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Occult Science
GA 13

Translated by Steiner Online Library

The Development of the Cosmos and Man

[ 1 ] The previous considerations have shown that the essence of the human being is made up of four members: Physical body, vital body, astral body and ego vehicle. The "I" works within the other three members and transforms them. Through such transformation, the following arise at a lower level: the sentient soul, the intellectual soul and the consciousness soul. At a higher level of human existence, the spirit self, life spirit and spirit man are formed. These members of the human nature now stand in the most varied relationships to the whole universe. And their development is connected with the development of this universe. By observing this development, one gains an insight into the deeper secrets of this human entity.

[ 2 ] It is clear that human life has relationships in the most diverse directions to the environment, to the dwelling place in which it develops. Now external science has already been forced by the facts given to it to the view that the earth itself, this dwelling place of man in the most comprehensive sense, has undergone a development. This science points to conditions in earthly existence in which a human being in his present form has not yet existed on our planet. It shows how mankind has slowly and gradually developed from simple cultural states to the present conditions. This science also comes to the conclusion that there is a connection between the development of man and that of his celestial body, the Earth.

[ 3 ] Spiritual science 1is used here, as is evident from the context, synonymously with secret science, with supersensible knowledge. pursues this connection through that knowledge which draws its facts from the perception sharpened by the spiritual organs. It follows man backwards in his development. It shows that the actual inner spiritual being of man has passed through a series of lives on this earth. Thus, however, spiritual research comes to a point in time far in the past when this inner human being first entered into an outer life in the present sense. It was in this first earthly embodiment that the "I" began to work within the three bodies, astral body, life body, physical body. And it then took the fruits of this work with it into the following life.

[ 4 ] If one moves backwards in the indicated manner up to this point in time, one becomes aware that the "I" finds an earthly state within which the three bodies, physical body, life body and astral body, are already developed and already have a certain connection. The "I" connects for the first time with the entity that consists of these three bodies. From now on this "I" takes part in the further development of the three bodies. Previously, they developed without such a human ego up to the level at which this ego encountered them at that time.

[ 5 ] Spiritual science must now go back even further with its research if it wants to answer the questions: How did the three bodies reach such a stage of development at which they were able to receive an "I" within themselves, and how did this "I" itself become and attain the ability to be able to work within these bodies?

[ 6 ] The answer to these questions is only possible if one follows the development of the earth planet itself in the spiritual scientific sense. Through such research one arrives at a beginning of this earth planet. That way of looking at things which is based only on the facts of the physical senses cannot reach conclusions which have anything to do with this beginning of the earth. A certain view which makes use of such conclusions comes to the conclusion that everything material on earth was formed out of a primordial nebula. It cannot be the task of this paper to go into more detail about such ideas. For spiritual research is concerned not only with the material processes of the earth's development, but above all with the spiritual causes behind the material. If you have a person in front of you who raises a hand, this raising of the hand can stimulate two different ways of looking at things. You can examine the mechanism of the arm and the other organism and want to describe the process as it takes place in purely physical terms. But one can also direct the spiritual gaze to that which takes place in the soul of the human being and which forms the spiritual cause for the raising of the hand. In a similar way, the researcher trained by spiritual perception sees spiritual processes behind all the processes of the sensory-physical world. For him, all transformations in the material of the earth planet are revelations of spiritual forces that lie behind the material. But when such spiritual observation in the life of the earth goes back further and further, it comes to a point of development at which everything material only begins to exist. This material develops out of the spiritual. Before that, only the spiritual is present. Through this spiritual observation one perceives the spiritual and sees how, in further pursuit, this spiritual partially condenses into the material, as it were. You have before you a process that takes place - on a higher level - as if you were looking at a vessel of water in which lumps of ice have gradually formed through skillfully controlled cooling. Just as one sees the ice condensing out of what was previously water, one can observe through spiritual observation how the material things, processes and entities condense, as it were, out of what was previously quite spiritual. - Thus the physical earth planet has developed out of a spiritual world being; and everything that is materially connected with this earth planet has condensed out of that which was previously spiritually connected with it. However, one should not imagine that everything spiritual ever transforms into matter; rather, in the latter one always only has transformed parts of the original spiritual before him. The spiritual also remains the actual guiding and leading principle during the material period of development.

[ 7 ] It is obvious that the kind of conception that only wants to adhere to the sensual-physical processes - and to that which the intellect can deduce from these processes - cannot say anything about the spiritual in question. Suppose there could be a being that only had senses that could perceive ice, but not the finer state of the water from which the ice emerges through cooling. For such a being, the water would not exist; and it would only be able to perceive something of the water when parts of it have transformed into ice. Thus, for a human being, the spiritual behind the earthly processes remains hidden if he only wants to accept what is present for the physical senses. And if he draws correct conclusions about earlier states of the earth planet from the physical facts he currently perceives, such a person will only reach that point of development in which the preceding spiritual partially condensed into the material. Such an approach sees this preceding spiritual just as little as the spiritual, which also invisibly rules behind the material at present.

[ 8 ] It is only in the last chapters of this writing that we can speak of the ways in which man acquires the ability to look back in spiritual perception on the earlier earthly states of which we speak here. It should only be indicated here for the time being that the facts of even remote pasts have not disappeared for spiritual research. When a being attains a physical existence, the material world disappears with its physical death. The spiritual forces that have driven this corporeality out of itself do not "disappear" in the same way. They leave behind their traces, their exact images in the spiritual foundation of the world. And whoever is able to raise his perception through the visible world to the invisible will finally arrive at something that could be compared to a vast spiritual panorama in which all past events of the world are recorded. These imperishable traces of all spiritual things can be called the "Akashic Chronicle", in that the Akashic Being is the spiritual being of world events in contrast to the transient forms of events. Now it must also be said here again that research in the supersensible areas of existence can only be carried out with the help of spiritual perception, i.e. in the area under consideration here only by reading the indicated "Akashic Chronicle". Nevertheless, what has already been said earlier in this book applies here as well. The supersensible facts can only be investigated through supersensible perception; but once they have been investigated and communicated by the science of the supersensible, they can be understood by ordinary thinking, if only it really wants to be unbiased. In the following, the states of development of the earth are communicated in the sense of supersensible knowledge. The transformations of our planet will be traced up to the state of life in which it is at present. If someone now looks at what he currently has before him in mere sensory perception, and then takes into himself what supersensible knowledge says about how this present has developed since the distant past, he can say to himself with truly unbiased thinking: firstly, it is quite logical what this knowledge reports; secondly, I can see that things have become as they appear to me, if I assume that what is communicated by supersensible research is correct. The "logical" in this context does not, of course, mean that there cannot be logical errors in any representation of supersensible research. Here, too, the "logical" should only be spoken of in the same way as it is spoken of in the ordinary life of the physical world. Just as a logical presentation is a requirement, even though the individual presenter of a factual area can fall prey to logical errors, so it is also in supersensible research. It can even happen that a researcher who is able to perceive in supersensible areas can fall into errors in logical representation, and that someone who does not perceive supersensibly at all, but has the ability of sound thinking, can then improve such a researcher. But in essence, there can be no objection to the logic applied in psychic research. And there is no need to emphasize that nothing can be argued against the facts themselves on purely logical grounds. Just as in the field of the physical world one can never prove logically whether there is a whale or not, but only by sight, so also the supersensible facts can only be recognized by spiritual perception. - However, it cannot be emphasized enough that it is a necessity for the observer of the supersensible realms, before he wants to approach the spiritual worlds in his own perception, to first obtain a view through the logic indicated, and no less so by recognizing how the sensible-obvious world appears comprehensible everywhere, if one assumes that the communications of secret science are correct. All experience in the supersensible world remains an uncertain - even dangerous - groping around if the described preparatory path is spurned. For this reason, the supersensible and factual aspects of the earth's development are first communicated in this writing before the path of supersensible knowledge itself is discussed. - It is also quite possible that the person who, thinking purely, finds his way into what supersensible knowledge has to say, is by no means in the same position as someone who listens to a story about a physical process that he cannot see for himself. For pure thinking is itself a supersensible activity. As something sensual, it cannot lead to supersensible processes through itself. But if this thinking is applied to the supersensible processes narrated by supersensible perception, then it grows through itself into the supersensible world. And it is even one of the very best ways to attain one's own perception in the supersensible realm by growing into the higher world through thinking about what is communicated by supersensible knowledge. Such an entry is connected with the greatest clarity. This is why a certain branch of spiritual scientific research regards this kind of thinking as the most solid first stage of all spiritual scientific training. - It must also seem quite understandable that in this writing no reference is made to all the details of the development of the earth as perceived in the spirit, as to how the supersensible is confirmed in what is revealed. This was also not the opinion when it was said that the hidden can be proven everywhere in its revealed effects. It is rather the opinion that at every turn everything that man encounters can become full of light and comprehensible to him if he puts the revealed processes into the light that is made possible by the secret science. In the following observations, reference may be made only at individual characteristic points to confirmations of the hidden through the revealed, in order to show how this can be done wherever one wishes in the practical pursuit of life.

[ 9 ] In the sense of the above spiritual-scientific research, one arrives at a spiritual state of our planet by following the earth's development backwards. But if one continues this research path backwards, then one finds that this spiritual was already in a kind of physical embodiment before. We thus encounter a past physical planetary state that later spiritualized itself and subsequently transformed itself into our earth through renewed materialization. Our earth thus presents itself as the re-embodiment of an ancient planet. But spiritual science can go back even further. And it then finds the whole process repeated twice more. Our earth has therefore gone through three previous planetary states, between which there are always intermediate states of spiritualization. The physical, however, proves to be finer and finer the further we trace the embodiment backwards.

[ 10 ] The objection to the following description is obvious: How can sound judgment engage in the assumption of such immeasurably distant world states as those spoken of here? On the other hand, it must be said that for those who are able to look with understanding at the present hidden spiritual in the obvious sensible, the insight into the earlier states of development, however remote, cannot represent anything impossible. Only those who do not recognize this hidden spiritual for the present will lose all sense in talking about such a development as is meant here. For him who recognizes it, the sight of the present state is like the sight of the former state, just as the sight of the fifty-year-old man is like the sight of the one-year-old child. Yes, one can say, but with regard to the latter one has before him, in addition to fifty-year-old people, one-year-old children and all possible intermediate stages. That is correct; but it is also correct for the development of the spiritual meant here. Whoever arrives at a meaningful judgment in this field also recognizes that in the complete observation of the present, which includes the spiritual, the states of development of the past are really preserved alongside the stages of existence that have progressed to the perfection of development of the present, just as one-year-old children are present alongside fifty-year-old human beings. One can see the primordial events within the earthly events of the present if one is only able to distinguish between the different successive states of development.

[ 11 ] Now the human being in the form in which he is currently developing only appears on the fourth of the characterized planetary embodiments, on the actual earth. And the essence of this form is that the human being is composed of the four members: physical body, life body, astral body and ego. But this form could not have appeared if it had not been prepared by the preceding facts of development. This preparation took place through the fact that within the earlier planetary embodiment beings developed who already had three of the present four human members: the physical body, the life body and the astral body. These beings, who in a certain sense can be called the human ancestors, did not yet have an "I", but they developed the other three limbs and their connection to such an extent that they became mature enough to later take on the "I". Thus the human ancestor reached a certain state of maturity of his three limbs in the earlier planetary embodiment. This state led to spiritualization. And from this spiritualization a new physical planetary state, that of the earth, was formed. This contained the mature human ancestors, as if they were germs. Because the whole planet went through a spiritualization and appeared in a new form, it not only offered the germs contained in it with the physical body, the life body and the astral body the opportunity to develop again to the height at which they had previously stood, but also the other possibility: after they had reached this height, to reach beyond themselves through the absorption of the "I". The earth's development thus breaks down into two parts. In the first period, the earth itself appears as a re-embodiment of the earlier planetary state. However, due to the spiritualization that has occurred in the meantime, this re-embodiment is a higher state than that of the previous embodiment. And the earth contains within itself the germs of the human ancestors from the previous planet. These first develop to the height at which they were already. When they have reached this level, the first period is complete. The earth, however, because of its own higher level of development, can now take the germs even higher, namely enable them to receive the "I". The second period of the earth's development is that of the unfolding of the ego in the physical, vital and astral bodies.b5It has been shown in individual chapters of this book how the world of man and he himself pass through the states which have been designated by the names Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan. It has also been indicated how human development relates to celestial bodies which are present next to the Earth and which have been designated as Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, etc. These latter celestial bodies make up the natural world. These latter celestial bodies naturally also undergo development. In the present period they have arrived at such a stage that their physical parts show themselves to perception as that which in physical astronomy is called Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and so on. If the present Saturn is now considered in the spiritual scientific sense, it is to a certain extent a re-embodiment of what the old Saturn was. It came into being because before the separation of the sun from the earth there were certain entities which could not take part in the separation, because they had incorporated so many of those qualities which are appropriate to Saturn's existence that their place could not be there where the sun's qualities are unfolded. The present Jupiter, however, came into being because beings were present who had qualities that could only unfold on the future Jupiter of overall development. A dwelling place was created for them in which they could anticipate this later development. Thus Mars is a celestial body in which beings live who have gone through the moon's development in such a way that further progress on earth could not give them anything. Mars is a reincarnation of the old moon on a higher level. The present Mercury is a dwelling place for beings who are ahead of earth development, but precisely because they have developed certain earth characteristics in a higher way than can happen on earth. The present Venus is a prophetic anticipation of the future state of Venus in a similar way. From all this it is justified that the names of the states that have preceded and follow the Earth are chosen according to their present representatives in the universe. It is quite natural that those who object to the parallelization of the supersensibly seen states of Saturn, the sun, etc., with the similarly named physical states will have much to object to. It goes without saying that anyone who wants to subject the parallelization of the supersensibly observed states of Saturn, the sun, etc., with the physical celestial bodies of the same name to the judgment of the intellect drawn from the external observation of nature will have much to object to. But just as it is possible to place the solar system before the soul as an image of spatio-temporal events by means of mathematical imagination, so it is possible for supersensible knowledge to intersperse the mathematical image with spiritual content. Then, however, the parallelization described above becomes permissible. This interpenetration with spiritual content also lies in the further implementation of the strictly scientific way of looking at things. At present, however, this way of looking at things is still limited to seeking an interrelationship between the solar system and the earth in purely mathematical-mechanical terms. By doing this, the natural science of the future will be driven by itself to concepts that extend the mechanical to the spiritual. A separate book would have to be written to show what could well happen, that such an expansion should already take place on the basis of current scientific concepts. Here we can only hint at what is possible, which, however, means that what is suggested must be exposed to many misunderstandings. Spiritual science often only appears to disagree with natural science because the latter science does not yet want to form ideas that are required not only by supersensible knowledge, but also by that which in truth adheres to the sensible. An unbiased observer can see everywhere in the scientific observation results of the present indications of purely sensory other areas of observation, which in the future will have to be tackled purely scientifically, and which will show that what supersensible vision reveals is fully confirmed by observation of nature, insofar as this supersensible knowledge refers to such supersensible world events to which a sensory revelation corresponds.

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[ 12 ] As in this way the human being is brought one step higher through earth development, so this has already been the case with the earlier planetary embodiments. For something of man was already present in the first of these embodiments. Therefore, clarity about the present human being is spread when its development is traced back to the distant past of the first of the planetary embodiments mentioned. - In supersensible research this first planetary embodiment can now be called Saturn; the second can be called the Sun; the third the Moon; the fourth is the Earth. It must be strictly observed that these names must not be brought into any connection with the names of the same name used for the members of our present solar system. Saturn, Sun and Moon are supposed to be names for past forms of development that the Earth has undergone. The relationship between these worlds of prehistoric times and the celestial bodies that form the present solar system will become clear in the course of the following observations. It will then also become clear why these names were chosen.

[ 13 ] If the relationships of the four planetary embodiments mentioned are now described, this can only be done in a very sketchy manner. For the processes, entities and their fates on Saturn, the Sun and the Moon are truly as diverse as on Earth itself. Therefore, only individual characteristics of these conditions can be emphasized in the description, which is suitable to illustrate how the conditions of the earth have developed from the earlier ones. One must also bear in mind that these conditions become more and more dissimilar to the present ones the further one goes back. And yet one can only describe them by using the ideas that are taken from the present conditions on earth to characterize them. If, for example, we speak of light, warmth or the like for these earlier conditions, we must not forget that this does not mean exactly what is now called light and warmth. And yet such a designation is correct, because for the observer of the supersensible something appears in the earlier stages of development which has become light, warmth etc. in the present. And he who follows the descriptions thus given will be able to gather from the context in which these things are placed what ideas are to be gained in order to have characteristic images and similes of such facts which took place in the distant past.

[ 14 ] However, this difficulty becomes very significant for those planetary states that precede the incarnation of the moon. During the latter, conditions prevailed that still bear a certain resemblance to those on earth. Whoever attempts a description of these conditions will have certain points of reference in the similarities with the present in order to express the supersensibly gained perceptions in clear ideas. The situation is different when the development of Saturn and the sun are described. There, what is available to clairvoyant observation is very different from the objects and entities that currently belong to the human circle of life. And this difference makes it extremely difficult to bring these corresponding prehistoric facts into the realm of supersensible consciousness. However, since the present human being cannot be understood if one does not go back to the Saturn state, the description must nevertheless be given. And certainly such a description cannot be misunderstood by those who bear in mind that such a difficulty exists and that therefore much of what is said must be more of an allusion and a hint to the corresponding facts than an exact description of them.

[ 15 ] A contradiction of what is stated here and in the following with what is said above on page 146 about the persistence of the past in the present could, however, be found. One might think that nowhere is there an earlier state of Saturn, the sun or the moon in addition to the present earthly state, or even a human form as described in these explanations as existing within these past states. Certainly, Saturn, sun and moon people do not walk around next to earth people like three-year-old children next to fifty-year-old people. But the earlier states of humanity are supersensibly perceptible within the earth person. In order to recognize this, one only needs to have acquired the ability to differentiate between the different living conditions. Just as the three-year-old child exists alongside the fifty-year-old human being, so the corpse, the sleeping human being and the dreaming human being exist alongside the living, waking human being. And even if these different manifestations of the human being do not immediately appear as the different stages of development as they are, a sensory perception of these forms nevertheless reveals these stages.

[ 16 ] Of the present four members of the human being, the physical body is the oldest. It is also the one that has reached the greatest perfection in its kind. And supersensible research shows that this human limb was already present during the evolution of Saturn. It will be shown in this description that the form which this physical body had on Saturn was, however, something quite different from the present physical human body. This earthly physical human body can only exist in its nature because it is connected with the life body, astral body and ego in the way that has been described in the previous parts of this writing. Such a connection did not yet exist on Saturn. At that time the physical body went through its first stage of development without a human life body, an astral body or an ego being incorporated into it. It only matured during Saturn's development to take on a living body. To do this, Saturn first had to spiritualize and then reincarnate as the sun. Within the solar embodiment, that which the physical body on Saturn had become unfolded again, as if from a germ that had remained, and only then was it able to interpenetrate with an etheric body. Through this incorporation of an etheric body, the physical body transformed its nature; it was raised to a second level of perfection. Something similar happened during the evolution of the moon. The human ancestor, as he evolved from the sun to the moon, incorporated the astral body. In this way the physical body was transformed a third time, that is, raised to the third stage of its perfection. The life body was also transformed; it was now on the second stage of its perfection. On earth, the ego was incorporated into the human ancestor consisting of the physical body, the life body and the astral body. As a result, the physical body reached its fourth degree of perfection, the vital body the third, the astral body the second; the ego is only at the first stage of its existence.

[ 17 ] If one indulges in an unbiased observation of the human being, it will not be difficult to imagine these different degrees of perfection of the individual limbs correctly. One need only compare the physical body with the astral body in this respect. Certainly the astral body as a soul member is at a higher stage of development than the physical body. And when the former will have perfected itself in the future, it will have much more significance for the overall being of the human being than the present physical body. But in its nature the latter has reached a certain height. Consider the construction of the heart, the miraculous construction of the brain, etc., even of a single part of a bone, for example the upper end of a thigh. In this end of the bone, we find a lawfully structured network or framework of fine rods. The whole is joined together in such a way that the least amount of material is used to achieve the most favorable effect on the joint surfaces, for example the most appropriate distribution of friction and thus the right kind of mobility. In this way one finds wise arrangements in the parts of the physical body. And whoever further observes the harmony in the interaction of the parts to the whole, will certainly find it correct to speak of the perfection of this part of the human being in its nature. It is out of the question that certain parts may appear inappropriate or that disturbances may occur in the structure and functions. It will even be found that such disturbances are in a certain respect only the necessary shadows of the wisdom-filled light that is poured out over the whole physical organism. And now compare with this the astral body as the bearer of pleasure and suffering, of desires and passions. What uncertainty prevails in it with regard to pleasure and suffering, what often senseless desires and passions that run counter to the higher human goal take place there. The astral body is only just on the way to attaining the harmony and inner unity already found in the physical body. It could also be shown that although the etheric body is more perfect in its nature than the astral body, it is more imperfect than the physical body. And no less will a corresponding observation reveal that the actual core of the human being, the "I", is currently only at the beginning of its development. For how much has this "I" already achieved in its task of transforming the other members of the human being in such a way that they are a revelation of its own nature? - What already emerges in this way from an external observation is intensified for the connoisseur of spiritual science by something else. One could refer to the fact that the physical body is afflicted by illnesses. Spiritual science is now in a position to show that a large proportion of all illnesses originate from the fact that the aberrations in the astral body propagate themselves to the etheric body and destroy the intrinsically perfect harmony of the physical body on the detour through the latter. The deeper connection, which can only be hinted at here, and the true cause of many disease processes are beyond scientific observation, which only wants to limit itself to the physical-sensual facts. In most cases this connection arises in such a way that damage to the astral body does not result in pathological manifestations in the physical body in the same life course in which the damage occurred, but only in a subsequent one. Therefore, the laws that come into consideration here only have meaning for those who can recognize the repetition of human life. But even if one did not want to know anything about such deeper insights, ordinary observation of life shows that man indulges in all too many pleasures and desires that undermine the harmony of the physical body. And pleasure, desire, passion etc. do not have their seat in the physical body, but in the astral body. The latter is still so imperfect in many respects that it can destroy the perfection of the physical body. - It should also be pointed out here that such arguments are not intended to prove the statements of spiritual science about the development of the four members of the human being. The evidence is taken from spiritual research, which shows that the physical body has undergone a fourfold transformation to higher degrees of perfection, and the other members of the human being less so in the manner described. It should only be indicated here that these messages of spiritual research refer to facts that are shown in their effects on the degrees of perfection of the physical body, the life body, etc., which can also be observed externally.

