Awareness - Life - Form
GA 89
1903/04
Translated by Steiner Online Library
Draft for the Presentation of Spiritual Cosmology
[ 1 ] The existence of the present human being does not take place in just one state of consciousness, but in several. The ordinary [state] is the one in which humans find themselves from the moment they wake up until they fall asleep. In this state, they perceive things through their senses and form mental images from their sensory perceptions. This is how the physical world exists for them. And it is to this world that the powers of their soul, their thinking, feeling, willing, and acting, relate.
[ 2 ] This state of consciousness is now alternated by two others: dream-filled sleep and deep, dreamless sleep. These states are often referred to as “unconscious.” However, this term obscures the facts under consideration here. In truth, they are only other types of consciousness. They could be called duller types of the same thing.
[ 3 ] Dream-filled sleep does not show objects like waking daytime consciousness, but images that arise and disappear in the soul. As confusing as these images may seem to ordinary consciousness, the clarification of their essence is capable of leading us deeper into the nature of the world. What they represent in the nightly life of the soul cannot provide a proper basis for their recognition. Such a basis is only available to those who, in the sense of the training described in this book, develop their higher powers of cognition, which lead them to an insight into the supersensible worlds. This chapter will describe the facts that apply to these higher worlds. Those who embark on the path of knowledge into these realms themselves will then also find these facts to be true.
[ 4 ] What must first strike us about the dream world is the symbolic character of its images. This character becomes clear when one pays reasonably subtle attention to the colorful diversity of dream experiences. From simple symbols to dramatic events, all intermediate stages can be found in this world that flits through the soul. One dreams of a conflagration; one wakes up and realizes that one had fallen asleep next to the lamp. In the dream, one perceived the light of the lamp, but not as it appears to the senses in the ordinary world, but symbolically, as a conflagration. Or one dreams of a troop of horsemen trampling past; one wakes up, and the trampling of horses continues immediately as the striking of the clock, which has symbolized itself in this way. - You dream of an animal scratching your face; when you wake up, you feel pain in the affected area, which has found its dream symbol in the manner indicated. — A longer dream might be something like the following. Someone dreams that they are walking through a forest. They hear a noise. As they continue walking, a person emerges from the bushes and approaches them. This person attacks them. A fight ensues, and the attacker shoots. At that moment, the dreamer wakes up and realizes that they have just knocked over the chair next to their bed. The impact of the chair has been transformed into the symbolic action described above by the dreamer's consciousness. In this way, external events or even internal facts, such as in the above example of the scratching animal, can be perceived as symbols through dreams. Emotions and moods can also be represented in this way. For example, someone suffers from the oppressive feeling that an unpleasant event will happen to them in the next few days. In the dream, this feeling is represented by the person being in danger of drowning.
[ 5 ] The examples described above characterize two properties of dream consciousness: first, its pictorial, symbolic character, and second, something creative in it. — This creative aspect is not characteristic of daytime consciousness. Daytime consciousness presents the things in our environment as they are in the physical world. Dream consciousness adds something from another source.
[ 6 ] What opens up this source? Nothing other than the fact that the sensory activity on which ‘daytime consciousness’ depends has ceased during sleep. The silence of this sensory activity is expressed by the disappearance of human self-consciousness. This self-consciousness is bound to the activity of the external senses; when these fall silent, it sinks into an abyss. In the so-called secret science, this fact is described by saying that the human soul has withdrawn from the physical world. Anyone who does not want to claim that human beings cease to exist when they fall asleep and come into being anew when they wake up will not find it difficult to recognize that human beings exist in a world other than the physical world during sleep. This world is called the astral world. The reader should initially accept this term as a designation for the world of which human beings have an inkling through their dreams. The justification for this term will become clear in other chapters of this book.
[ 7 ] During dreams, humans dwell in the astral world. The facts and beings of this world are represented in images. Consciousness perceives these images, but human self-awareness is absent. A comparison with everyday life can give a mental image of what is actually happening here. Human beings perceive the outside world only insofar as they have organs for doing so. Without ears, there would be no world of sound for them; without eyes, no world of light and color, and so on. If human beings could develop a new organ in their bodies, something completely new would appear in their environment, just as light and color appear as something completely new to those born blind after their operation.
[ 8 ] Just as the physical body of a person perceives the physical world through its organs, so during sleep another body—a spiritual one—perceives the other world, the astral world, through its own organs. However, this body is not connected with self-consciousness. In this state, self-consciousness is outside the realm of the human being.
[ 9 ] If it were impossible for human self-awareness to come into being in this state, then humans would never be able to understand the circumstances under consideration here. However, this is possible through the higher training mentioned above and described in this book, which is also called initiation. Through it, the human being learns to develop organs in his astral body in the dream state similar to those his physical body has for perceiving the physical world. And once these organs are developed, a self-consciousness arises during the dream that is similar to that which he has during waking daytime life. Once this stage of existence has been reached, however, the entire dream world undergoes a considerable transformation. It loses the confusing colorfulness that it has for the ordinary sleeper and is replaced by an inner order and harmony that not only equals the ordinary physical world, but also surpasses it to a high degree in terms of these qualities. The human being becomes aware that there has always been another world around him, in the same sense that the world of light and colors is around the blind person. He could not see it only because of a lack of organs of perception, just as the blind person cannot see the world of light and colors before his operation. The significant moment when the astral organs of perception begin to function in humans is called awakening or rebirth in esoteric science.
[ 10 ] At this moment of awakening, the human being experiences that he is surrounded by a higher world in which not only the things of the sensory world previously known to him have different qualities, but in which there are facts and essences that were previously unknown to him. — And now it also becomes clear to him that in this other world there are images from which the things of the sensory world are formed. It is not an inaccurate mental image to compare the way in which the physical world arises from the astral world with the formation of ice from water. Just as ice is transformed water, so the physical world is the transformed astral world. And just as water is a flowing element, so the astral world stands in the background of the physical world as an ever-changing world of images. Nothing fixed or closed can be found in its forms, as in the ordinary world. Everything flows into everything else and transforms itself. And a physical thing or a physical being comes into being only when such a flowing image solidifies for a moment. Anyone who wanted to apply the mental images of the physical world with its fixed boundaries to the astral realm would only reveal that they lack a real insight into this completely different world.
[ 11 ] Just as the beings of the physical world are embodied in the physical body, so the astral images are the expression of beings that do not enter the physical world. They find this expression in a different substance than the human being living in the physical world, who finds his in flesh and blood.
[ 12 ] What, then, is this astral substance? It is none other than that which human beings actually have within themselves. It is only covered up, as it were, by sensory mental images during everyday waking life. Human desires, wishes, and aversions, sympathies and antipathies are linked to these sensory mental images. They desire one object and reject another. It is in nothing other than these desires, wishes, and aversions that the source is to be found from which dream consciousness also draws when it transforms things into symbols. The self-consciousness of daily life feeds desires and wishes with external perceptions. When the activities of the external senses fall silent, another creative force steps in and forms images from the substance of desires and wishes. Secret science now says that the dreaming person is in the astral body woven from desires and cravings and that the physical body has been abandoned by self-consciousness. In the case of the initiate or awakened person, the situation is such that he has also left his physical body, but his self-consciousness dwells in his astral body. Just as the physical body can convey the perception of physical things because its organs are made of the same substance as the physical world, so the initiate can perceive the beings of the astral world because he has organs made of the substance of desires and cravings in which they find their expression.
[ 13 ] The difference between the uninitiated and the initiated person is that the former does not perceive the astral world as an external world, whereas the latter does. For the unawakened, this astral world remains a mere inner world; they experience it in their wishes and desires, but they do not see it. The initiated person not only feels their desire; they perceive it as something in the outer world, just as the unawakened person perceives tables and chairs.
