Esoteric Evolution - 23 

The Consequences of the Fall

The eras of development of the Earth:

1. Polaris						7. Seventh era
	2. Hyperborea				6. Sixth era
		3. Lemuria		5. Post-Atlantean era
			4. Atlantis

In the previous chapter about the role of the fallen angels (22) we have seen how around the middle of Lemuria Lucifer, as a fallen angel, obtained access to the inner being, and therefore in the course of time also to the soul and I, of developing human beings.

This had big consequences. For because of the influence of Lucifer human beings were strongly connected with the forces of their astral body, and thus with their passions, desires, emotions, and unfocused will impulses.

As a result, we human beings became connected with our physical body, and therefore with earthly existence, much more strongly than the Elohim had intended.

Intellectual thinking and I-consciousness

But this stronger connection with the physical-material world by Lucifer's influence also had a good side. For because of this in the course of evolution our normal, intellectual thinking was able to develop, and with it our self-awareness. For there exists a direct relationship between our physical body and the intellect or day-consciousness. The stronger the connection with the physical body is, the stronger intellectual thinking will be and the feeling of independence and strength.

At the same time, however, because of this purely earthly, physically bound intellect and the influence of Lucifer, we ended up on wrong tracks and in untruths, and our whole life started to revolve around ourselves. That caused insecurity and fear. For what is true and what is not?

Besides, through Lucifer's influence we also got more and more into Ahriman's sphere of influence, the second, stronger power of evil.¹⁾

The necessity of the deed of Lucifer

Yet, as has been mentioned before, the intervention by Lucifer was necessary. What was the situation before Lucifer obtained access to the astral body? Before that time, becoming human beings were still pure reflections of divine beings. The Elohim, the creative beings in the Earth period, created human beings in their image and likeness, as Genesis 1:26 describes.

That means that the consciousness of becoming human beings in those early times was still completely filled with the divine and that cosmic wisdom was reflected in them. They did not yet possess an I-consciousness of their own. In that heavenly condition, there were also no illness, death, and birth.

Thus, we see that without Lucifer's intervention we humans would not have been able to become earth citizens with our own I-consciousness based on intellectual thinking. The creative beings could not give that to us. As heavenly beings, they lacked that capacity.

Lucifer in a staging of Rudolf Steiner's Mystery Plays, Goetheanum Dornach

Yahweh-Elohim

Through Rudolf Steiner we know that Yahweh-Elohim basically had no relationship to the earthly intellect. That was because he was unfamiliar with the necessity of thinking that is bound to the earth and the physical body, and did not understand it. For him, a high spiritual being, the only thing that existed was cosmic, divine, all-encompassing wisdom.

Similarly, freedom, unfreedom, and untruth were totally unknown concepts. If it had been up to him, human beings would for a long time have remained reflections of the cosmic wisdom of which they were part during Lemuria. And thus, they would automatically and self-evidently think and do whatever the gods inspired into them.²⁾

What would have been the consequences? The result would have been that we humans would not have become autonomous individuals on earth. And thus, we would not have found a way to autonomy and freedom, let alone have been able to strive for a new, I-conscious, free connection with the divine world, as we are intended to do.

The fall into sin

Lucifer and his intervention into the human astral body were therefore needed in order - incredible as it may sound - to free the human being more and more from the envelopment, penetration and guidance of the divine beings in the spiritual world. It was the task of Lucifer to free us by prying us sufficiently loose so that now we can become free and autonomous individuals on earth, free to make our own choices between good and evil.

As a result, because of the stronger connection with the astral body, becoming human beings were pulled out of the sphere of harmony, truth, and goodness of the divine-spiritual world. In different words, by the influence of Lucifer, the serpent in Paradise, they were driven out of the immediate proximity of the divine. Thus, they fell into isolation from the divine world, and there took place what is called the fall into sin.

Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem - The Fall - 1592

Loosening human beings from the earth

This means that Lucifer had reached part of his goal. But it was not at all his intention that human beings would become bound to the world of matter, let alone get lost in materialism. What Lucifer wanted was to loosen human beings from the purely divine world and lead them into his own luciferic spiritual realm, which is connected neither with the higher spiritual world nor earthly reality.

Where is that realm of Lucifer to be found? Not in the world of matter, where Ahriman reigns, the other power of evil. We have to find it on the border between the material and the spiritual world. That is where he pulls people. As the "spirit of elevation" he stimulates our longing for experiencing the higher, the intense, away from earthly pain and suffering. Lucifer stirs this longing up in various ways.

And this too has two sides.

On the one hand, he stimulates human beings to raise themselves to the experience of beauty, knowledge, spirituality, art, creativity, the good, and the like. But on the other hand, also to feel superior to others through feelings of hubris, arrogance, and the like. However, we feel his influence most strongly of all in situations where people are pulled out of themselves and live in illusions, for example in excessive desire, addiction, and ecstasy.

Think in this regard of addiction to alcohol, drugs, sex, social media, and in our time also especially to computer games and virtual reality. Away, out of themselves, and submerged in sensations that cause an intense feeling of self-experience.³⁾ In this way, Lucifer tries to encapsulate human beings, make them unfree, and lead them into his flighty, immaterial, sensory-supersensory realm, and thus let them forget the tasks for which they came to the earth.

Lucifer works positively and negatively

Rudolf Steiner says about Lucifer that as a fallen angel we should certainly regard him as one of the counterforces that put themselves in opposition to the creative powers of the Elohim. But besides this, we should also know that, through his opposition, Lucifer contributes to the necessary development of us humans. He brings us, by loosening us from the divine world of our origin, a certain form of freedom.

