Esoteric Evolution - 2

The Seven Planetary Phases of Development

Three previous embodiments

Pralaya

Old Sun and Old Saturn

Future planetary embodiments

What is the purpose of the seven planetary states?

The creation of human corporeality – an outline

Only on Earth did we become true human beings

The planetary states of Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan will work

on the transformation of our different bodies and the unfolding of the spirit

Spirit Self, Life Spirit, and Spirit Man

Sources

In the previous chapter I described that according to esoteric tradition - ancient wisdom therefore - the path of the human being leads to ever higher levels of consciousness, a path of development encompassing seven different states of consciousness. It begins in a condition of deep trance consciousness, and reaches a culmination in a condition in which human beings self-consciously possess All-consciousness and have themselves become creators. In other words, they have then reached a state in which their inner divine spirit has fully grown.

I promised to describe these different phases of consciousness development. I will do that, but first I want to shine light on something else in this chapter.

Like human beings, the earth also goes through repeated re-embodiments. This means that it makes its appearance, after a certain time withdraws again into the spiritual world and, when the time comes, reappears in a new form.

The earth as we now know it is not its first form. Western and eastern tradition point out that today's earth was preceded by three earlier planetary forms with totally different conditions than the earth has today.

A brief sketch follows.

The planetary state that existed before the current one is called "moon" in esotericism. This moon condition is not the same as the moon we see in the sky at night. The moon that stands in the sky at night is a small, old remnant of the previous moon period in the distant past, before the earth was created.

To distinguish between the two and emphasize the difference between the two conditions, this previous embodiment is called "Old Moon" or "Ancient Moon."

At one point at the end of its planetary existence, this Old Moon let go of its external form again and was absorbed into the spiritual world. After a certain time, a new embodiment emerged from this world, planet Earth.

This withdrawal into the spiritual world by a planetary state may be compared with human dying. When death comes, human beings lay aside their physical bodies and rise up into the spiritual world.

There they begin what may be called a digestion process of the life they just finished. At a certain moment the time has come, and they are born again in a totally new situation.

This is similarly the case with a planetary state. It lasts for some time, "dies," and passes over into a spiritual state in the spiritual world, where the past planetary period is closed and a new one prepared.

In western and eastern esotericism this period in the spiritual world between two planetary embodiments is called "pralaya." Pralaya indicates a state of rest, of being turned in on itself, in which externally the planet has disappeared. There is then no external cosmic activity taking place, only invisible inner activity of a spiritual nature.

Old Moon was also preceded by an earlier embodiment, an earlier planetary state. It is called Old Sun. This Old Sun state too was not identical to today's sun that bestows daylight on us from outside.

Our sun is also a remnant, in this case of an unimaginably great, mighty sun state that encompassed everything in the even more distant past than Old Moon.

In its turn, Old Sun too was preceded by another planetary embodiment, called Old Saturn.

The current planet is a small remnant of the primeval state that is described as Old Saturn, an unimaginably extensive planetary state in a totally different sphere and form than the current one. With Old Saturn the cycle of seven planetary embodiments begins. Old Saturn formed the very first beginning of our current solar system.

Summarizing the foregoing, we have now named four consecutive embodiments or planetary states:

Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon, and our current planet Earth, which is therefore the fourth in the series of a total of seven planetary embodiments.

Our planet Earth will one day also cease to exist. It will then go through pralaya and reappear in a new condition as a new planet, a condition that will be completely different from that of Earth.

In esotericism this new planetary state is called Jupiter.

In its turn, Jupiter will in the infinitely distant future change into a planetary embodiment that is called Venus. Both new planetary states have the same names as the current planets Jupiter and Venus, but are completely different from these. The future states will encompass much more and look completely different. The cycle of seven developmental conditions or planetary phases ends with the planetary state that is called Vulcan.

A diagram of the whole cycle gives us the following picture:

The diagram shows a gigantic process of appearing and again disappearing planetary states. We could also call it an enormous cosmic process of breathing out and breathing in.

In her book Isis Unveiled, theosophist Helena Blavatsky relates that in ancient Hindu scripture these "cosmic days and nights" are described as the breathing out and breathing in of Brahma.

Brahma, the highest Godhead, is also called "the Great Breath." He breathes out a thought, it is said, and it becomes cosmos, solar system, and planetary state. After a certain time, he breathes in again, and everything that exists is absorbed again into the womb of the "Great Mother" or the spiritual world.

Here we again come across the concurrence between the Godhead Brahma of the oriental Hindu tradition and the Logos, the divine All-One-consciousness of western esotericism. From the Logos, the divine Word, also emanates a thought, a word, which eventually brings forth the creation of heaven and earth.