[ 14 ] The ordinary dream world is, however, only a faint echo of this world of the initiated. It can only be this because self-consciousness is not involved in it. But where is this self-consciousness during the dream? It has withdrawn into a higher world in which man does not initially exist as such. A comparison can clarify his relationship to this world. Think of a human hand and a tool held by it. As long as the hand holds the tool, the two form a whole, as it were. The latter carries out the activities determined by the former. But as soon as the hand puts the tool down, it is left to its own devices; and the movements of the hand are only expressions of the will of the person to whom it belongs. Thus, during waking daytime life, the physical body must be regarded as a tool of a member of a higher being. When this higher being extends a limb, as it were, into the physical body, sensory activity and thus self-consciousness arise in it. When this limb leaves the body, self-consciousness ceases. Thus, the innermost essence of the human being, which can have self-consciousness, is a limb of a higher being, from which it is temporarily extended, as it were, and covered with the physical body. However, the corresponding mental image can be better understood if one regards the protrusion as a severing, as if during waking life a drop detached itself from the higher being in question, which is then reabsorbed during sleep. For during waking life, the human being is not aware of his connection with a higher being; he is thus effectively severed from it. During sleep, self-consciousness must be absent, for it withdraws into the higher being; the latter absorbs it, and so it rests enclosed within it.
[ 15 ] When dreamless sleep sets in, the world of images disappears. The physical body now appears to lie there completely unconscious; in reality, however, its state of consciousness is only even more dull than in dream-filled sleep. The image-producing power has also left the physical body. Therefore, only the insights of the awakened can shed light on this state. The unawakened lack perceptions of it. To the awakened, however, the image-producing body, which was previously loosely connected to the physical body, appears to have been lifted out of it. And it is now not idle, but has the task of restoring the forces of the physical body, which appear exhausted through fatigue, to their appropriate strength. This explains the refreshing nature of healthy sleep. Weary, the physical body sinks into sleep. At this moment, it surrenders its self-consciousness to higher beings. In the intermediate state of dream sleep, the soul remains loosely connected to the physical body. The characteristic feature of this soul is its creativity. From the moment of awakening, it begins to apply its creative power to processing the perceptions conveyed by the senses into human inner life. At the moment of falling asleep, external sensory perceptions fall away. In the intermediate state of dreaming, the creative power is transformed into the symbols described above; then these symbols also disappear; the soul turns its entire creative power to the body, which it now works on from the outside. Anyone who wanted to disregard the teachings of secret science altogether could already deduce from the fact of feeling refreshed in the morning upon awakening what characterizes the soul's nocturnal activity. There is something disharmonious and chaotic about daily life. Things in the physical environment affect people from all sides. Soon this, soon that finds its way into their inner being. This throws the inner forces of education out of the order that befits them by their original nature. At night, this is balanced out again. The soul restores order and harmony. Through daily life, the physical body gradually comes to resemble a mass of air that is swept by wind currents from all sides, its parts moving about in an irregular manner. Upon awakening, however, it can be compared to a mass of air set into regular vibrations by the rhythm and harmony of a piece of music. And indeed, to the initiated, the work of the soul on the body during sleep appears as a sounding through of the body. During sleep, the human being immerses itself in the harmony of the soul life. And this is the same harmony from which it was formed. Before the physical body opened itself to the outside world for the first time through the sense organs, it was completely under the influence of this harmony, which structured it. This harmony pervades the whole world as soul harmony, as soul tones. Human beings are surrounded by its sounds just as they are surrounded by the images described above. Just as this world of images becomes perceptible to the awakened person through training, so does this third world on an even higher level. It begins to sound and resonate around them. And in these sounds, the meaning of the world opens up to them. Just as the form of the physical world arose from the images, so these forms received their inner meaning and essence from the sounds described. From this point of view, all things are sounds that have taken form.
[ 16 ] During waking life, therefore, the human being is a being composed of three parts: the physical body, which perceives the physical world through the organs implanted in it from the outer world and encompasses self-consciousness; a body that has a mobile image character within itself; its images are at the same time the archetypes of the physical body, whose clearly defined forms have emerged, as it were, through solidification from the changing images of the second body; and furthermore, both the physical and the image bodies are permeated by a harmony of sound, a third body. — In dream sleep, the soul withdraws from the physical body; it remains in connection with the other two bodies, resonates through the sound body and permeates the image body with images. The latter act upon the physical body and communicate the shadowy dream images to it. In dreamless sleep, the soul is connected only to the sound body; what was in the physical body while awake is now outside it and works on it from outside. This activity flowing into it from the soul produces only such a dull consciousness in it that it is not perceived by the human being.
[ 17 ] In fact, this presents three states of consciousness of the physical body: waking daytime consciousness, dream consciousness, and dreamless sleep consciousness. For the initiate, the dullness of the latter two states of consciousness brightens; through this brightening, they live in higher worlds, just as the unawakened live in the physical outer world during waking daytime life. This gives us five states of consciousness, which are arranged in the following order according to their increasing brightness:
1. dreamless sleep consciousness
2. dream sleep
3. waking daytime consciousness
4. the image consciousness of the initiate
5. the sound consciousness of the initiate.
[ 18 ] Considering that, through esoteric training, the last two states of consciousness are attained by the initiate as a higher stage of human development, it will be readily apparent that waking daytime consciousness also represents a higher stage of the two subordinate states of consciousness, having developed from them. This is what esoteric science describes. It explains that in the distant past, human beings went through a stage of development in which they had only a dull sleep consciousness, uninterrupted by any dream images; then they rose to a dull dream consciousness, finally arriving at the waking daytime consciousness of today. The initiate continues this line of development. He develops the two higher forms of consciousness.
[ 19 ] Now, however, an even higher form of consciousness is attainable for this initiate. For it is evident from the foregoing that even in sound consciousness the soul is still connected with the human body. This connection can cease entirely. The soul can leave the body completely. The initiate learns this. And then he must have developed organs of an even higher kind than before if he wants to perceive anything. If this is the case, then the meaning of the world expresses itself directly in his surroundings, without the mediation of ‘sound’. This highest level of consciousness is initially called spiritual or pure spiritual consciousness. In the sense of the previous list of levels of consciousness, this would correspond to a state in the present human being that represents an even duller consciousness than dreamless sleep consciousness. In terms of meaning, this is indeed the case. However, the present human being cannot actually experience this state. Their soul would then have to be completely outside the body; dreamless sleep would have to be interrupted by a completely soulless state. This would in fact be equivalent to a temporary surrender of the physical body to itself, that is, a temporary killing. The physical body must not be exposed to this if it is not to run the risk of becoming incapable of receiving the soul.
[ 20 ] In evolution, however, this state has in fact preceded dreamless sleep consciousness, so that the complete series of stages of human consciousness is as follows:
1. a low, dull consciousness
2. dreamless sleep consciousness
3. dream consciousness
4. bright daytime consciousness
5. image consciousness
6. sound consciousness
7. spiritual consciousness.
[ 21 ] The human body has only advanced to the fourth level of consciousness in the present. The initiate can attain the higher types of consciousness. However, they also lead him into higher worlds. Human development can be mentally imaged as follows: the physical body has formed itself through the first three stages and has now taken on such a form that, during sleep, it still displays two other forms of consciousness as remnants of previous stages. The first stage has been completely obliterated by evolution. — The three higher stages of consciousness of the initiate cannot yet be expressed in the physical human body, because it cannot develop the organs for them. They are prophetic foretellings of forms that this physical body will yet assume.
[ 22 ] If, starting from these distinctions, one wants to form a correct mental image of the present world, it appears as a fourfold world: first, the physical world of the bodily senses; then, enveloping and permeating this, a world of images; further, a world of sound permeating both; and finally, a spiritual world underlying them all.
[ 23 ] This world was preceded by another in which human beings lived like dreaming beings. Their physical bodies were then in the same state as they are now during dream-filled sleep. Their surroundings resembled a panorama of changing images. There were no fixed outlines of things. This state was interrupted at that time by another, which is similar to the present dreamless sleep. And this in turn was interrupted by another, which can no longer be realized today and which was filled by the first of the forms of consciousness characterized above.
[ 24 ] In an even earlier world, human beings were also unable to rise to the experience of dream images. Their highest consciousness was that of dreamless sleep, and this state was interrupted by the lower, dull consciousness that is now already blurred; this in turn was interrupted by a state that has lost all significance for present-day development.