[ 18 ] If one wants to form a vivid idea of the conditions during Saturn's development, which approximates reality, one must take into account that during this time - essentially - nothing of the things and creatures that currently belong to Earth and which are counted among the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms was yet present. The beings of these three kingdoms were only formed in later periods of development. Of the earth beings physically perceptible today, only man was present at that time, and of him only the physical body in the manner described. Now, however, not only the beings of the mineral, animal, plant and human kingdoms belong to the earth today, but also other beings that do not manifest themselves in a physical body. Such beings were also present in the development of Saturn. And their activity on the stage of Saturn resulted in the later development of man.

[ 19 ] If the spiritual organs of perception are not initially directed to the beginning and end, but to the middle period of development of this Saturn embodiment, a state is revealed in it which, in the main, consists only of "warmth". Nothing of gaseous, nothing of liquid or even of solid components is to be found. All these states only appear in later embodiments. Let us assume that a human being with the present sensory organs would approach this Saturnian state as an observer. None of the sensory impressions that he can have would confront him there, except the sensation of warmth. Suppose such a being were to approach this Saturn. It would only perceive, when it enters the part of space it occupies, that this has a different state of warmth than the rest of its spatial surroundings. However, it would not find this part of space uniformly warm, but would alternate between warmer and colder parts in the most varied manner. Radiant warmth would be perceived along certain lines. And it would not be that such lines would only be straight, but that the differences in warmth would create irregular shapes. You would have something in front of you, like a world being structured in itself, appearing in changing states and consisting only of warmth.

[ 20 ] It must be difficult for contemporary man to imagine something that consists only in heat, since he is accustomed not to recognize heat as something in itself, but to perceive it only in warm or cold gaseous, liquid or solid bodies. Speaking of "heat" in the above way will appear nonsensical, especially to someone who has adopted the physical concepts of our time. Such a person will perhaps say: there are solid, liquid and gaseous bodies; but heat denotes only a state in which one of these three forms of body exists. If the smallest parts of a gas are in motion, this motion is perceived as heat. Where there is no gas, there can be no such movement and therefore no heat. - For the spiritual scientist, the situation is different. For him, heat is something he speaks of in the same sense as gas, liquid or solid body. It is only an even finer substance than a gas. And the latter is to him nothing other than condensed heat in the same sense as the liquid is condensed vapor or the solid body is condensed liquid. Thus the spiritual scientist speaks of heat bodies in the same way as he speaks of gaseous and vaporous bodies. - It is only necessary to admit that there is spiritual perception if one wishes to follow the spiritual scientist in this field. In the world given to the physical senses, heat certainly presents itself as a solid, liquid or gaseous state; but this state is only the outside of heat or its effect. Physicists only speak of this effect of heat, not of its inner nature. Let us try to disregard all the effects of heat that we receive from external bodies and merely visualize the inner experience that we have when we say: "I feel warm" or "I feel cold". This inner experience alone can give an idea of what Saturn was in the period of its development described above. It would have been possible to pass completely through the part of space it occupied: there would have been no gas there to exert any pressure, no solid or liquid body from which any impression of light could have been obtained. But at every point in space, without any impression from outside, one would have felt internally: here is this or that degree of warmth.

[ 21 ] In a world body of such constitution there are no conditions for the animal, vegetable and mineral beings of our present. (It is therefore hardly necessary to note that the above could never actually take place. A present human being as such cannot confront the old Saturn as an observer. The confrontation should only serve the purpose of clarification). The beings of which the supersensible cognition becomes aware when observing Saturn were at a completely different stage of development than the present, sensually perceptible earth beings. First of all, beings who did not have a physical body like the present human being stand before this cognition. One must also be careful not to think of the present physical corporeality of the human being when the term "physical body" is used here. Instead, a careful distinction must be made between the physical body and the mineral body. A physical body is that which is governed by the physical laws that are currently observed in the mineral kingdom. The present physical human body is not only governed by such physical laws, but it is also permeated by mineral matter. There can be no question of such a physical-mineral body on Saturn. There is only a physical corporeality which is governed by physical laws; but these physical laws only express themselves through thermal effects. So the physical body is a fine, thin, ethereal body of heat. And the whole of Saturn consists of such thermal bodies. These heat bodies are the first structure of the present physical-mineral human body. The latter was formed from the former by incorporating the gaseous, liquid and solid substances that were formed later. Among the beings who place themselves before the supersensible consciousness at the moment when this consciousness has the Saturnian state before it, and who can be spoken of as Saturn dwellers apart from man, are, for example, those who had no need of a physical body at all. The lowest part of their being was an etheric body. Instead, they also had a limb above and beyond the human being limbs. The highest member of the human being is the spirit man. These beings still have a higher one. And between the etheric body and the spirit man they have all the members described in this scripture, which are also found in humans: Astral body, ego, spirit self and life spirit. Just as our earth is surrounded by a circle of air, so was Saturn; only with him this "circle of air" was of a spiritual nature. 2In order to express the inner experience of spiritual research exactly, a very precise way of speaking would have to say, instead of "Saturn was surrounded by a circle of air": "As the supersensible cognition becomes aware of Saturn, a circle of air of Saturn also presents itself in front of this consciousness" or "other beings of one kind or another present themselves". The translation into the expression: "this or that is there" must be permitted, because basically the same translation also takes place in the formulation of the language used for the real soul experience in sensory perception, but one will have to keep this in mind in relation to the following description. It is already given from the context of the description. It actually consisted of the entities just mentioned and still others. There was now a continuous interaction between the heat bodies of Saturn and the characterized beings. These lowered their essential limbs into the physical heat bodies of Saturn. And while there was no life in these bodies of warmth themselves, the life of those around them was expressed in them. They could be compared to mirrors, except that it was not the images of these living beings that were reflected in them, but their states of life. It would have been impossible to discover anything living in Saturn itself, but it had a vitalizing effect on its surroundings in celestial space, as it reflected the life sent to it like an echo. The whole of Saturn appeared like a mirror of celestial life. Very high beings whose life Saturn reflects may be called "spirits of wisdom". (In Christian spiritual science they are called "Kyriotetes", which means "Lords"). Their activity on Saturn does not only begin with the middle epoch of its development described above. In a certain sense, it was already complete even then. Before they were able to become aware of the reflection of their own lives from the warm bodies of Saturn, they first had to make these warm bodies capable of bringing about this reflection. This is why their activity began soon after Saturn began to evolve. When this happened, Saturn's physicality was still disordered materiality that could not have reflected anything. - And by observing this disordered materiality, one has transported oneself to the beginning of Saturn's development through spiritual observation. What can be observed there does not yet have the later character of warmth. If we want to characterize it, we can only speak of a quality that can be compared with human will. It is nothing but will through and through. We are therefore dealing with a completely spiritual state. If we are to trace where this 'will' came from, we see it arising through the outpouring of exalted beings who, in stages that can only be guessed at, brought their development to such a height that, when Saturn's development began, they were able to emanate 'will' from their own being. After this emanation had lasted for some time, the activity of the "spirits of wisdom" characterized above is combined with the will. As a result, the will, which was previously completely devoid of qualities, gradually acquires the property of radiating life back into the celestial space. - The beings who feel their bliss in radiating will at the beginning of Saturn's development can be called the "spirits of will". (In Christian esoteric science they are called "thrones".) After a certain stage of Saturn's development has been reached through the interaction of will and life, the effect of other beings who are also in Saturn's orbit begins. They can be called the "spirits of movement". (Christian: "Dynameis", "powers".) They have no physical and no life body. Their lowest member is the astral body. When the Saturnian bodies have attained the ability to reflect life, this reflected life is able to permeate itself with the qualities which have their seat in the astral bodies of the "spirits of movement". The consequence of this is that it appears as if sensory expressions, feelings and similar spiritual forces are hurled out from Saturn into celestial space. The whole of Saturn appears like an animated being that expresses sympathies and antipathies. However, these spiritual expressions are by no means his own, but only the reflected spiritual effects of the "spirits of movement". - Once this too has lasted for a certain epoch, the activity of further beings begins, which are called "spirits of form". Their lowest member is also an astral body. However, this is at a different stage of development than that of the "spirits of movement". While the latter only communicate general expressions of sensation to the reflected life, the astral body of the "spirits of form" (Christian: "exusiai", "powers") works in such a way that the expressions of sensation are hurled out into the world space as if by individual beings. One could say that the "spirits of movement" make Saturn as a whole appear like an animated being. The "spirits of form" divide this life into individual living beings, so that it now appears like an amalgamation of such soul beings. - To have an image, imagine a mulberry or a blackberry, how it is composed of individual berries. Thus Saturn, for the supersensible cognizer in the epoch of development described, is composed of individual Saturnian beings, which, however, do not have a life of their own or a soul of their own, but reflect the life and soul of their inhabitants. - Beings now intervene in this Saturnian state who also have the astral body as their lowest member, but who have brought it to such a stage of development that it acts like a present human "I". Through these beings the "I" looks down on Saturn from its surroundings. And it communicates its nature to the individual beings of Saturn. Thus something is sent out from Saturn into the universe which appears like the effect of the human personality in the present circle of life. The beings who effect this are called "spirits of personality" (Christian: "Archai", "primal beginnings"). They give the Saturnian body particles the appearance of personality character. However, the personality is not present on Saturn itself, but only its mirror image, as it were, the shell of the personality. The "spirits of personality" have their real personality in the orbit of Saturn. Precisely because these "spirits of personality" allow their essence to radiate back from the Saturnian bodies in the way described, they are given that fine materiality which was described earlier as "warmth". - There is no inwardness in the whole of Saturn; but the "spirits of personality" recognize the image of their own inwardness as it flows to them as warmth from Saturn.

[ 22 ] When all this occurs, the "spirits of personality" stand on the level on which man currently stands. They are going through their human epoch. If you want to look at this fact with an unbiased eye, you have to imagine that a being can be "human" not only in the form that the human being currently has. The "spirits of personality" are "human beings" on Saturn. They do not have the physical body as their lowest member, but the astral body with the ego. Therefore they cannot express the experiences of this astral body in such a physical body and etheric body as the present human being; but they not only have an "I", they also know about it, because the warmth of Saturn brings this "I" to their consciousness in a reflective way. They are simply "human beings" under conditions other than those on earth.

[ 23 ] In the further course of Saturn's development, facts of a different kind follow than the previous ones. Whereas up to now everything was a reflection of external life and feelings, now a kind of inner life begins. In the world of Saturn, a life of light begins, flickering here and there and then dimming again. Trembling flickering in these or those places, something like twitching lightning in others, appears. Saturn's heat bodies begin to flicker, to shine, even to radiate. The fact that this stage of development has been reached gives certain entities the opportunity to develop an activity. These are the ones who can be described as "fire spirits" (Christian: "Archangeloi", "archangels"). Although these beings have an astral body, they cannot give any stimuli to their own astral body at the marked stage of their existence; they would not be able to arouse any feeling or sensation if they could not act on the warm bodies that have reached the Saturn stage described above. This effect gives them the opportunity to recognize their own existence by the effect they exert. They cannot say to themselves: "I am here", but rather: "My surroundings allow me to be here." They perceive, and their perceptions consist of the described light effects on Saturn. In a certain way, these are their "I". This gives them a special kind of consciousness. This can be described as image consciousness. It can be imagined as being similar to human dream consciousness, except that the degree of vividness is much greater than in human dreams and that we are not dealing with insubstantial dream images that rise and fall, but with images that are in a real relationship to the play of light on Saturn. - In this interplay between the fire spirits and the Saturnian heat bodies, the germs of the human sensory organs are incorporated into development. The organs through which the human being currently perceives the physical world light up in their first subtle etheric dispositions. Human phantoms, which in themselves still show nothing other than the light-primordial images of the sense organs, become recognizable to the clairvoyant faculty of perception within Saturn. - These sense organs are thus the fruit of the activity of the fire spirits; but not only these spirits are involved in their creation. At the same time as these fire spirits, other beings appear on the scene of Saturn. Beings who are so far advanced in their development that they can make use of those sensory germs to observe the world processes in Saturn's life. They are beings who can be regarded as "spirits of love" (Christian: "seraphim"). If they were not there, the fire spirits could not have the consciousness described above. They look at the processes of Saturn with a consciousness that enables them to transfer them to the fire spirits as images. They themselves renounce all advantages that they could have by looking at Saturn's processes, all pleasure, all joy; they give it all up so that the fire spirits can have it.

[ 24 ] A new period of Saturn's existence follows these events. The play of light is joined by another. For many it can seem like madness when it is said what is presented to the supersensible cognition. Inwardly in Saturn it is like a confusion of taste sensations. Sweet, bitter, sour, etc. are observed in the most diverse places within Saturn; and outwards, into the celestial space, all this is perceived as sound, as a kind of music. - Within these processes, certain entities find the opportunity to develop an activity on Saturn. They are called the "sons of twilight or of life" (Christian: "Angeloi", "angels"). They interact with the ascending and descending forces of taste within Saturn. As a result, their etheric or vital body becomes so active that it can be described as a kind of metabolism. They bring life into the interior of Saturn. Food and excretion processes take place in Saturn as a result. They do not bring about these processes directly, but through what they bring about, such processes arise indirectly. This inner life makes it possible for other beings to enter the world body, who may be referred to as "spirits of harmonies" (Christian: "cherubim"). They impart a dull kind of consciousness to the "sons of life". It is even duller and dimmer than the dream consciousness of the present human being. It is the same as that of man in dreamless sleep. This is of such a low degree that it "does not even come to consciousness", so to speak. Yet it is there. It differs from daytime consciousness in degree and also in kind. Plants also have this "dreamless sleep consciousness" at present. Even if it does not convey any perceptions of the outside world in the human sense, it nevertheless regulates life processes and brings them into harmony with the external world processes. At the Saturn level in question, the "sons of life" cannot perceive this regulation; but the "spirits of harmonies" do perceive it, and they are therefore the actual regulators. - All this life takes place in the marked human phantoms. To the spiritual eye they therefore appear to be alive, but their life is only an illusory life. It is the life of the "sons of life", who, so to speak, make use of the human phantoms in order to live out their lives.

[ 25 ] Now turn your attention to the human phantoms with the illusory life. During the Saturnian period described, they are of a completely changing form. Sometimes they look like this shape, sometimes like that. In the further course of development, the forms become more definite; temporarily permanent. This is due to the fact that they are now permeated by the effects of the spirits that already come into consideration at the beginning of Saturn's development, namely the "spirits of the will" (the "thrones"). The consequence of this is that the human phantom itself appears with the simplest dullest form of consciousness. One must imagine this form of consciousness to be even duller than that of dreamless sleep. Under the present conditions the minerals have this consciousness. It brings the inner being into harmony with the physical outer world. On Saturn, the "spirits of will" are the regulators of this harmony. And the human being thus appears like an imprint of Saturn's life itself. What Saturn's life is on a large scale, man is on a small scale at this level. And this is the first seed of what is still germinating in today's human being: the "spiritual man" (Atma). Inwardly (in Saturn) this dull human will makes itself known to the supersensible faculty of perception through effects which can be compared to "smells". Outwards into the celestial space there is a manifestation like that of a personality, which however is not directed by an inner "I", but is regulated from outside like a machine. The regulators are the "spirits of the will".

[ 26 ] Overlooking the foregoing, it becomes apparent that, starting from the first described middle state of Saturn's development, the stages of this development could be characterized by comparing their effects with sensory perceptions of the present. It could be said that Saturn's development manifests itself as warmth, then a play of light is added, then a play of taste and sound; finally something appears that manifests itself towards the inside of Saturn with sensations of smell, towards the outside like a machine-like human ego. What about the revelations of Saturn's development for that which lies before the state of warmth? This cannot be compared with something that is accessible to external sensory perception. The state of warmth is preceded by such a state, which man at present only experiences in his inner being. If he indulges in ideas which he forms in his soul without the prompting of an external impression being forced upon him, then he has something within himself which no physical senses can perceive, but which is only accessible as perception to higher vision. Saturn's state of warmth is preceded by revelations that can only be present for those who perceive supersensibly. Three such states can be named: pure spiritual warmth, which is not outwardly perceptible; pure spiritual light, which is outwardly darkness; and finally spiritual essence, which is complete in itself and needs no external being to become aware of it. Pure inner warmth accompanies the appearance of the "spirits of movement"; pure spiritual light that of the "spirits of wisdom", pure inner being is connected with the first emanation of the "spirits of will".

[ 27 ] With the appearance of Saturn's warmth, our development first emerges from the inner life, from pure spirituality, into an outwardly manifest existence. It will be particularly difficult for the present consciousness to come to terms with this, although it must also be said that with the Saturnian heat state, that which is called "time" also appears first. The preceding states are not temporal at all. They belong to that region which in spiritual science can be called "duration". Therefore, everything that is said in this writing about such states in the "region of duration" must be understood in such a way that expressions that refer to temporal relationships are only used for comparison and understanding. For human language, what precedes "time", so to speak, can also only be characterized with expressions that contain the concept of time. We must also be aware that, although the first, second and third states of Saturn did not take place "successively" in the present sense, we cannot avoid describing them one after the other. Also, despite their "duration" or simultaneity, they are so interdependent that this dependence can be compared to a temporal sequence.

[ 28 ] This reference to the first developmental states of Saturn also sheds light on all further questions about the "where from" of these states. From a purely intellectual point of view, it is of course quite possible to ask about the "origin of this origin". However, this does not apply to the facts. You only need to visualize this with a comparison. If you find traces dug into a path somewhere, you can ask: where do they come from? You may receive the answer: from a wagon. Then you can ask further: where did the wagon come from, where was it going? An answer based on facts is again possible. One can then ask: who was in the car? what were the intentions of the person using it, what was he doing? Eventually, however, you will reach a point where the facts naturally put an end to the questioning. Anyone who continues to ask questions will then stray from the intention of the original question. To a certain extent, he is merely continuing the questioning in the manner of a template. It is easy to see where the facts bring the questioning to an end, as is the case here. It is not so easy to be clear about the big world questions. But if you look really closely, you will realize that all questions about the "whence" must end with the Saturnian states described above. For we have reached an area where the beings and processes are no longer justified by that from which they originate, but by themselves.

[ 29 ] As a result of Saturn's development, it appears that the human germ has developed to a certain level. It has attained the low, dull consciousness mentioned above. One should not imagine that its development only begins in the last Saturnian stage. The "spirits of the will" work through all states. In the last period, however, the success of supersensible perception is most prominent. In general, there is no fixed boundary between the effects of the individual groups of beings. When it is said that the "spirits of will" work first, then the "spirits of wisdom", etc., it is not meant that they only work there. They work throughout Saturn's development; their activity is best observed in the periods indicated. The individual beings have the leadership there, as it were.

[ 30 ] So the whole development of Saturn appears as a processing of what has flowed out of the "spirits of will" through the "spirits of wisdom, of movement, of form" etc.. These spiritual entities undergo a development themselves. The "spirits of wisdom", for example, stand on a different level after they have received their life radiated back from Saturn than before. The fruit of this activity increases the abilities of their own being. The consequence of this is that something similar occurs for them after such accomplished activity as for the human being with sleep. Their periods of activity in relation to Saturn are followed by periods in which they live, as it were, in other worlds. Then their activity is turned away from Saturn. This is why clairvoyant perception sees an ascent and a descent in the Saturnian development described above. The ascent lasts until the formation of the heat state. Then, with the play of light, a flowing down already begins. And when the human phantoms have taken shape through the "spirits of will", then the spiritual beings have also gradually withdrawn: Saturn's development dies in itself; it disappears as such. A kind of pause occurs. The human germ enters a state of dissolution, but not one that would cause it to disappear, but one that is similar to that of a plant seed resting in the earth in order to mature into a new plant. Thus the human seed rests in the womb of the world to awaken anew. And when the time of its awakening arrives, the spiritual beings described above have also acquired the abilities under different circumstances through which they can continue to work on the human seed. The "spirits of wisdom" have acquired the ability in their etheric body not only to enjoy the reflection of life as on Saturn; they are now also able to let life flow out of themselves and to endow other beings with it. The "spirits of movement" are now as advanced as the "spirits of wisdom" on Saturn. There, their lowest element was the astral body. Now they have an etheric or vital body. And the other spiritual beings have reached a further stage of development in the same way. All these spiritual beings can therefore work differently in the further development of the human germ than they did on Saturn. - But now the human germ was dissolved at the end of Saturn's development. In order for the further developed spiritual beings to be able to continue where they left off earlier, this human germ must briefly repeat the stages it went through on Saturn. This becomes apparent to the supersensible perceptive faculty. The human germ emerges from its concealment and begins to develop of its own accord through the forces that were implanted in it on Saturn. It emerges from the darkness as a being of will, brings itself to the appearance of life, of soulfulness, etc., up to that machine-like revelation of personality which it had at the end of Saturn's development.

[ 31 ] The second of the great periods of development indicated, the "solar stage", brings about the elevation of the human being to a higher state of consciousness than that which he had attained on Saturn. Compared with the present consciousness of the human being, however, this solar state could be described as "unconsciousness". For it comes close to the state in which man now finds himself during completely dreamless sleep. Or it could also be compared to the lower level of consciousness in which our plant world currently slumbers. For the supersensible view there is no "unconsciousness", only different degrees of consciousness. Everything in the world is conscious. - The human being attains the higher degree of consciousness in the course of solar development through the incorporation of the etheric or life body. Before this can happen, the states of Saturn must repeat themselves in the manner described above. This repetition has a very specific purpose. When the pause of rest, of which we have spoken in the previous explanations, has expired, then that which was previously Saturn emerges from the "world sleep" as a new world being, as the sun. But the conditions of development have thus changed. The spiritual beings whose work has been described for Saturn have advanced to other states. The human germ, however, first appears on the newly formed sun as what it has become on Saturn. It must first transform the various stages of development that it assumed on Saturn so that they fit the conditions on the sun. The solar epoch therefore begins with a repetition of the Saturnian facts, but with adaptation to the changed conditions of solar life. When the human being has now reached the stage where the level of development attained on Saturn is adapted to the conditions on the sun, then the aforementioned "spirits of wisdom" begin to allow the etheric or life body to flow into the physical body. The higher level that the human being reaches on the sun can thus be characterized by the fact that the physical body already formed on Saturn in the germinal plant is raised to a second level of perfection by becoming the carrier of an etheric or life body. This etheric or life body attains the first degree of perfection for itself during the development of the sun. But in order to achieve this second degree of perfection for the physical body and the first for the life body, the intervention of other spirit beings is necessary in the further course of the solar life in a similar way as has already been described for the Saturn stage.

