After an intermediate state, which will be a sojourn in a higher world, the earth will be transformed into the Jupiter condition. That which we now call the mineral kingdom will not exist on Jupiter; the forces of this mineral kingdom will be transformed into plant forces and the plant kingdom, which will have quite a new form compared with its present one, will appear in the Jupiter state as the lowest of the kingdoms, while above it, we find the animal kingdom, likewise transformed. Next comes a human kingdom—the descendants of the evil earth humanity. And then will appear the descendants [pg 398] of the good earth humanity, as a human kingdom on a higher level. A great part of the work of this last human kingdom consists in ennobling the souls which have sunk into the evil community, so that they may still gain admittance into the true human kingdom.
The Venus condition will be of such a nature that the plant kingdom will have disappeared also; the lowest kingdom will be the animal kingdom once more transformed, and above that there will be three successive human kingdoms of different degrees of perfection. The earth will remain united with the sun during the Venus period; while during that of Jupiter it will have happened that, at a certain point, the sun separates from Jupiter, the latter receiving its influence from outside. Then there is again a union between the sun and Jupiter, the transformation gradually passing into the Venus state. During that state another planet detaches itself from Venus, containing all kinds of beings which have opposed evolution, an “irredeemable moon,” as it were, following a path of evolution which is of a character impossible to describe, because it is too unlike anything which man can experience on earth. But evolved humanity will pass on in a fully spiritualized state of existence to the Vulcan evolution, a description of which lies beyond the scope of this work.
We see that from the fruits of the “Wisdom of the Grail” springs the highest ideal of human evolution conceivable for man: spiritualization attained by him through his own efforts. For in the end this [pg 399] spiritualization appears as a product of the harmony which he wrought out in the fifth and sixth periods of the present evolution, between the faculties of reason and emotion which he had then attained and cognition of supersensible worlds. That which he thus achieves within his soul will finally become in itself the outer world. The human spirit rises to the mighty impressions of its outer world and at first divines, later recognizes spiritual beings behind these impressions; the human heart senses the unspeakable exaltedness of the Spirit. Man can, however, also recognize that his inner experiences of intellect, feeling and character are but the germs of a nascent spirit world.
He who thinks that human liberty is not compatible with a foreknowledge and predestination of future conditions, ought to consider that man's freedom of action in the future depends just as little on the arrangement of predestined things as does his liberty of action with regard to inhabiting a house a year hence, on the plans for which he is now settling. He will be as free as his innermost being will permit, within the house he has built; and he will be as free on Jupiter and on Venus as his inner life permits, even under the conditions which will arise there. Freedom will not depend on what has been predetermined by antecedent conditions, but on what the soul has made out of itself.
In the earth condition is contained that which has developed within the preceding Saturn, Sun and [pg 400] Moon states. Earth-man finds “wisdom” in the processes going on around him. This wisdom is there as the fruit of what has happened in the past. The Earth is the descendant of the “old Moon”; and the latter developed with all that belonged to it, into the “Cosmos of Wisdom.” The Earth is now at the commencement of an evolution, which will introduce a new force into this wisdom. It will cause man to feel himself an independent member of a spiritual world. This will come to pass because his ego will have been formed within him during the Earth period by the Lords of Form, as was his physical body on Saturn by the Lords of Will, his vital body on the Sun by the Lords of Wisdom, and his astral body on the Moon by the Lords of Motion.
By means of the co-operation of the Lords of Will, Wisdom and Motion, that which manifests as wisdom is brought forth. Through the labours of these three classes of spirits, the beings and processes of earth can harmonize in wisdom with the other beings of their world. It is the Lords of Form who bestowed on man his independent ego. In the future this ego will harmonize with the beings of Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and of Vulcan, by means of the force added to the existing wisdom during the Earth period. It is the force of love. This force must begin to arise within earth-humanity and the Cosmos of Wisdom develop into a Cosmos of Love. Everything which the ego is able to unfold within itself must give birth to love. The all-embracing archetype of love is set forth in the revelation of [pg 401] that lofty Sun-spirit indicated in the description of the Christ Mystery. Through Him the germ of love is planted in the innermost core of the human being; and from this starting-point it must flow through the whole of evolution. Just as the wisdom previously formed manifests in the forces of the earthly sense-world, in the “elementary forces” of to-day, so love itself will manifest in the future, in all phenomena, as the new “elementary force.”
The secret of all future development is a recognition that everything achieved by man from a right comprehension of evolution is a sowing of seed which must ripen into love. And the greater the amount of love-force, so much the greater will be the creative force available for the future. In that which will grow from love, will lie the mighty forces leading to that culminating point of spiritualization described above. The greater the amount of spiritual knowledge that flows into human and terrestrial evolution, so much more living and fruitful seed will be stored up for the future. Spiritual knowledge is transmuted through its own nature into love. The whole process which has been described, beginning with the Greco-Roman period and extending throughout the present time, shows how this transformation, for which the beginning has now been made for future times, is to take place and to what end. That which has been prepared as wisdom on Saturn, Sun and Moon, is active in the physical, etheric and astral bodies of man; it shows itself there as the “Wisdom of the World”, but within the [pg 402] “ego” it becomes intensified. The wisdom of the outer world becomes inner wisdom in man from the Earth period onward and when it is concentrated in him, it becomes the germ of love. Wisdom is the necessary preliminary condition for love; love is the fruit of wisdom, reborn in the ego.