[ 25 ] In the first world, to which secret science refers, humans also lack dull sleep consciousness; the first of the states described is their highest; two others, which are not considered today, alternated with it.
[ 26 ] Thus, one looks back into a distant past of development; one surveys four stages through which the physical human body has passed. But we also look into the future, in which the three forms of consciousness accessible today to initiates in higher worlds will find their realization in the physical world. Our world will be replaced by a future one in which physical human bodies will have organs through which a self-conscious human being will perceive an eternally moving world of images, indeed will see himself as such. And further, one looks to a world in which the images will be permeated by harmonious sounds that will express their inner essence. Finally, to a world with a spiritual nature, but one that will have poured its spirit into physical nature.
[ 27 ] This is how secret science depicts the development of the world in which human beings pass through successive stages. And it designates these stages of development with names that have then been transferred to the planets surrounding the Earth. The stage of development at which human beings stood with their consciousness still in a dull state is called Saturn development; the second, in which human beings lived with dreamless sleep consciousness, is called the Sun stage; the third, in which dream consciousness appeared, is called the Moon stage; the fourth, the present stage, in which human beings have struggled their way to clear daytime consciousness, is called the Earth stage. And the stages of the future, in which the stages of consciousness attainable today by initiates in higher worlds will find their physical expression, are called successively the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan stages of development.
[ 28 ] The difference between the types of consciousness of the initiate and the states of consciousness of human beings during the future Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolutions lies in the fact that the former must rise to higher worlds in order to live in the corresponding states of consciousness, whereas the future human being will have them in the physical world. This stems from the fact that in the present, the initiate's corresponding organs of perception are formed from the forces of the higher worlds; in the future, equivalent organs will arise in the physical human body from the physical environment. Human beings can perceive as their environment precisely that world which provides the material for their organs. In the future, the physical environment will have formative forces that currently belong only to the higher worlds. The development of the world can therefore be described as a succession of higher and higher worlds becoming physically embodied. The earth is the fourth embodiment. Its physical structure has the ability to imprint the organs for clear daytime consciousness on the human body. In the sense of secret science, it developed from another physical state in which it could only imprint organs for dream consciousness on the body. This state is referred to as the “moon.” The earth is thus formed from this “moon” by acquiring a new ability, namely to develop the organs for waking daytime consciousness. The “moon” arose from the “sun.” What has now become the ‘earth’ was therefore the “sun” at that time. Secret science refers to the “sun state” as the state in which the world body located within it can only produce the organs for dreamless sleep consciousness in a human body. And before the Earth was a ‘sun’ in this sense, it was at the stage of “Saturn.”
[ 29 ] How does such a world body acquire the power to form the corresponding organs in the human body? It could never do so if these organs were not preformed in relation to higher worlds by human beings who have gone before. By preforming the Jupiter organs in higher worlds, the initiates create the possibility for the surrounding world of images to take on a physical character. The solidification into the physical-corporeal is brought about by the fact that the forms which it is to take on are first present in a spiritual way. Thus the initiates become the transformers of the world body they inhabit. From them, as it were, radiate the formative forces that subsequently bring into being the things of the physical human environment.
[ 30 ] Thus, the initiates of the lunar stage spiritually preformed the physical shape of the Earth. The present-day earthly environment of human beings formed the content of their soul experiences. They perceived the earth as their object in a higher world.
[ 31 ] In this sense, secret science recognizes seven great world cycles or world periods through which the being that represents the earth in its fourth stage passes. Each such period is linked to a higher formation of the human body. Based on this insight, this science sees the “fourfold” as characterizing the present stage of world development. What Pythagoras and his school, for example, referred to as the “fourfold” is thus characterized. The ‘four’ is the number of the “great world,” that is, the world that human beings currently inhabit. It has raised him to the fourth stage of his consciousness.
[ 32 ] Secret science contrasts the human being himself with the “small world” of this “great world.” In his predispositions, he already has within him as soul what the “great world” is to become physically. He is therefore on the way to expanding his inner “small world” into the “big world.” Within him is the creative womb of the latter. In this sense, secret science sees in the soul a creative seed for the future, an “inner” that strives to realize itself in an outer world.
[ 33 ] But in order to be creative in the external world, this soul must first mature. It must first experience internally what it will later shape in the external world. For example, before the soul possessed the ability to imprint organs for waking daytime consciousness on the physical body, it first had to go through a series of stages of development in which it gradually acquired this ability. Thus, the soul first had to experience the first state of consciousness within itself before it could create it; and so it was with the other forms of consciousness. These stages of development of the soul, which precede the creation of the types of consciousness within it, are called stages of life in esoteric science. Accordingly, there are seven stages of life, just as there are seven stages of consciousness. Life differs from consciousness in that the former has an inner character, while the latter is based on a relationship with the outside world.
[ 34 ] Applied to the earth, one can say that before the bright state of daytime consciousness of the human body appeared on it, this world body had to pass through four states, which can be understood as four states of life.
[ 35 ] The stages of soul experience arise when one internalizes what is perceived as the external world in the states of consciousness. First, there is that dull state of consciousness that precedes dreamless sleep. In the latter, the soul works harmoniously on the body; its corresponding state of life is the harmonization of its own inner being. It thus permeates itself with a world of resonant movement. Before, in the dull state of experience, it was in its own motionless inner being. It felt this inner being in undifferentiated indifference on all sides. This lowest state of life is referred to as the first elemental realm. It is an experience of matter in its original state. Matter is excited and set in motion in various directions. And its self-experience of this mobility is the first stage of life, the first elemental realm. — The second stage is reached when these movements become rhythm and harmony. The corresponding stage of life is the inner awareness of rhythm as sound. This is the second elemental realm. The third stage develops when the movements transform into images. Then the soul lives within itself as in a world of images that form and dissolve again. This is the third elemental realm. At the fourth stage, the images take on fixed forms; individual elements emerge from the changing panorama. As a result, they can no longer be experienced only inwardly, but can also be perceived outwardly. This realm is the realm of the outer bodies.
[ 36 ] In this realm, a distinction must be made between the form it has for the bright daytime consciousness of human beings and the form it experiences within itself. The body actually experiences its form within itself, that is, the substance that forms itself into regular shapes. — At the next stage, this mere experience of form is overcome; it is replaced by the experience of form change. The form forms itself and transforms itself. One can say that at this stage, the third elemental realm appears in a higher form. In the third elemental kingdom, the movement from form to form can only be experienced as an image; in this fifth kingdom, the image passes into solidification in the external object, but this external object does not die in form, but retains its ability to change. This kingdom is that of growing and reproducing bodies. And its capacity for transformation manifests itself precisely in growth and reproduction. In the next kingdom, the ability to experience the external in its effect on the internal is added. It is the kingdom of sentient beings. The last kingdom to be considered is that which not only experiences the effect of external things within itself, but also experiences their inner nature. This is the realm of sentient beings. Thus, the sequence of stages of life is structured as follows:
1. Dull material life
2. Experience of inner movement
3. Experience of inner formation
4. Experience of a fixed boundary
5. Experience of transformation
6. Experience of the effects of the outer world as sensation
7. Witnessing of the outer world.
[ 37 ] The inner experience of the soul must first be preceded by the creation of this life. For nothing can be experienced that has not first come into existence. If secret science describes inner experience as soul-related, it refers to creative activity as spiritual. The [physical body] perceives through organs; the soul experiences itself internally; the spirit creates externally. Just as the seven stages of consciousness are preceded by seven soul experiences, these soul experiences are preceded by seven types of creative activity. The dull experience of matter corresponds in the realm of creativity to the production of this matter. Matter flows into the world in an indifferent manner. This realm is referred to as that of formlessness. On the next stage, matter is structured and its parts enter into relationship with each other. We are thus dealing with different substances that combine and separate. This realm is called the realm of form. On the third stage, matter no longer needs to enter into relationship with matter itself, but forces emanate from matter, substances attract and repel each other, and so on. We are dealing with the astral realm. At the fourth stage, a material substance appears, shaped by the forces of the environment, which at the third stage merely regulated the external relationships and now work their way into the interior of beings. This is the realm of the physical. A being at this stage is a mirror of its environment; the forces of the latter work on its structure. Further progress consists in the being not only structuring itself internally in accordance with the forces in the environment, but also giving itself an external physiognomy that bears the imprint of this environment. If a being on the fourth stage represents a mirror of its environment, then a being on the fifth stage expresses this environment physiognomically. This stage is therefore called the physiognomic stage in secret science. At the sixth stage, physiognomy becomes an outflow of itself. A being at this stage forms the things of its environment in the same way that it first formed itself. This is the stage of shaping. And at the seventh stage, shaping transitions into creation. The being that has arrived there creates forms in its environment that replicate on a small scale what its environment is on a large scale. This is the stage of creativity.
