Man, Nature and the Cosmos

GA 91 — 29 August 1905, Berlin

22. The Relationship Between the Natural and Etheric Realms

Certainly the present materialistic doctrine of evolution tells us that from the mineral kingdom the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, the human kingdom arose. According to the theosophical teaching, the original is man. He has separated from himself first the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom and the mineral kingdom. In these three kingdoms we can see it best.

In the coal deposit we meet the burning coal; it was a plant millions of years ago. The huge primeval forests that covered the earth had trees similar to ferns and horsetails. They first buried themselves in themselves. The solid ground has originated from the plant, in that it formed the earth ground as coal solidified. Our whole mineral world we would be able to follow, if we go on, up to the plant world. The rocks are nothing else than corpses of ancient plants, and our present coal would change after millions of years to other rock. So that the basic substance of all minerals is coal. Coal is plant body and original substance of all mineral. What is it, then, that actually makes all other minerals out of coal? What force is it?

It is a force which really pervades the whole mineral world, namely the electric force which rests, as it were, locked in all mineral and which can be called forth. And what has made the various minerals out of coal is precisely the electric force.

What actually causes the plant to become a mineral, a coal? What goes away from the plant? Prana - the life principle goes away. If we take it away from it and instead give electricity to the carbon, if we replace the life ether with electrical or chemical ether, then we get mineral.

If we go up still further, there is no vegetable kingdom on earth either, but only an animal kingdom; and the vegetable kingdom is born out of the animal kingdom just as coal and rock are born out of the vegetable kingdom. What did this animal kingdom contain at that time? It was a kingdom which consisted of a different substance than the present one. It was air animals. This ancient animal kingdom mixed air with prana and also with kama, and this air was carbonic acid. That which we find today in certain seltzer waters, these air bubbles, was the matter of which the animals were composed. Kama, Prana and carbonic acid, that resulted in our ancient animal kingdom. Carbonic acid consists of carbon and oxygen. At the moment when oxygen is released from the animal, it retains only carbon and sinks into the plant kingdom. And what happened to Kama? It draws the oxygen; as we know, it causes the blood circulation. Thus we have a certain cycle from the aerial animal to the plant and to the mineral. In those ancient times, where there was no human kingdom, the plant was an aquatic being, so we have to distinguish:

• First: an ancient animal kingdom in the air, interwoven,

• second: with an ancient plant kingdom whose matter was liquid carbon, that is, water, and

• thirdly: the mineral kingdom - earth, solid matter.

Now, however, these kingdoms still remain in their descendants. When the ancient animal kingdom was there alone, it did not need first to bring up external substance. But now, when the plant kingdom arose, it had to draw substances out of the plants in order to nourish itself. So that the animal kingdom ceases to be the only kingdom, it is dependent on the kingdom next to it. So it is the ancient animal kingdom that draws its nourishment from the plant kingdom.

Then we get a plant kingdom which processes the mineral kingdom. This is always done with the help of another. In the mineral kingdom, the animal kingdom processes the plant kingdom with the help of heat. The plant kingdom processes the mineral kingdom with the help of light, and our mineral kingdom processes electricity.

The ancient animal kingdom did not yet have heat, but had within it the power of kama. This is connected with the animal kingdom also now, but not with substance, but with heat. With the plant, in the connection with the light, there is the prana. In a certain respect heat and kama have entered into looser connection by the fact that something has come between them. If we go back from the air, we think of this connection becoming still looser; if we come back from the heat into the air, we have not kama penetrating the air, but sound, and thus we come to man. Originally the word - word-sound - then man has gone through all the kingdoms until he returns and becomes again the ruler of sound.