[ 32 ] When the "spirits of wisdom" begin their influx of the life body, the previously dark solar being begins to glow. At the same time, the first manifestations of inner activity occur in the human germ; life begins. What had to be characterized as an illusory life for Saturn now becomes real life. The influx takes a certain amount of time. After this time has elapsed, an important change occurs for the human germ. It divides itself into two parts. Whereas before the physical body and the life body formed a whole in intimate union, now the physical body begins to separate itself as a special part. But even this separated physical body remains permeated by the life body. We are now dealing with a two-part human being. One part is a physical body worked through by a life body, the other part is merely a life body. This separation, however, takes place during a pause in the life of the sun. During this pause, the light that has already appeared goes out again. The separation takes place, so to speak, during a "world night". However, this rest period is much shorter than the one between the Saturnian and solar development mentioned above. At the end of the resting period, the "spirits of wisdom" continue to work on the bipartite human being for a while, just as they did before on the unipartite one. Then the "spirits of movement" begin their work. They flow through the living body of the human being with their own astral body. This gives the latter the ability to carry out certain inner movements in the physical body. These movements can be compared to the movements of the juices in a present plant.

[ 33 ] The body of Saturn consisted of mere heat substance. During solar evolution, this heat substance condenses to the state that can be compared to the present gas or vapor state. It is that state which can be described as "air". The first beginnings of such a state appear after the "spirits of movement" have begun their activity. The following sight presents itself to the supersensible consciousness. Within the substance of heat something appears like fine formations which are set in regular motion by the forces of the life body. These formations illustrate the physical body of the human being at its present stage of development. They are completely permeated by warmth and also enclosed as if by a thermal envelope. In physical terms, this human being can be called a heat structure with integrated air forms - the latter in regular movement. If we therefore wish to retain the above comparison with the present plant, we must remain aware that we are not dealing with a compact plant structure, but with an air or gas form, 3the gas appears to the supersensible consciousness through the light effect that it lets emanate from itself. One could therefore also speak of light forms that present themselves to spiritual vision. Their movements can be compared with the movements of the juices of the present plants. - The development characterized in this way continues. After a certain time there is again a pause for rest; after this the spirits of movement continue to work until their activity is joined by that of the spirits of form. Their effect is that the previously constantly changing gas formations take on permanent shapes. This also happens because the spirits of form allow their forces to flow in and out of the living bodies of human beings. In the past, when only the spirits of movement acted upon them, the gaseous formations were in constant motion, retaining their form for only a moment. Now, however, they take on temporarily distinguishable forms. - Again, after a certain time, a pause occurs; again, after this, the spirits of form continue their activity. Then, however, completely new conditions arise within the development of the sun.

[ 34 ] The point is reached where the sun's development has reached its center. This is the time when the spirits of personality who have attained their humanity stage on Saturn rise to a higher degree of perfection. They progress beyond this stage. They attain a consciousness which the present human being on our earth does not yet have in the regular progress of development. He will attain it when the earth - that is, the fourth of the planetary stages of development - has reached its goal and has entered the following planetary period. Then man will not merely perceive what is around him through the present physical senses, but he will be able to observe in pictures the inner, spiritual states of the beings around him. He will have an image consciousness, but with the retention of full self-consciousness. There will be nothing dreamlike or dull in his pictorial vision, but he will perceive the soul, albeit in pictures, but in such a way that these pictures will be the expression of realities, just as physical colors and sounds are now. At present, man can only rise to such vision through spiritual-scientific training. This training will be discussed in later pages of this book. - The spirits of personality attain this vision as their normal developmental gift in the midst of the solar stage. And it is precisely through this that they become able to work on the newly formed life body of the human being during the solar development in a similar way as they worked on the physical body on Saturn. Just as the warmth there radiated their own personality back to them, so now the gaseous formations in the radiance of light radiate back to them the images of their seeing consciousness. They look supersensibly at what is happening on the sun. And this gazing is by no means mere observation. It is as if in the images emanating from the sun something of the power that earthly man calls love was asserting itself. And if you look more closely at the soul, you will find the reason for this phenomenon. Exalted beings have mingled with the light radiating from the sun with their activity. These are the "spirits of love" (Christian: "seraphim") mentioned above. From now on they work on the human etheric or life body together with the spirits of personality. Through this activity, this life body itself advances by one stage on its developmental path. It acquires the ability not only to transform the gaseous formations within it, but also to process them in such a way that the first signs of the reproduction of living human beings appear. To a certain extent, secretions are expelled from the formed gas formations (as if sweated out), which form themselves into shapes that are similar to their mother formations.

[ 35 ] In order to characterize the further development of the sun, it is necessary to point out a fact of the world's remoteness which is of the greatest importance. It consists in the fact that in the course of an epoch by no means all beings reach the goal of their development. There are those who fall short of this goal. Thus, during Saturn's development, not all spirits of personality really reached the level of humanity that was granted to them there in the manner described above. Nor did all the physical human bodies formed on Saturn attain the degree of maturity that would enable them to become the bearers of an independent life body on the Sun. The consequence of this is that there are beings and formations on the sun that do not fit their circumstances. These now have to make up for what they failed to do on Saturn during the development of the sun. The following can therefore be observed spiritually during the solar stage. When the spirits of wisdom begin their influx of the life body, the solar body becomes clouded to a certain extent. It is permeated by formations which would actually still belong to Saturn. They are heat formations which are not able to condense into air in the appropriate way. These are the human beings who have remained behind on the Saturn level. They cannot become carriers of a properly formed life body. - What remains of the heat substance of Saturn is divided into two parts on the sun. One part is absorbed by the human body, as it were, and from then on forms a kind of lower nature within the human being. Thus the human being on the sun absorbs something into his corporeality that actually corresponds to the Saturn stage. Just as the Saturn body of the human being has made it possible for the spirits of the personality to rise to the level of humanity, so now this Saturn part of the human being on the sun does the same for the fire spirits. They rise to the level of humanity by letting their forces flow in and out of this Saturn part of the human being, just as the spirits of the personality did on Saturn. This also happens in the middle of the sun's development. Then the Saturn part of the human being is so far mature that with its help the fire spirits (Archangeloi) can pass through their stage of humanity. - Another part of the heat substance of Saturn separates and attains an independent existence next to and between the human beings of the sun. This now forms a second realm next to the human realm. A realm that forms a completely independent, but only physical body on the sun, as a thermal body. The consequence of this is that the fully developed "spirits of personality" cannot direct their activity in the manner described to any independent living body. However, certain "spirits of personality" have also remained behind on the Saturn level. These have not reached the level of humanity. There is a bond of attraction between them and the second solar kingdom which has become independent. They must now behave towards the kingdom that has remained behind on the sun in the same way as their more advanced comrades did towards the human beings on Saturn. They also first formed the physical body there. On the sun itself, however, there is no possibility for the retarded personality spirits to do such work. They therefore separate themselves from the solar body and form an independent world body outside of it. This body therefore emerges from the sun. From it, the "spirits of personality" that have remained behind have an effect on the beings of the second solar realm described above. As a result, two world formations have emerged from the one that was formerly Saturn. The sun now has a second world body in its environment, one that represents a kind of rebirth of Saturn, a new Saturn. It is from this Saturn that the second solar realm is given its personality character. Within this realm we are therefore dealing with beings who have no personality on the sun itself. However, they reflect their own personality back to the "spirits of personality" on the new Saturn. The extrasensory consciousness can observe thermal forces between the human beings on the sun, which play into the regular solar development and in which one can see the activity of the marked spirits of the new Saturn.

[ 36 ] The following must be observed in the human being during the middle of the sun's development. It is divided into a physical body and a life body. In it the activity of the advanced "spirits of personality" takes place in connection with that of the "spirits of love". The physical body is now mixed with a part of the Saturnian nature that has remained behind. This is where the activity of the "spirits of fire" takes place. One can now see in everything that the "fire spirits" bring about in the remaining Saturnian nature, the forerunners of the present sensory organs of earth people. It has already been shown how these "fire spirits" were already busy on Saturn in the heat substance with the development of the sense germs. In what is accomplished by the "spirits of personality" in union with the "spirits of love" (the seraphim), the first development of the present human glandular organs can be recognized. - However, the work of the personality spirits dwelling on the new Saturn is not exhausted with the above. They not only extend their activity to the second solar realm mentioned above, but also establish a kind of connection between this realm and the human senses. The warmth substances of this realm flow out and in through the human sensory germs. In this way the human being on the sun attains a kind of perception of the lower realm outside himself. This perception is naturally only a dull one, completely corresponding to the dull Saturn consciousness mentioned above. And it essentially consists of various heat effects.

[ 37 ] Everything that has been described here for the middle of the sun's development lasts for a certain time. Then there is another pause. After this, it continues in the same way for a while until a point of development is reached in which the human etheric body is mature enough for the united work of the "Sons of Life" (Angeloi) and the "Spirits of Harmony" (Cherubim) to begin. Revelations now occur within the human being for the supersensible consciousness, which can be compared to taste perceptions and which manifest themselves outwardly as sounds. Something similar had to be said for the development of Saturn. Here on the sun, only everything in the human being is more inner, full of independent life. - The "sons of life" thus attain that dull consciousness of images which the "spirits of fire" had attained on Saturn. The "spirits of harmony" (the cherubim) are their helpers. They are actually spiritually observing what is now taking place within the development of the sun. But they renounce all the fruits of this contemplation, the perception of the wisdom-filled images that arise, and allow them to flow into the dreamlike consciousness of the "sons of life" like magnificent magical phenomena. These in turn work such images of their vision into the etheric body of the human being so that it reaches ever higher levels of development. - Again a pause for rest occurs, again the whole rises from the "world-sleep", and, after it has lasted a while, the human being is so far mature that it can now stimulate its own powers. These are the same forces that flowed into this human being through the "thrones" during the last period of Saturn. This human being is now developing in an inner life, which in its revelation to the consciousness can be compared to an inner perception of smell. Outwardly, however, towards the celestial space, this human being reveals itself as a personality, albeit one that is not directed by an inner "I". Rather, it appears like a plant acting as a personality. At the end of Saturn's development it has been shown that the personality manifests itself like a machine. And just as there the first germ developed into that which is also germinal in the present human being, the "spirit man" (Atma), so here a similar first germ is formed into the "life spirit" (Buddhi). - After all this has taken place for some time, a pause occurs again. As in similar cases earlier, the activity of the human being continues for a while after this pause. Then circumstances arise which present themselves as a new intervention of the "spirits of wisdom". Through this the human being becomes capable of feeling the first traces of sympathy and antipathy with its surroundings. It is not yet a real feeling in all this, but it is a precursor of feeling. For the inner life activity, which in its manifestation could be characterized as olfactory perceptions, expresses itself outwardly as in a kind of primitive language. If a sympathetic smell - or taste, flickering, etc. - is perceived internally, the human being makes this known externally through a sound. And this happens in a similar way with an inwardly unsympathetic perception. - Through all the processes described, the actual meaning of the development of the sun is achieved for the human being. This has attained a higher level of consciousness compared to Saturn consciousness. This is the sleep consciousness.

[ 38 ] After some time, the point of development has now also occurred when the higher beings connected with the solar level must pass over into other spheres in order to process what they themselves have developed in themselves through their work on the human being. There is a great pause for rest, as there was between the development of Saturn and the sun. Everything that has developed on the sun passes into a state that can be compared to that of the plant when its growth forces are at rest in the seed. But just as these forces of growth emerge again into the light of day in a new plant, so too, after the pause of rest, everything that was life on the sun emerges again from the womb of the world, and a new planetary existence begins. One will understand the meaning of such a pause, a "world sleep", if one only directs one's spiritual gaze to one of the types of beings mentioned, for example to the "spirits of wisdom". They were not yet so far advanced on Saturn that they could have allowed an etheric body to emanate from them. They were only prepared for this through the experiences they had on Saturn. During the pause they now transform that which was first prepared in them into a real ability. Thus, on the sun, they are ready to allow life to flow out of themselves and to endow the human being with its own life body.

[ 39 ] After the resting period, that which was formerly the sun emerges again from the "world sleep". That is, it becomes perceptible again to the spiritually observing powers for whom it was previously observable and for whom it had disappeared during the rest. Now, however, the newly emerging planetary being, which is to be called the "moon" (and which must not be confused with the part of it that is currently the earth's moon), reveals two things. Firstly, that which had separated itself during the solar period as a "new Saturn" is again in the new planetary being. This Saturn has thus reunited with the sun during the rest period. Everything that was in the first Saturn first reappears as a world entity. Secondly, the life bodies of the human being formed on the sun have been absorbed during the rest period by that which in a way forms the spiritual shell of the planet. They therefore do not appear at this time united with the corresponding physical human bodies, but these initially appear on their own. It is true that they carry everything that has been worked out in them on Saturn and the sun, but they lack the etheric or life body. Indeed, they cannot immediately absorb this etheric body, for it has itself undergone a development during the resting period to which they are not yet adapted. - What now occurs at the beginning of the moon's development, so that this adaptation can be achieved, is first of all a repetition of the Saturnian facts. Physical human life goes through the stages of Saturn's development again, only under completely different conditions. On Saturn only the forces of a warm body were at play in him, now there are also those of the developed gaseous body in him. The latter, however, do not appear immediately at the beginning of the moon's development. There everything is as if the human being consisted only of heat substance and the gas forces slumbered within it. Then comes a time when the first hints of this appear. And finally, in the last period of Saturn's repetition, the human being already looks as it did during its living state on the sun. However, all life then still proves to be an illusory life. First there is a pause, similar to the short pauses during the development of the sun. Then the influx of the life body, for which the physical body has now made itself ready, begins anew. Like the repetition of Saturn, this influx takes place in three distinct epochs. During the second of these epochs, the human being is so far adapted to the new lunar conditions that the "spirits of movement" can put into practice the ability they have acquired. This consists of allowing the astral body to flow into the human beings from their own being. They have prepared themselves for this work during the development of the sun and, during the pause between the sun and the moon, have transformed what they have prepared into the ability indicated. This influx now lasts for a while, then one of the smaller pauses occurs. After this, the influx continues until the "spirits of form" begin their activity. When the "spirits of movement" allow the astral body to flow into the human being, the latter acquires the first soul qualities. It begins to follow with sensations the processes that take place in it through the possession of a life body and which were still plant-like during the development of the sun, and to feel pleasure and displeasure through them. However, such pleasure and displeasure continue to flow up and down in the body until the "spirits of form" intervene. Then these changing feelings are transformed in such a way that what can be understood as the first trace of desire appears in the human being. The being strives for a repetition of what once gave pleasure and tries to avoid what was perceived as antipathetic. However, since the "spirits of form" do not transfer their own essence to the human being, but only allow their forces to flow in and out, desire lacks inwardness and independence. It is directed by the "spirits of form". It appears with an instinctive character.

[ 40 ] On Saturn the physical body of the human being was a warm body; on the sun a condensation to the gaseous state or to "air" has occurred. Now, as the astral flows in during the moon's development, at a certain point in time the physical reaches a further degree of condensation, it comes into a state that can be compared to that of a present liquid. This state can be described as "water". However, this does not refer to our present water, but to any liquid form of existence. The physical human body now gradually takes on a form that is composed of three different substantial entities. The densest is a "body of water"; this is permeated by air currents, and heat effects run through all of these again.

[ 41 ] Now even during the solar stage not all formations attain the full corresponding maturity. Therefore, there are entities on the moon that are only at the Saturnian stage and those that have only reached the solar stage. This gives rise to two other kingdoms in addition to the fully developed human kingdom. One that consists of beings who have remained at the Saturnian stage, who therefore only have a physical body that cannot yet become the bearer of an independent life body even on the moon. This is the lowest lunar kingdom. A second kingdom consists of beings who have remained behind on the solar level and who therefore do not mature enough to incorporate an independent astral body on the moon. These form a realm between the aforementioned and the regularly advanced human realm. - But something else also takes place: The substances with mere heat forces and those with mere air forces also permeate the human beings. Thus it comes about that these on the moon carry within them a Saturnian and a solar nature. This has brought a kind of dichotomy into the human nature. And through this dichotomy, after the activity of the "spirits of form" has begun, something very significant is brought about within the development of the moon. A split in the lunar world body begins to prepare itself. One part of its substances and entities separates from the others. One world body becomes two. Certain higher beings, who were previously more intimately connected with the unified world body, make one of them their dwelling place. The other, on the other hand, is occupied by the human being, the two lower realms described above and certain higher beings who have not passed over to the first world body. One of the two world bodies with the higher beings appears like a reborn but refined sun; the other is now the actual new formation, the "old moon", as the third planetary embodiment of our earth, after the Saturn and sun embodiment. Of the substances created on the moon, the reborn sun takes only the "heat" and the "air" with it when it leaves; on what remains as a remnant of the moon, apart from these two substances, there is still the watery state. Through this separation it is achieved that the entities that have moved out with the resurrected sun are not initially hindered in their further development by the denser lunar entities. They can thus progress unhindered in their own development. However, this gives them all the more power to influence the lunar beings from outside, from their sun. And this also gives them new opportunities for development. The "spirits of form" in particular have remained united with them. These solidify the desires and the desire nature; and this is gradually expressed in a further densification of the physical body of the human beings. What was previously merely watery in this body takes on a viscous form, and the airy and heat-like formations condense accordingly. Similar processes also take place in the two lower realms.

[ 42 ] The fact that the lunar body is separated from the solar body has the consequence that the former behaves towards the latter in the same way as the Saturnian body once did towards the entire surrounding world development. The Saturnian body was formed from the body of the "spirits of will" (the thrones). Everything that was experienced by the above-mentioned spiritual beings in the vicinity radiated back into the world space from its substance. And the re-radiation gradually awoke to independent life through the following processes. All development is based on the fact that first an independent being separates itself from the life of the environment; then the environment is imprinted in the separated being as if by reflection and then this separated being continues to develop independently. - In the same way, the lunar body separated itself from the solar body and initially radiated back the life of the solar body. If nothing else had happened, we would be dealing with the following world process. There would be a solar body in which spiritual beings adapted to this body would have their experiences in the warmth and air elements. Opposite this solar body there would be a lunar body in which other beings with the heat, air and water life would unfold. The progress from the solar embodiment to the lunar embodiment would consist in the fact that the solar beings would have their own life in front of them from the lunar processes as in a mirror image and could thus enjoy the same, which was still impossible for them during the solar embodiment.

[ 43 ] But this developmental process did not stop there. Something happened which was of the most profound significance for all subsequent development. Certain entities, which were adapted to the lunar body, took possession of the element of will available to them (the inheritance of the thrones) and thereby developed a life of their own, which took shape independently of solar life. In addition to the experiences of the moon, which are only under the influence of the sun, independent experiences of the moon arise; states of rebellion or revolt, as it were, against the solar beings. And the various kingdoms that arose on the sun and moon, above all the kingdom of the human ancestors, were drawn into these states. The lunar body thus contains two kinds of life, spiritually and materially: that which is closely connected with solar life and that which has "fallen away" from it and goes its own way. This division into twofold life is now expressed in all subsequent processes of the lunar embodiment.

[ 44 ] What presents itself to the supersensible consciousness for this period of development can be characterized in the following images. The whole basic mass of the moon is formed from a semi-living substance, which is in a sometimes sluggish, sometimes lively movement. It is not yet a mineral mass in the sense of the rocks and the components of the earth on which the present man walks. One could speak of a realm of plant minerals. But one has to imagine that the whole basic body of the moon consists of this plant-mineral substance, just as the earth today consists of rocks, arable soil, etc. Just as masses of rock are currently piled up, harder parts were deposited in the lunar mass, which can be compared to hard wooden structures or forms made of horn. And just as plants now rise from the mineral soil, so the lunar soil was covered and permeated by the second realm, consisting of a kind of plant animals. Their substance was softer than the ground mass and more mobile in itself. This realm stretched over the other like a viscous sea. And man himself can be described as an animal man. He had in his nature the components of the other two kingdoms. But his being was completely permeated by a life body and an astral body, on which the forces of the higher beings emanating from the separated sun had an effect. Thus his form was ennobled. While the "spirits of form" gave him a shape through which he was adapted to the life of the moon, the sun spirits made him into an entity that lifted him above this life. He had the power to ennoble his own nature with the abilities given to him by these spirits, indeed to raise that which was related to the lower realms to a higher level. From a spiritual point of view, the processes under consideration here can be described in the following way. The human ancestor had been ennobled by beings who had fallen away from the solar kingdom. This ennoblement extended above all to everything that could be experienced in the water element. The sun beings, who were rulers of the warmth and air elements, had less influence on this element. For the human ancestor this had the consequence that two kinds of beings asserted themselves in his organization: one part of this organization was completely permeated by the effects of the solar beings. In the other, the fallen moon beings were at work. Thus the latter part was more independent than the former. In the former, only states of consciousness could arise in which the solar beings lived; in the latter, a kind of world consciousness lived, as was characteristic of the Saturnian state, only now on a higher level. The human ancestor thus felt himself to be an "image of the world", while his "solar part" only felt itself to be an "image of the sun". - These two entities now entered into a kind of battle in the human nature. And through the influence of the solar entities, a balance was created for this struggle by making the material organization, which made the independent world consciousness possible, frail and transient. From time to time this part of the organization had to be eliminated. During and for some time after the elimination, the human ancestor was a being merely dependent on the influence of the sun. His consciousness became less independent; he lived in it entirely devoted to solar life. Then the independent lunar part renewed itself again. After some time this process was always repeated. Thus the ancestor of man lived on the moon in alternating states of brighter and duller consciousness; and the change was accompanied by a transformation of his nature in material terms. From time to time he shed his lunar body and later took it on again.

[ 45 ] From a physical point of view, the kingdoms of the moon show great diversity. The mineral plants, plant animals and animal people are different according to groups. This will be understood when one considers that, through the remaining of the formations at each of the earlier stages of development, forms have been embodied in the most varied qualities. There are forms which still show the initial qualities of Saturn, those of the middle epoch of this world body, those of the end. The same applies to all stages of development of the sun.

[ 46 ] And just as the entities connected with the evolving world body remain behind, so it is also the case with certain beings that are connected with this development. Through the advancement of the becoming to the moon, a number of stages of such entities have already arisen. There are "spirits of personality" who have not yet reached their human stage on the sun; but there are also those who have made up for their ascent to humanity. A number of the "fire spirits" who should have become human beings on the sun have also remained behind. Just as during the development of the sun certain "spirits of personality" who had remained behind withdrew from the solar body and allowed Saturn to arise again as a special world body, so it also happens that in the course of the development of the moon the entities characterized above separate themselves on special world bodies. So far we have only spoken of the division into Sun and Moon, but for the reasons given, other world entities separate themselves from the lunar body that appeared after the great Sun-Moon pause. After some time we are dealing with a system of world bodies, the most advanced of which, as can easily be seen, must be called the new sun. And a bond of attraction similar to that described above for the solar development between the Saturnian realm that has remained behind and the personality spirits on the new Saturn is formed between each such world body and the corresponding lunar beings. It would go far too far here to follow all the emerging world bodies in detail. It must suffice to have pointed out the reason why a series of world bodies gradually emerge from the uniform world structure that appears as Saturn at the beginning of human development.