On the other hand, through his effect on the astral body, he binds us more strongly to the physical and thus makes us beings of the earth. This helps the development of intellectual thinking, the regular, everyday kind of thinking that we need to be able to live on earth, develop personally, and learn to distinguish between good and evil - the ability the serpent referred to in Paradise.

Lucifer thus works both positively and negatively. Positively when by his influence people take up and develop a striving for the higher, in the sense of a longing for beauty, increased knowledge, spirituality, etc. Negatively when people one-sidedly indulge in passions, desire, egoism, addiction, illusion and one-sidedness, and completely lose themselves in experiencing themselves, and identify with that.

Illness and death

As long as the precursors of human beings lived in the paradisal sphere of the divine world and were led by divine-spiritual beings, they knew no illness or death. The spiritual beings who built them after their image and likeness, are perfectly healthy. The divine world of harmony knows neither illness nor death. That is why becoming human beings in those early times, when they were still embedded in the divine world of origin, were healthy.

This changed when, as a result of increasing sensuality and passions of the astral body, they became earthlier and more removed from the divine world. In Chapter 20, I have already pointed to one of the radical changes that were caused by this, namely that in the course of Atlantis astral passion and desire became more and more predominant in the deed of procreation. This was the beginning of sensual love, sense-bound sexuality.

The result of increasing sensuality was that, under Lucifer's influence, the astral body declined and began to ruin the etheric body of the human being. The etheric body, in its turn, then damaged the physical body.⁴⁾ That is understandable when we remember that the etheric body consists of life forces that have the purpose of building up the physical body and keeping it healthy.

When these life forces were affected by the astral body, in the course of evolution illnesses occurred in the physical body, and in a later stage also death. As a result of all these profound changes the human being became mortal.

The measures taken by Yahweh-Elohim

In order to prevent the etheric body from succumbing to the astral body by the influence of Lucifer, and the physical body with it, Yahweh-Elohim intervened. He did this by loosening a part of the human etheric body and, in doing so, pulling it out of the influence of the astral body.

He preserved this liberated part, on which Lucifer had no influence, outside the physical body in the divine world. Rudolf Steiner describes the place where it is kept as "the great mother lodge of humanity." ⁵⁾ There it was guarded and tended by high Sun Beings, the Elohim, who participate in the creation from the Sun. Thus, a part of the etheric body and, with it, also a part of the I of the human being remained outside the influence of Lucifer and were not pulled along in the fall into sin.

A higher I and a lower I

What Yahweh-Elohim achieved with this deed was that the human I was split into a higher and a lower part, the higher I and the lower I.⁶⁾ The higher I is directly connected with the divine world and the spiritual self. As we have seen, the lower I was embedded both in the physical and etheric bodies and in the astral body in all its aspects.

This lower I - it is called this way because it was connected not with the spiritual but with corporeality - formed in the course of evolution that part of us that we experience as our everyday I. It is also called the personality-I or ego.

Yahweh did even more. He made the I part of a family- and generational stream, and thus connected it with a particular stream of heredity.⁷⁾ As the I developed further in the course of time, human beings therefore began to feel themselves part of a family group and thus of the stream of generations that had lived before them and from which they had come forth. As blood relatives, they felt deeply connected with these, yes, experienced themselves initially as one with them.

Karma and reincarnation

This deed of Yahweh was necessary because, as a result of the fall into sin and the increasing, ever stronger connection with the physical body and earthly existence, not only did death begin to occur but, because of the progressing hardening and density of the physical body, physical birth also began. And physical birth brought the necessity of karma and reincarnation.

If human evolution was to continue, thoughts and deeds in one life had to work through and have consequences in the next life. For only if human beings learned from the past life, in other words if bad deeds were compensated for and good intentions were formed for the next life, could development go on.

To make that possible, Yahweh-Elohim made such changes to the corporeality (astral body, etheric body, and physical body) that karma - i.e. the whole of thoughts and actions that originate in a human being during life - was then stored in it. In this way, in life after death, when the etheric body and astral body open themselves and show their content, this karma could be lived through again and be contemplated.

What went well and what didn't? Where do I have to learn something? What can be set right? But also: Where do I want to go? What contributions do I want to make? In the course of time, this led to a process after death of review and raising consciousness that exerted great influence on goals and lessons in the next life.

As I said, the process of karma and reincarnation made development through the incarnations possible. Human beings could learn of their mistakes and, therefore, take on their tasks and intentions more consciously in a next life. Thus, they contribute to their own development and the ongoing development of humanity as regards consciousness, wisdom, and morality.

Hence, today we look back in life after death on our past life, obtain insight into it, and become conscious of the will to set right in a next life what went wrong, to take on new opportunities and aim for the good.

In that review, we also come to recognize and acknowledge the workings of Lucifer, both in ourselves and in the world around us.

Bertram von Minden - The original sin (1375) - Habsburger Kunsthalle

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Sources

1. Rudolf Steiner, An Outline of Esoteric Science, GA 13, Chapter 4.
2. Rudolf Steiner, How the Spiritual World Projects into Physical Existence, GA 150
3. Rudolf Steiner, Egyptian Myths and Mysteries, A 106, Chapter 11.
4. Rudolf Steiner, Spiritual-Scientific Enquiries into the Nature of the Human Being, GA 107, Chapter 10.
5. Rudolf Steiner, The Gospel of St. Luke, GA 114, Chapter 4.
6. See the schematics of the I in Chapter 14.
7. See note 1.

For English translations see www.rsarchive.org.