Fourth Lecture

But why did the other Planets split off? For it also occurred that Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury detached themselves. Why did this happen? We shall understand this if we realize that in the great universe there occurs something similar to an event in our trivial everyday life. It is not only in school that pupils sometimes fail to be promoted, but also in the cosmos there are beings who remain behind and cannot progress with the others. Let us be quite clear about this. There was one group of higher beings who could not continue with the earth's tempo. These abstracted the finest substances and formed therefrom the sun as their dwelling-place. These were the highest beings connected with our evolution, although they also had gone through an evolution of their own. Thus there were beings who were in the act of becoming sun-spirits, and others who had remained behind, standing lower than the sun-spirits but higher than man. These could not continue with the sun-spirits because they were not equally mature. They could not go out with the sun, for it would have scorched them. But on the other hand they were too noble for the earth. Therefore they abstracted certain substances, which were between sun and earth in fineness and corresponded to their nature, and built themselves dwelling-places between the sun and the earth. Thus Venus and Mercury were separated off. Here we have two groups of beings who are not as high as the sun-spirits, but are further along than man. They became the spirits of Venus and Mercury. These are the beings who caused the appearance of these two planets. Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were formed earlier for other reasons, and they also became dwelling-places for certain beings.