[ 47 ] After the "spirits of form" have set in on the moon, the development continues for a time in the way that has been described. After this time a pause occurs again. During it the coarser parts of the three lunar kingdoms remain in a kind of resting state; the finer parts, however, namely the astral bodies of the human beings, detach themselves from these coarser formations. They enter a state in which the higher forces of the sublime solar beings can have a particularly strong effect on them. - After the resting period they again penetrate those parts of the human being that consist of the coarser substances. Because they have absorbed the strong forces during the pause - in a free state - they can make these coarser substances ripe for the effect which, after a certain time, is now to be exerted on them by the properly advanced "spirits of personality" and the "spirits of fire".

[ 48 ] These "spirits of personality" have meanwhile risen to a level at which they have the "consciousness of inspiration". They can not only perceive the inner states of other beings in images - as was the case with the earlier image consciousness - but also the inner states of such beings themselves, as if in a spiritual tonal language. The "spirits of fire", however, have risen to the level of consciousness that the "spirits of personality" had on the senses. Both types of spirits can thus intervene in the mature life of the human being. The "spirits of personality" work on the astral body, the "spirits of fire" on the etheric body of this human being. The astral body thereby acquires the character d of the personality. It now not only experiences pleasure and pain within itself, but also relates them to itself. It does not yet attain a complete ego-consciousness that says to itself "I am here"; but it feels carried and protected by other beings in its environment. By looking up to them, as it were, he can say to himself: This environment of mine keeps me in existence. - The "fire spirits" now have an effect on the etheric body. Under their influence, the movement of the forces in this body becomes more and more an inner life activity. What arises there finds physical expression in a movement of juices and in growth phenomena. The gaseous substances have condensed into watery ones; we can speak of a kind of nourishment in the sense that what is absorbed from the outside is transformed and processed internally. If one thinks of a middle ground between nourishment and respiration in the present sense, then one gets an idea of what happened in this direction at that time. The nutrients were taken from the realm of animal plants by the human being. These animal plants are to be thought of as floating and swimming - or even slightly grown - in an element surrounding them, just as the present lower animals live in water or the land animals in the air. However, this element is neither water nor air in the present sense, but something in the middle of both, a kind of dense vapor in which the most diverse substances move back and forth as if dissolved in the most diverse currents. The animal plants only appear as condensed, regular forms of this element, often physically only slightly different from their surroundings. The respiration process exists alongside the nourishment process. It is not like on earth, but like an intake and outflow of warmth. For extrasensory observation, it is as if organs opened and closed again during these processes, through which a warming current flows in and out and the air and water-like substances are also drawn in and out. And because the human being already possesses an astral body at this stage of its development, this breathing and nourishment are accompanied by feelings, so that a kind of pleasure arises when such substances are taken in from outside that are beneficial for the development of the human being. Displeasure is caused when harmful substances flow in or even come close by. - Just as the breathing process was close to the process of nourishment during the moon's development as described above, so the process of conception was close to reproduction. The things and beings in the lunar man's environment did not have a direct effect on any of his senses. Rather, the imagination was such that the presence of such things and beings aroused images in the dull, dim consciousness. These images were in a much more intimate connection with the actual nature of the surroundings than the present sensory perceptions, which in colors, sounds, smells, etc. only show, as it were, the outside of the beings. In order to have a clearer concept of the consciousness of the moon people, imagine that they are embedded in the vaporous environment described above. The most diverse processes take place in this vaporous element. Substances combine, substances separate from each other. Parts become denser, others become thinner. All this takes place in such a way that human beings do not see or hear it directly, but it evokes images in the human consciousness. These images are comparable to those of the present dream consciousness. Like when an object falls to earth and a sleeping person does not perceive the actual process, but some image, for example, he thinks that a shot is being fired. But the images of the moon consciousness are not arbitrary like such dream images; they are indeed symbols, not images, but they correspond to external processes. Only a very specific image appears with a specific external process. The moon man is thus able to adjust his behavior according to these images, just as the present man does according to his perceptions. It should only be noted that behavior on the basis of perceptions is subject to arbitrariness, while action under the influence of the marked images takes place as if under a dark impulse. - This image-consciousness is by no means such that only external physical processes are sensualized through it, but the spiritual beings and their activities behind the physical facts are also presented through the images. Thus the "spirits of personality" become visible, as it were, in the things of the animal-plant kingdom; the "spirits of fire" appear behind and in the mineral-plant beings; and the "sons of life" appear as beings which man is able to imagine without connection with anything physical, which he sees, as it were, as etheric-soul formations. - If these ideas of the moon consciousness were not images, but only symbols of the outside, they had a much more significant effect on the inside of the human being than the present ideas of man conveyed through perception. They were able to set the whole inner being in motion and activity. The inner processes were shaped according to them. They were genuine formative forces. The human being became what these formative forces shaped it to be. To a certain extent, it became an image of its processes of consciousness.

[ 49 ] The further the progress of development takes place in this way, the more it results in a profound change taking place in the human being. The power emanating from the images of consciousness can gradually no longer extend over the entire human body. Such limbs are formed which are subject to the formative effect of the consciousness of images and become to a high degree an image of the life of imagination in the sense just described. Other organs, however, elude such influence. The human being is, as it were, too dense in one part of his being, too determined by other laws, to be guided by the images of consciousness. These withdraw themselves from the influence of the human being; but they come under another, under that of the sublime solar beings themselves. However, this stage of development is preceded by a period of rest. During this period the sun spirits gather the strength to work on the beings of the moon under completely new circumstances. - After this period of rest, the human being is clearly divided into two natures. One is withdrawn from the independent activity of the image-consciousness; it takes on a more definite form and comes under the influence of forces which, although they emanate from the lunar body, only arise in it through the influence of the solar beings. This part of the human being increasingly lives the life that is stimulated by the sun. The other part rises like a kind of head from the former. It is mobile in itself, pictorial, and forms itself as the expression and carrier of the human dull life of consciousness. Yet the two parts are intimately connected; they send their juices to each other; limbs extend from one into the other.

[ 50 ] A meaningful harmony is now achieved by the fact that in the course of time, in which all this has happened, such a relationship of sun and moon has also developed, which agrees with the direction of this development. - It has already been indicated in an earlier passage (see page 172) how the progressing beings, through their stages of development, separate their heavenly bodies from the general mass of the world. They radiate, as it were, the forces according to which the substances are organized. The sun and moon have separated themselves from each other in such a way as was necessary to create the right dwelling places for the corresponding beings. But this determination of matter and its forces by the spirit goes much further. The beings themselves also cause certain movements of the world bodies, certain revolutions of them around each other. This brings these bodies into changing positions in relation to each other. And if the position of one world body changes in relation to the other, the effects of their corresponding beings on each other also change. This is what happened with the sun and the moon. Through the movement of the moon around the sun, which has arisen, the human beings alternately come more into the area of the sun's effect; at other times they can turn away from it and are then more dependent on themselves. The movement is a consequence of the above-described "falling away" of certain lunar beings and the compensation for the struggle that this has caused. It is only the physical expression of the spiritual balance of power created by the apostasy. The fact that one body moves around the other has the consequence that in the beings inhabiting the world bodies such changing states of consciousness occur as have been described above. It can be said that the moon alternately turns its life towards and away from the sun. There is a solar time and a planetary time, in the latter of which the lunar beings develop on a side of the moon that is turned away from the sun. However, for the moon there is something else in addition to the movement of the celestial bodies. The supersensible consciousness looking back can see how the lunar beings themselves wander around their world body at very regular intervals. In certain times they seek out places where they can surrender to the influence of the sun; in other epochs they wander to places where they are not subject to this influence and can then, as it were, reflect on themselves.

[ 51 ] To complete the picture to be drawn of these processes, it should also be noted that the "sons of life" reach their human stage during this period. Even on the moon, man cannot yet use his senses, which were already developed on Saturn, for his own perception of external objects. But these senses become instruments of the "sons of life" on the lunar stage. They make use of them in order to perceive through them. These senses, which belong to the physical human body, thereby enter into a reciprocal relationship with the "sons of life". They not only make use of them, but also perfect them.

[ 52 ] Now, as has already been described, through the changing relationships with the sun, a change occurs in the living conditions of the human being itself. Things develop in such a way that every time the human being is subject to the influence of the sun, it is more devoted to solar life and its phenomena than to itself. At such times he feels the greatness and glory of the universe as it is expressed in being in the sun. It absorbs it, as it were. The sublime beings that have their dwelling place on the sun have an effect on the moon. And this again has an effect on the human being. However, this effect does not extend to the whole human being, but primarily to those parts of him that have withdrawn from the influence of his own consciousness images. In particular, the physical body and the life body attain a certain size and form. In return, however, the phenomena of consciousness recede. When the human being is turned away from the sun in his life, he is occupied with his own nature. There begins an inner activity, especially in the astral body. On the other hand, the outer form becomes less attractive, less perfect. - Thus during the development of the moon there are the two characterized, clearly distinguishable, alternating states of consciousness. A duller one during the solar period and a brighter one during the epoch in which life is more dependent on itself. The first state is duller, but it is also more selfless: the human being lives more in devotion to the outside world, to the universe reflected in the sun. It is a change in the states of consciousness that can be compared with the change between sleep and waking in the present human being, as well as with his life between birth and death on the one hand and the more spiritual existence between death and a new birth on the other. Waking up on the moon, when solar time gradually ceases, could be characterized as a middle ground between the waking up of the present human being every morning and his birth. And likewise, the gradual dulling of consciousness as solar time approaches is like a middle state between falling asleep and dying. For there was no such consciousness of birth and death on the old moon as is characteristic of the present human being. In a kind of solar life man gave himself up to the enjoyment of this life. For this time he was removed from his own life. He lived more spiritually. We can only attempt an approximate and comparative description of what man experienced in such times. He felt as if the forces of the universe were flowing into him, pulsating through him. He felt as if he were drunk with the harmonies of the universe that he was experiencing. At such times, his astral body was as if liberated from the physical body. And a part of the life body was also pulled out of the physical body. And this structure, consisting of astral body and life body, was like a fine, wonderful musical instrument on whose strings the mysteries of the universe resounded. And the limbs of that part of the human being over which consciousness had little influence were shaped according to the harmonies of the universe. For the beings of the sun worked in these harmonies. Thus this part of the human being was shaped by the spiritual sounds of the world. And the change between the brighter state of consciousness and this duller one during the time of the sun was not as abrupt as that of the present human being between waking and completely dreamless sleep. However, the picture consciousness was not as bright as the present waking consciousness; but the other consciousness was not as dull as the dreamless sleep of the present. And so the human being had a kind of, albeit muted, idea of the play of world harmonies in his physical body and that part of the etheric body that remained connected to the physical body. During the time in which the sun did not shine for the human being, the images took the place of the harmonies in consciousness. Especially those parts of the physical and etheric body that were under the direct power of consciousness came to life. In contrast, the other parts of the human being, which were not affected by the powers of formation from the sun, underwent a kind of hardening and withering process. And when the time of the sun approached again, the old bodies decayed; they separated from the human being, and as if from a grave of its old corporeality, the human being emerged newly formed within, even if still unsightly in this form. A renewal of the life process had taken place. Through the effect of the solar beings and their harmonies, the newborn body then took shape again in its perfection and the process described above was repeated. And the human being experienced this renewal like putting on a new garment. The core of his being had not passed through an actual birth or death; he had only passed from a spiritual consciousness of sound, in which he was devoted to the outer world, to one in which he was more turned towards the inner. He had shed his skin. The old body had become useless; it was cast off and renewed. This also describes more precisely what has been characterized above as a kind of procreation and which has been noted as being close to the life of imagination. The human being has produced its own kind in relation to certain parts of the physical and etheric body. But no daughter being arises that is completely distinct from the parent being, but the essence of the former passes over to the latter. The latter does not bring forth a new being, but itself in a new form. Thus the moon man experiences a change of consciousness. As the time of the sun approaches, his images become duller and duller, a blissful devotion fills him; the harmonies of the world resound in his calm inner being. Towards the end of this time, the images in the astral body come to life; he begins to feel and sense himself more. The human being experiences something like an awakening from the bliss and tranquillity into which he was immersed during the solar period. However, another important experience occurs. With the new illumination of the images of consciousness, the human being sees himself as if enveloped in a cloud that has descended upon him like an entity from outer space. And it feels this entity as something belonging to it, as an addition to its own nature. It feels it like that which gives it its existence, like its "I". This entity is one of the "sons of life". Towards it, man feels something like this: "I have lived in this one, even while I was devoted to the glory of the universe in the time of the sun; at that time he was only not visible to me; but now he becomes visible to me". And it is also this "son of life" from whom the power emanates for the effect that man exerts on his own body in the sunless time. And then, when the time of the sun approaches again, man feels as if he himself becomes one with the "Son of Life". Even if he does not see him there, he still feels intimately connected to him.

[ 53 ] The relationship with the "sons of life" was such that not every individual human being had a "son of life" for himself, but a whole group of people felt that such a being belonged to them. Thus on the moon people lived separately in such groups, and each group perceived the common "group ego" in a "son of life". The difference between the groups was made evident by the fact that the etheric bodies of each group had a particular form. However, since the physical bodies are formed according to the etheric bodies, the differences of the latter also manifested themselves in the former and the individual human groups appeared as just as many human species. When the "sons of life" looked down on the groups of human beings belonging to them, they saw themselves multiplied, as it were, in the individual human beings. And in this they felt their own ego. They reflected themselves in the people, as it were. This was also the task of the human senses at that time. It has been shown that they did not yet convey perceptions of objects. But they reflected the essence of the "sons of life". What these "sons of life" perceived through this reflection gave them their "I-consciousness". And what was aroused by the reflection in the human astral body were the images of the dull, twilight moon consciousness. - The effect of this human activity, carried out in interaction with the "sons of life", took effect in the physical body in the structure of the nervous system. The nerves are like extensions of the senses to the interior of the human body.

[ 54 ] It is evident from the above how the three types of spirits, those of the "personality", the "fire spirits" and the "sons of life", affect the lunar man. If one considers the main period of the Moon's development, the middle period of development, it can be said that the "spirits of personality" imbue the human astral body with independence, the personality character. It is due to this fact that at times when the sun is not shining, as it were, man can be introverted and able to work on himself. The "fire spirits" are active in the etheric body insofar as it imprints the independent shaping of the human being. It is through them that the human being feels itself to be the same again each time after the renewal of the body. A kind of memory is thus given to the etheric body through the "spirits of fire". The "sons of life" work on the physical body in such a way that it can become the expression of the astral body that has become independent. They thus make it possible for this physical body to become a physiognomic image of its astral body. On the other hand, higher spiritual entities, namely the "spirits of form" and those of movement, intervene in the physical body and the etheric body, insofar as these develop independently of the independent astral body during the solar periods. Their intervention takes place in the manner described above from the sun.

[ 55 ] Under the influence of such facts, the human being matures in order to gradually form the germ of the "spirit self" in a similar way to how the germ of the spirit man and the germ of the spirit of life were formed on the sun in the second half of Saturn's development. This changes all the conditions on the moon. Through the successive transformations and renewals the human beings have become ever more noble and refined; but they have also gained in strength. As a result, the consciousness of images was preserved more and more in the times of the sun. It thereby also gained influence on the shaping of the physical and etheric body, which previously took place entirely through the effect of the solar beings. What happened on the moon through the human beings and the spirits connected with them became more and more similar to what had previously been brought about by the sun with its higher beings. The consequence of this was that these solar beings were able to use their powers more and more for their own development. As a result of this, the moon became ripe to be reunited with the sun after some time. - From a spiritual point of view, these processes can be described as follows: The "fallen moon beings" have gradually been overcome by the sun beings and must now submit to them in such a way that their activities are integrated into the activities of the sun beings by subordinating themselves to them. - However, this only happened after long epochs in which the moon times had become shorter and shorter and the sun times longer and longer. There is now another development during which the sun and moon are one world entity. The physical human body has become completely ethereal. - But one should not imagine, when it is said that the physical body has become etheric, that one cannot speak of a physical body for such states. What was formed as a physical body during the Saturnian, solar and lunar periods remains present. It is important to recognize the physical not only where it manifests itself physically on the outside. The physical can also be present in such a way that outwardly it shows the form of the etheric, even that of the astral. A distinction must be made between the outer appearance and the inner regularity. A physical entity can etherealize and astralize itself, but retain the physical lawfulness within itself. This is the case when the physical body of the human being on the moon has reached a certain degree of perfection. It becomes etheric. But when the super-sensible consciousness, which can observe this, focuses on such an etheric body, then it does not appear to it to be imbued with the laws of the etheric, but with those of the physical. The physical is then absorbed into the etheric in order to rest in it as in a mother's womb and to be nurtured therein. Later it also emerges again in physical form, but at a higher level. If the human beings of the moon kept their physical body in the gross physical form, the moon could never unite with the sun. By assuming the etheric form, the physical body becomes more closely related to the etheric body, and it can thereby again penetrate more intimately with those parts of the etheric and astral body which had to withdraw from it during the solar epochs of the moon's development. The human being, who appeared as a double being during the separation of sun and moon, becomes a unified creature again. The physical becomes more spiritual, but the spiritual also becomes more connected with the physical. - The sun spirits, into whose immediate sphere the human being has now come, can now have a completely different effect on this unified human being than before from the outside towards the moon. The human being is now in a more soul-spiritual environment. This allows the "spirits of wisdom" to have a meaningful effect. They imprint wisdom on him. They inspire him with wisdom. He thus becomes an independent soul in a certain sense. And in addition to the influence of these beings, there is also that of the "spirits of movement". They have a special effect on the astral body, so that it develops a soul-like activity and a wisdom-filled life body under the influence of these beings. The etheric body, filled with wisdom, is the first disposition for what has been described in an earlier section as the intellectual soul in the present human being, while the astral body, excited by the "spirits of movement", is the germinal disposition of the sentient soul. And because all of this is brought about in the human being in his heightened state of independence, these germinal structures of the intellectual and intuitive souls appear as the expression of the "spirit self". On the other hand, one should not allow oneself to be misled into thinking that in this period of development the "spirit self" is still something special alongside the intellectual and emotional souls. The latter are only the expression of the "spirit self", and this signifies their higher unity and harmony.

[ 56 ] It is of particular significance that the "spirits of wisdom" intervene in this epoch in the manner described. They do this not only with regard to human beings, but also for the other kingdoms that have developed on the moon. When the sun and moon reunite, these lower kingdoms are drawn into the solar realm. Everything that was physical about them is etherized. So now mineral plants and plant animals are found in the sun, just as the human being is in it. But these other beings remain endowed with their own laws. This makes them feel like strangers in their environment. They appear with a nature that is only slightly in tune with that of their surroundings. But since they are etherized, the effect of the "spirits of wisdom" can also extend to them. Everything that has come into the sun from the moon is now permeated with the forces of the "spirits of wisdom". Therefore, what becomes of the sun-moon formation within this developmental period can be called the "cosmos of wisdom". - When, after a period of rest, our earth system appears as a descendant of this 'cosmos of wisdom', all the new beings living on earth and sprouting from their moon germs show themselves to be filled with wisdom. This is the reason why the human being on earth, when he looks at the things around him, can explore wisdom in the nature of their being. One can admire the wisdom in every plant leaf, in every animal and human bone, in the miraculous structure of the brain and the heart. If man needs wisdom to understand things, i.e. to extract wisdom from them, this shows that wisdom lies within things. For no matter how hard man tries to understand things through wisdom-filled ideas, he cannot extract wisdom from them if it is not first put into them. He who wants to grasp things through wisdom, which he believes have not first received wisdom, may also believe that he can draw water from a glass into which it has not first been poured. The earth is, as will be shown later in this writing, the resurrected "old moon". And it appears as an entity full of wisdom, because in the epoch described it was imbued with the powers of the "spirits of wisdom".

[ 57 ] It will seem understandable that only certain temporary forms of development could be recorded in this description of the moon's relationships. To a certain extent, certain things had to be captured in the progress of the facts and singled out for depiction. This kind of description, however, only gives individual pictures; and it may therefore be missed in the foregoing that the development has not been brought into a network of fixed concepts. In the face of such an objection, however, it may perhaps be pointed out that the description has been deliberately given in less precise terms. For it is not so much a matter of giving speculative concepts and constructions of ideas here, but rather an idea of what can really present itself to the spiritual eye of the supersensible vision directed towards these facts. And for the moon's development this is not something in such sharp and definite outlines as the earth's perceptions show. In the lunar epoch we are dealing with changeable, changing impressions, with fluctuating, moving images and their transitions. Furthermore, it must be taken into account that a development over long, long periods of time comes into consideration and that from this only momentary images can be captured in the representation.

[ 58 ] The essential climax of the lunar epoch is reached at the point in time when the astral body implanted in the human being has brought it so far forward in its development that its physical body gives the "sons of life" the opportunity to reach their level of humanity. The human being has also achieved all that this epoch can give him for himself, for his inner being, on the path forward. The following, i.e. the second half of the moon's development, could therefore be described as a flowing away. But you can see that in relation to man's environment and also for man himself, an important thing happens precisely in this epoch. Wisdom is implanted in the solar-moon body. It has been shown that the germs of the soul of understanding and feeling are laid during this outflow. However, the unfolding of these and also of the consciousness soul and thus the birth of the "I", the free self-consciousness, will only take place during the time on earth. At the lunar stage, the soul of understanding and the soul of feeling do not yet appear as if the human being itself were already expressing itself through them, but as if they were instruments for the "sons of life" belonging to the human being. If one wanted to characterize the feeling that man has in this direction on the moon, one would have to say that he feels thus: "In me and through me lives the ; through me he sees the lunar environment, he thinks in me about the things and beings of this environment." The lunar man feels overshadowed by the "Sons of Life", he feels like the instrument of this higher being. And during the separation of sun and moon, he felt a greater independence when he turned away from the sun; but he also felt as if the "I" belonging to him, which had disappeared from the consciousness of images in the times of the sun, then became visible to him. For the moon man it was what can be characterized as a change in the states of consciousness, so that he had the feeling: "My I floats away with me in the solar time into higher regions, to sublime beings, and when the sun fades, it descends with me into deeper worlds."

