Esoteric Evolution - 18

The Separation into Two Sexes

The first half of Lemuria

Fire cloud

The events in the middle of Lemuria

The descent of the I

The fall into sin, the temptation by Lucifer

The separation of the Moon from the Earth

The separation of the two sexes

Why women and men?

Sources

As was described in the previous chapters, in the era of Lemuria of the Earth a number of events occurred that caused extremely profound changes in human evolution. Lemuria was the third era in the development of the Earth. The Earth has seven different periods or eras:

In its turn, the Earth forms part of an even much larger cosmic process that consists of seven planetary states:

We are now living in the fifth era of the Earth's development: Post-Atlantis.

At the beginning of the third period of the Earth's development, Lemuria, which is again the subject of this chapter, circumstances were completely different from those of today. In the first half of this period, Earth and Moon were not yet separated from each other. The Moon was still completely part of the Earth. Also, the "fall into sin," which occurred as a result of the Luciferic temptation, had not yet taken place.

Becoming human beings did not yet possess a physical body with bones, for at that time the mineral-material element did not yet exist. The precursor of the human being then possessed a non-material physical body, an etheric or life body, and an astral body. He did not yet have an I, because Yahweh-Elohim, the Lord God, had not yet bestowed an I on him.

The early human being was then still androgynous, male and female in one; the separation of the sexes had not yet happened.

This becoming human being - for that is what we should still call him - lived in an etheric, paradisal, not yet physical state. On the one hand, with his unborn soul, his spirit, and I, he still lived entirely in the light, unity, and harmony of the world of angels, the Elohim, and the divine. On the other hand, on Earth there was his corporeality, on which high divine-spiritual angelic beings worked under the leadership of the Elohim for the benefit of his development on Earth.

In the book Cosmic Memory, Rudolf Steiner tells us that we should picture this corporeality as consisting of a watery substance permeated by fire- or warmth ether. The whole of the still becoming corporeality then looked like a kind of fire cloud floating in the air. With the aid of four organs that looked like limbs, this fire-mist moved more floating than walking every which way, forward, backward, sideways, etc. That is what it looked like from the outside.

Inwardly, the fire-cloud-human being was living and organized. The movements he made were not arbitrary, but were structured, because he was directed and led out of the high consciousness of the high creative Elohim. Together with other high creative beings, they worked from outside and from inside in the developing corporeality. As a result, everything that happened had significance and purpose.

Because his astral body was already developed to some extent, within this fire-mist body he could in a particular, albeit very rudimentary, way express urges, instincts, and passions. His soul expressed itself solely in instincts, desires, animal-like longings, etc. He was also somewhat able to produce sounds - sounds that could not yet be heard physically. However, his consciousness was hardly present.

Whatever consciousness there was, was dreamy, dull and dim.¹⁾ This meant that at the time, the human being hardly observed anything in the world around him. Intelligence, intellect, or thinking did not yet exist. He lacked the necessary organs for this, such as brains and an I. In brief, the human being was at that time in phases of consciousness that were described in Chapter 1 as lower states of consciousness.

Halfway through Lemuria the events took place that were discussed before. Although they were most closely related and deeply influenced each other, we can still distinguish a certain sequence:

The descent of the I into corporeality by Yahweh-Elohim.
The "fall into sin," the temptation by the serpent, Lucifer.
The separation of the Moon from the Earth.
The split into two sexes.

Prior chapters - Yahweh and the Second Creation (13) and The Descent of the I into Corporeality (14) - describe how halfway through Lemuria the becoming human being received what would in the course of time make him truly human - his I. The corporeality of the becoming human being was then already so far developed by the Elohim, that he could receive that I. The I descended into the corporeality and unfolded gradually in the course of time. The descent of the I created the connection between the corporeality that was developing on Earth and the part of the human being that lived in the spiritual world, outside corporeality, namely his soul and spirit. Until then, the latter were completely part of the spiritual world, the inner world of the divine and the Elohim.

The Bible describes this grand event as the Lord God "breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and man became a living being." (Genesis 2:7) Rudolf Steiner called this the integration of the I-substance into the corporeality by Yahweh-Elohim. This integration process took millions of years. Because of this I, which human beings have and animals don't, they could in due course walk erect, speak, think, and develop personally and spiritually.

This subject will be discussed in a subsequent chapter.

Why did the Moon have to come out of the Earth and become an autonomous organ? This is exhaustively described in the previous chapter, The Separation of the Moon (17).