The seven planetary states, the way from Old Saturn through to Vulcan, forms the basis of the development of consciousness we human beings go through.

Each of these planetary states fulfills a certain assignment in our development to a higher level of consciousness and being human.

Each of them creates the right conditions for this. When that task has been fulfilled, the corresponding planetary state ceases to exist and, after a condition of pralaya, passes over into a subsequent planetary state with a new assignment.

In order to find the way to our own consciousness and our own spirit outside the spiritual world of our origin, we human beings need our own corporeality. This means our own physical body, etheric body, and astral body. In addition, we need an I in order to arrive at self-consciousness.

Only if we possess these four elements can we on earth, in our own unique way, bring to development our divine core, our spiritual Self, which is part of the divine All-One. Only then can we, in the course of the planetary incarnations that follow that of Earth, become creative spirits out of self-consciousness.

Our corporeality and our human I did not come into being by accident, or just by themselves.

They were consciously bestowed on us by extremely lofty spiritual angelic beings who together form the spiritual Hierarchies. These divine hierarchical angelic beings possess incredibly high, creative capacities with which, in the service of the highest Godhead, the Trinity, they create new worlds, new solar systems, and new planetary situations.

Hence, especially in oriental wisdom, they are also called gods or devas.

In a similar way, they created in successive planetary situations our human corporeality and everything we need for our path of development. In an unimaginably long process that took several planetary periods, they developed our physical body, our etheric body, and our astral body into their present form.

In addition, these high, creative hierarchical beings bestowed on us an I. This last element, the I, made it possible for our spiritual core, our deepest essence, which as a divine spark forms part of the divine world, to connect itself with our physical home—our astral body, our etheric body, and our physical body. This made life and development on earth possible.

The creation of human corporeality begins in the very earliest planetary development, the Old Saturn period. In my article The Angelic Hierarchies as Creators of Humanity and the Earth, I have described how the divine-spiritual beings from the highest angelic hierarchies performed that work. Spirits of Will (Thrones), Spirits of Wisdom, (Kyriotetes), and Spirits of Movement (Dynameis) worked together with Spirits of Form (Exousiai or Elohim) and thus created the very first planetary state, Old Saturn.

In that state, which was still entirely spiritual and not material, they wove the first beginning of what would in later planetary states become the physical body of the human being.

In every subsequent planetary state this creative work on our physical corporeality continued. In the planetary state that followed on Old Saturn, Old Sun, high creative spiritual beings worked further on the development of the physical body, and at a certain moment they added the etheric body to it.

The etheric element consists of life forces, energies that cause "life," yes, are "life." This etheric body, also called life body, permeated the becoming physical body with life forces and thus brought it to life.

Before that time, in the Old Saturn stage, this was not yet the case. The becoming physical body then did not yet "live."

In the Old Moon state more work was done on the becoming physical body which, even then, did not yet consist of matter, physical-mineral matter. The etheric body is also developed further. When that happens, in this planetary state another addition is made. High angelic beings create an astral body, through which they permeate the becoming etheric body and physical body with astrality.

The astral element has to do with movement, passion and emotion. As a result, in the becoming human being there now also arose, besides life (through the etheric body), a first expression of emotion because of the astral body.

It shows that at that point a very first beginning was made with forming our own inner world, our own soul or inner being.

In the Old Moon state we are still speaking of "becoming human beings." We can best characterize these becoming human beings as ancestors of humanity. At that stage we were not yet "truly" human. The real human being only came into being in the Earth period, the planetary state that followed on that of Old Moon.

In the fourth planetary state, that of Earth, high spiritual beings worked further on the physical body. Gradually, this body more and more received the form we are familiar with today. This happened because the creative beings on earth built the mineral-material element into what earlier had still been a fluid physical body. This made it solid, dense and sturdy.

On earth the work on the further perfection of the etheric body and astral body also continued. And when the whole corporeality (physical, etheric, and astral bodies) reached a certain development, high angelic beings again added a new element, the I. Just like the different bodies, the I is also a gift of high hierarchical creative beings, in this case the Spirits of Form, also called Elohim or Exousiai.

It is an active, individualizing, spiritual principle that enables us to become an individual, a truly separate person. Without an I this would not be possible.

Possessing an I make fundamental, new developments possible. One of these is that, because of this I, our spiritual core, our spiritual Self, the spark of God in us, can connect itself with our different bodies; not only that, it can also develop in these bodies.

I will elaborate later on this process of the connection of the spirit with the corporeality through the I.