[ 59 ] The actual development of the moon was preceded by preparation. A repetition of Saturn's and the sun's evolution took place in a certain way. Now, after the reunion of sun and moon, two epochs can also be distinguished from each other during the time of the outflow. During these, physical condensations even occur to a certain degree. Spiritual-soul states of the sun-moon formation thus alternate with physical ones. In such physical epochs the human beings and also the beings of the lower kingdoms appear as if they were modeling in stiff, dependent forms what they are to become later, in earth time, in a more independent way. We can therefore speak of two preparatory epochs of the moon's development and of two others during the time of the outflow. Such epochs can be called "cycles". In that which follows the two preparatory epochs and precedes those of the outflow, i.e. in the time of the splitting of the moon, it will also be possible to distinguish three epochs. The middle one is the time of the incarnation of the "sons of life". It is preceded by one in which all relationships come to a head towards this main event; and it is followed by another which can be described as a settling in and shaping in the new creations. Thus the middle lunar development again separates into three epochs, which, with the two preparatory and the two outflowing ones, gives seven lunar cycles. It can therefore be said that the entire lunar development flows in seven cycles. There are pauses between these cycles. For example, the solar beings gradually withdraw from their activity on the moon. For them a time begins which appears to the outside world as their rest period, while on the moon itself there is still lively independent activity. Thus the epoch of activity of one kind of being extends many times into the pause of rest of the other. If we take this into account, we can speak of a rhythmic rise and fall of forces in cycles. Indeed, similar divisions can also be recognized within the seven lunar cycles indicated. One can then call the whole lunar development a great cycle, a planetary cycle; then the seven divisions within such a cycle "small" cycles and the links of these again "smaller" cycles. This division into seven times seven sections is already noticeable in the development of the sun and is also indicated during the Saturnian epoch. However, it must be borne in mind that the boundaries between the divisions are already blurred in the Sun and even more so in Saturn. These boundaries become clearer and clearer as development progresses towards the Earth epoch.

[ 60 ] After the conclusion of the lunar development outlined above, all the entities and forces in question enter a more spiritual form of existence. This is on a completely different level than that during the lunar period and also than that during the following earth development. A being which would have such highly developed cognitive abilities that it could perceive all the details of the moon and earth development would therefore not yet need to be able to see what happens between the two developments. For such a being, the beings and forces would, as it were, vanish into nothingness at the end of the lunar period and emerge again from the twilight darkness of the womb after an intervening period. Only a being with even higher abilities could follow the spiritual facts that occur in the meantime.

[ 61 ] At the end of the interim period, the beings involved in the developmental processes on Saturn, the sun and the moon emerge with new abilities. Through their previous deeds, the beings above the human being have acquired the ability to further develop the human being in such a way that during the earth time following the moon time he can unfold a type of consciousness within himself which is one level higher than the image consciousness which was characteristic of him during the moon time. However, the human being must first be prepared to receive what is to be given to him. During the development of Saturn, the sun and the moon, he has incorporated the physical body, the life body and the astral body into his being. But these members of his being have only received those faculties and powers which enable them to live for a picture-consciousness; they still lack the organs and the form through which they can perceive a world of sense-external objects, as is appropriate for the earth stage. Just as the new plant only unfolds that which has been predisposed in the germ that comes from the old one, so at the beginning of the new stage of development the three members of human nature appear with such forms and organs that they can only unfold image-consciousness. They must first be prepared for the unfolding of a higher level of consciousness. - This happens in three preliminary stages. Within the first, the physical body is raised to such a height that it is able to take on the necessary transformation that can form the basis of object consciousness. This is a preliminary stage of earthly development, which can be described as a repetition of the period on a higher level. For during this period, as during the Saturn period, higher beings only work on the physical body. If the latter is sufficiently advanced in its development, then all beings must first again pass over into a higher form of existence before the life body can also progress. The physical body must be recast, as it were, in order to be able to receive the more highly developed life body when it unfolds again. After this intermediate period dedicated to a higher form of existence, a kind of repetition of the sun's development occurs at a higher level to form the life body. And again after an intermediate period, a similar thing occurs for the astral body in a repetition of the moon's development.

[ 62 ] The attention is now directed to the facts of development after the end of the third of the described repetitions. All entities and powers have spiritualized again. During this spiritualization they have ascended to high worlds. The lowest of the worlds, in which something of them can still be perceived during this spiritualization epoch, is the one in which the present human being dwells between death and a new birth. These are the regions of the spirit land. They then gradually descend again to lower worlds. Before the physical development on earth begins, they have descended so far that their lowest revelations can be seen in the astral or soul world.

[ 63 ] All that is present of man in this period still has its astral form. In order to understand this state of humanity, particular attention should be paid to the fact that the human being has a physical body, a life body and an astral body, but that both the physical and the life body are not present in physical and etheric, but in astral form. What makes the physical body physical is not the physical form, but the fact that, although it has the astral form, it still has the physical laws within itself. It is a being with physical lawfulness in soul form. The same applies to the living body.

[ 64 ] At this stage of development, the earth initially stands before the spiritual eye as a world being that is entirely soul and spirit, in which the physical and living forces therefore also still appear soul-like. This world entity contains everything that is later to be transformed into the creatures of the physical earth. It is luminous; but its light is not yet such as physical eyes could perceive, even if they were there. It only shines in the spiritual light for the open eye of the seer.

[ 65 ] Something happens in this being that can be described as condensation. The result of this condensation is that after some time a form of fire appears in the midst of the soul structure, such as Saturn was in its densest state. This form of fire is interwoven with the effects of the various entities involved in the development. The interaction between these entities and the celestial body can be observed as an emergence and immersion from and into the earth's sphere of fire. The earthly sphere of fire is therefore not a uniform substance, but something like a soulful and spiritualized organism. Those beings who are destined to become human beings on earth in their present form are still in a position where they participate least in the immersion into the fire body. They still remain almost entirely in the uncondensed environment. They are still in the bosom of the higher spiritual beings. At this stage they only touch the fiery earth with one point of their soul form; and this causes the heat to condense a part of their astral form. This ignites earth life in them. They still belong to the soul-spiritual worlds with the largest part of their being; only through contact with the earth fire are they surrounded by the warmth of life. If one wanted to form a sensual-supersensible picture of these people at the beginning of the physical earth time, one would have to imagine a soul egg shape contained in the earth's orbit and enclosed by a cup on its lower surface like the acorn fruit. But the substance of the cup consists only of heat or fire. The enveloping of warmth not only has the consequence that life is ignited in the human being, but at the same time a change occurs in the astral body. This incorporates the first disposition for what later becomes the sentient soul. We can therefore say that the human being at this stage of his existence consists of the sentient soul, the astral body, the life body and the physical body woven from fire. In the astral body the spiritual entities that are involved in man's existence sway up and down; through the intuitive soul he feels bound to the earth body. Thus at this time he has a predominant consciousness of images, in which the spiritual beings in whose womb he lies reveal themselves; and only as a point within this consciousness does the sensation of his own body appear. He looks down, as it were, from the spiritual world upon an earthly possession of which he feels: "This is yours." - Again and again the condensation of the earth progresses; and thus the characterized division in man becomes ever clearer. From a certain point in its development, the earth is condensed to such an extent that only one part is still fiery. Another part has taken on a substantial form which can be described as "gas" or "air". Now a change is also taking place with the human being. He is now not only touched by the heat of the earth, but the substance of air is incorporated into his fiery body. And just as the warmth has ignited life in him, the air that surrounds him has an effect in him that can be described as (spiritual) sound. His living body resounds. At the same time, a part separates from the astral body, which is the first plant of the later appearing intellectual soul. - In order to visualize what is going on in the human soul at this time, one must pay attention to the fact that in the air-fire body of the earth the beings standing above the human being weigh up and down. In the earth of fire, it is first of all the "spirits of personality" that are significant for man. And when man is aroused to life by the heat of the earth, his sentient soul says to itself: these are the "spirits of personality". In the same way, those beings who were called "archangels" (in the sense of Christian esotericism) above in this writing announce themselves in the air body. It is their effects that man feels as a sound within himself when the air plays around him. And the intellectual soul says to itself: "These are the archangels". Thus what man perceives at this stage through his connection with the earth is not yet a sum of physical objects, but he lives in sensations of warmth that rise up to him and in sounds; but he senses the "spirits of personality" and the "archangels" in these currents of warmth and in this wave of sound. However, he cannot perceive these beings directly, but only as if through the veil of warmth and sound. While these perceptions penetrate his soul from the earth, the images of the higher beings, in whose bosom he feels himself, still rise and fall within it.

[ 66 ] Now the development of the earth continues. The progression is again expressed in a densification. The watery substance is incorporated into the earth's body so that it now consists of three parts, the fiery, the aerial and the watery. Before this happens, an important process takes place. An independent world body splits off from the fire-air earth, which then becomes the present sun in its further development. Previously, the earth and the sun were one body. After the separation of the sun, the earth still contains everything that is in and on the present moon. The separation of the sun happens because higher beings can no longer bear the matter, which is condensed to water, for their own development and for what they have to do for the earth. They extract from the common earth mass the substances that are only useful to them and withdraw from it to form a new dwelling place in the sun. They now act on the earth from outside the sun. For his further development, however, the human being requires a place where the substance can condense even further.

[ 67 ] The incorporation of the watery substance into the earthly body is accompanied by a transformation of the human being. Now not only fire flows into him, and not only air flows around him, but the watery substance is incorporated into his physical body. At the same time, his etheric part changes; man now perceives it as a fine body of light. Before, man felt streams of warmth coming up to him from the earth, he felt air approaching him through sounds; now the watery element also penetrates his fire-air body, and he sees its inflow and outflow as the shining and dimming of light. But a change has also occurred in his soul. In addition to the faculties of the sensory and intellectual soul, the consciousness soul has been added. The "angels" work in the element of water; they are also the actual light stimulators. To man it is as if they appeared to him in the light. - Certain higher beings, which were previously in the earth body itself, now affect it from the sun. This changes all the effects on earth. The human being bound to the earth could no longer feel the effects of the solar beings within himself if his soul were continually turned towards the earth from which his physical body is taken. A change now occurs in the human states of consciousness. At certain times the sun beings snatch the soul of man from the physical body, so that man is now alternately in the womb of the sun beings purely spiritual, and at other times in a state where he is connected with the body and receives the influences of the earth. When he is in the physical body, the heat currents flow up to him. The air masses surround him; the water flows out of him and into him. When man is outside his body, his soul is suffused with the images of the higher beings in whose bosom he is. - At this stage of its development, the earth experiences two periods. In the one it is allowed to play around the human souls with its substances and cover them with bodies; in the other the souls have departed from it; only the bodies have remained. It is in a dormant state with the human beings. It is quite appropriate to say that in these times of the distant past the earth goes through a daytime and a nighttime. (Physically and spatially this is expressed by the fact that through the mutual effect of the sun and earth beings the earth comes into a movement in relation to the sun; this brings about the change in the characterized night and day time. Daytime takes place when the earth's surface, on which the human being develops, is turned towards the sun; nighttime, i.e. the time when the human being leads a purely spiritual existence, takes place when this surface is turned away from the sun. However, we must not imagine that in those primeval times the movement of the earth around the sun was similar to the present. The conditions were still quite different. But it is also useful to realize here that the movements of the celestial bodies arise as a result of the relationships that the spiritual beings inhabiting them have with each other. The celestial bodies are brought into such positions and movements by spiritual-mental causes that the spiritual states can live out in the physical).

[ 68 ] If one were to look at the earth during its night time, one would see its body like a corpse. For it consists largely of the decaying bodies of people whose souls are in a different form of existence. The articulated, watery and airy structures from which the human bodies were formed decay and dissolve into the rest of the earthly mass. Only that part of the human body which was formed through the interaction of fire and the human soul from the beginning of the earth's development and which subsequently became denser and denser remains like an outwardly unsightly germ. What is said here about daytime and nighttime must not be too similar to what is meant by these terms for the present earth. When, at the beginning of the day, the earth again becomes partaker of the direct influence of the sun, then the human souls penetrate into the realm of physical life. They come into contact with those germs and cause them to sprout, so that they take on an outer form that appears like an image of the human soul being. It is something like a delicate fertilization that takes place between the human soul and the body germ. Now these embodied souls also begin to draw in the air and water masses again and incorporate them into their bodies. The air is expelled from the structured body and drawn in: the first facility for the later breathing process. Water is also taken in and expelled: an original type of nourishment process begins. However, these processes are not yet perceived as external. A kind of external perception takes place through the soul only in the characterized kind of fertilization. There the soul dully feels its awakening to physical existence by touching the germ that is held out to it by the earth. It hears something that can be expressed in the words: "This is my form". And such a feeling, which could also be called a dawning sense of self, remains with the soul throughout its connection with the physical body. However, the process of taking in the air is still experienced by the soul in a soul-spiritual way, still as a pictorial one. It appears in the form of sound images weighing in and out, which give form to the dividing germ. The soul feels itself surrounded everywhere by sounds, and it senses how it shapes the body according to these sound forces. In this way human forms were formed at that stage which cannot be observed by a present consciousness in any external world. They develop like finely substantial plant and flower-like forms, which are, however, inwardly mobile and therefore appear like fluttering flowers. And man experiences the blissful feeling of his forming into such shapes during his time on earth. The absorption of the watery parts is felt in the soul as a supply of strength, as an inner strengthening. Outwardly it appears as the growth of the physical human form. As the direct effect of the sun diminishes, the human soul also loses the power to control these processes. They are gradually discarded. Only those parts remain which allow the germ described above to mature. The human being, however, leaves his body and returns to the spiritual form of existence. (Since not all parts of the earth's body are used to build human bodies, one should not imagine that in the night time the earth consists only of the decaying corpses and the germs waiting to be awakened. All of this is embedded in other formations that are formed from the substances of the earth. How it behaves with these will be shown later.)

[ 69 ] But now the process of compression of the earth's substance continues. The watery element is joined by the solid, which can be called "earthy". And thus the human being also begins to incorporate the earthy element into his body during his time on earth. As soon as this incorporation begins, the forces that the soul brings with it from its body-free time no longer have the same power as before. In the past, the soul formed the body from the fiery, airy and watery elements according to the sounds that surrounded it and the light images that played around it. In contrast to the solidified form, the soul cannot do this. Other powers now intervene in its creation. In that which remains of the human being when the soul departs from the body, there is now not only a germ which is kindled to life by the returning soul, but an entity which also contains within itself the power of this vitalization. When the soul departs, it not only leaves behind its afterimage on earth, but it also sinks part of its vitalizing power into this image. When it reappears on earth it can no longer awaken the image to life alone, but the revitalization must take place in the image itself. The spiritual beings, which work on earth from the sun, now receive the enlivening power in the human body, even if the human being is not on earth himself. Thus, when the soul is embodied, it not only feels the sounds and light images that surround it, in which it perceives the beings that are initially above it, but through the perception of the earthy element it also experiences the influence of those still higher beings that have taken up residence on the sun. Sun have set up their scene. Previously man felt that he belonged to the spiritual-soul beings with whom he was united when he was free of his body. In their bosom was still his "I". Now this "I" confronted him during the physical embodiment, just like the other beings around him during this time. Independent images of the soul-spiritual human being were now on earth. In comparison with the present human body, these were formations of fine materiality. For the earthy parts were only mixed with them in the finest state. Just as the present human being absorbs the finely distributed substances of an object with his olfactory organ. The human bodies were like shadows. But since they were distributed over the whole earth, they came under the effects of the earth, which were of different kinds on different parts of its surface. Whereas before the bodily images corresponded to the soul-man who animated them and were therefore essentially the same over the whole earth, now diversity appeared among the human forms. This prepared the way for what later emerged as the diversity of the races. - With the independence of the bodily human being, however, the previous close connection between the earthly human being and the spiritual-soul world was severed to a certain extent. When the soul now left the body, the body lived on somewhat like a continuation of life. - If development had progressed in this way, the earth would have hardened under the influence of its solid element. The supersensible knowledge looking back on these conditions shows how the human bodies, abandoned by their souls, harden more and more. And after some time the human souls returning to earth would have found no useful material with which they could have united. All substances useful to humans would have been used to fill the earth with the lignified remains of embodiments.

[ 70 ] Then an event occurred which gave the whole development a different turn. Everything in the solid earth material that could contribute to permanent hardening was eliminated. Our present moon left the earth at that time. And what had previously contributed directly in the earth to the permanent formation of form, now worked indirectly in a weakened way from the moon. The higher beings, on whom this formation of form depends, had decided to let their effects no longer come from within the earth, but from without. As a result, a difference appeared in the bodily human formations which must be described as the beginning of the separation into a male and female sex. The ethereal human forms that previously inhabited the earth gave rise to the new human form, their offspring, through the interaction of the two forces within themselves, the germ and the vitalizing force. Now these offspring were transformed. In one group of such offspring the germinal force of the spiritual-soul worked more, in the other group the vitalizing germinal force worked more. This was brought about by the fact that with the departure of the moon from the earth the earth element had weakened its power. The interaction of the two forces now became more delicate than it was when it happened in one life. Consequently, the offspring was also more delicate, more subtle. It entered the earth in a delicate state and only gradually incorporated the more solid parts. This gave the human soul returning to earth the opportunity to reunite with the body. It no longer animated it from outside, for this animation took place on earth itself. But it united with it and caused it to grow. However, there was a certain limit to this growth. The separation from the moon had made the human body pliable for a while, but the more it continued to grow on earth, the more the solidifying forces took over. In the end, the soul could only participate in the organization of the body weaker and weaker. This decayed as the soul ascended to spiritual and mental modes of existence.

[ 71 ] You can follow how the forces that the human being gradually acquired during the development of Saturn, the sun and the moon gradually participate in the progress of the human being during the earth formation described above. First it is the astral body, which also contains the life body and the physical body still dissolved in itself, which is ignited by the earth fire. Then this astral body divides into a finer astral part, the sentient soul, and a coarser, etheric part, which is now touched by the earth element. Thus the already pre-formed etheric or life body emerges. And while in the astral human being the intellectual and consciousness souls are formed, the coarser parts that are receptive to sound and light are separated in the etheric body. At the time when the etheric body becomes even more condensed, so that it turns from a body of light into a body of fire or warmth, the stage of development has also occurred in which, as characterized above, the parts of the solid earth element are incorporated into the human being. Because the etheric body has condensed down to fire, it can now also, through the forces of the physical body which were previously implanted in it, combine with the substances of the physical earth which have been diluted down to the state of fire. But it could no longer introduce the air substances alone into the body, which has meanwhile become more solid. Then, as indicated above, the higher beings who dwell on the sun enter and breathe the air into him. While man himself has the power to permeate himself with earthly fire by virtue of his past, higher beings direct the breath of air into his body. Before solidification, man's vital body was the sound receiver and the conductor of the air current. He permeated his physical body with life. Now his physical body receives an external life. The consequence of this is that this life becomes independent of the soul part of the human being. When he leaves the earth, he not only leaves behind the germ of form, but also a living image of himself. The "spirits of form" now remain united with this image; they also pass on the life they have given to their offspring when the human soul has departed from the body. This is how what can be called heredity is formed. And when the human soul then reappears on earth, it feels itself in a body whose life has been passed on from the ancestors. It feels particularly drawn to such a body. Something like a memory of the ancestor is formed, with which the soul feels at one. This memory passes through the succession of descendants like a shared consciousness. The "I" flows down through the generations.

[ 72 ] At this stage of development, man felt himself to be an independent being during his time on earth. He felt the inner fire of his life body connected with the outer fire of the earth. He could feel the warmth flowing through him as his "I". The system of blood circulation can be found in these currents of warmth, which are interwoven with life. But in what flowed into him as air, man did not fully feel his own being. The forces of the characterized higher beings were active in this air. But that part of the active forces within the air flowing through him remained with him which was already his own through the etheric forces he had formed earlier. He was the ruler of a part of these air currents. And in this respect not only the higher beings, but also he himself, were active in his formation. According to the images of his astral body he formed the parts of the air within himself. While air thus flowed into his body from outside, which became the basis of his breathing, part of the air inside formed itself into an organism imprinted on the human being, which became the basis of the later nervous system. Through warmth and air, man was then in contact with the outside world of the earth. - On the other hand, he felt nothing of the introduction of the solid element of the earth; this took part in his embodiment on earth, but he could not perceive the supply directly, but only in a dull consciousness in the image of the higher beings who were active in it. In such an image form as an expression of beings above him, man had also previously perceived the supply of the liquid earth elements. Through the condensation of man's earthly form, these images have now undergone a change in his consciousness. The liquid element is mixed with the solid. This addition must therefore also be perceived as coming from the higher beings acting from outside. Man can no longer have the power in his soul to direct the supply himself, for it must now serve his externally constructed body. He would spoil its form if he wanted to direct the supply himself. Thus that which he feeds himself from outside appears to him to be directed by the commandments of power emanating from the higher beings who are at work in the shaping of his body. Man feels himself as an ego; he has within him his intellectual soul as a part of his astral body, through which he experiences inwardly as images what is going on outside, and through which he penetrates his subtle nervous system. He feels himself to be a descendant of ancestors because of the life flowing through the generations. He breathes and feels this as the effect of the marked higher beings who are the "spirits of form". And he also submits to them in what is fed to him from outside (for his nourishment) through their impulses. What is darkest to him is his origin as an individual. He only feels that he has experienced an influence from the "spirits of form" expressing themselves in earthly forces. Man was guided and directed in his relationship to the outside world. This is expressed by the fact that he has an awareness of the spiritual-soul activities taking place behind his physical world. Although he does not perceive the spiritual beings in their own form, he experiences sounds, colors, etc. in his soul. And he knows that the deeds of the spiritual beings live in this imaginary world. What these beings communicate to him sounds to him; their revelations appear to him in light images. The earthly man feels most inwardly through the ideas which he receives through the element of fire or warmth. He already distinguishes between his inner warmth and the heat currents of the earthly environment. In the latter the "spirits of personality" reveal themselves. But man has only a dark awareness of what lies behind the currents of outer warmth. It is precisely in these currents that he feels the influence of the "spirits of form". When powerful heat effects appear in a person's surroundings, the soul feels that spiritual beings are now glowing around the earth, from which a spark has detached itself and is warming my inner being. - In the effects of light, the human being does not yet fully distinguish between the outer and the inner in the same way. When images of light appear in the environment, they do not always produce the same feeling in the soul of the earthling. There were times when man perceived these light images as external. It was in the time after he had just descended from the bodiless state into embodiment. It was the period of his growth on earth. When the time approached when the germ of the new earthly man was formed, these images faded. And man only retained something like inner memories of them. These light images contained the deeds of the "spirits of fire" (archangels). They appeared to man like the servants of the warmth beings who lowered a spark into his inner being. When their outer revelations died out, man experienced them as images (memories) within himself. He felt connected to their powers. And he was. For through what he had received from them, he was able to have an effect on the surrounding circle of air. This began to glow under his influence. It was a time when the forces of nature and the forces of man were not yet separated from each other in the way they were later. What happened on earth was still largely the result of human forces. Anyone who had observed the natural processes on earth from outside the earth at that time would not only have seen something in them that was independent of man, but would have perceived the effects of man in them. The perception of sound was even different for people on earth. They were perceived as external sounds from the beginning of life on earth. While the aerial images were perceived from the outside until the middle period of human existence on earth, the external sounds could still be heard after this middle period. Only towards the end of life did the human being on earth become insensitive to them. And the memories of these sounds remained with him. They contained the revelations of the "sons of life" (the angels). When, towards the end of his life, man felt inwardly connected with these forces, he was able to produce powerful effects in the water element of the earth by imitating them. The waters in and above the earth rippled under his influence. Man only had ideas of taste in the first quarter of his life on earth. And even then they appeared to the soul like a memory of the experiences in the bodiless state. As long as man had them, the solidification of his body through the absorption of external substances continued. In the second quarter of life on earth, growth continued, but the form was already fully formed. During this time, man could only perceive other living beings next to him through their warmth, light and sound effects. For he was not yet able to imagine the solid element. In the first quarter of his life, he only received the taste effects described above from water.

