Esoteric Evolution - 7

The Beginnings of the Earth

Purpose of the Earth development

Levels of densification

The solar system

The Primeval Word and the human form

The phantom body

Polaris

Hyperborea

Sources

The Earth and its relationship to the planetary phases in the past and future:

When billions of years ago the Earth appeared out of the darkness of the pralaya condition as the fourth planetary phase, it looked as if its whole previous development had vanished. For what appeared was one big heavenly body, stupendous in its proportions, which encompassed the entire creation, everything that had developed from the time of Old Saturn.

Did this mean that the results of the previous planetary phases no longer existed? No. In the living creation process every new phase begins with a return to the very first beginning, and then gradually works its way into the new phase. We find an example of this in the development of a baby in the body of the mother. Before the later body comes into being as a whole, the embryo again goes through all the evolutionary stages humanity has passed through.

The Earth goes through the same process in its development. Every time the old phases are experienced anew at the beginning, after which they are expanded. In this way, in the very beginning times of the Earth, high creative spiritual beings prepared in that immense heavenly body the subsequent phases of human evolution. Their principal task was now to work on the physical, etheric, and astral bodies and the organs in the state they had reached at the end of Old Moon in such a way that they became able to accept an I into themselves. Why was that necessary?

The purpose of the Earth period is that human beings achieve a self-conscious I-consciousness, both personally and spiritually. Human beings must not only experience themselves as autonomous personalities, but also as fundamentally spiritual beings. That purpose is realized only if we possess our own I. An I is a spiritual power that makes individualization possible. Only through an individual I can self-consciousness arise. And that, in turn, is a precondition not only for dealing with earthly circumstances, but most of all also to achieve an inner, personal connection with the world of the spirit.

However, our own I and the self-consciousness that goes with it - we can only conquer this on Earth, in the world of solid matter. In the spiritual world everything lives in and through each other; because of this, individualization cannot exist. We can only obtain self-consciousness, consciousness of ourselves as individuals, in a physical body that is separate from other human beings and is formed from solid earthly materiality.

The step to the human being becoming an I, and the concomitant need for a material physical body, determines the first half of Earth evolution. It forms the reason why from the primeval beginning we are dealing with ever progressing densification processes on our planet, processes in which, through cooling, "materiality" gradually densified and became solid and firm.

How did that densification process take place? Because we will meet those densification processes again and again in the description of Earth development, here is first a general sketch.

In its very first beginning, the Earth consisted entirely of a mixture of primeval warmth or fire and a delicate etheric condition. In the course of time, this condition partly passed over into a misty, gaseous sphere. From this developed in time a fluid, watery state. Subsequently the watery substance became a jelly-like form, which eventually solidified into our current, mineral materiality.

The body of the Earth and the body of us humans both went through these densifications. Their processes are analogous and are most closely connected with each other. At the beginning of the Earth period, not only the Earth itself but also the becoming human bodies consisted of warmth-fire and delicate etheric substance. And as in much later times, because of progressive densification, mineralization and hardening occur in the human body, and with it the formation of bones, on Earth the tendency toward the formation of crystals, rocks and stone develops.

Once more the seven principal ages of the Earth period:

After the seventh era the Earth passes after a pralaya condition over into a new planetary state, which is then called Jupiter.

The densification process of materiality described above occurs especially in the first four principal eras of the Earth: Polaris, Hyperborea, Lemuria, and Atlantis. During Polaris there was a brief repetition of the warmth/fire condition of Old Saturn. During a repetition of Old Sun in Hyperborea, the elements of air, vapor or gas, and light were added. In the first half of Lemuria the Old Moon state was repeated and high creative spiritual beings added the fluid, watery element. Only in the second half of Lemuria did the mineral, solid element very gradually come into being on Earth. Then only could a beginning be made with the development of the I.

But it was only in Atlantean times that, as a result of the descent of this I, human beings started to walk upright and began to look more or less like we do today.

Parallel to this process went the planetary development that was described in a previous chapter, the forming of our current sun, moon, and planets. Our solar system came into being because parts of the original primeval heavenly body split off and gradually became independent. We have seen that the first ones were Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars. During Hyperborea the Sun separated from the whole, and with it the later planets Venus and Mercury. Initially the Moon and the Earth stayed connected with each other. Only in the second half of Lemuria did the Moon separate from the Earth; the earth was then left by itself.

All those separations took place in times when everything was still fiery, gaseous, and fluid, and hardening and mineralization did not yet, or hardly exist.

It is important to keep in mind with these unimaginably great developmental processes that there is something most essential at the bottom of it all. This essential element is called in esotericism the Primeval Word, Divine Thought, or Logos. This is the primeval creative source from which everything has originated. In the Primeval Word, and therefore also in the highest creative spiritual beings, lived the primeval image of the form that human beings would have to adopt to enable their spiritual being - that which they really are - to come to development.

