# 127. On the Evolution of the Spiritual Kernel of Being

The Secret Doctrine is based on the experience that behind the world of sense is a spiritual world. Man can rise to the spiritual world by developing his spiritual essence. Thus man belongs to a twofold world: the manifest and the hidden.

The visible and the now hidden go back to an originally unified one. From this, man has developed. He carries the visible around with him because his senses reveal it to him. The hidden is veiled to him.

In visible nature, that part of the original unity is overcome by spiritual powers. Man as he is today has only become possible through this overcoming.

The fight against the dragon is the fight that man must also wage within himself. In nature, the fight is an older one; in man it is repeated. The gods are the older brothers of man; they have passed the fight: man has yet to pass it. In the fire, the bound power of God.

In the air, the victorious power of God. The air gods have wrestled themselves free.

Man has to undergo a development that has already taken place in the world around him. He has been what the older brothers, the gods, originally were. He will be what they are today. But the original form of the gods no longer exists today. Only the part that was overcome has found expression in visible nature. What lies behind this visible nature is the part of their being that was expelled by the gods.

The dragon and the snake have remained at the original stage.