth had already built up a somewhat more solid skeleton, and humans formed in what is called fire mist. These are referred to as the sons of the fire mist. This came about because human beings shed their shells, which then developed further on the other side as birds and reptiles. But then, when human beings had progressed so far in this way, when they had advanced to this fire matter, they were able to absorb a new impact from outside. Just as we saw at the beginning of our Earth's formation how physical matter united with what the soul-spiritual human being had cast off as the coarser being, so in the period we are now speaking of, which already parallels the strong states of condensation of our Earth, he united with what we call the higher spirit. First, this happened when what I have called the Buddhi descended and became Kama. What separates humans from the lower, cold-blooded beings came into being, and with it, all other warm-blooded creatures on Earth. Up to a certain point in development, there were only cold-blooded and passionless beings; the others came into being in the middle of the Lemurian period. This also led to the development of the two sexes from the one. By rejecting the lower beings, which still live on as reptiles, and then, when he had already advanced to warm-bloodedness, the bird species, this separation made him ready to take in the spirit in its first form. This is the species that first appears with spiritual gifts. In the Lemurian epoch, human beings attained a condensed materiality; they achieved physicality. This is the Lemurian human being. And this human being lived on our Earth at a time when much of the old fire matter was still present. In this Lemurian epoch, the entire species perishes in a comprehensive manner, through catastrophes caused by fire in the form of great volcanic activity. Only a few remain and live on.

The Atlantean period took place in areas of the Earth that are now covered by the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Here, something else is rejected by humans: the higher mammals are separated. At first, humans still had the nature of higher mammals within them. They still had within them what we call human-like apes. These are all separations of lower components of their being. Humans have now evolved to a higher level only by shedding the lower. What I previously called Ahamkara, the ego, came to the fore in humans. In the first Atlantean epoch, Ahamkara came to the fore in the human race with the corresponding development of memory and language. Self-consciousness became consciousness of egoism. The first Atlantean epoch is therefore also a time in which brutal egoism developed more and more. We will hear and read about the excesses to which the developed Ahamkara led. Thus, the higher mammalian nature was rejected, so that we do not see the monkey as our ancestor; rather, we see humans as the firstborn on our Earth. Humans are incarnated in the Akasha ether, and everything that exists outside of them has gradually been eliminated by them. Humans and animals have adapted to conditions and circumstances and have become what we know them to be today. Paracelsus knew this and said that humans themselves wrote down the letters that make up their entire being. So we do not see monkeys as our ancestors, but as descendants of the original humans. It is remarkable that this theosophical view echoes, in a very elementary way, an omission by the naturalist and botanist Reinke. In his book “Die Welt als Tat” (The World as Deed), he says that the ape does not stand out as an ancestor of man, but as a degenerate human being, as a human being who has fallen away from humanity and degenerated. This view is in complete agreement with what natural science teaches us in this field. It teaches us that in its earliest form, the human brain, especially the brain of a child, is very similar—to a certain extent—to an ape's brain, but that the developed human brain nevertheless differs from the ape's brain. So that the monkey brain appears to be something that takes a completely different course of development. The Darwinian view, however, wants to support its theory of the relationship between monkeys and humans with the first observation. At that time, in order to develop more freely and nobly, humans rejected the nature that today constitutes the formation of monkeys. As a result, the monkey species degenerated and developed in a different direction. The monkey cannot in any way be considered the ancestor of humans. But this further advances the development of humans.

After humans had developed Buddhi, Kama, and Ahamkara, they were able to take up the first principle of the spirit again: Manas. Manas, logical thinking, combinatory thinking, has developed from this refined human nature since the last period of the Atlantean epoch and throughout our entire fifth epoch of humanity. Thus, after first developing Buddhi, human beings had to live out wisdom in egoism, in Ahamkara, up to Kama; thus, they had to lead an egoistic life. But then wisdom developed again in a purer form, so that human beings today are able to think logically. They will one day ascend to a higher form of spirituality by working out the Buddhi nature from the Kama nature and from everyday feelings, in order to then ascend to even higher levels of spirituality. We will talk about this later, when we learn more about the stages of development.

Only a general outline of the theosophical view could be given. This is the doctrine of evolution, the doctrine of the descent of man in the theosophical sense. This is the doctrine of descent, which is called upon to replace the one that has in any case suffered a significant loss in recent times due to the actual scientific facts.

In order to show that what I have said does not entirely contradict scientific mental images, I would now like to read a few words by the botanist Reinke to demonstrate that it is necessary today to conceive of a new kind of “creation story.” He says the following: "It is clear from the outset what a profound contrast there is between this view just expressed and the view and method of research that generally prevails in our science. We generally do not seek theories, but build on facts. Therefore, natural science should be content to limit itself to facts. However, the facts are by no means available at present. I must protest against the matter being presented as if the facts had been supplied by zoology, anatomy, etc. If an image is to be derived from this, it is a fantasy." — At this point, this natural scientist does not yet realize that it is impossible to ever obtain a view of the origin of man from external facts. This can never be done, because the origin of man does not lie in the sensory, but in the soul-spiritual. Only when we ascend from the sensory to the soul-spiritual, when we ascend to a view that is not fantastical but spiritual in nature, can we arrive at a theory of descent that truly satisfies human beings. It is the task of theosophy to lead people to a theory of descent that satisfies them again. The “natural” story of creation can no longer satisfy us today. On the one hand, there is a need for spiritual knowledge, and on the other hand, the facts have disproved the theory of evolution. Natural science will never be able to say anything about the origin of humankind. If the origin of humankind is to be understood, it can only be done in the sense of spiritual knowledge. To lead the present back to such spiritual knowledge: this is the task of the theosophical worldview.