It indicates how important the figure of the human being, the form of the human physical body, is for the evolution of the human being, and therefore for the divine powers. It becomes comprehensible when we realize that human beings can only fulfill their task in evolution if they possess a physical instrument or vehicle that, in a process of continually changing planetary conditions, makes their development to higher levels of humanness possible. The body therefore had to meet very high requirements.

For that reason, the basis, the spiritual primeval image of this body, was designed by the very highest divine beings in the highest regions of the divine world. This is why in the construction and form of the human body we discover the inconceivably high wisdom that is characteristic of the divine world.

According to Rudolf Steiner we should imagine this primeval form of the physical body as a kind of living spiritual fabric or force system. You could also call it a kind of living blueprint or matrix. On that basis the high creative spiritual beings worked on the available materiality in such a way that human corporeality received the form that was required at the moment. In this way the form and figure we now possess in the 21st century also came into being.

In Anthroposophy, this spiritual primeval form or figure of the physical body is also called the "phantom" or "phantom body." We will see later that the Sun Logos, Christ, came to fulfill a very important task regarding the body of formative forces or phantom body later on Earth.

According to esoteric evolution, the Earth period does not begin with the pictures described in the Book of Genesis in the Bible. This is, says the esoteric view of the Bible, because Genesis does not speak of the very first beginning of the Earth, but of a later phase. Genesis 1 speaks of waters and of an Earth that was without form and void. This indicates that there was already a certain state of physical materiality in existence! In the course of this series, it will become clear at what stage, according to esoteric evolution, the story of Genesis begins.

What did the situation in Polaris look like? Rudolf Steiner related that in the great, primeval etheric heavenly body that appeared in the beginning of the Earth period there appeared after some time a fire form that corresponded with the densest warmth condition on Old Saturn. This fire form was full of high spiritual beings who worked on the Earth and the human body, Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim, Spirits of Wisdom, Spirits of Movement, Spirits of Form, Archai, Archangels, Angels. All of them descended for their creative work into the fireball that was the Earth at the time and rose out of it again.

The Spirits of Form, also called Exousiai or Elohim, were the leaders of this creative work on Earth. They are, as the name indicates, the creators of fixed forms. They led the progressive process of densification. The Spirits of Form are identical to the creative gods, the Elohim, of which both the Hebrew and the Christian Bible speaks.

In that early period, the creative work of these high spiritual beings on the human body led to a kind of ensouled egg shape of which the bottom was enclosed similarly to the way the top of an acorn is enclosed. Only, this egg consisted of etheric substance, and the enclosure of fire-ether substance.

Together these etheric egg shapes formed a kind of tree from which new shoots and forms appeared through division. From the surroundings they absorbed fine etheric substance, from which their etheric bodies were formed. These bodies had in them the tender nuances of the first beginnings of the limbs and other later organs of the human body.

In Polaris only the becoming human bodies were in existence. Plants and animals did not yet exist; they only appeared later because of separations and divisions from the developing human body.

Out of the mass of fiery warmth and ether-vapor described above, a luminous vapor slowly arose. This happened because, due to progressive densification, the original primeval etheric substance was permeated by a kind of light-emitting gas. The denser this gas became, the brighter and stronger the light became. Eventually, it became so strong that the luminous vapor began to look like a gigantic sun, a sun that spread light in all directions in the universe. This was the beginning of Hyperborea, the era when Sun, Moon, and Earth still formed one whole.

Rudolf Steiner could not stop describing the glory and magnificence, the radiance and luster of light and color that permeated and radiated from the Earth at that time. High spiritual beings added to the light that which would later become the mission of the Earth, namely the power of love. The luminous vapor did not only radiate light in all directions, but also love - love that permeated the light.

In this paradisal state, in this abundance of light and love, high creative spiritual beings wove further on the Earth and created bodies that were appropriate for that condition, delicate vapor figures, air- or gas bodies that were completely irradiated by light and love.

Rudolf Steiner related that we might imagine the human body as a cloud with an opening cup at the top. That cup was irradiated by inner light. Although becoming human beings at that time were not plants in the current sense of the word, we may still view their bodies as a kind of light-plant - a light-plant that formed a unity with the light mantle of the Earth that cherished and enveloped it and from which it hung as on an umbilical cord, just as today a baby is connected with the body of the mother.

This light- and love-filled world, this paradisal state, came to an end in the course of Hyperborea. The Sun separated off and became autonomous. This changed everything on Earth.

Old Saturn

Rudolf Steiner:

Cosmic memory, GA 11

An Outline of Esoteric Science, GA 13

Theosophy of the Rosicrucians, GA 99

Egyptian Myths and Mysteries, GA 106.

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Translated by Philip Mees