uals. However, I would like
to describe it somewhat clearer.
We have seen the human being
facing us as another being in very distant times taking on the physical
dress only bit by bit not having his origin from the physical but from
the psychic. We have seen the psychic leading the way of the physical,
the psychic developing the forces in itself by which it can gradually
clothe itself in this physical dress. All that has been shown. At the
same time, we have drawn our attention to the fact that we can trace
back the human being, as well as he faces us today, only through a certain
number of periods.
We are within the fifth
age of our physical earth development. Another age preceded it that
took place on a continent which forms the bottom of the Atlantic today.
And another age preceded this Atlantean age called the Lemurian age.
At that time, in the middle of the Lemurian age, we find that, actually,
that connects with the human being, as well as he had developed till
then which we call our immortal spirit. This higher element, this higher
nature of the human being which outlasts any physical corporeality and
any psychic development in other words the eternal in the human being
this has established itself in those days. If we want to express ourselves
figuratively, we may call it a spiritual spark in the human nature,
so that the human being faces us till then as the connection of soul
and body. Up to the middle of the Lemurian age, our ancestors were bodily-psychic
If we want to conceive a
clear idea how these human ancestors were in some way, actually, we
have to remember that the spirit is inseparably connected with any really
higher thinking. Without spirit the human being could not count, without
spirit he could not speak, without spirit no higher spiritual activity,
never mind still higher activities would be possible. So that we deal
with a human being till then who waited to become mind-endowed who did
not yet have the immortal part who had, however, a soul-life that was
completely different from ours. Our soul-life is infiltrated with spirit.
If we want to call the human being who was not yet mind-endowed a human
being and we want to do this for the sake of the shortness of time ,
we must say that his soul-life was vague that it was a more dreamy,
pictorial soul-life. One can understand the soul-life of the human being
at that time only if one traces it back one period more. In the time
of which I have spoken now the human being is able to receive external
body impressions, to perceive the surroundings. This perception developed
only slowly and gradually.
If we trace back the Lemurians
still farther, we find that the human ancestors have sensation already,
indeed, that the external objects make impressions on them but that
they could not connect ideas with these external percepts. If you imagine
a soul-life like that of the dream, then you have something similar.
However, it is not completely the same. For the pictorial ideas which
surged up and down in the soul at that time were much clearer, much
more original and more elementary, much more saturated than the confused
dream pictures of the present-day average person are. Above all, these
pictures in the human soul were dependent in certain way on that which
took place around the human being. At that time, the human being was
not yet able to associate a colour with an external object, he could
not yet see the things coloured. He could not see that an object is
green or red; the colour idea did not yet combine with the object. Nevertheless,
colours still surged in the human soul. These colours had some resemblance
to that which the clairvoyant knows if he develops certain capacities
in himself. The clairvoyant sees not only the external physical, but
also the feelings and instincts in the form of an aura. The physical
human being is only one part of the human being. The physical human
being is embedded like in a cloud in which all sorts of formations surge
up and down. Only someone can see them who has the gift of clairvoyance
in our theosophical sense not in the