[ 73 ] A reflection of this inner state of the human soul was its outer body form. Those parts that contained the predisposition for the later head form were the most perfectly developed. The other organs only appeared like appendages. These were shadowy and indistinct. But the earth people were different in terms of shape. There were those whose appendages were more or less developed depending on the earthly conditions in which they lived. This varied according to where people lived on earth. Where people were more involved in the earthly world, the appendages came more to the fore. Those people who were most mature at the beginning of their physical development on earth due to their previous development, so that they experienced contact with the fire element right at the beginning, when the earth was not yet condensed into air, were now able to develop their head appendages most perfectly. These were the most harmonious people. Others were only ready for contact with the fire element when the earth had already formed the air in itself. These were people who were more dependent on external conditions than the first. These first ones clearly felt the "spirits of form" through the warmth, and they felt in their life on earth as if they retained a memory of belonging to these spirits and of being connected with them in the bodiless state. The second kind of people felt the memory of the bodiless state only to a lesser extent; they felt their affiliation with the spiritual world primarily through the light effects of the "fire spirits" (archangels). A third kind of people were even more involved in earthly existence. They were those who could only be touched by the fire element when the earth was separated from the sun and had absorbed the watery element. Their sense of belonging to the spiritual world was particularly weak at the beginning of their life on earth. Only when the effects of the archangels and especially the angels made themselves felt in the inner life of imagination did they sense this connection. In contrast, at the beginning of their time on earth they were full of lively impulses for deeds that could be carried out in the earthly circumstances themselves. Their appendages were particularly well developed.

[ 74 ] When, before the separation of the moon from the earth, the lunar forces in the latter led more and more to solidification, it happened that through these forces among the descendants of the germs left behind by men on earth were those in which the human souls returning from the bodiless state could no longer embody themselves. The form of such offspring was too solidified and had become too dissimilar to a human form through the forces of the moon to be able to take on such a form. Therefore, certain human souls were no longer able to return to earth under such conditions. Only the most mature, the strongest of the souls could feel themselves capable of transforming the earthly body during its growth so that it blossomed into human form. Only some of the bodily human offspring became carriers of earthly human beings. Because of the solidified form, another part could only receive souls that were lower than those of humans. However, some of the human souls were forced not to participate in the earthly development of that time. This brought them to a different kind of life course. There were souls who found no place on earth when the sun separated from the earth. For their further development they were carried away to a planet which, under the guidance of cosmic beings, detached itself from the general world substance which was connected with the earth at the beginning of its physical development and from which the sun had also separated itself. This planet is the one whose physical expression is known to external science as "Jupiter". (We speak here of celestial bodies, planets and their names in exactly the same way as older science did. How things are meant is clear from the context. Just as the physical earth is only the physical expression of a spiritual-soul organism, this is also the case for every other celestial body. And just as the observer of the supersensible does not merely refer to the physical planet by the name "Earth", nor to the physical fixed star by "Sun", he also means wide spiritual connections when he speaks of "Jupiter", "Mars" etc.. The celestial bodies have naturally changed their shape and function considerably since the times spoken of here - in certain respects even their place in celestial space. Only those who trace the development of these celestial bodies back into the distant past with the gaze of supersensible knowledge are able to recognize the connection between the present planets and their ancestors). On "Jupiter" the characterized souls initially developed further. And later, when the earth became more and more solid, another dwelling place had to be created for souls who had the opportunity to inhabit the solidified bodies for a while, but then could no longer do so when this solidification had progressed too far. A suitable place for their further development was created in "Mars". Even when the earth was still connected to the sun and its airy elements were integrated, it turned out that the souls proved to be unsuitable to participate in earthly development. They were too strongly affected by the earthly physical form. Therefore, even then they had to be removed from the direct influence of the solar forces. These had to act on them from outside. These souls were given a place for further development on "Saturn". Thus, in the course of the earth's development, the number of human forms decreased; forms appeared which had not embodied human souls. They could only take into themselves astral bodies, just as the physical bodies and the life bodies of man on the old moon had taken them in. While the earth became desolate with regard to its human inhabitants, these beings colonized it. All human souls would finally have had to leave the earth if the detachment of the moon had not created the possibility for the human forms, which at that time could still be animated humanly, to withdraw the human germ from the lunar forces coming directly from the earth during their life on earth and to allow it to mature within themselves until it could be handed over to these forces. As long as the germ then took shape within the human being, it was under the effect of the beings who, under the guidance of their most powerful comrade, had detached the moon from the earth in order to guide its development beyond a critical point.

[ 75 ] When the earth had developed the air element in itself, there were, in the sense of the above description, such astral beings as remnants from the old moon, which had remained further behind in their development than the lowest human souls. They became the souls of those forms which had to be abandoned by man before the separation from the sun. These beings are the ancestors of the animal kingdom. In the distant course of time they developed especially those organs which were only present as appendages in humans. Their astral body had to act on the physical and life body in the same way as was the case with man on the old moon. The animals thus created now had souls which could not dwell in the individual animal. The soul also extended its being to the descendant of the ancestral form. The animals that essentially descend from one form have one soul. Only when the descendant departs from the form of the ancestor through special influences does a new animal soul come into embodiment. In this sense, one can speak of a species (or genus) or group soul in the spiritual science of animals.

[ 76 ] Something similar happened at the time of the separation of sun and earth. Out of the watery element emerged forms that were no further along in their development than man was before his development on the old moon. They could only receive an effect from an astral being if it influenced them from outside. This could only happen after the sun had moved away from the earth. Every time the solar time of the earth occurred, the astral of the sun stimulated these forms in such a way that they formed their life body from the etheric of the earth. When the sun then turned away from the earth, this life body dissolved again into the general earth body. And as a result of the interaction of the astral from the sun and the etheric from the earth, the physical forms emerged from the watery element, which formed the ancestors of the present plant kingdom.

[ 77 ] Man has become an individualized soul being on earth. His astral body, which had flowed into him on the moon through the "spirits of movement", has divided itself on earth into a soul of sensation, intellect and consciousness. And when his consciousness soul had progressed so far that it was able to form a suitable body during his life on earth, the "spirits of form" endowed him with the spark from their fire. The "I" was kindled in him. Every time the human being left the physical body, he was in the spiritual world, where he met the beings who had given him his physical body, his life body and his astral body during the evolution of Saturn, the sun and the moon, and had developed them to the level of the earth. Ever since the fire spark of the "I" had ignited in earthly life, a change had also occurred in the bodiless life. Before this point in the development of his being, man had no independence from the spiritual world. Within this spiritual world he did not feel like an individual being, but like a member of the sublime organism that was composed of the beings above him. The "I-experience" on earth now also has an effect in the spiritual world. The human being now also feels himself to a certain degree as a unit in this world. But he also feels that he is constantly connected to the same world. In the body-free state, he finds the "spirits of form" again in a higher form, which he perceived in their revelation on earth through the spark of his "I".

[ 78 ] With the separation of the moon from the earth, experiences also developed in the spiritual world for the body-free soul, which were connected with this separation. It only became possible to develop such human forms on earth, which could absorb the individuality of the soul, because a part of the formative forces was transferred from the earth to the moon. This brought human individuality into the realm of the lunar beings. And in the bodiless state the echo of the earth individuality could only work by the fact that also for this state the soul remained in the realm of the mighty spirits who had brought about the separation from the moon. The process developed in such a way that immediately after leaving the earthly body the soul could only see the high solar beings as if they were reflected by the lunar beings. Only when it was sufficiently prepared by seeing this reflection did the soul come to see the high solar beings themselves.

[ 79 ] The mineral kingdom of the earth also came into being through expulsion from the general development of humanity. Its formations are that which remained solidified when the moon separated from the earth. Only that which had remained at the Saturnian stage was attracted to these formations, that which was only capable of forming physical forms. All the events mentioned here and in the following took place over enormously long periods of time. However, time determinations cannot be discussed here.

[ 80 ] The events described represent the earth's development from the external side; viewed from the side of the spirit, the following results. The spiritual beings who pulled the moon out of the earth and connected their own existence with the moon - thus became earth-moon beings - brought about a certain shaping of the human organization through the forces which they sent from the latter world body to the earth. Their effect was on the "I" acquired by man. In the interaction of this "I" with the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body, this effect made itself felt. Through it, the possibility arose in the human being to consciously reflect the wisdom-filled design of the world in himself, to depict it as in a reflection of knowledge. Recall how it has been described that during the old lunar period man acquired a certain independence in his organization, a freer degree of consciousness than that which could emanate directly from the solar beings, through the separation from the sun at that time. This free, independent consciousness arose again - as a legacy of the old moon development - during the characterized time of the earth development. But it was precisely this consciousness, brought back into harmony with the universe through the influence of the characterized earth-moon beings, that could be made into an image of it. This would have happened if no other influence had asserted itself. Without such an influence man would have become a being with a consciousness whose content would have reflected the world in the images of cognitive life as if by natural necessity, not through his free intervention. This is not what happened. Just at the time of the separation of the moon, certain spiritual beings intervened in the development of man, who had retained so much of their lunar nature that they could not participate in the sun's exit from the earth. And that they were also excluded from the effects of the beings who proved to be active from the earth's moon towards the earth. These beings with the old moon nature were, so to speak, banished to earth with irregular development. In their lunar nature lay precisely that which had rebelled against the sun spirits during the old lunar development, which was a blessing to man at that time in so far as through it man had been led to an independent, free state of consciousness. The consequences of the peculiar development of these beings during the time on earth meant that they became opponents of those beings who, from the moon, wanted to make human consciousness a necessary mirror of knowledge of the world. What helped man to a higher state on the old moon emerged as the opposition to the establishment that had become possible through earthly development. The opposing powers had brought with them from their lunar nature the power to work on the human astral body, namely - in the sense of the above explanations - to make it independent. They exercised this power by giving this astral body a certain independence - also now for the time on earth - compared to the necessary (unfree) state of consciousness, which was brought about by the beings of the earth moon. It is difficult to express in practicable words what the effects of the characterized spiritual entities were on man in the marked primeval time. They should not be thought of as present-day natural influences, nor as the effect of one human being on another when the former awakens inner powers of consciousness in the latter through words, whereby the latter learns to understand something or is stimulated to a virtue or vice. The effect meant in primeval times was not a natural effect, but a spiritual influence, but one which also had a spiritual effect, which was transmitted as a spiritual effect from the higher spiritual beings to man according to the state of consciousness of this man at that time. If one thinks of the matter as an effect of nature, one does not grasp its true nature at all. If, on the other hand, we say that the beings with the old lunar nature approached man in order to "seduce" him for their goals, we are using a symbolic expression that is good as long as we remain aware of its symbolic nature and at the same time realize that there is a spiritual fact behind the symbol.

[ 81 ] The effect that the spirits left behind in the lunar state had on man was twofold. His consciousness was thereby stripped of the character of a mere mirror of the universe, because the possibility was aroused in the human astral body to regulate and control the images of consciousness from there. Man became the master of his knowledge. On the other hand, the starting point of this dominion became the astral body, and the "I", which was superior to it, became constantly dependent on it. Thus man was exposed in the future to the continuing influences of a lower element in his nature. In his life he could sink below the level to which he had been placed by the earth-moon beings in the course of the world. And the continuing influence of the characterized irregularly developed lunar beings on his nature remained for him for the following time. One can call these lunar beings the Luciferic spirits, in contrast to the others who formed the consciousness from the earth moon to the world mirror, but did not give free will. These brought man the possibility of developing free activity in his consciousness, but thus also the possibility of error, of evil.

[ 82 ] The consequence of these processes was that man came into a different relationship with the sun spirits than was predetermined for him by the earth-moon spirits. They wanted to develop the mirror of his consciousness in such a way that the influence of the sun spirits would have dominated the entire life of the human soul. These processes were thwarted and a contrast was created in the human being between the influence of the sun spirit and the influence of the spirits with irregular lunar development. This opposition also created in man the inability to recognize the physical effects of the sun as such; they remained hidden from him behind the earthly impressions of the outer world. The astral in man, filled with these impressions, was drawn into the realm of the "I". This "I", which otherwise would only have felt the spark of fire imparted to it by the "spirits of form" and would have subordinated itself to the commandments of these spirits in everything that concerned the outer fire, now also had an effect on the outer appearances of warmth through the element implanted in it. It thereby created a bond of attraction between itself and the earth fire. In this way it entangled man more than he was destined to be in earthly materiality. Whereas before he had a physical body, the main parts of which consisted of fire, air and water and to which only something like a shadow image of earth substance was added, now the body of earth became denser. And whereas before man was more than a finely organized being above the solid earth in a kind of floating, hovering movement, he now had to descend "from the earth's orbit" to parts of the earth that were already more or less solidified.

[ 83 ] The fact that such physical effects of the spiritual influences described could occur is explained by the fact that these influences were as described above. They were neither natural influences nor those that have a spiritual effect from person to person. The latter do not extend their effect as far into the physical as the spiritual forces in question here.

[ 84 ] Because man exposed himself to the influences of the outside world according to his own ideas, which were subject to error, because he lived according to desires and passions which he did not allow to be regulated by higher spiritual influences, the possibility of illnesses arose. A particular effect of the Luciferic influence, however, was that now man could not feel his individual life on earth as a continuation of a bodiless existence. He now received such earth impressions which could be experienced through the implanted astral element and which connected with the forces that destroy the physical body. The human being experienced this as the death of his earthly life. And the "death" caused by human nature itself occurred as a result. This points to a significant mystery in human nature, to the connection between the human astral body and illness and death.

[ 85 ] Special conditions now arose for the human vital body. It was incorporated into such a relationship between the physical body and the astral body that it was in a certain respect removed from the abilities that the human being had acquired through the Luciferic influence. A part of this life body remained outside the physical body in such a way that it could only be controlled by higher beings, not by the human ego. These higher beings were those who had left the earth at the separation of the sun to take up another abode under the guidance of one of their exalted comrades. If the characterized part of the vital body had remained united with the astral body, man would have put supersensible powers, which were previously his own, at his own service. He would have extended the Luciferic influence to these powers. As a result, the human being would have gradually detached himself completely from the solar beings. And his ego would have become a complete earth ego. It would have had to come about in such a way that this earth ego would have inhabited another physical body, a descendant body, after the death of the physical body (or already at its decay), without passing through a connection with higher spiritual entities in a body-free state. The human being would thus have become conscious of his ego, but only as an "earthly ego". This was averted through the process with the life body, which was brought about by the earth-moon beings. The actual individual ego was thereby so detached from the mere earth ego that the human being only partially felt himself as his own ego during his life on earth; at the same time he felt how his earth ego was a continuation of the earth ego of his ancestors through the generations. In earthly life the soul felt a kind of "group ego" up to the distant ancestors, and the human being felt himself to be a member of the group. In the body-free state, the individual ego could only feel like an individual being. But the state of this isolation was impaired by the fact that the ego remained afflicted with the memory of the earth consciousness (earth ego). This clouded the view of the spiritual world, which began to cover itself with a veil between death and birth in a similar way to the physical view on earth.

[ 86 ] The physical expression of all the changes that took place in the spiritual world while human development passed through the conditions described was the gradual regulation of the mutual relationships between the sun, moon and earth (and, in a broader sense, other celestial bodies). One of the consequences of these relationships is the alternation of day and night. (The movements of the celestial bodies are regulated by the beings inhabiting them. The movement of the earth, through which day and night arise, was brought about by the interrelationship of the various spirits above man. In the same way, the movement of the moon was brought about so that after the separation of the moon from the earth, through the rotation of the first around the second, the "spirits of form" could work on the physical human body in the right way, in the right rhythm). By day, the ego and the astral body of the human being worked in the physical and the life body. At night this effect ceased. Then the I and the astral body stepped out of the physical and the life body. At this time they came completely into the realm of the "sons of life" (angels), the "spirits of fire" (archangels), the "spirits of personality" and the "spirits of form". In addition to the "spirits of form", the "spirits of movement", the "spirits of wisdom" and the "thrones" also took hold of the physical body and the life body during this time. In this way, the harmful effects exerted on man during the day by the errors of the astral body could be repaired.

[ 87 ] Now that human beings were multiplying again on earth, there was no longer any reason in the descendants why human souls should not have gone into embodiment in them. Just as the earth-moon forces were now at work, the human bodies became quite suitable for the embodiment of human souls under their influence. And the souls previously raptured to Mars, Jupiter etc. were now directed to earth. As a result, there was a soul for every human descendant born in the succession of generations. This continued for a long time, so that the influx of souls on earth corresponded to the increase in the number of people. Those souls that left the body after death on earth retained the echo of their earthly individuality as a memory for the body-free state. This memory worked in such a way that when a body corresponding to them was born again on earth, they embodied themselves again in such a body. Within the human descendants there were subsequently people who had souls coming from outside, who reappeared on earth for the first time after the first times on earth, and others with earthly re-embodied souls. In the subsequent period of earthly development, the young souls who appeared for the first time became fewer and fewer and the re-embodied souls more and more. However, for a long time the human race consisted of the two types of human beings caused by these facts. On earth, man now felt connected to his ancestors through the common group ego. The experience of the individual ego was all the stronger in the bodiless state between death and a new birth. Those souls who, coming from heavenly space, entered human bodies were in a different situation from those who had already lived one or more earthly lives. The former brought with them for their physical life on earth as souls only the conditions to which they had been subjected through the higher spiritual world and through their experiences outside the earthly realm. The others had added their own conditions in earlier lives. The fate of those souls was only determined by facts that lay outside the new earth conditions. The fate of the re-embodied souls is also determined by what they themselves did in previous lives under the earthly conditions. With the re-embodiment the individual human karma appeared at the same time. - Because the human life body was removed from the influence of the astral body in the manner indicated above, the reproductive relationship did not enter the sphere of human consciousness, but was under the dominion of the spiritual world. When a soul was to descend to the earth circle, then the impulses for procreation arose in the earth man. The whole process was to a certain extent shrouded in mystery for the earthly consciousness. - But the consequences of this partial separation of the life body from the physical body also occurred during life on earth. The abilities of this life body could be particularly enhanced by the spiritual influence. This had an effect on the life of the soul in that the memory received special training. Independent logical thinking was only in its very beginnings at this time. On the other hand, the ability to remember was almost limitless. Outwardly, it became apparent that man had a direct emotional understanding of the forces at work in all living things. He was able to put the forces of life and reproduction of animal and especially plant nature at his service. What drives the plant to grow, for example, man could extract from the plant and use it, just as at present the forces of inanimate nature, for example the power slumbering in the coal, are extracted from it and used to move machines. (More details on this matter can be found in my short book "Our Atlantean Ancestors"). - The inner soul life of man also changed in the most varied ways through the Luciferic influence. Many kinds of feelings and sensations could be mentioned which arose as a result. Only a few may be mentioned. Up to this influence the human soul worked in the sense of the intentions of higher spiritual beings in what it had to form and do. The plan for everything that was to be carried out was determined from the outset. And to the extent that human consciousness was developed at all, it was also able to foresee how things would have to develop in the future according to the preconceived plan. This foresighted consciousness was lost when the veil of earthly perceptions was woven over the revelation of the higher spiritual beings and the actual powers of the solar beings were concealed within them. The future now became uncertain. And thus the possibility of fear was implanted in the soul. Fear is a direct consequence of error. - But you can also see how the Luciferic influence made man independent of certain forces to which he had previously been willlessly devoted. He was now able to make decisions of his own accord. Freedom is the result of this influence. And fear and similar feelings are only side effects of man's development towards freedom.

[ 88 ] Spiritually speaking, the appearance of fear is due to the fact that within the earth forces under whose influence man had come through the Luciferic powers, other powers were at work which had assumed irregularity much earlier in the course of development than the Luciferic powers. With the earth forces man took the influences of these powers into his being. They gave the quality of fear to feelings that would have worked quite differently without them. These entities can be called the ahrimanic ones; they are the same ones that - in Goethe's sense - are called Mephistophelean.

[ 89 ] Although the Luciferic influence initially only made itself felt in the most advanced human beings, it soon spread to others. The descendants of the advanced ones mingled with the less advanced ones characterized above. Thus the Luciferic power also penetrated to the latter. But the life body of the souls returning from the planets could not be protected to the same degree as that of the descendants of those who remained on earth. The protection of the latter came from a high being who was in charge of the cosmos at the time when the sun separated from the earth. This being appears in the area under consideration here as the ruler of the solar realm. Those exalted spirits who had attained maturity through their cosmic development moved with him to the place where the sun dwelt. But there were also beings who had not risen to such heights at the separation of the sun. They had to look for other places. It was through them that Jupiter and other planets detached themselves from the common world substance that was initially in the physical earth organism. Jupiter became the dwelling place of such beings who had not matured to the height of the sun. The most advanced became the leader of Jupiter. 1 Just as the leader of the sun's development became the "higher I" that worked in the life of the descendants of the human beings who remained on earth, so this Jupiter leader became the "higher I" that ran like a common consciousness through the human beings who descended from a mixture of offspring of those who remained on earth with such human beings who had first appeared on earth in the manner described above in the time of the air element and had passed over to Jupiter. One can call such people "Jupiter people" in the sense of spiritual science. They were human descendants who had still received human souls in those ancient times, but who were not yet mature enough to make their first contact with fire at the beginning of the earth's development. They were souls between the human and animal kingdoms. There are now also beings who, under the guidance of a supreme being from the common world substance, had chosen Mars as their dwelling place. Under their influence came a third kind of human being, the "Martians", who had come into being through mixing. (These findings shed light on the original reasons for the formation of the planets in our solar system. For all the bodies in this system came into being through the various states of maturity of the beings inhabiting them. However, it is of course not possible to go into all the details of the cosmic structures here). Those people who perceived the high solar being itself as being present in their life can be called "sun people". The being that lived in them as a "higher I" - of course only in the generations, not in the individual - is the one that was later given various names when people attained a conscious knowledge of it and that is the one in which the relationship that the Christ has to the cosmos is revealed to present-day people. A distinction can then be made between "Saturnians". With them, a being appeared as a "higher self" that had to leave the common world substance with its comrades before the separation from the sun. This was a type of human being who not only had a part in the life body, but also in the physical body, which remained removed from the Luciferic influence.

