Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge I

GA 90a — 15 December 1903, Berlin

VII. On the Origin of Planetary Systems

First, the purely physical theory that is usually taught in our schools. According to Kant-Laplace's theory, it is assumed that at the point where our solar system is today, there was once a thin, gaseous nebula, similar to the mass of the Orion Nebula, so that the entire planets such as Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Venus, Earth - in analogy - were like simple fat globules, like fat globules floating on water.

[ Dr. Steiner takes a card sheet that is as large in diameter as a fat globule, pushes it through the fat globule, which is then divided into two parts. Then he pushes a needle through it as an axis, puts it in water and sets it in rotation. It becomes a lens, and then fat globules split off and move around the original drop.]

Kepler replaced the circular motion with the ellipse. All physical theories are built on analogies. There is no other evidence. As long as we remain within the physical mass, we can transfer the process we have described to the large scale and accept it. If someone had sat outside the process of creation to observe its development, they would not have seen anything different.

But suppose that something that would not be visible to the physical eye would become visible in the preceding and subsequent for someone who begins to see brightly, who could say: Now something is present in the moment when the ethereal condenses into the physical. He completely disregards what precedes it. And that is the secret, that everything else is eliminated and only the physical remains. Such a physical representation cannot be challenged. It is a partial truth. The Kant nebula could never have been there if it had not condensed out of something else. Can you imagine organic germs separating out of a mass of gas? From this you can see that within what Kant describes, something must have been present that Kant does not describe. If we trace back the states of our earth: today it is solid, before that it was liquid, even before that it had a gaseous form. But before it took on the gaseous form, it was an astral sphere.

And this cannot be described by physical theory. You have to imagine the space where the earth is now as being filled with astral matter. At a certain point in time, Kama is divided into two poles. One of these is the physical-material, the other the kamic-manasic. Now the material emerges, as it were, out of nothing.

He cannot recognize the Kama-Manas. This forms the human being, and the human being forms the animals as side branches. Something else must precede the astral earth. This is preceded by a mental earth, the rupic-mental earth. But when the rupic-mental earth was formed, the rupic-mental sun, Venus, and so on, the whole planetary system, was formed at the same time. All planets became rupic-mental at the same time. The original was the Sun. The first division that arises is developed out of the Arupic. The segregation of the planets takes place in such a way that this is a purely mental process. The Dhyan-Chohans are the mental spirits of the planets.

Let us consider Jupiter. The Arupic mental Sun has become the Rupic mental Mercury and so on. We have designated as rupic-mental all the processes that relate to the planetary system. Everything that enters into the individual planets is astral. The astral-earthly has nothing to do with any other planet. On the other hand, we have the rupic-mental sphere in common with all the other planets. The kamic entities are those that belong only to our physical existence. The observer sitting on the chair could only see the bodies shine when they have entered the physical-material. A Christian who imagines God as a man with a long beard is spiritually superstitious. Those who believe in the Kant-Laplace theory we call materially superstitious.

If we follow the lunar cycle, we are dealing with a physical moon. It becomes astral. Take the earth. It was first arupic, then rupic, then mental, astral, physical, then astral again, rupic, arupic. We have already been through this.

The Pitri nature is astral and so on. In the astral state, we would never be able to make the transition from one planet to another. Only when we rise to the mental and there again reach the roupical-mental, which still belongs to the same planet, and come to the formless, only then can we pass into the pralaya and ascend to another planet. We have to reach the arupical stage to be able to go from one planet to another.

I will now describe the process by which the Earth was formed from the Moon. In today's physics books, the process is described very crudely. The conditions are described as being similar to those on our Earth. Our Earth makes one revolution in 24 hours. The Moon completes the same in 29 days. That is one lunar month. It revolves around its axis once. Its day lasts half of 29 days = 14¾ days day and 14¾ days night. When the sun shines for so long, such heat is generated that the lead, if it exists on the moon, would melt completely at noon and would flow on the moon. Lead could never stay put for a day. The other metals would all be water. And if we look at the night, it would have become so cold before sunset that the thermometer would be 150 degrees below freezing. Everything that looks like earthly life would have to perish every moonlit night. You see, the conditions are radically different when we look at them purely physically.

Now I will show you what conditions were like before our Earth was formed. The body that is the Moon today is not the Moon we speak of in occult science. That was a world body that no longer exists today, on which the soul ancestors lived, who had a highly developed Kama nature, were long-haired, gigantic in size, and in certain races even looked similar to a Nikelmann [...], moist, the ancestors were enclosed in the germ. Their physical form had become astral; from there rupisch, arupisch, then germ [...] and from there over to earth. The seeds were fertilized by Kama-Manas. Then the astral formed, and then we had the astral earth.

In this line were the Pitris, who were essentially already merged with Kama-Manas, and most of the Pitris were merged with such Kama-Manas seeds. But there were also a number of Pitris natures who had not reached their level of development in the earlier lunar epoch. Not those that had gone mad, that disturbed the development, but those that had remained behind, that had not achieved the development. They were there with the full amount of kamic power that belonged to them, that was not usable by others. This was excreted, and the sphere that was present lengthened, becoming an ellipsoid, an egg-shaped form.

In this form, two solid cores formed, one large and one small. And now the small sphere and the large sphere were separated. The moon lost its astral shell, a mass of slag that contains only those kamic forces that are more firmly embedded in its mass than the magnetic forces are in a magnet. Lunar magnetism is a very condensed kamic force. The outside then also condenses and becomes solid earth. This process of casting out takes place in the astral state. The Rupa earth differs from the earlier moon in that the seed of Kama-Manas is added. The fact that we do not make moral demands on cosmic bodies in the mineral kingdom is because the astral body of the same has come to rest. You will not blame Vesuvius for overflowing and spewing fire.

The more one has burnt [kama], the more one's human body will resemble a star. The astral body will not appear as a surging battlefield between the astral and the physical, but will come to a uniform rest within itself. The burning of [kama] consists precisely in the thorough astralization of the astral body.