a pictorial kind of soul formation, and basically
everything was united in one single being, like in a common nodal point,
that is today the human being and the higher animal realm. The human
being was, in so far as it is a psycho-physical being, in a certain
respect on the level of animality. But no present animal and also not
the present human being resembles the human being of that time. However,
the human being has developed so far that a part, a branch of the previous
type has further-developed up to the present-day human beings. Other
members of the beings of that time remained behind because of certain
circumstances which I will especially show another time. They went back
in their development, became decadent. These decadent beings are the
I want to make this point
clear to you and use the following for it: you know that there are regions
in which Catholicism has degenerated to a kind of fetish service where
it appears like adoring lifeless objects or pictures of saints. Nobody
is able to state that this point of view, in proportion to the more
perfect to which humankind has developed, is the same one. This fetish
Christianity is a decayed Christianity. Thus it is also from the theosophical
point of view considering different “savage” tribes. The
materialistic history of civilisation regards them as ancestors of the
civilised people. We regard them as decayed, decadent descendants of
once advanced peoples. The same applies to the higher animals if we
go back in time even farther. Once they were more perfect, they decayed.
We come to a formation of the human realm which is different which shows
the human being still undifferentiated from the other higher animal
species, indeed, at a time which lies millions of years behind us.
How has it come to pass
that the human being stopped in those days on the course of his development?
Concerning his soul development the human being is completely the result
of that which takes place round him. Simply imagine the room in which
we are with a temperature higher than hundred degrees, and imagine also
everything changing there! If you expand this thought to all the other
natural conditions, it shows you that the human being is in truth completely
dependent on the constellation and configuration of the forces within
which he lives. He becomes another being if he is in another interrelation.
One made scientific attempts
recently: one made butterflies hatch at temperatures at which they do
not live, otherwise. One found that they change their colours and colour
shadings. At higher temperatures even bigger changes are to be observed.
Today the natural sciences are already a kind of elementary theosophy.
Concerning theosophy there is no contradiction between the natural sciences
Thus the developmental levels
of humankind also depended on the quite different developmental levels
on our earth. Already the physicist says to you namely as a hypothesis
that the farther we go back in the earth development, we come to higher
and higher temperatures. The theosophist or the practical mystic sees
really back to these primeval times, and he sees these conditions in
the Akasha Chronicle as truth, like the average person sees table and
chairs as truth before him. We come to a condition in which all substances
on our earth are in quite different relations to each other than today.
You know that the substances
if they are warmed up change their state. Solid substances become liquid,
liquid ones become vaporous et etcetera Now we come back to much higher
temperatures than we know on earth today. There the whole material world
of our earth was different. Only someone who is set on the materialistic
view and on the immediate view of our earth can get to the view that
this is impossible. Who emancipates himself from our reality today also
realises that life was possible in these higher temperatures of the
earth .The human being really lived in these higher temperatures, indeed,
in another way. He lived in the state of the “fire mist.”
The bodies were a vaporous, soft mass which cannot really be compare