Question and Answer Session

Question: Were crustaceans the first living beings to be separated?

Crustaceans were not the first living beings to be separated. Of course, they were single-celled organisms. However, they were not like today's single-celled organisms; they existed in completely different conditions.

Question: How can we imagine the fiery surface of the Earth during the Lemurian period and the existence of beings on it?

Not the entire surface of the Earth was in a fiery state, only the dwelling place of the beings was fiery. When the mineral entities separated, something like a kind of remnant, almost like the impact of a skeleton, was present, which could accommodate entities that had already taken on a solid form in some way. Only what had taken on a solid form can be proven by paleontology.

Question: Is the rejection that the future must still bring promoted by vegetarianism?

It is difficult to talk about this because this question, even more than other questions, challenges people's feelings. However, I would like to talk about the question impartially. It is true that the further refinement of human beings is promoted in a very significant way by vegetarianism. This is not to say that it is possible for everyone to live as a vegetarian or that it is beneficial for everyone. The question of whether one should become a vegetarian is different from the question of what effect a vegetarian lifestyle has. Vegetarianism promotes spiritual intuition and is also conducive to action. At the same time, it is also a question of heredity. However, I would like to address a prejudice. The materialistic thinker may have some experience in this area, but it is not sufficient. It is said that some people have become weak as a result of vegetarianism, that they cannot endure the vegetarian lifestyle. This is both true and false. It is true that many people who occupy their minds only with kamamanas, whose thoughts are therefore purely sensual in nature — and this includes ordinary scholarship, law, physiology, and even medicine, where the content of mental images is taken solely from the sensory world — do not find everything they need in vegetarianism. For all those who live their spiritual lives in the realm of the intellect, which is directed toward the sensory world, who think, form mental images, and feel sensually, there will come a point where they may break down as a result of vegetarianism. There are many such people. But it does not have to be that way. I have met people in this field who were learned thinkers, physiological and historical thinkers, for whom it was not possible to nourish their brains properly if they lived on a vegetarian diet alone. However, the situation changes immediately when a person develops spirituality. As soon as a person comes to spiritual knowledge, as soon as they come to life in the spiritual, then it is possible for them to sustain themselves on vegetarianism. Then vegetarianism promotes spiritual life, and the person will come to a place where they have the prospect of an even higher future. I will speak about this higher future in the next lectures, on February 16, February 23, and March 2, when I will talk about Goethe's “Secret Revelation.”

Question: What is meant by a spiritual-soul being?

We will see where the spirit has its origin. We must form the mental image of this spiritual impact within the development of the human being as an influence from outside. This does not mean that a view of nature is now justified or that the opinion that this is dualism is justified. Hydrogen and oxygen also produce water. But those who know this do not need to be dualists.

Question: What actually existed as a human being before the spiritual impact took place?

Up to a certain point, the human being is a trinity: spirit, soul, and body. As we move further upward, we have the physical-soul human being on Earth, connected with the physicality of the Earth. This physical-soul human being is initially incarnated in a much finer and lighter matter than the later human being. A process of densification is constantly taking place. That is why we also speak of the so-called “sons of the fire mist.” We are dealing here with a form of human being. However, I do not wish to describe this form in a public lecture, because if one simply presents it, it does not look good. The prerequisites for understanding this form are not in place. In the “fire mist,” it was last incarnated in Akasha. The physics of our time has no knowledge of this Akasha. What we now have as an impact is the predisposition to eternity; when we speak of spirit in relation to modern man, we are speaking of eternity. The consciousness that existed at that time was by no means the same as the consciousness in hypnosis or in a trance state. It is present, approximately, during a particularly vivid dream. That was the state of consciousness before the impact of the spirit.

Question: Why should all progress be achieved through the densification of matter, when we consider finer matter to be progress?

The general form of consciousness was illuminated, but also limited by the densification to the material formation of the sense organs.

Question: Is the Akasha substance ethereal or astral substance?

Astral substance is the higher substance. Akashic substance stands between physical and astral matter. It is the finest physical matter, the very finest matter in which thought can immediately manifest itself.

Question: How was man perceptible in these fine states?

At the time when humans were still ethereal, it was possible to perceive them through hearing, as vibrations, but not through sight.

Question: What influence did the impact of the spirit have on sexuality?

With the impact of the spirit, the single sexuality of the individual being also appeared. Before that, both sexes were present in one being. Reproduction at that time was similar to that of our single-celled beings.

Question: What is the origin of the theosophical worldview?

In the past, teaching was done through images. Today, this is no longer possible. Therefore, ideas must be expressed in a language that is understandable to the mind, especially for our scientists. These things should be viewed as the physicist views his, as a useful working hypothesis. This will gradually lead to conviction.

When Dr. Steiner was asked to say something more about the process of the emergence of the ape, he replied something like this:

Imagine an ancestor who has two descendants. One of these descendants can take in the divine spark in his form. He develops upward and becomes human. The other descendant has a form created from coarser substances; he cannot take in the spark. He develops downward and becomes an ape.