The development of the spiritual is therefore divided into the following stages:
1. Formlessness
2. Forming
3. Incorporating power
4. Designing in accordance with the forces of the environment
5. Physiognomic expressiveness
6. Creative power
7. Creative ability.
[ 38 ] When Saturn's development began, the human body was at the stage of formlessness. It first had to struggle its way to creative ability before a soul could experience its first material life in it. This means that the body first had to develop through the seven stages of creative activity before its soul could live through it. This soul must now reach the point where it can communicate its inner movement to each of the seven forms of the body. The first time the body passes through its seven forms, it is still completely lifeless. Only on the seventh stage, when the body becomes creative, does its life awaken. And it must now awaken, for the body expends substance in its creative activity. The soul must replace this substance. And now a second cycle begins. The substance that flows into the body as a replacement itself goes through the seven stages from formlessness to creative ability. Once it has reached this stage, the soul is no longer limited to the experiences caused by the movement of the inflowing substance, but begins a new stage of life. Because the inflowing substance itself has become creative, it begins to fill the body internally. Previously, it had only ever replaced what had been lost; now it is stored in the body. And again, it goes through all the stages from formlessness to creative ability. First, it is stored in the body in a formless state, then it gradually takes on forms, develops powers, shapes structures, gives them a physiognomic expression, and so on. During this entire cycle, the soul goes through its third stage of life. It harmonizes this inner structure and balances out the disorder caused by the inner processes. Once the substance within has been shaped in this way, it moves on to a fourth stage, in which it allows the outside world to have an effect on it. It can do this because the soul inhabiting it has now matured to the point where it can experience the impressions of its surroundings in a dull manner and thus repeatedly restore order to the disorder caused by the outside world. In the next cycle, the body no longer stops at structuring itself; it transforms itself under the influence of the outside world. The soul has matured enough to regulate this transformation. Then a cycle begins for the body in which it perceives the effects of the outside world as sensations. The soul again forms the regulator of this stage of existence. Finally, the body has reached its last stage; it can experience the outside world. The soul is now ready to experience the next stage, namely the next stage of consciousness in a world higher than Saturn's existence. During this last Saturn cycle, it thus goes through the dreamless state of sleep. And it now transfers this to the physical body during the first solar cycle.
[ 39 ] It is evident that during the Saturn period, the physical human body passed through seven physical stages. Each time it reached one of these stages, the soul attained a higher stage of experience. At the seventh stage, it went beyond Saturn's development and pointed to the solar stage in its experience.
[ 40 ] When the solar cycle begins, the physical body is ready to take on its own form. Whereas the soul was previously the regulator of this form, it now has its own formative force within itself. This is called the etheric body. The soul is no longer in direct connection with the physical body; the etheric body stands between them as a mediator. Its experiences are transferred to this etheric body, just as they were previously transferred to the physical body. Now, the seven states of form must first be passed through again from this etheric body, from formlessness to creative activity. As the etheric body has a formative effect on the physical body, it continuously loses its tension. And this is regulated again and again by the soul. In this way, the development of the sun also passes through seven physical stages. And in each of these, the soul appears at a higher level; on the seventh, it forms a new state of consciousness. While it still witnesses how the etheric body becomes the creator of new forms that replicate the entire solar world, it already senses within itself a world of images that ebbs and flows within it.
[ 41 ] During the first lunar cycle, it transfers this world of images to the etheric body, which now shapes the physical body according to these soul images. Just as the formative etheric body has moved between the physical body and the soul at the solar stage, so now the characterized image body is interposed between them and the soul. In secret science, it is called the feeling body. For just as human feelings flow in from the outside world, as it were, and thus make the content of the outside world the property of the inner world, so the images of the image body work from the inside out and imprint their content on the etheric body, which in turn transfers it to the physical body.
[ 42 ] During the lunar evolution, the human being again passes through all seven stages of form, in order to allow the soul to mature to a higher level in each of them. During the seventh stage, the soul has the ability to give its images the most perfect form; it can witness everything that is happening on the world body around it, so that its world of images is an expression of the entire lunar world. At the same time, it has a foretaste of the elevated state of consciousness of the next stage; it begins to see fixed forms within its changing world of images. This enables it to mature to the point where it can also act on the etheric body in such a way that it develops organs within itself that have something lasting about them. And with that, the transition to the first earth cycle can be made. Within this cycle, the physical body takes in the fixed image forms; these become its organs. With this, a fourth limb begins to develop in the human being. Perceptions of external objects interpose themselves between the image body and the soul. The body has now, in a certain sense, outgrown the soul; it has become independent. What previously appeared in it were the results of those images which the soul had appropriated from the external world. Now the external world directly causes perceptions in it. And the inner life of the soul proceeds as a co-experience of these perceptions. The expression of this independent activity of the body is self-consciousness. But self-consciousness only matures gradually. First, the human being must go through a cycle of forms in which only dull material life is felt in his organs; in a second cycle, the influence of matter causes an inner movement; the etheric body thereby experiences the outer world and transforms the organs into living tools of the physical organism. In a third cycle, the image body also becomes capable of reproducing the outer world. It now stimulates the organs in such a way that they themselves produce images that live within them, but are not yet reflections of external things. Only in the fourth cycle does the soul itself become capable of permeating the bodily organs; in doing so, it detaches the images from these bodily organs and covers external things with them. Thus, an external world stands before it, to which it stands in opposition as an inner, independent being. — But now is also when, from time to time, the bodily organs it uses fall into exhaustion. Then the possibility of connecting with the external world ceases. Sleep sets in, during which the soul once again exerts a balancing influence on the physical body in its former manner through the image and etheric bodies. Thus, for secret science, sleep appears to be a remnant of earlier stages of development. At present, human beings have passed the midpoint of the fourth earth cycle. This is expressed in the fact that they perceive not only external objects in their bright daytime consciousness, but also the laws underlying them. The soul has begun to experience the inner transformation of things.
[ 43 ] During the Saturn development, the human body was at the level of the dullest consciousness. However, one should not assume that other levels of consciousness were not present in beings who existed at that time in connection with this earlier embodiment of the Earth. Above all, there was a being at that time whose consciousness was equivalent to the present waking consciousness of human beings. But since the conditions of the Saturn environment were completely different from those on Earth, this level of consciousness also had to function in a fundamentally different way.
[ 44 ] Earth humans have minerals, plants, and animals around them as objects of perception. They regard these beings as inferior to themselves, considering themselves to be higher beings in relation to them. With the Saturnian being, the opposite was true. It had three groups of beings above it and had to consider itself the lowest link in the realm of what was perceptible to it. These three higher groups of beings were given different names in secret science, depending on the language of the people and the time to which the secret teachers belonged. The designations of Christian secret science are, listed from top to bottom: Lordships (Kyriotetes), Powers (Dynamis), and Authorities (Exusiai). The fourth lowest link in the chain is that characterized being, just as the earthly human being is the highest link in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. In accordance with these very different conditions, the nature of perception itself was also different. The initiate knows this nature from experience. For it is equivalent to what he attains as his third stage, beyond waking daytime consciousness, namely spiritual consciousness. It is as if the impressions did not come to the senses from external objects, but as if they pressed in from within, flowed outwards from the senses, and encountered the objects and beings outside, reflecting themselves in them and then appearing in their reflection to the consciousness. This was the case with that Saturn being. It poured its life force onto the things of the planet, and from all sides the reflection was thrown back to it in the most manifold ways. It perceived its own life from all sides in the mirror image. And the things that reflected its essence back to it were the beginnings of the physical human body. For the planet consisted of them. What else was perceived did not appear on the planet, but in its orbit. The beings called Exusiai (powers) appeared as radiant beings illuminating the world body from all sides. Saturn itself was a dark body; it did not receive its light from dead light sources, but from these beings who inhabited its orbit and illuminated it as luminous beings. Their light revealed itself to the perception of the Saturn being, just as the animal body currently makes itself perceptible to humans. The beings called Dynamis (powers) revealed themselves in a similar way from the periphery through spiritual sounds, and the Kyriotetes (lordships) through what is called in secret science the world aroma, a kind of impression that can be compared to the present sense of smell.