[ 90 ] Now, in the case of the lower human species, the living body was not sufficiently protected to be able to withstand the effects of the Luciferic being. They were able to extend the arbitrariness of the fire spark of the "I" within them to such an extent that they caused powerful fire effects of a harmful nature in their surroundings. The result was a huge earth catastrophe. The firestorms destroyed a large part of the then inhabited earth and with it the people who had fallen into error. Only the smallest part, which had remained partially untouched by the error, was able to save itself to an area of the earth that had been protected from the corrupting human influence until then. One such dwelling place, which was particularly suitable for the new humanity, turned out to be the land on that part of the earth which is currently covered by the Atlantic Ocean. It was there that the part of mankind that had remained the purest from error moved. Only scattered members of humanity inhabited other regions. In the sense of spiritual science, the area on earth between present-day Europe, Africa and America, which once existed, can be called "Atlantis". (In the relevant literature, reference is made in a certain way to the characterized period of human development preceding the Atlantean. It is called the Lemurian age of the earth, which was followed by the Atlantean age. On the other hand, the period in which the lunar forces had not yet unfolded their main effects can be called the Hyperborean Age. This is preceded by another, which therefore coincides with the very first period of physical development on earth. In the biblical tradition, the time before the influence of the Luciferic beings is described as the paradisiacal time and the descent to earth, the entanglement of people in the world of the senses, as the expulsion from paradise.

[ 91 ] The development in the Atlantean region was the time of the actual separation into Saturnians, Solarians, Jupiters and Martians. Prior to this, the predispositions had actually only just been developed. Now the separation of the waking and sleeping states had special consequences for the human being, which were particularly evident in Atlantean mankind. During the night man's astral body and ego were in the realm of the beings above him up to the "spirits of personality". Through that part of his life body which was not connected with the physical body, man could have the perception of the "sons of life" (angels) and the "spirits of fire" (archangels). For he could remain united with the part of the life body not permeated by the physical body during sleep. However, the perception of the "spirits of personality" remained indistinct, precisely because of the Luciferian influence. With the angels and archangels, however, those beings also became visible to man in the described state who, as those who had remained behind on the sun or moon, could not take up earthly existence. They therefore had to remain in the soul-spiritual world. However, the human being drew them through the Luciferian being into the realm of his soul, which was separated from the physical body. This brought him into contact with beings that had a highly seductive effect on him. They increased in the soul the impulse to error; namely to abuse the powers of growth and reproduction, which were in his power through the separation of physical body and life body.

[ 92 ] It was now possible for individuals of the Atlantean age to become as little entangled as possible in the world of the senses. Through them the Luciferic influence was transformed from an obstacle to human development into a means of higher progress. Through him they were able to develop knowledge of earthly things earlier than would otherwise have been possible. In doing so, these people tried to remove error from their imaginary life and to fathom the original intentions of the spiritual beings from the phenomena of the world. They kept themselves free from the drives and desires of the astral body, which were directed towards the mere sense world. As a result, they became increasingly free from its errors. This brought about states in them through which they perceived only in that part of the living body which was separated from the physical body in the manner described. In such states the perceptive faculty of the physical body was as if extinguished and the physical body itself as if dead. Then, through the living body, they would be completely connected with the realm of the "spirits of form" and could experience from them how they were guided and directed by that high being who was in charge during the separation of sun and earth, and through whom the understanding of the "Christ" later opened up to people. Such people were initiates. However, because human individuality had entered the realm of the lunar beings in the manner described above, these initiates could not, as a rule, be touched directly by the solar being, but could only be shown to them as if in a reflection by the lunar beings. They did not see the sun being directly, but its reflection. They became the leaders of other humanity, to whom they could communicate the secrets they had seen. They raised disciples to whom they showed the ways to attain the state that leads to initiation. Only those people who belonged to the sun people in the sense indicated could attain the knowledge of that which was formerly revealed through "Christ". They cultivated their mysterious knowledge and the practices that led to it in a special place, which will be called the Christ or sun oracle here. (Oraculum in the sense of a place where the intentions of spiritual beings are heard). What is said here with regard to the Christ will only not be misunderstood if one considers that supersensible knowledge must see in the appearance of the Christ on earth an event which was pointed out as something imminent in the future by those who were familiar with the meaning of earthly development before this event. It would be wrong to assume that these "initiates" had a relationship with Christ that was only made possible by this event. But they were able to grasp this prophetically and explain it to their disciples: "Whoever is touched by the power of the solar being sees the Christ approaching the earth."

[ 93 ] Other oracles were called into being by the members of the Saturnian, Martian and Jupiter humanities. Their initiates led their contemplation only as far as the beings who could be revealed as the corresponding "higher ego" in their living bodies. This is how confessors of the wisdom of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars came into being. In addition to these initiation methods, there were those for people who had absorbed too much of the Luciferic being to allow such a large part of the life body to be separated from the physical body as the sun people. Nor could they be brought to the prophetic revelation of Christ through the aforementioned states. They had to undergo more difficult preparations because of their astral body, which was more influenced by the Luciferic principle, and then, in a less body-free state than the others, they could not receive the revelation of the Christ himself, but they could receive that of other high beings. There were beings who left the earth at the time of the separation of the sun, but who were not high enough to be able to participate in the development of the sun in the long term. After the separation of sun and earth, they separated a dwelling place from the sun, Venus. Its leader became the being that now became the "higher self" for the initiates and their followers described above. A similar thing happened with the leading spirit of Mercury for another kind of human being. This is how the Venus and Mercury oracles came into being. A certain type of human being who had absorbed the most of the Luciferic influence could only reach a being who, together with his comrades, had been ejected from the solar evolution at the earliest stage. This being has no particular planet in world space, but still lives in the vicinity of the earth itself, with which it reunited after its return from the sun. Those people to whom this being revealed itself as a higher self can be called the followers of the volcano oracle. Their gaze was turned more towards earthly phenomena than that of the other initiates. They laid the first foundations for what later developed as sciences and arts among mankind. The Mercury initiates, on the other hand, founded the knowledge of the more supersensible things; and the Venus initiates did this to an even greater degree. The initiates of Vulcan, Mercury and Venus differed from the initiates of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars in that the latter received their secrets more as a revelation from above, more in a finished state; while the former received their knowledge more in the form of their own thoughts, of ideas. In the middle were the initiates of Christ. With the revelation in a direct state they also received the ability to clothe their secrets in human conceptual forms. The initiates of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars had to express themselves more in symbols; the initiates of Christ, Venus, Mercury and Vulcan were able to communicate more in concepts.

[ 94 ] What reached Atlantean humanity in this way came in a roundabout way through the initiates. But the other humanity also received special abilities through the Luciferic principle, in that the high cosmic beings transformed into salvation what could otherwise have become ruin. One such ability is that of language. It was granted to man through his condensation into physical matter and through the separation of a part of his life body from the physical body. In the times after the separation of the moon, the group ego felt connected. However, this common consciousness, which connected descendants with ancestors, gradually faded over the generations. The later descendants then only had the inner memory up to a not too distant ancestor; up to the earlier ancestors no longer. The memory of this or that ancestor only resurfaced in the states of sleep-like states in which people came into contact with the spiritual world. People then thought they were one with this ancestor, whom they believed had reappeared in them. This was an erroneous idea of re-embodiment, which emerged especially in the last Atlantean period. The true doctrine of re-embodiment could only be learned in the schools of the initiates. The initiates saw how the human soul passes from embodiment to embodiment in the bodiless state. And they alone could communicate the truth of this to their disciples.

[ 95 ] The physical form of man in the distant past, of which we are speaking here, is still far different from the present. This form was still to a high degree the expression of the qualities of the soul. Man still consisted of a finer, softer materiality than he later assumed. What is now solidified was soft, pliable and malleable in the limbs. A more soulful, more spiritual human being had a delicate, flexible, expressive physique. A less spiritually developed person had a coarse, immobile, less sculptural physique. Mental advancement contracted the limbs; the form was kept small; mental retardation and entanglement in sensuality was expressed in gigantic size. While man was in the period of growth, the body was formed in a way that must seem fabulous, even fantastic, to present-day ideas, according to what was forming in the soul. Corruption in the passions, drives and instincts led to a growth of the material in man to gigantic proportions. The present physical human form came into being through the contraction, compression and solidification of the Atlantean human being. And while before the Atlantean period man existed as a faithful image of his soul essence, the processes of the Atlantean development carried within themselves the causes that led to the post-Atlantean man, who is solid in his physical form and relatively little dependent on his soul qualities. (The animal kingdom became dense in its forms in far older times on earth than man). - The laws that currently underlie the formation of forms in the natural kingdoms must by no means be extended to more distant pasts.

[ 96 ] Towards the middle of the Atlantean period of development, a calamity gradually made itself felt in humanity. The secrets of the initiates should have been carefully guarded from those people who had not purified their astral body of error through preparation. If they gain such an insight into the hidden knowledge, into the laws by which the higher beings direct the forces of nature, they put them at the service of their misguided needs and passions. The danger was all the greater because, as has been described, people came into the realm of lower spiritual beings who could not follow the regular earthly development and therefore worked against it. These continually influenced people in such a way that they instilled in them interests which were in truth directed against the salvation of humanity. However, people still had the ability to put the growth and reproductive powers of animal and human nature at their service. - Not only ordinary people, but also some of the initiates were subject to the temptations of lower spiritual beings. They came to put the aforementioned supersensible powers at the service of something that ran counter to the development of humanity. And they sought comrades for this service who were not initiated and who applied the secrets of the supersensible workings of nature in a very low sense. The result was a great corruption of humanity. The evil spread more and more. And because the forces of growth and reproduction, when they are torn from their mother soil and used independently, are mysteriously connected with certain forces that work in the air and water, powerful corrupting forces of nature were unleashed by human actions. This led to the gradual destruction of the Atlantean region through air and water catastrophes on earth. The Atlantean human race had to emigrate if it did not perish in the storms. At that time, these storms gave the earth a new face. On the one hand, Europe, Asia and Africa gradually took on the shapes they have today. On the other side, America. Great migrations followed these countries. Of particular importance for our present are those of these migrations which went eastwards from Atlantis. Europe, Asia and Africa were gradually colonized by the descendants of the Atlanteans. Various peoples settled there. They stood at different heights of development, but also at different heights of corruption. And in their midst moved the initiates, the guardians of the oracle secrets. These founded places in various regions where the services of Jupiter, Venus and so on were cultivated in a good, but also in a bad sense. The betrayal of the Vulcan secrets had a particularly unfavorable influence. For the eyes of their confessors were most focused on earthly conditions. Through this betrayal, humanity was brought into dependence on spiritual beings who, as a result of their previous development, rejected everything that came from the spiritual world that had developed through the separation of the earth from the sun. In accordance with their thus developed disposition they worked precisely in that element which developed in man through the fact that he had perceptions in the sensual world behind which the spiritual was concealed. These beings now acquired a great influence on many human inhabitants of the earth. And this influence initially manifested itself in the fact that man's feeling for the spiritual was increasingly taken away. - Because in these times the size, form and likeness of the human physical body was still highly dependent on the characteristics of the soul, the consequence of this betrayal also manifested itself in changes in the human race in this direction. Wherever the depravity of man made itself felt, especially by placing supersensible powers at the service of base instincts, desires and passions, shapeless human figures were formed, grotesque in size and form. However, these could not survive beyond the Atlantean period. They died out. Post-Atlantean mankind developed physically from those Atlantean ancestors whose physical form had already become so solidified that they did not yield to the forces of the soul, which had now become contrary to nature. - There was a certain period in the Atlantean development in which the laws prevailing in and around the earth created precisely those conditions for the human form under which it had to solidify. Those human-racial forms that had solidified before this period were able to reproduce for a long time, but gradually the souls embodied in them became so constricted that the races had to die out. However, some of these racial forms survived into post-Atlantean times; those that remained sufficiently mobile even survived for a very long time in a modified form. Those human forms that had remained viable beyond the characterized period became bodies for souls that had experienced the harmful influence of the marked betrayal to a great extent. They were destined to die out soon.

[ 97 ] Since the middle of the Atlantean period of development, therefore, beings had asserted themselves in the area of human development which had the effect of causing man to live in the sensual-physical world in an unspiritual way. This could go so far that instead of the true form of this world, illusions and phantoms of all kinds appeared to him. Man was exposed not only to Luciferian influence, but also to that of the other beings alluded to above, whose leader may be called Ahriman according to the name he later received in Persian culture. (Mephistopheles is the same being.) Through this influence man after death came under powers which even then made him appear only as a being turned towards the earthly-sensual conditions. The free view into the processes of the spiritual world was increasingly taken away from him. He had to feel himself in the power of Ahriman and to a certain extent excluded from communion with the spiritual world.

[ 98 ] Of particular importance was an oracle site which had preserved the old service most purely in the general decline. It belonged to the Christ oracles. And that is why it was able to preserve not only the secret of Christ himself, but also the secrets of the other oracles. For in the revelation of the most sublime solar spirit, the guides of Saturn, Jupiter and so on were also revealed. In the solar oracle one knew the secret of bringing forth such human life bodies in this or that person as the best of the initiates of Jupiter, Mercury, etc. had. With the means at hand, which are not to be discussed further here, the imprints of the best bodies of the old initiates were preserved and imprinted on later suitable people. Through the Venus, Mercury and Vulcan initiates, such processes could also take place for the astral bodies.

[ 99 ] At a certain time, the leader of the Christ initiates found himself alone with some comrades to whom he could only communicate the secrets of the world to a very limited extent. For these comrades were people who, as a natural disposition, had experienced the least of the separation of the physical and the life body. Such people were the best for the further progress of mankind during this period. They gradually experienced less and less of the sleep state. The spiritual world had become more and more closed to them. But they also lacked an understanding of everything that had been revealed in ancient times when man was not in his physical body but only in his life body. The people in the immediate vicinity of the leader of the Christ oracle were the most advanced with regard to the unification of the part of the life body that had previously been separated from the physical body with the latter. This union gradually took place in humanity as a result of the change that had taken place with the Atlantean dwelling place and the earth in general. The physical body and the life body of man became more and more congruent. As a result, the earlier, now limited abilities of memory were lost and the human thought life began. The part of the life body connected with the physical body transformed the physical brain into the actual thinking tool, and only from now on did the human being actually feel his "I" in the physical body. Only then did self-consciousness awaken. This was initially only the case for a small part of humanity, especially the comrades of the leader of the Christ Oracle. The other masses of people scattered across Europe, Asia and Africa retained the remnants of the old states of consciousness in various degrees. They therefore had a direct experience of the supersensible world. - The comrades of the initiate of Christ were men of highly developed intellect, but of all men of that time they had the least experience in the supersensible realm. The initiate traveled with them from west to east, to a region in Inner Asia. He wanted to protect them as far as possible from contact with people who were less advanced in the development of consciousness. He educated these comrades in the spirit of the secrets revealed to him; in particular, he worked in this way on their descendants. In this way he educated a group of people who had absorbed into their hearts the impulses that corresponded to the mysteries of the initiation into Christ. From this group he selected the seven best so that they could have such bodies of life and astral bodies that corresponded to the imprints of the bodies of life of the seven best Atlantean initiates. Thus he raised one successor of each of the Christ, Saturn and Jupiter initiates. Initiates. These seven initiates became the teachers and leaders of the people who had colonized the south of Asia, especially ancient India, in the post-Atlantean period. Since these great teachers were actually gifted with afterimages of the life bodies of their spiritual ancestors, what was in their astral body, namely their self-processed knowledge and cognition, did not reach as far as what was revealed to them through their life body. If these revelations were to speak within them, they had to silence their own knowledge and cognition. Then the high beings, who had also spoken for their spiritual ancestors, spoke from them and through them. Except for the times when these beings spoke through them, they were simple human beings, gifted with the degree of understanding and education of the heart that they had acquired for themselves.

[ 100 ] In India at that time dwelt a kind of people who had preserved a vivid memory of the ancient Atlantean state of soul, which permitted experiences in the spiritual world. In a large number of these people there was also a powerful pull of the heart and mind towards the experiences of this supersensible world. By a wise twist of fate, the main part of this human species had come to South Asia from the best parts of the Atlantean population. Apart from this main part, other parts had immigrated at other times. For this group of people, the aforementioned Christ Initiate appointed his seven great disciples as teachers. They gave this people their wisdom and their commandments. Some of these ancient Indians needed little preparation to awaken in themselves the barely extinguished abilities that led to observation in the supersensible world. For the longing for this world was actually a basic mood of the Indian soul. In this world, it was felt, was the original home of mankind. They were transported out of this world into the one that external sensory perception and the mind bound to this perception can provide. The supersensible world was felt to be the true world and the sensory world a deception of human perception, an illusion (Maja). They strove by all means to gain insight into the true world. The illusory world of the senses was of no interest, or at least only to the extent that it proved to be a veil for the supersensible world. The power that the seven great teachers could exert on such people was enormous. What could be revealed through them was deeply implanted in the Indian souls. And because the possession of the traditional life and astral bodies gave these teachers great powers, they could also have a magical effect on their pupils. They did not actually teach. They worked as if by magic from personality to personality. This gave rise to a culture that was completely imbued with supernatural wisdom. What is contained in the wisdom books of the Indians (in the Vedas) does not give the original form of the high wisdoms that were cultivated by the great teachers in the most ancient times, but only a faint echo. Only the supersensible view turned backwards can find an unwritten primordial wisdom behind the written one. One feature that is particularly prominent in this primordial wisdom is the harmonious resonance of the various oracular wisdoms of the Atlantean period. For each of the great teachers was able to reveal one of these oracular wisdoms. And the different sides of wisdom were in perfect harmony, because behind them stood the basic wisdom of the prophetic initiation of Christ. It is true that the teacher who was the spiritual successor of the Christ-initiate did not represent that which the Christ-initiate himself could reveal. He had remained in the background of the development. At first he could not confer his high office on a post-Atlantean. The Christ-initiate of the seven great Indian teachers differed from him in that he had been able to completely process his vision of the Christ-mystery into human concepts, whereas the Indian Christ-initiate could only represent a reflection of this mystery in symbols and signs. For his humanly developed imagination did not reach as far as this mystery. But from the union of the seven teachers a knowledge of the supersensible world resulted in a great picture of wisdom, of which only the individual elements could have been proclaimed in the old Atlantean oracle. The great leaderships of the cosmic world were revealed and quietly pointed to the one great Sun Spirit, the Hidden One, who sits enthroned above those revealed by the seven teachers.

[ 101 ] What is understood here by "ancient Indians" does not coincide with what is usually meant by it. There are no external documents from the period referred to here. The people usually referred to as "Indians" correspond to a stage in the development of history that was formed long after the period referred to here. A first post-Atlantean period on earth can be recognized, in which the "Indian" culture described here was the dominant one; then a second post-Atlantean period developed, in which that culture became dominant which will be called "Urperian" later in this writing; and still later the Egyptian-Chaldean culture, which will also be described, developed. During the development of this second and third post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the "old" Indian culture also experienced a second and third epoch. And what is usually portrayed of ancient India applies to this third epoch. One must therefore not relate what is described here to the "old India" that is otherwise spoken of.

[ 102 ] Another feature of this ancient Indian culture is that which later led to the division of people into castes. Those who lived in India were descendants of Atlanteans who belonged to different types of humans, Saturnians, Jupiterians, etc. humans. Through the supersensible teachings it was understood that a soul was not placed in this or that caste by chance, but by the fact that it had destined itself for it. Such a comprehension of the supersensible teachings was facilitated here in particular by the fact that in many people the inner memories of the ancestors described above could be awakened, which however also easily led to an erroneous idea of re-embodiment. Just as in the Atlantean age the true idea of re-embodiment could only be attained through the initiates, so in ancient India only through direct contact with the great teachers. The above-mentioned erroneous idea of re-embodiment, however, found the greatest conceivable extension among the peoples who spread over Europe, Asia and Africa as a result of the fall of Atlantis. And because those initiates who had gone astray during the Atlantean development had also communicated this secret to the immature, people increasingly confused the true idea with the erroneous one. A kind of dim clairvoyance had remained with these people as a legacy of the Atlantean period. Just as the Atlanteans entered the realm of the spiritual world in sleep, so their descendants experienced this spiritual world in abnormal intermediate states between waking and sleep. The images of ancient times to which their ancestors had belonged appeared in them. They believed themselves to be reincarnations of people who had lived in such times. Teachings about reincarnation, which contradicted the genuine ideas of the initiates, spread across the whole world.

[ 103 ] In the Near Eastern regions, as a result of the long migrations that moved from west to east since the beginning of the Atlantean destruction, a group of people had settled down, whose descendants are known to history as the Persian people and the tribes related to them. The supernatural knowledge must, however, go back to much earlier times than the historical ones of these peoples. First of all, we are talking about the very early ancestors of the later Persians, among whom the second great cultural age of post-Atlantean development, after the Indian one, arose. The peoples of this second age had a different task than the Indian peoples. Their longings and inclinations were not merely directed towards the supersensible world; they were predisposed towards the physical-sensible world. They became fond of the earth. They appreciated what man could conquer on it and what he could gain through its powers. What they accomplished as a warrior people and also what they invented as a means of extracting their treasures from the earth is connected with this peculiarity of their nature. They were not in danger of completely turning away from the "illusion" of the physical-sensual through their longing for the supernatural, but rather of completely losing their spiritual connection with the supernatural world through their sense of it. The oracle sites, which had been transplanted here from the old Atlantean region, also bore the general character of the people. Forces which had once been acquired through the experiences of the supersensible world, and which could still be controlled in certain lower forms, were cultivated there to direct the phenomena of nature in such a way that they served the personal interests of man. This ancient people still had great power in the control of such natural forces, which later withdrew from human will. The guardians of the oracles commanded inner powers that were connected with fire and other elements. They can be called magicians. What they had preserved as a legacy of supersensible knowledge and supersensible powers from ancient times was admittedly weak in comparison to what man was capable of in the distant past. But it took on all forms, from noble arts that had only the welfare of mankind in mind to the most reprehensible activities. In these people, the Luciferian being reigned in a special way. It had connected them with everything that diverted man from the intentions of those higher beings who, without the Luciferic influence, would alone have guided the development of mankind forward. Even those members of this people who were still gifted with remnants of the old clairvoyant state, the intermediate state between waking and sleeping described above, felt very drawn to the lower beings of the spiritual world. This people had to be given a spiritual impulse which counteracted these character traits. They were given a leadership from the same source from which the ancient Indian spiritual life came, from the keeper of the secrets of the solar oracle.

