The Circular Flow of Man's Life within the World Of Sense, Soul And Spirit

GA 68b — 1 December 1905, Cologne

30. The Creation of the World and the Descent of Man

Report in the “Mühlheimer Zeitung”, No. 667, December 5, 1905

a. Cologne, December 4. Last Friday and Saturday, the General Secretary of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, Dr. Rudolf Steiner, gave two fascinating and significant lectures in the Isabellensaal of the Gürzenich. On Friday, the speaker talked about “the origin of the world”, and, following on from that, on Saturday about “the creation of man”; both topics were illuminated from the point of view of the theosophist. In the first lecture, the great difference between the theosophical and materialistic views of the creation of the world was pointed out. Theosophy brings the old teachings of creation, which in our days have been dismissed as childish and naive, and which were tried in their creation, into mythical form to approach the understanding of contemporaries, to reintroduce them. A glance at these old teachings shows that they all have the same basic idea about the creation of the world, only expressed in different ways. The ancient Germans killed the giant [Ymir], the Egyptians killed Osiris, and created a world from their parts; even the later accounts of creation only appear to be different. The sacrifice of the god would be necessary everywhere in religions to develop a world or culture. In religions, therefore, the divine spirit is placed at the beginning of events, through it matter is animated, the inanimate is made alive. In our days, since Kant-Laplace, one imagines the creation of the earth from a primeval nebula that was in a rotating motion. From this, the world bodies formed. Similar to how smaller drops separate from a large rotating drop of oil in a glass of water due to the vibration, according to today's view, the gradually formed ball of matter hurls smaller ones, thus producing suns and planets. Even if Theosophy accepts this genesis as far as it takes place in matter, this view does not satisfy the Theosophist, because the modern theory does not answer the question of how spirit came to earth and how life entered this matter. The speaker continued by saying that the answer to this cannot be given scientifically or speculatively; it is only possible to gain clarity about this through one's own inner development. Goethe emphasized that every physical apparatus used as a research tool must be placed above the human being himself, whose organs represent instruments of a much higher order. Goethe also pointed out that the great world outside finds its true reflection in us and that there is no force in the environment that does not also apply to the inside of the human being; that is why he directly related the world around us as the macrocosm to the world within us, as the microcosm. Just as we are connected with a visible world, we are also connected with an invisible one. The human being as a physical organism forms the pinnacle of life, which is also expressed in the fact that he can say “I” to himself. This is not possible for any other being; nor can this “I” say “I” to another, rather each person can only say “I” to themselves. With the I, the human being presents himself as the crown, the perfection of physical life, but only at the beginning of the spiritual world. In the environment, as the mirror image of our inner world, we see at the beginning of the physical world the perfect spiritual world. The religions now place the sacrifice of God at the forefront of creation for the reason that God not only wanted to create a beautiful and wise world, but also a loving one. But true love can only exist in freedom, so he had to, as it were, immerse himself in the world, lose himself in it, so that we can recognize him around us and, of our own free will, engage with his spirit and develop in the direction of his spirit. When the ancient Egyptians conceived of their Osiris as resting in sleep in the world, they thereby demonstrated a fine understanding of the ancient wisdom teachings and the essence of all religions.

In the second lecture, Dr. Steiner began by noting that the question of human descent is connected to what we understand by human destiny. As a theosophist, one must have a different view of human descent than the materialists. Today, human beings only partially reveal the characteristic features of their entire nature; to obtain a complete picture of the human being, it would be necessary to consider what these have looked like in the various phases of development. In addition to the physical body, one must also speak of an etheric body in humans, which represents the actual body of life, and an astral body, which, as a sentient soul body, first created the physical body according to ancient theosophical wisdom. For, according to the theosophical view, we create our bodily form out of the spirit, through the soul, the speaker said. Depending on the external circumstances, the spirit and the soul have built up the outer appearance and adapted it to the given circumstances. At the time of the Atlantean civilization, the culture of

a lost continent situated between America and Europe, the conditions on Earth and in the atmosphere were quite different than they are today. The people of that time mastered their environment through their inherent spiritual powers and not through reason, as we do today. He could directly put the forces of nature, such as the life force, as it is present in plants, for example, into his service; it was only much later that man developed the ability to think. Theosophy must reject what modern researchers have claimed, that man descended from apes; even the latest research already contradicts this theory. No researcher has been able to prove that man is a further development of the ape species. If one wants to accept this, then there must necessarily have been a regression in the gibbon, the ape species whose skull is closest to that of modern humans, namely a regression of its colossal arms and hands. But this contradicts every reasonable theory of evolution. Theosophy presents the relationship between humans and animals – and especially between humans and apes – in such a way that humans and apes once shared a common stage of development, at a time long before the Atlantic one. From this common stage, the spiritually inclined man developed from his similarly designed companion, who was bound by lower instincts, to the heights of humanity, while the latter degenerated into bestiality. This view of theosophy corresponds to its fundamental conception of the relationship between man and his environment, which is most closely related to him. In stone, in plants, in animals, the theosophist recognizes soul-related beings that are subject to laws similar to his own, for, according to the theosophical view, in order to become a human being, he must first develop through all the kingdoms of nature. The speaker, whose captivating presentation we can only hint at here, was met with enthusiastic applause.