XVI. Human Biography and Planetary Evolution

You may remember that reference has been made on several earlier occasions to the fact that our earth has to go through an evolution which is similar to that of the human being, that our earth has not always been the planet on which we live today, but that it is a reincarnation, as it were, of earlier planets. Basing ourselves on the science of the spirit, we can say that our earth has evolved from a planet that preceded it, though this was a vast number of years ago, and, as we have said several times before, this planet is called ‘Moon’ by occultists. It should not, of course, in any way be confused with our present-day moon. Today’s moon, a satellite of our earth, is a kind of cinder that has been cast off as being of no further use. You could see the predecessor of our earth develop if you were able to stir together everything our present-day earth and moon are today and everything of soul and spiritual quality they contain. This would give you a planet that would more or less be the predecessor of our earth, the Moon. On that Moon, from which our earth has gradually evolved, the physical human beings did not yet have their present form. A kind of physical predecessor lived on the Moon, but this predecessor still had very much an animal nature. You should not think that today’s human being was present in the animal-human being on Moon. On ancient Moon, creatures walked about that had animal and human nature, higher than today’s mammals but lower than today’s human beings. The soul human beings have in them today was not yet present in the Moon human being. At that time it enveloped human beings, just as they have an invisible aura around them today.