[ 45 ] Just as the earthly human being rises above the perceptions of external things to mental images that live only within him, so that the Saturn being recognized, in addition to the aforementioned beings that revealed themselves to it as if from within, beings that it perceived from without; in Christian esoteric science they are called seraphim, cherubim, and thrones. There is nothing within the sphere of human experience that can be compared to the sublime characteristics in which they appeared at that time. Finally, this Saturn being was aware of a third type of cohabitants. They populated the interior of the planet. This consisted only of a composition of human bodies, as far as they had developed at that time. If one wants to form a mental image of these bodies, one can do so by comparing them, for the times when they appeared in physical form, to automatons made of the finest ethereal substance. As such, they reflected the life of that Saturnian being; but they themselves were completely lifeless and without any sensation. But they were inhabited by two kinds of beings who developed their life and their sensitivity within them. They needed a certain foundation for this, for they lacked a physical body of their own, and yet they were so constituted that they could only develop their higher abilities in such a body. They therefore made use of the human physical body.
[ 46 ] Thus, on Saturn, the physical, soul, and spiritual elements were present in a similar way as they are on Earth. Only on Earth do they form the threefold nature of man: his body, his soul, and his spirit. Each of these parts of the human being consists of three sub-parts: the body consists of the physical body, the etheric body, and the sentient body; the soul consists of the sentient soul, the intellectual soul, and the conscious soul; the spirit consists of the spirit self, the life spirit, and the spirit man. On Saturn, the physical, soul, and spiritual are not present as parts of a being, but as independent beings; the physical body as the first foundation of the human body and the actual material basis of the planet itself; the etheric body as an angel, the sentient body as an archangel; the sentient soul is represented by that characterized Saturn being itself, the intellectual soul by the powers, the consciousness soul by the authorities, the spirit self by the dominions, the life spirit by the thrones, the spirit man by the cherubim; above all stand the seraphim.
[ 47 ] During the times when Saturn was in its physical stage, it thus represented a limb body consisting of fine etheric bodies; within it, the angels and archangels reigned as the life and nerve forces present in the human body. And just as the human body has sensory organs on the outside, Saturn itself was covered on its surface as if with senses; only these senses were not receptive, but reflective. They reflected everything that made an impression from the surroundings of the world body. The luminous powers irradiated the surface of Saturn, and their light was reflected back in many ways from its surface. Sounds came from the powers, and these sounds penetrated space again as manifold echoes; finally, the surface of Saturn was irradiated by the aroma of the powers, and it returned this in a manifoldly altered form. And in the perception of all these reflections consisted the soul life of that marked Saturn being. — This being can be called the actual planetary spirit of Saturn. For in fact there was only one of its kind, just as in human beings there is a multiplicity of limbs, senses, and so on, but only one self-consciousness. The whole of Saturn was the body of this planetary spirit.
[ 48 ] The development of Saturn consisted of seven cycles, which represent the unfolding of soul life. In each of these seven cycles, the planet passes through the seven forms, from formlessness to creative ability. In the first cycle, the Thrones form the directing soul element, in the second the Dominions, in the third the Powers, in the fourth the Authorities, and in the fifth the Saturn planetary spirit itself. This did not have full, clear consciousness right from the beginning of Saturn's development, but only acquired it in the fourth cycle. It was only then that it attained a true soul experience of the planetary processes. Thus, in the fifth cycle, it can act as a soul itself. During the fifth cycle, the archangels develop an inner soul life, the content of which is taken from the Saturn processes. They can do this by making use of the human bodies that have developed into suitable instruments for them by that time. This enables them to guide these bodies as independent souls in the sixth cycle. The same applies to the angels in the seventh cycle.
[ 49 ] In the fifth cycle, the planetary spirit of Saturn could not act as a soul in the manner described if it remained within the body of Saturn. For the nature of Saturn does not allow this. The spirit of Saturn must therefore leave the body of Saturn and act on it from outside. In this cycle, Saturn is thus divided into two world bodies. Of these, however, the one that has stepped out can be described as the soul of Saturn. It is, as it were, the prophetic foretelling of the next planetary embodiment: the sun. Thus, during its fifth, sixth, and seventh cycles, Saturn is orbited by a kind of sun, just as the Earth is currently orbited by its moon.
[ 50 ] Something similar must occur in the sixth cycle for the archangels. They leave the Saturn mass and orbit it as a new planet, which is called Jupiter in secret science. And in the seventh cycle, something similar happens with regard to the angels. They withdraw their mass from that of Saturn and orbit it as an independent planet. In secret science, this is called Mars. These are processes similar to those that already took place during the previous Saturn cycles. In the third cycle, the powers guided spiritual development. During the fourth, they left the planet and orbited it as a bright, independent planet, which in secret science is called Mercury. In the third cycle, the same thing happened to the powers that became independent as the planet Venus.
[ 51 ] Within the development of the sun, the previously automatic human body becomes alive within itself. This happens because the light that previously illuminated Saturn from its orbit as an emanation of the luminous beings is now absorbed by the components of the sun's body itself. The sun becomes a luminous planet. The perfected human bodies develop a luminous life. It now resounds from the orbit, and the aroma of the world flows from the corresponding beings.
[ 52 ] A transformation has taken place with the Saturn planetary spirit. It has multiplied. One has become seven. Just as the seed is one and in the ear that forms from it there are many that are of the same essence as that one, so seven sprouts germinate from the one Saturn planetary spirit during the transition to the solar stage. And its life now becomes different. It acquires the ability to perceive a realm that is one stage lower than itself. This is made possible by the fact that a number of human bodies have remained behind in their development, remaining at the Saturn stage. They are therefore unable to receive the luminous life of the sun. They form dark spots within the radiant sun planet. They perceive the seven sun spirits that arose from the Saturn planetary spirit as a natural realm beneath them. Thus, these seven beings live on the surface of the sun; beneath them, they see a realm whose beings have bodies only one level lower than the sun human bodies. But these bodies themselves, in the light they radiate, give them the nourishment they need. While the Saturn bodies were only the reflectors of the Saturn spirit's being, the sun bodies occupy the position towards the sun spirits that the sun currently occupies with its light towards the beings of the plant kingdom. In terms of bodily organization, during the sun's development, humans stand on the level of plant beings. It would not be correct to say that he himself passed through the plant kingdom at that time. For a plant kingdom as it is today can only develop under the peculiar conditions of the earth. If one wants to use a comparison in this regard, one would have to form the mental image of the solar human body as a plant being that develops organs similar to those of the present-day plant as a flower, turning toward its own planet. And just as the present-day plant receives its light from an external sun, so the human sun plant received its light from its own planet, which was indeed a sun. What the plant today lowers into the earth as roots was turned toward the inflowing sounds and smells on the sun body; it took them in and processed them within itself. One could call the present plant a human body that has remained at the solar stage and has completely turned around. It therefore stretches the organs of growth and reproduction, which the human being has covered and turned downward, chastely upward toward the sun.
