Lecture II-VI

The third, the Lemurian age, was reflected during the Egyptian age in the mood of its religion. The teaching of Osiris and Isis can be characterized from the most varied sides and points of view. But what is characteristic of this teaching is the following: In the ancient Lemurian age birth and death did not yet exist. At first, human beings repeated the condition in which they had been when the sun had not yet separated from the earth. At that time they were in a spiritual body. Then, when the sun was no longer united with the earth, they came to the point of having an air-like body; and then the human body was filled with a watery mist. Before the Lemurian age the human being was present only as mist and steam, barely distinguishable from what was flowing all around as mist or fog—changeable like the clouds, constantly changing forms in a way similar to the clouds of today. In these ancient times the human being was not yet altogether on the earth, but rather hovered above it. Pieces of this fine matter were constantly separating off and going away from human beings, welling up and flowing away from them. The condensation of human bodies into solid forms only occurred in the Lemurian age. What we call the succession of incarnations only began to appear with this condensation or “densification” of the human being. Only now are the bodily and soul aspects separated to such an extent that one can say human beings begin to regard the external as opposed to their inner life. Today we distinguish our inner and our outer being as the contradiction between our life of soul and the external world. In the age of the sun, human beings perceived the spiritual beings surrounding them as their external world. Then came the age of the separation of the moon. The external began to separate from the internal. In this way the difference between waking and sleeping arose. Human beings alternated between states when they were exposed to the sun and then were turned away from it. Then the time approached when the human being began to perceive objects on which the sun shone. At night the forces of the moon continually stimulated the life of the soul so that human beings distinguished a time when they perceived the external world and a state when they felt forces that worked through the moon and made them clairvoyant. Human beings said to themselves that through the spirituality that lived in the moon, they could perceive the spiritual world that was inwardly flowing into them through the forces of the moon. The forces of the moon were reflected sun forces that the spiritual world mediated to human beings, while the external world became increasingly perceptible to them during the day.