The addition of the I into the corporeality is what enabled us to become human beings in the true sense of the word. This fact is always emphasized in esoteric wisdom of the East and the West. Because of the I and the indwelling spirit, human beings distinguish themselves from the animals. You can also say: we have the capacity to raise ourselves above the level of the animals. This is because both of them, the I and the spirit together, create self-consciousness. This makes self-consciousness and development in our inner essence possible, for because we possess our own I and in it a developing spirit or spiritual Self, we are able to grow in personal and spiritual ways.

This growth can basically go on and on because our spirit, as part of the divine spirit, possesses infinite consciousness. Because of this we human beings will in the infinitely distant future reach the point when we achieve all-consciousness, which will make us creative.

Currently, on earth, we human beings work on ourselves. With the aid of our I and our spirit we take distance from ourselves and look inward. We reflect on our thoughts, our emotions, our feelings, and the way we behave. In this way we become conscious of what we do and how we do it, of what is good and what is not, and what we want to change or learn. We then practice it in daily life situations.

Thus, we continue to grow.

The noteworthy thing is that, by working on ourselves in this way, we human beings are in essence already creatively active. For by reflecting on yourself and working on yourself you transform your astral body by means of your I and your spirit.

The astral body is the bearer of the ego, our "regular everyday I," which is self-oriented. It contains all our as yet undeveloped, unpurified impulses, thoughts, feelings and behavior. When you become aware of this and begin to work on it consciously by leading and guiding yourself, then you are working on the purification of your astral body.

It is interesting to know that we are then doing work that in early times was done by the pupils in mystery schools. The purification of the astral body was one of the first requirements on the spiritual path to higher levels of consciousness. For then it was also just as true as now that every time you consciously change something fundamental in yourself - for instance when you overcome a certain tendency to criticism, jealousy, or loss of self-control - because of the transformation that takes place in your astral body, your spiritual Self becomes a little more accessible to you.

And every time this happens the strength of the spirit in yourself, in your I, increases. The result is that your consciousness becomes stronger and you acquire more wisdom. Thus, you grow in a spiritual respect.

In our time here on earth we are in the very beginning of this transformation process of our astral body and our I. In the Jupiter period that follows on that of Earth, we will have brought this spiritual Self fully to development. For that reason, our life on the next planet will be totally different from our current one. As a result of the spiritual capacities we will then develop: we will be clairvoyant and associate with ourselves and other human beings in a very different way.

What will happen in the subsequent planetary state, Venus? Before I speak about this, first a little more about the Spirit or Spark of God that lives in us. Both eastern and western esoteric traditions relate that the Spark of God that lives in us as part of divine consciousness (the Logos or Brahma) comes to realization in the human being by means of a spiritual path of schooling on three different levels.

On the first level the Spark of God is called Spirit Self, or Manas in Sanskrit. On the second level Life Spirit or Buddhi. On the third and highest level Spirit Man or Atma.

Spirit Self or Manas develops when we work on ourselves and in so doing transform the astral body.

Life Spirit or Buddi unfolds when we work on ourselves on a more profound level and, as a result, transform the etheric body or life body. This opens our consciousness at a higher level than in the previous phase. We will then become creatively active in the realm of life.

Finally, Spirit Man or Atma unfolds when, again by even more profound work on ourselves, we touch on the spiritual ground of our physical body and, in doing so, transform this body. By this transformation on the third level, All-consciousness will make its appearance in us and, with it, the capacity to be creative at a much higher level than before. Only when we have reached this third level of spiritual development will we have brought the divine spirit to development in all its fullness in us.

Rudolf Steiner indicated that we will reach the second level of spiritual development, the phase of Life Spirit or Buddhi, in the Venus period, the sixth planetary phase. That is because as individuals we will then, besides our astral body, also completely have transformed our etheric body. As proof of this we will radiate light.

Finally, by the transformation of the physical body in the Vulcan period, our consciousness will rise to All-consciousness. This will give us the capacity to create living beings.

When we allow this path of human development to penetrate into our inner experience in all its greatness, we may contemplate in awe the perspective of our human development. And in all humility, we may realize the great task we face as human beings.

In conclusion, I will summarize the foregoing again in a schematic diagram of the seven planetary states and the developing human corporeality, the I, and the spirit.

Later I will go into the question of how the different planetary states and the development of consciousness of human beings are connected with each other.

Old Saturn

Rudolf Steiner,

Cosmic Memory, GA 11
An Outline of Esoteric Science, GA 13
An Esoteric Cosmology, GA 94, lectures of June 10 and 11, 1906.
The Spiritual Hierarchies and the Physical World, GA 110.