[ 53 ] In this way, the human body was only fully developed during the fourth solar cycle. Three previous cycles were a preparation for this. The first cycle is actually only a repetition of the Saturn existence. And its seven stages of form are seven repetitions of the stages of life in the Saturn cycle. But it is only during the second solar cycle that life flashes into the human body. It is not yet so fully developed that the archangels, who take up the position on the sun that the planetary spirit occupied on Saturn, can find satisfaction in this life. Rather, the powers now suck up the energy that can flow from this life; during the third cycle, the seven beings that arose from the Saturn spirit take their place; and during the fourth solar cycle, the archangels live in the life of the earthly bodies, just as the planetary spirit was reflected in the bodies of Saturn. During the fifth solar cycle, the archangels ascend to a higher level of existence, and the angels take their place on the planet. During the sixth solar cycle, the angels have also developed so highly that they no longer need the physical part of the human body; they now only use the light flowing in and out for their purposes, in order to live in it. The physical human body has become an independent entity, the model for the present physical body of man. And at this stage it also behaves entirely like a physical apparatus; only like one whose parts are alive. It is, in a sense, a living sensory instrument, but its perceptions are not registered by itself. It lacks the necessary degree of consciousness for this. It is in a plant-like sleep, which constitutes its highest level of consciousness. What is conceived in it as perceptions passes into the consciousness of the angels, archangels, and so on, according to the sequence of the various solar cycles. These higher beings watch over the sleeping human body.
[ 54 ] What are the causes under whose influence the sun developed from Saturn? They can be recognized by looking at the final stages of Saturn's development. Let us assume that the seventh cycle has reached the fourth stage of form, the physical stage. The human body is now ready to serve the angels as sensory organs that reflect their nature. At this stage, the angels have a kind of human consciousness, which, however, is only available to them through the senses of the human body. Higher beings work on the planet from its orbit. They develop the higher stages of consciousness one after the other. At the moment when the angels also develop such higher types of consciousness, they can no longer make use of the human body. The consequence of this is that they leave it. It must die. But this means nothing other than that the physical Saturn body disintegrates before the physiognomic form of the seventh cycle develops. This physiognomic stage is therefore no longer physical at all. The planet exists only as a soul planet. The physical form sinks into the abyss. In the soul planet, the angels live in a superphysical image consciousness. And the higher beings are active in it with corresponding higher forms of consciousness. At the moment when the angels have also grown beyond image consciousness, the soul planet must also disintegrate. It is replaced by another, on which the formative shape is developed. However, it only floats in the world in which the earthly initiate finds himself when he dwells in the higher tone consciousness. For the same reasons, another planet develops from this one, which belongs to an even higher world at the end of the seventh Saturn cycle. In this planet, the creative form of existence is realized. It has been shown that as higher beings ascend into corresponding forms of consciousness, satellite planets of Saturn always separate, which must float in higher worlds because the main form of Saturn cannot accommodate such types of consciousness. But now Saturn itself ascends to such higher worlds. As a result, each time it arrives in such a higher world, it unites with the satellite planet that exists in the same world. At the end of the seventh Saturn cycle, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, and the Sun are thus reunited with Saturn. Everything forms one world again. But in this one world, the creative form of Saturn's life force is found. Through it, the world, which has become spiritualized in the manner described, is brought back to the lower stages of existence. This happens with the development of the Sun. In the course of its cycles, the planets formed from Saturn reappear. Each one now appears only one step closer to physical existence.
[ 55 ] If a human observer with senses in their present form of development were to watch the planet described, they would only see the world body emerge from the darkness at certain times; during long intervals, when it exists only in higher worlds, it would disappear from such an observer. It would remain visible only to an observer whose consciousness can dwell in higher worlds. A distinction is therefore made between the physical states of planetary existence: twilight or night states. However, one must not form a mental image that during such intervals the planet and its beings fall into inactivity. This [activity] only falls into higher worlds and thus expresses itself in a much more real existence than the mere physical one.
[ 56 ] When the sun has completed its seven cycles, a time begins in which the human body is ready not only to receive the influx of light and be enlivened by it, but also to acquire the ability to allow the world of sound surrounding it, which is formed by the “powers,” to continue to work within it and to reproduce it as sounds. At this stage of existence, known as the lunar evolution, the human body becomes a sounding entity. Whereas on the Saturn stage the sound thrown back from the planet into the environment was only an echo of the surroundings, it now sounds out into these surroundings in a changed form. It is so changed that it reproduces in the most varied ways what is going on in the human bodies. Human bodies have thus incorporated a third member into their being, the feeling body. For it is their inner nature, their world of feelings, that sounds outwards. But the seven beings that developed from the Saturn spirit during the evolution of the sun have become seven times seven. Their environment has now become such that they experience their own emotional world in the sentient bodies that have formed. These sentient bodies are the carriers of their bright daytime consciousness. They now feel themselves surrounded by two realms below them and one above them. This realm hovering above them makes itself felt to them from outer space as the world aroma; they experience themselves as sounding beings, and the two realms below them have come into being because one area of human bodies has remained at the Saturn stage and a second at the Sun stage. Thus, these lunar beings are surrounded by automaton-like beings who continue their Saturn maturity on the moon under conditions that are completely different from those that existed on Saturn itself, and also by plant-like solar bodies that are in a similar situation. Thus, there are three kinds of beings present in the actual lunar mass. Those automaton-like beings, which are dark within themselves and which have retained from Saturn the ability to radiate life around them. They are not lifeless beings in the sense of present-day minerals. A mineral basis, such as that which the Earth has, did not yet exist on the Moon. In its place was one consisting of the characterized being. One can get a mental image of it by imagining it as being endowed with life throughout, so that on the moon, for example, instead of the mineral soil of our planet, there is a living, mushy mass; embedded in this are woody parts like the rock masses in the softer rock of our earth. In this living foundation, which can be called plant minerals in its parts, the characterized sun beings were rooted, standing on a level between the present animal and the present plant. And the mobile beings that inhabited the moon were human bodies, standing in the middle between animals and humans in terms of their development. They were the hosts of the descendants of the Saturn planetary spirit. However, the latter could not develop an alert daytime consciousness in them. In order to live in such a consciousness, these beings had to step out of their bodies each time. When they were inside it, that is, when they lived its life, they were filled only with a consciousness filled with dream images. In this consciousness, they saw nothing of their physical surroundings, but they projected their inner experiences out into their surroundings. What was expressed in sounds during the sleep of the moon beings were their passions and desires. To highlight just one aspect of this experience, it should be noted that what we now call love life, which is the basis of procreation, took place on the Moon during dream-filled sleep. Wakeful daily life was desireless and, indeed, loveless, devoted entirely to observing the environment. The ancestors of humans on the Moon knew nothing of sexual relations in their daily lives. What humans today feel in sexual love was played out on the Moon in dream images, which only symbolically expressed what is now objective reality. It was not the human ancestors who experienced the world of images on the moon in their waking state; rather, it was the beings standing above humans, the angels, who lived in it. For them, the dream world of humans played out, as it were, as bright daytime reality. They watched over the dreaming human world, just as the archangels watched over the solar world living in a plant-like sleep.
[ 57 ] The first two lunar cycles were merely repetitions of earlier stages of development. The seven forms of the first cycle repeated the seven Saturn cycles, and the seven forms of the second cycle repeated the seven Sun cycles.
[ 58 ] In the third lunar cycle, the human body is ready for the beings at the archangel stage to experience its dream images as their environment; in the fourth cycle, this is the case with the angels. In this cycle, the descendants of the Saturn planetary spirit can use the human body to such an extent that, when they envelop it from outside and make use of it, they attain a clear daytime consciousness through it. In the fifth cycle, these beings have risen to such a height that they no longer need the physical human body; the latter now perceives its surroundings for itself, but only at a low level of consciousness in relation to these perceptions. At this time, these beings only need the etheric body and the sentient body. In the sixth cycle they also leave the etheric body to itself, and in the seventh the sentient body.
