XV. The Lord's Prayer: An Esoteric Study, Movement and Change an Essential Principle in the World of the Spirit, School of Turanian Adepts

GA 96/1907-02-28/p013 ·1907-02-28 · English MediumMedium alignmentSome paragraph re-numbering between this translation and the German original — the locus may slip by a paragraph or two.
Record: unknown. How this text was taken down (shorthand transcript, listeners' notes or manuscript) is not on record here. Unknown is not an assurance of a stenogram: check the edition's own notes before resting an argument on one word.

Without noticing it, we have gone past a time in earth evolution that would appear like this, if we were to make the comparison: Physical life already existed on earth; forms had developed down below that were quite different from but in a way similar to today’s minerals, plants and animals, and others that were not yet human beings but were between animals and humans and ripe to be given the human soul. Their organization had reached a point where they would be able to receive the human soul. We can only make an approximation, but we may visualize human beings walking about down on earth who were really still animal-humans. Now think of the human bodies as small individual sponges and the souls as drops of water which at the time were still all united in a common body of water. So you have the physical earth teeming with fife, and enveloping it a soul atmosphere—rather like our air atmosphere today. Within that soul atmosphere everything was still undivided, like the drops of water. And what happened then was just like it would be if you now let the sponges absorb the water, with every sponge receiving a single drop. Common soul substance was absorbed into individual human bodies; it was divided among them. And it was only through this that the human soul came into being. Without this process, the human substance would never have divided into numerous single individuals.

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Cite: GA 96/1907-02-28/p013 · edition English