In the first place, it happened to counteract excessive and premature hardening of the corporeality. This hardening would eventually have made it impossible for human souls to incarnate, to adopt a body on Earth in which to live. What was important is that because the Moon left the Earth, another kind of materiality, crystalline materiality, could develop. Today we are familiar with this crystalline materiality as the mineral element we encounter in stones and rocks, and in minerals like copper, iron, lime, etc. It is fine and light, and continues to form the basis of bones in today's human beings and animals.

In the second place, the separation of the Moon was necessary because Yahweh, the Godhead who had remained connected with the Moon, could in that new situation work creatively on the Earth from outside, in a different way. One of the changes Yahweh-Elohim thus effected was that androgyny (double sexuality) was transformed into single sexuality, in other words, into separate sexes, female and male. This brought about the separation of the sexes.

In the third place, the autonomy of the Moon was necessary to bring Sun, Moon, and Earth into such a constellation with each other that the creative beings that are connected with this process could lead human evolution in the right way.

Thus, all three events - the descent of the I, the fall, and the separation of the Moon - were needed so that this enormously big step could be made in the evolution of humanity, namely the split into two sexes. The Moon forces of Yahweh-Elohim working from outside were especially essential in this process.

Before we go more deeply into the separation process itself, it is interesting to answer a burning question: Why was this separation necessary? Why does the creation have a male and a female sex? In other words, why are there women and men?

The split into two sexes has everything to do with the necessary individualization of human beings. From an evolutionary point of view, human beings have the task to become I-personalities, individuals on their own two feet. For only as individuals are human beings the appropriate vehicles in which the spirit can come to expression and work in all its fullness. And that is the goal of human evolution. The spirit wants to come to expression in every human being on Earth in a specific, individual way.

To achieve this, it is necessary for every human being to learn ever more to act out of their own observation and thinking, their own feeling and will, and out of their own insights. In that way they develop an autonomous personality and the individuality makes its appearance. For the more they develop by working on themselves, the more the spirit will inwardly be freed.

It is only in such an inwardly active, conscious soul or I-personality that is oriented to the good, that the spirit can work and develop further. With the word "spirit" is meant the higher spiritual self, spiritual consciousness, the spiritual core of us humans - that which is part of the divine, God the Holy Spirit.

In their development, human beings are traveling an extremely intensive and long road. At some point, in the very beginnings of the Earth, their corporeality was created, their etheric body, astral body, and physical body. With those they could live on Earth.

In Lemuria, with the descent of the I, the next phase began. Now a beginning could be made with the creation of the soul in the corporeality, the inner being. This also started the development of the personality and, with it, their own experience of the I. This soul- and I-development is so essential for human evolution that it took not only the second half of Lemuria, but also the entire period of Atlantis and a large part of Post-Atlantis.

Actually, it was not until our time that we reached the point where our soul and I are so far developed that our spiritual core, our spiritual, true self, can begin to be born.

It is in this context that we have to regard the split into two sexes. If we had remained androgynous, our soul would not or barely have been able to develop, neither our I-consciousness. The individualization process would then not have happened.

Chapter 16, The Androgynous Human Being in Antiquity and Paradise, shows that androgynous human beings in the beginning only brought forth their equals; the offspring did not, or barely, distinguish themselves from their parents and ancestors. Differences and individuality did not yet exist.

The individual element could only arise when the soul and the I developed themselves, when people started thinking, and procreation occurred after female and male human beings came into being who had physical contact with each other.

In the words of Rudolf Steiner: "By the effect of the male element in the female, by men and women coming together, the individuality in the human being grows." ²⁾

Genetics, the conventional science that describes and explains heredity, supports this opinion. It is the man, the father, who determines the sex of the future child. It is explained as follows. In male sperm there is either an X-chromosome, or a Y-chromosome. The woman, the mother, has in every ovum two X-chromosomes. When the ovum is fertilized by the amalgamation of sperm and ovum, it will have either two X-chromosomes (one from the mother and one from the father) or one X-chromosome (from the mother) plus one Y-chromosome (from the father). In the first case (XX), the child will be a girl; in the second case (XY) a boy.³⁾

The split into a male and female sex marks the beginning of the process of individualization, of becoming an autonomous I, that is of such importance for human evolution. The following chapters will discuss how the separation process into men and women occurred in the course of time, and they will show the importance of the female and male soul for the development of the I-personality and the spirit.

7. Seventh era

2. Hyperborea

6. Sixth era

5. Post-Atlantean era

4. Atlantis

Rudolf Steiner, Cosmic Memory, GA 11, Chapter 5.
Rudolf Steiner, True Knowledge of the Christ, GA 100, lecture of June 27, 1907; and Spiritual-Scientific Enquiries into the Nature of the Human Being, GA 107, lecture of December 8, 1908.
Wikipedia: procreation, heredity.