[ 59 ] The Moon is a reincarnation of the Sun planet. Now, during the period in which the stage of solar development is repeated on the moon, that is, in the second cycle, the solar body emerges from its mass. Within this emerged solar body live those beings who have attained a stage of consciousness and life for which no conditions exist on the moon itself. During the second cycle, these are the forces; during the life of the sun, they shared in the life of the physical human body. Now, on the moon, this stage of the sun leads only a stunted, backward existence in the animal plants described above. The forces cannot live in them. Rather, they enliven these beings from outside by sending them the light they need from their sun. During the third lunar cycle, the descendants of the Saturn planetary spirit have also risen to a stage where they can no longer find existence on the moon. And accordingly, during the fourth cycle, the archangels leave the moon, which in this period is the dwelling place of the angels, just as later the earth in its fourth cycle is that of human beings.
[ 60 ] Just as the other planets emerged gradually during the development of the Sun, so too does this happen to them now during the development of the Moon. Only they are again one step closer to physical existence at the point in time when the Moon is at the height of its development, that is, from the physical form of its fourth cycle onwards. With the fifth cycle, Mars, which is then inhabited by the angels, attains a fine, ethereal-physical form in the moon's environment; with the sixth cycle, the same happens with Jupiter, the dwelling place of the archangels. Finally, during the seventh lunar cycle, the same happens with Mercury. Mars and Jupiter have become even denser in the meantime; the former has a density that enables it to generate heat through the movements of its components and to radiate it out into space.
[ 61 ] Earth's development takes over the fruits that have ripened on the moon. The human body has gone through three stages of development. In the first stage, it was able to serve as a physical instrument, as an organ of perception, for those beings who had already advanced so far on the sun stage that they could dispense with any such apparatus. Even then, they already belonged to those beings who were able to devote their activities to the sun planet from outside as creators. The position they held on Saturn was taken by the archangels on the sun. The spirits of Saturn did not have their physicality in the sun planet, but in the creative forces that sustained the life of the sun. On the moon, the archangels then became the creative powers. The angels of the moon, who at that time had bright daytime consciousness, could admire their physicality when they looked up at their creators.
[ 62 ] These three planetary stages of development were now repeated in the first three Earth cycles. During these cycles, the human body was to prepare itself to transform the images that had formed during the lunar consciousness into experiences. It had to become capable not only of harboring a life and image body within itself, but also of reflecting its environment internally in its images. On the moon, it had progressed to the point where its images could be viewed by the angels. The moon body of the human being was the environment of the angels. And in contemplating the moon human, they had themselves advanced; they had struggled through, so that they could now create on a higher level what they had perceived on the moon. For, in addition to the two realms below them, they still had beings of their own kind in their environment. After the moon's development had come to an end, they were able to impress their nature upon the human body. Earth humans could then see in their physical environment, while inhabiting their bodies, what the angels on the moon could only see when they ascended to a higher world: their own kind.
[ 63 ] But the human body could only be guided to such a capacity in stages. And this happened during the three Earth cycles. In the first, they could perceive themselves as they were on Saturn, in the second as they were on the Sun, and in the third as they were on the Moon. During the first Earth cycle, their fellow human beings were still nothing more than walking automatons to them; during the second, they appeared to them as plant-like beings; and during the third, they appeared to them as animals.
[ 64 ] When the fourth cycle began, man had become capable of perceiving the creations of the angels, his equals, around him. But the angels stood three levels of consciousness above him. They could create what he perceived. - The human body now acquired four members: the physical [member], which became the mirror of the environment; the living [member], which could translate perceptions of the environment into inner movement; the image body, which was able to translate inner movements into the character of symbols; and finally the body, which became the bearer of bright daytime consciousness, harmonizing the inner images with the impressions of the environment and thus creating the connection between inner experience and the processes of the environment. — But bright daytime consciousness remains limited to the external world of the physical; the processes of life and the images of the image body are enlivened internally, but not perceived as surroundings. His image body remains the object of the next higher level of being, the angels, his life body even that of the archangels. Everything in human beings that is connected with the life body, the laws of its growth and reproduction, therefore remains hidden from them; they are only aware of it in dreamless sleep. For the archangels, however, these processes are things of the outer world and its workings, just as for human beings their work on a physical machine is present. And everything connected with the consciousness of images, the laws that are more mysterious to human beings, which give their faces a certain expression and play of features, their gait and so on certain forms, that is, what is expressed in their character, temperament, and so on, is under the dominion of the angels. Only what they effect in their surroundings is under their own laws.
[ 65 ] Human beings developed into beings that can be described in this way during the fourth earth cycle. But the angels, who had developed into the consciousness of creators during the lunar stage, could no longer find a place for themselves on Earth at the moment when the image body began to belong to human beings themselves, that is, from the point in time when the second cycle had passed its midpoint. So they withdrew to a higher community with new conditions of life; the sun separated itself from the new Earth and from then on sent its forces to it from outside.
[ 66 ] In the third earth cycle, those human bodies that had not progressed far enough in the second cycle to be able to have their image bodies supplied by the forces gathered on the sun had to fall into a subordinate existence. They sank from the animal-human level to the animal level. Where could they now obtain the forces for their image bodies? They were not receptive to the solar forces of the perfected angels. However, beings remain behind in their development at every level. By the third cycle, there were angels who had remained behind in their development and therefore could not find a place on the sun. During the second half of the third earth cycle, they were still unable to find the predisposition to ascend to the sun. But they were also not capable of continuing to act on the image bodies of the perfecting human being. They only had the gift of acting on those image bodies that had remained at the stage of the moon's existence. Therefore, they withdrew from the earth's mass as the present moon. This is therefore a world body which represents an earlier stage of Earth's development in a kind of hardened state. It is the dwelling place of those beings who did not want to become creators of the perfect human body. Their activity can be found in the image bodies of animals; but they also continue to direct their attacks on the image body of the human being, which is, after all, the realm they have outgrown. As soon as a person strays even slightly from devotion to their higher nature, which is revealed to them through the impressions of their senses, as soon as they succumb to the forces at work in their image body, these beings gain influence over them. Their work is evident in wild dreams, which reflect the animalistic desires arising from their lower nature.
[ 67 ] When the third earth cycle passes its midpoint, when the earth has become physical for the third time, there are initially no conditions of existence for the form of the physical human body, which can receive external perceptions. The physical dies away. The result of this is that the sin of omission committed by the angels who remained behind is no longer felt so painfully by the beings who have ascended to solar existence. The moon is therefore reincorporated into the Earth's body. And as the cycle continues, when the whole Earth has ascended to a higher world through its image existence, it also reunites with the sun. As a result, the forces in the human body, which in the third cycle could only see the image-animated body in their surroundings, attain creative ability. This enables them to enter the fourth cycle. At first, they are still in the world that is only perceptible to spiritual consciousness, but they gradually descend to ever deeper worlds. Finally, the human body is ready to develop organs of perception for its own kind in a fine etheric form. The physical body thus acquires the abilities of its earthly form. This is also the moment when the earth can no longer be a stage for the perfected angels; the sun emerges from the earth with them and shines on it from outside. The physical body continues to progress. The images of the image body attain a liveliness that was not previously their own; the organs of the physical body nourish them in the mirror images of external objects. The time has come when the external earthly environment snatches these images away from the angels who have remained behind. They must pull the part of the earth that can be their dwelling place out of the earth. The moon separates from the earth once more and orbits it as its satellite.
[ 68 ] How far has the human body developed at this point in time? It has developed its fourfold nature. It is organized in such a way that it can be the bearer of an etheric or life body, that it can accommodate an image body. In addition, its sense organs allow the earthly environment to be reflected in these images. The physical human body has now reached a completely new stage. It reflects inwardly, just as it reflected outwardly on Saturn the essence of the Saturn planetary spirit. As a result, that part of this spirit which was then the lowest member of the spirit can now live within it. This part therefore separates itself from the Saturn planetary spirit; it loses the ability to receive the revelations of the higher realms and becomes the bearer of human self-consciousness. Human beings learn to feel themselves as “I.” From now on, they carry within themselves the nature that on Saturn was revealed by the planetary spirit as a sphere surrounding the planet.