[ 104 ] The leader of the Urperian spiritual culture, who was given by that. Guardian of the Sun Oracle to the people in question can be called by the same name that history knows as Zarathustra or Zoroaster. It must only be emphasized that the personality meant here belongs to a much earlier time than that in which history places the bearer of this name. However, it is not external historical research that is important here, but spiritual science. And whoever has to think of a later time for the bearer of Zarathustra's name may seek harmony with spiritual science by imagining a successor of the first great Zarathustra who has taken his name and works in the spirit of his teaching. - The impulse which Zarathustra had to give to his people consisted in pointing out to them how the sensual-physical world is not merely the spiritless world which confronts man when he places himself under the exclusive influence of the Luciferic being. Man owes his personal independence and his sense of freedom to this being. However, it should work in him in harmony with the opposite spiritual being. It was important for the ancient Persian people to keep their sense of this latter spiritual being alive. Their inclination towards the sensual-physical world threatened them with complete fusion with the Luciferic beings. Zarathustra had now received such an initiation through the guardian of the solar oracle that he was able to receive the revelations of the high solar beings. In special states of consciousness, to which his training had led him, he could see the leader of the solar beings, who had taken the human life body into his protection in the manner described above. He knew that this being was guiding the development of humanity, but that it could only descend to earth from outer space at a certain time. For this it is necessary that it could live in the astral body of a human being, just as it had been working in the life body since the impact of the Luciferian being. A human being had to appear who had transformed the astral body back to such a level as it would have attained without Lucifer at a certain other time (in the middle of the Atlantean development). If Lucifer had not come, man would have reached this stage earlier, but without personal independence and without the possibility of freedom. Now, however, despite these characteristics, man was to reach this height again. Zarathustra foresaw in his seer states that in the future a personality would be possible within the development of mankind which would have such a corresponding astral body. But he also knew that before this time the spiritual solar forces could not be found on earth, but that they could be perceived by the supersensible vision in the realm of the spiritual part of the sun. He was able to see these powers when he directed his vision towards the sun. And he proclaimed to his people the nature of these powers, which were initially only to be found in the spiritual world and would later descend to earth. This was the proclamation of the great sun or light spirit (the sun aura, Ahura-mazdao, Ormuzd). This spirit of light reveals itself to Zarathustra and his followers as the spirit who turns his face towards man from the spiritual world and who prepares the future within humanity. It is the spirit pointing to Christ before his appearance on earth that Zarathustra proclaims as the spirit of light. In Ahriman (Angra mainju), on the other hand, he represents a power which, through its influence, has a corrupting effect on the human soul if it surrenders to it one-sidedly. This power is none other than the one already characterized above, which had attained a special dominion on earth since the betrayal of the Vulcan secrets. In addition to the message of the god of light, Zarathustra proclaimed teachings of those spiritual beings who would be revealed to the purified mind of the seer as comrades of the spirit of light and to whom the tempters formed a contrast, who appeared to the unpurified remnant of clairvoyance that had survived from the Atlantean period. It was to be made clear to the ancient Persian people how in the human soul, insofar as it is turned towards the work and striving in the sensual-physical world, a struggle takes place between the power of the god of light and that of his opponent and how man must behave so that the latter does not lead him into the abyss, but his influence is directed into the good through the power of the former.

[ 105 ] A third cultural epoch of the post-Atlantean period was born among the peoples who had recently flocked to the Near East and North Africa as a result of the migrations. It developed among the Chaldeans, Babylonians and Assyrians on the one hand and the Egyptians on the other. Among these peoples the sense of the physical-sensual world was still developed in a different way from that of the primitive people. They had absorbed much more than others of the spiritual disposition which forms the basis of the intellectual faculty, the gift of understanding, which has arisen since the last Atlantean times. It was the task of post-Atlantean mankind to develop those faculties of the soul that could be gained through the awakened powers of thought and emotion, which are not directly stimulated by the spiritual world, but arise from the fact that man observes the world of the senses, lives in it and works it. The conquest of this sensory-physical world through these human faculties must be regarded as the mission of post-Atlantean man. This conquest progresses from stage to stage. In ancient India, man is already directed towards this world through the constitution of his soul. But he still regards it as an illusion, and his spirit is turned towards the supersensible world. In the ancient Persian people, by contrast, the endeavor to conquer the physical-sensual world appears; but this is still largely attempted with those powers of the soul which have remained as an inheritance from a time when man could reach directly up to the supersensible world. Among the peoples of the third cultural epoch, the soul has largely lost its supersensible abilities. It must explore the revelations of the spiritual in the sensual environment and educate itself further through the discovery and invention of the means of culture arising from this world. The human sciences arose from the fact that the laws of the spiritual behind the physical-sensual world were researched; human technology, artistic work and their tools and means arose from the fact that the forces of this world were recognized and processed. To the man of the Chaldean-Babylonian peoples, the world of the senses was no longer an illusion, but in its realms, in mountains and seas, in air and water, a revelation of the spiritual deeds of the powers behind it, whose laws he sought to recognize. To the Egyptian, the earth was a field of his work, which was handed over to him in a state that he had to transform through his own powers of understanding in such a way that it appeared as an imprint of human power. Oracle sites had been transplanted to Egypt from Atlantis, preferably originating from the Mercury oracle. But there were also others, for example Venus oracles. A new cultural germ was sown into that which could be cultivated in the Egyptian people through these oracle sites. It emanated from a great leader who had received his training within the Persian Zarathustra mysteries. (He was the reincarnated personality of a disciple of the great Zarathustra himself). He is called "Herbes" in reference to a historical name. By absorbing the secrets of Zarathustra, he was able to find the right path for guiding the Egyptian people. In their earthly life, between birth and death, this people had so directed their sense of the physical-sensual world that although they could only see the spiritual world behind it to a limited extent, they recognized the laws of that world. Thus the spiritual world could not be taught to him as the one into which he could settle on earth. On the other hand, it could be shown how man in a bodiless state would live after death with the world of spirits, which appear during his time on earth through their imprint in the realm of the sensual-physical. Herbes taught that insofar as man uses his powers on earth to work according to the intentions of the spiritual powers, he makes himself capable of being united with these powers after death. In particular, those who have worked most diligently in this direction between birth and death will be united with the high solar being - with Osiris. On the Chaldean-Babylonian side of this cultural current, the direction of the human sense towards the physical-sensual was more pronounced than on the Egyptian side. The laws of this world were researched and the spiritual archetypes were seen from the sensual images. But the people remained attached to the sensual in many respects. Instead of the star spirit, the star and instead of other spiritual beings, their earthly images were pushed into the foreground. Only the leaders attained truly profound insights into the laws of the supersensible world and its interaction with the sensible world. Here, more than anywhere else, a contrast between the knowledge of the initiates and the misguided faith of the people became apparent.

[ 106 ] The situation was quite different in the regions of southern Europe and western Asia, where the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch flourished. It can be called the Greco-Latin era. The descendants of people from the most diverse regions of the older world had flocked to these countries. There were oracle sites that emulated the manifold Atlantean oracles. There were people who were naturally endowed with inherited traits of ancient clairvoyance and those who could acquire them relatively easily through training. In special places, not only were the traditions of the ancient initiates preserved, but worthy successors to them arose in these places, who brought forth disciples who could rise to high levels of spiritual vision. At the same time, these peoples had within them the impulse to create a realm within the sensual world which would express the spiritual in the physical in a perfect form. Among many other things, Greek art is a result of this drive. One need only look through the Greek temple with the spiritual eye and one will recognize how in such a marvel of art the sensual-material is worked by man in such a way that it appears in every member as the expression of the spiritual. The Greek temple is the "house of the spirit". One perceives in its forms what otherwise only the spiritual eye of the supersensible sees. A Zeus (or Jupiter) temple is designed in such a way that it represents a worthy enclosure for the sensual eye of what the guardian of the Zeus or Jupiter initiation saw with the spiritual eye. And so it is with all Greek art. In mysterious ways, the wisdom of the initiates flowed into the poets, artists and thinkers. In the worldview buildings of the ancient Greek philosophers, the secrets of the initiates can be found in the form of concepts and ideas. And the influences of the spiritual life, the secrets of the Asian and African places of initiation flowed to these peoples and their leaders. The great Indian teachers, the comrades of Zarathustra, the followers of Hermes had brought in their disciples. These or their successors now founded initiation sites in which the old wisdoms were revived in a new form. These are the mysteries of antiquity. The disciples were prepared there in order to bring them into those states of consciousness through which they could attain insight into the spiritual world. (You can find more details about these mysteries of antiquity in my book: "Christianity as a Mystical Fact". Other things will be said about them in the last chapters of this book). From these places of initiation the wisdom flowed to those who cultivated the spiritual mysteries in Asia Minor, Greece and Italy. (In the Greek world, the Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries gave rise to important places of initiation. In the wisdom school of Pythagoras, the great wisdom teachings and wisdom methods of ancient times continued to have an effect. Pythagoras had been initiated into the secrets of various mysteries on long journeys)

[ 107 ] Human life - in the post-Atlantean period - between birth and death also had an influence on the bodiless state after death. The more man turned his interests towards the physical-sensual world, the greater was the possibility that Ahriman would settle into the soul during life on earth and then retain his power beyond death. Among the peoples of ancient India this danger was still the least. For they had perceived the physical-sensual world as an illusion during their earthly life. Thus they withdrew from the power of Ahriman after death. The danger was all the greater for the Urperian peoples. In the time between birth and death, they had focused their attention on the sensual-physical world. They would have fallen prey to Ahriman's entanglements to a great extent if Zarathustra had not pointed out in an impressive way through the teaching of the god of light that behind the physical-sensual world there is that of the spirits of light. As much as the people of this culture had absorbed into their souls from the world of imagination thus aroused, they withdrew just as much from the tentacles of Ahriman for life on earth and thus also for life after death, through which they were to prepare themselves for a new life on earth. In earthly life, Ahriman's power leads them to regard their sensual-physical existence as their only existence and thus to block any prospect of a spiritual world. In the spiritual world, this violence leads people to complete isolation, to directing all their interests solely towards themselves. People who are under Ahriman's control at death are reborn as egoists.

[ 108 ] At present, spiritual science can describe life between death and a new birth as it is when the Ahrimanic influence has been overcome to a certain degree. And this is how it has been described by the writer of this book in other writings and in the first chapters of this one. And this is how it must be described if it is to become clear what can be experienced by man in this form of existence when he has conquered the pure spiritual vision for what really exists. The extent to which the individual experiences it more or less depends on his conquest of the ahrimanic influence. Man comes closer and closer to what he can be in the spiritual world. How this, what man can be, is impaired by other influences, must be sharply focused on when looking at the course of development of mankind.

[ 109 ] In the case of the Egyptian people, Hermes ensured that people prepared themselves for communion with the spirit of light during their life on earth. But because people's interests between birth and death were already so shaped during this time that it was only possible to see through the veil of the physical-sensual to a limited extent, the soul's spiritual vision also remained clouded after death. The perception of the world of light remained dim. - The obscuration of the spiritual world after death reached a climax for those souls who passed from a body of the Greek-Latin culture into the body-free state. They had brought the cultivation of the sensual-physical existence to bloom in earthly life. And thus they had condemned themselves to a shadowy existence after death. That is why the Greeks perceived this life after death as a shadowy existence; and it is not mere talk, but the feeling of truth when the hero of this time, who turned to the sensual life, says: "Better a beggar on earth than a king in the realm of shadows." All this was even more pronounced among those Asian peoples who, even in their worship and adoration, only looked at the sensual images instead of the spiritual archetypes. At the time of the Greco-Latin cultural period, a large part of humanity was in the situation described above. One can see how man's mission in the post-Atlantean period, which consisted in the conquest of the physical-sensual world, necessarily led to alienation from the spiritual world. Thus the great on the one hand is necessarily connected with the decline on the other. - In the Mysteries the connection of man with the spiritual world was cultivated. Their initiates were able to receive revelations from this world in special states of soul. They were more or less the successors of the Atlantean oracle keepers. To them was revealed that which had been concealed by the impacts of Lucifer and Ahriman. Lucifer veiled for man that which had flowed into the human astral body from the spiritual world without his intervention up to the middle of the Atlantean period. If the life body had not been partially separated from the physical body, man would have been able to experience this area of the spiritual world as an inner revelation of the soul. Due to the Luciferic influence he could only do so in special states of soul. Then a spiritual world appeared to him in the guise of the astral. The corresponding beings revealed themselves through such figures, which merely bore the limbs of the higher human nature, and on these limbs the astral-visible symbols for their special spiritual powers. Superhuman figures revealed themselves in this way - After the intervention of Ahriman another kind of initiation was added to this. Ahriman veiled all that from the spiritual world which would have appeared behind the sensual-physical perception if his intervention had not taken place from the middle of the Atlantean epoch. That this was revealed to the initiates was due to the fact that they exercised all those faculties in the soul which man had acquired since that time beyond the measure by which the impressions of sensory-physical existence are achieved. This revealed to them what lies behind the forces of nature as spiritual powers. They were able to speak of the spiritual entities behind nature. The creative powers of those forces revealed themselves to them which are at work in the natural, which is below man. What had continued to work from Saturn, the sun and the old moon and had formed man's physical body, his life body, his astral body, as well as the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, formed the content of one kind of mystery secrets. They were those over which Ahriman held sway. That which had led to the sentient soul, to the intellectual soul, to the consciousness soul, was revealed in a second kind of mystery-secrets. But what could only be prophesied by the Mysteries was that in the course of time a human being would appear with such an astral body that in spite of Lucifer the light world of the sun spirit would be able to become conscious through the life body without special soul states. And the physical body of this human being had to be such that everything from the spiritual world that can be veiled by Ahriman until physical death would be revealed to it. Physical death cannot change anything within life for this human being, that is, it cannot have any power over it. In such a human being the "I" appears in such a way that the full spiritual life is simultaneously contained in the physical life. Such a being is the bearer of the spirit of light, to which the initiate rises from two sides by being led either to the spirit of the superhuman or to the being of the powers of nature in particular states of soul. By predicting that such a human being would appear in the course of time, the initiates of the Mysteries were the prophets of the Christ.

[ 110 ] As the special prophet in this sense, a personality arose in the midst of a people who by natural inheritance had the characteristics of the Near Eastern peoples and by education the teachings of the Egyptians, the Israelite people. It was Moses. So much of the influences of initiation had come into his soul that in special states the being revealed itself to this soul which had once taken over the role of shaping human consciousness from the moon in the regular development of the earth. In thunder and lightning Moses recognized not only the physical phenomena, but the revelations of the marked spirit. But at the same time the other kind of mysteries had worked on his soul, and so he heard in the astral visions the superhuman as it becomes human through the "I". Thus the one who had to come revealed himself to Moses from two sides as the highest form of the "I".

[ 111 ] And with "Christ" appeared in human form what the high solar being had prepared as the great human earth model. With this appearance, all mystery wisdom had to take on a new form in a certain respect. Before this, it was exclusively there to bring man into such a state of soul that he could see the realm of the Sun-Spirit apart from earthly development. Now the Mysteries - Wisdoms were given the task of enabling man to recognize the incarnate Christ and to understand the natural and spiritual world from this center of all wisdom.

[ 112 ] In that moment of his life, in which the astral body of Christ Jesus had everything in it that can be veiled by the Luciferic influence, his appearance as a teacher of humanity began. From that moment on, the disposition was implanted in the human development on earth to absorb the wisdom through which the physical goal on earth can gradually be reached. At that moment, when the event of Golgotha took place, the other disposition was implanted in humanity, whereby the influence of Ahriman can be turned to good. Out of life, man can now take with him through the gate of death that which liberates him from isolation in the spiritual world. The event of Palestine is not only central to the physical development of mankind, but also to the other worlds to which man belongs. And when the "Mystery of Golgotha" had been accomplished, when the "death of the cross" had been suffered, the Christ appeared in that world in which the souls dwell after death, and put the power of Ahriman in its place. From that moment on, the region that the Greeks had called a "shadowy realm" was struck by that flash of inspiration that showed its beings that light was to come into it again. What had been achieved for the physical world through the "Mystery of Golgotha" cast its light into the spiritual world. - Thus the post-Atlantean development of mankind up to this event was an ascent for the physical-sensual world. But it was also a decline for the spiritual world. Everything that flowed into the sensual world flowed out of what had been in the spiritual world since time immemorial. Since the Christ-event, people who rise to the Christ-mystery can take what they have achieved from the sensual world into the spiritual world. And from this it then flows back into the earthly-sensual world, in that people bring with them in their re-embodiment that which the Christ impulse has become to them in the spiritual world between death and a new birth.

[ 113 ] What flowed into the development of humanity through the appearance of Christ acted like a seed within it. The seed can only ripen gradually. Only the very smallest part of the depths of the new wisdoms has flowed into physical existence up to the present day. This is only at the beginning of Christian development. In the successive periods of time that have elapsed since that apparition, it has only ever been able to reveal as much of its inner essence as the people, the peoples, were able to receive, as they were able to absorb into their imagination. The first form into which this recognition could be poured can be expressed as a comprehensive ideal of life. As such, it stood in opposition to the forms of life that had developed in post-Atlantean humanity. The conditions that have influenced the development of humanity since the repopulation of the earth in Lemurian times have been described above. Accordingly, human beings can be traced back psychically to various entities which, coming from other worlds, embodied themselves in the bodily descendants of the ancient Lemurians. The different human races are a consequence of this fact. And in the re-embodied souls, as a result of their karma, the most diverse life interests arose. As long as all this continued to have an effect, there could not be the ideal of "universal humanity". Mankind started out from a unity, but the development on earth to date has led to separation. In the concept of Christ there is first of all an ideal that counteracts all separation, for in the human being who bears the name of Christ also live the forces of the high solar being, in which every human ego finds its original ground. The Israelite people still felt themselves to be a people, the human being a member of this people. By first grasping in the mere thought that in Christ Jesus lives the ideal man, to whom the conditions of separation do not penetrate, Christianity became the ideal of comprehensive brotherhood. Beyond all special interests and special affinities, the feeling arose that the innermost self of man has the same origin in everyone. (In addition to all earthly ancestors, the common father of all people appears. "I and the Father are one.")

[ 114 ] In the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries after Christ, a cultural age prepared itself in Europe that began with the fifteenth century and in which the present still lives. It was to gradually replace the fourth, the Greco-Latin age. It is the fifth post-Atlantean cultural age. The peoples who, after various migrations and the most diverse fates, made themselves the bearers of this age were descendants of those Atlanteans who had remained most untouched by what had happened in the four previous cultural periods. They had not penetrated into the areas where the corresponding cultures had taken root. On the other hand, they had propagated the Atlantic cultures in their own way. There were many people among them who had preserved to a high degree the legacy of the old twilight clairvoyance - the described intermediate state between waking and sleeping. Such people knew the spiritual world as their own experience and were able to tell their fellow human beings what was going on in this world. This gave rise to a world of tales about spiritual beings and spiritual processes. And the fairy tales and legends of the peoples originally arose from such spiritual experiences. For the twilight clairvoyance of many people lasted until times by no means long after our present day. There were other people who had lost their clairvoyance, but who nevertheless developed the abilities they had acquired for the sensory-physical world according to feelings and sensations that corresponded to the experiences of this clairvoyance. And the Atlantean oracles also had their successors here. There were mysteries everywhere. But in these mysteries there was mainly a secret of initiation which led to the revelation of that spiritual world which Ahriman keeps closed. The spiritual powers behind the forces of nature were revealed. The mythologies of the European peoples contain the remnants of what the initiates of these mysteries were able to proclaim to people. However, these mythologies also contain the other secret, but in a more imperfect form than the southern and eastern mysteries had. The superhuman beings were also known in Europe. However, they were seen to be in constant battle with Lucifer's comrades. And the God of Light was proclaimed, but in such a form that it could not be said to defeat Lucifer. Instead, the future figure of Christ shone into these mysteries. It was proclaimed that his kingdom would replace the kingdom of that other god of light. (All the legends of the twilight of the gods and the like have their origin in this realization of the mysteries of Europe). Such influences gave rise to a split in the souls of the people of the fifth cultural epoch, which still persists today and manifests itself in the most diverse manifestations of life. From ancient times, the soul did not retain the pull towards the spiritual so strongly that it could have retained the connection between the spiritual and the sensual world. It only retained it as a cultivation of feelings and sensations, but not as a direct vision of the supersensible world. In contrast, man's gaze was increasingly directed towards the sensual world and its control. And the intellectual powers that awoke in the last Atlantean period, all the powers in man whose instrument is the physical brain, were trained towards the sensory world and its cognition and control. Two worlds developed, so to speak, in the human breast. One is turned towards the sensual-physical existence, the other is receptive to the revelation of the spiritual in order to penetrate it with feeling and sensation, but without perception. The dispositions for this division of the soul were already present when the doctrine of Christ was introduced into Europe. This message was received from the spirit into the hearts, penetrating sensation and feeling, but was unable to build a bridge to that which the mind, directed towards the senses, explored in physical-sensual existence. What we know today as the contrast between external science and spiritual knowledge is only a consequence of this fact. Christian mysticism (Eckhardt's, Tauler's, etc.) is a result of the interpenetration of feeling and sensation with Christianity. Science, which is merely directed towards the world of the senses, and its results in life are the consequences of the other side of the soul's dispositions. And the achievements in the field of external material culture are entirely due to this separation of dispositions. By turning one-sidedly to physical life, those faculties of man which have their instrument in the brain have been able to attain that increase which has made possible present-day science, technology and so on. And the origin of this material culture could only lie with the peoples of Europe. For they are the descendants of Atlantean ancestors, who only developed the trait for the physical-sensual world into abilities when it had reached a certain maturity. Before that, they let it lie dormant and lived from the heirlooms of Atlantean clairvoyance and the messages of their initiates. While outwardly the spiritual culture was devoted only to these influences, the sense of material mastery of the world slowly matured.

[ 115 ] However, the dawn of the sixth post-Atlantean cultural period is already announcing itself. For what is to emerge at a certain time in the development of mankind is slowly maturing in the preceding period. What can already develop in the early stages is the discovery of the thread that connects the two sides of the human breast, material culture and life in the spiritual world. For this it is necessary that on the one side the results of spiritual vision are understood and on the other side the revelations of the spirit are recognized in the observations and experiences of the sense world. The sixth cultural epoch will bring the harmony between the two to full development. - Thus the consideration of this book has advanced to a point where it can pass from a view into the past to a view into the future. But it is better if this outlook is preceded by a consideration of the knowledge of the higher world and of initiation. Then this outlook, insofar as it is possible within the framework of this writing, can be given briefly.

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