[ 69 ] Thus, human beings have reached the stage where the archangels reveal themselves in their etheric body, the angels in their image body, and the planetary spirit of Saturn in their self-consciousness. He can now ascend to the stage where the Saturn spirit within him becomes capable of having a similar relationship to the image body as the Saturn spirit itself attained when it gradually outgrew its own planetary existence and became a Jupiter inhabitant. But since man remains an inhabitant of Earth, such forces can only act on him from outside. This means that the Earth comes under the influence of the forces of Jupiter. At a later stage, something similar happens in relation to those beings who were at a stage where they only acted on the etheric body from outside, from Mars. The human being on Earth comes under the influence of Mars.
[ 70 ] When the sun, Earth, and moon still formed one body, the human body on this planet was made of a substance that had an air-like state. Apart from human bodies, only the descendants of the human animals of the moon existed with bodies in a liquid state. The offspring of those moon beings who lived there as plant minerals had reached a solid state. In addition to the liquid human animals, however, there were also animal-plant-like beings at this [point in time] that had developed from the plant animals of the moon. But while the former had a more watery appearance, the animal-plant-like beings consisted of a dense, mushy mass which, when it became coarse, resembled the substance that currently forms mushrooms.
[ 71 ] When the sun drew its matter out of the earth, so that the latter now contained only the moon's mass, all conditions on the planet changed. The substance of human bodies condensed into a liquid substance comparable to today's blood. The previously liquid beings took on a solid form, and the solid plant minerals became very dense. Before the sun withdrew, the life of the human body was essentially a kind of respiration, an absorption and release of air-like matter. Afterwards, a form of nutrition developed from the liquid environment. And this nutrition was also connected with reproduction. The viscous human body was fertilized by the reproductive substance of its environment and divided under this fertilizing influence. Its development, while the moon substance was still within the earth, proceeded in such a way that it formed semi-solid parts within its liquid mass, which condensed to the point of becoming cartilaginous. It could not yet form solid bone-like limb deposits during this time, because the Earth's mass was not suitable for this as long as it contained the Moon. Only with the departure of the Moon, when the coarsest material was removed, did a solid skeletal structure develop in the human body. And this was also the time when it was no longer possible to take the fertilizing substances from the environment. With the departure of the moon, the earth substances also lost their ability to have a fertilizing effect on the human body. In the time before, there were not two sexes of the human body. Man was a being of a feminine nature, to which the male entity was in the earth environment itself. The whole moon earth had a masculine character.
[ 72 ] With the departure of the moon, part of the human body was transformed into one with a male character. It thus absorbed the fertilizing powers that had previously been contained, as it were, in the sap of the earth itself. The female nature of the human body underwent such a transformation that it could be fertilized by the male nature that had arisen. — All this happened because a kind of double-sexed human body changed into a single-sexed one. The earlier human body fertilized itself with absorbed substances. Now the one form of the human body, the female, received only the power to bring the fertilized to maturity. This happened because the male power lost the ability to prepare the fruit substance. This power remains only with the etheric or life body, which has to bring about maturation. The male form of the human body lost the ability to do anything with the fruit substance within itself. The female remained limited to the etheric body within it. Thus, in the present human being, the situation is such that in the man the etheric body is female, but in the woman it is male. The acquisition of these abilities coincides with the development of a solid skeleton.
[ 73 ] However, this was preceded by another important process. When the human body transitioned from airy to liquid matter, the capacity to absorb airy matter in a special organ developed at the same time. Separate breathing thus began. It must be understood that at this time the earth did not yet have a separate air circle of its own. The substances that later separated from the common mass as liquid and solid were still air-like at that time and were enclosed in the air. And when liquefaction began, the human body did not live on solid ground, but in the liquid element. It moved in a kind of floating suspension. And the air above the liquid element was much denser than it later became. It contained not only all the water that would later exist, but also many other substances in solution. Accordingly, the entire respiratory system of the human body was different.
[ 74 ] Before the sun withdrew, the entire respiratory process had a different meaning than in the subsequent period. It consisted of absorbing and releasing heat from and into the environment. It can be said that the heat that humans today generate within themselves through their blood circulation was then inhaled and exhaled from the environment. It was only after the sun's departure that the process changed so that the air, after being absorbed, generates heat through its effect in the body. Thus, with air breathing in its present form, the human body had become a heat generator within itself.
[ 75 ] This change in the human body is connected with a cosmic event which in secret science is called the withdrawal of Mars from the earth. Mars is the planet whose inherent forces in the human body brought about what the blood circulation subsequently took over in the human body itself before this withdrawal. As the blood on Earth took over the activity of Mars, the spiritual beings were able to lift themselves out of the Earth, so that the influence of Mars on humans then became one that worked from outside. Physically, this came about because iron became an important component of the blood; and iron is the substance on which the forces of Mars have a special effect. Thus, the present form of respiration is connected with this withdrawal of Mars. But through this, human beings received everything that can be called the inner power of their blood. This gave them their soul life. In fact, with their breathing of air, human beings breathed in their living soul.
[ 76 ] As long as the Earth was connected to the Sun, the power of the Sun was what regulated the other effects in the human body. The power of the Sun contained what acted as both male and female in the human body. And under its influence, the absorption and release of the warmth emanating from Mars also acquired law and order. When the sun had moved away, certain human bodies began to transform themselves in such a way that they became infertile. These were the precursors of the later male natures. As long as the forces of the moon were still connected with the earth, the other part retained the ability to self-fertilize. With the departure of the moon, it lost this ability. From then on, the sun took effect, and the beings that now inhabited it, the angels, influenced the ability to reproduce. The male etheric body came under the influence of these sun beings. The female etheric body, which is male, retained its relationship to those beings whose sphere of activity had become the moon. Accordingly, the physical body of the woman came under the influence of the solar forces. It had already developed its corresponding form when the sun was already shining on the earth from outside. The male physical body, on the other hand, came under the influence of the moon because it had taken on its form, which was infertile in terms of reproduction, under the influence of the planet still united with the earth. Alongside all these processes, the senses are simultaneously developing, bringing the world of images of the sentient body under the influence of the Earth's environment and thus bringing human beings under the influence of the descendants of the planetary body of Saturn. Furthermore, the pulsating power of the blood is developed internally, through which the soul is formed and, together with the sensory perceptions, an inner life, sympathy, and antipathy with the environment can be formed.
[ 77 ] Human beings had reached this stage when the Earth emerged as an independent physical planet in its fourth cycle and detached itself from the Sun, Moon, and Mars.
[ 78 ] Human beings had thus completed the separation into two sexes. They looked at their surroundings through their senses. They felt attraction and aversion to these surroundings. And because they differed from their surroundings, they were endowed with a nascent sense of self. The human body had become a four-part being. And within the fourth part, through the blood that allowed the forces of Mars to enter, inner soul life had arisen.
[ 79 ] Human beings had thus developed within themselves everything they could have as the fruit of the first three planetary stages of development. And they had a fourth limb of their body, which had come into being because other influences, which could have nothing to do with its development, had withdrawn from the earth.
[ 80 ] In secret science, this humanity is called the third main earth race. Actually, one can only speak of race formation from this point on. For only now was there human reproduction and thus differences within humanity, which were brought about by the interaction of human beings themselves. What can be called heredity and kinship came into being. But now the Earth, the fourth planetary form of development, had no influence yet. Perceptions of the environment had only just taken hold of the images of the sentient body. The etheric body was not yet under the influence of the Earth's environment. The fourth planet had no influence on hereditary conditions. Only the first three [planetary forms] did. That is why the race in which this was the case is referred to as the third.
[ 81 ] It was followed by the fourth, in which the earthly environment itself began to have an effect on the etheric body. This could only happen when beings who were at such a stage in their development that they lacked the creative ability to act on the etheric body in the sense of fertilization, but who were nevertheless beyond the point of receiving only sensory impressions from the physical environment, as humans themselves do, gained influence over humans. Such beings were those who, on the Moon, i.e., during the previous incarnation of the Earth, had not risen to the level of creative beings capable of populating the Sun, but who had nevertheless progressed beyond the stage at which one can only lead an inner life through the images of the human body. Within the development of the Earth, they have the ability to perceive through the senses of human beings, but not to create these senses. These beings can help human beings ...
[The manuscript breaks off here.]