# 43. Consciousness – Life – Form

The existence of the present human being is characterized not by just one, but by several states of consciousness. The usual one is the one in which the human being finds himself from awakening to falling asleep. In this state, he perceives things through his senses and forms ideas from his sensory perceptions. This is how the physical world comes into being for him. And the powers of his soul, his thinking, feeling, willing and acting, also relate to it.

This state of consciousness is now followed 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. They are in fact only different types of consciousness. One could call them duller types of the same.

The dream-filled sleep does not show objects like the waking day consciousness, but images that arise and fade in the soul. However confusing these images may appear to the ordinary consciousness, the illumination of their essence is apt to lead deeper into the nature of the world. What they present themselves as in the nightly life of the soul cannot provide a proper basis for their knowledge. Such a basis is only available to the human being who, in the sense of such a training as described in this book, develops his higher powers of knowledge that lead him to an insight into the supersensible worlds. This chapter is intended to give a description of the facts that apply to these higher worlds. Those who themselves enter the path of knowledge into these regions will then also find these facts to be true.

What must first strike us about the world of dreams is the symbolic character that appears in its images. With a certain subtle attention to the colorful diversity of dream experiences, this character can become clear. 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. The light of the lamp was perceived in the dream; but not as it presents itself to the senses in the ordinary world, but as a symbol, as a conflagration. Or you dream of a troop of riders that you hear trampling past; you wake up, and the horse trampling continues immediately as the beating of the clock, which has been symbolized in this way. - You dream of an animal scratching your face; when you wake up, you feel pain in that particular place, which has found its dream symbol in the way described. - A longer “dream could be something like the following. Someone dreams that he is walking through a forest. He hears a noise. As he continues walking, a person emerges from a bush and approaches him. The attacker shoots. At this moment, the dreamer wakes up and realizes that he has just knocked over the chair next to his bed. The impact of the chair has been transformed by the dream consciousness into the symbolic action described. In this way, external events or even internal facts, such as the example given above of the animal scratching, can be perceived as symbols through the dream. Affects and moods can also be represented in this way. For example, someone suffers from the oppressive feeling that an unpleasant event will occur for him in the next few days. In the dream, this feeling presents itself in such a way that he is in danger of drowning.

The examples given above serve to characterize two properties of dream consciousness: first, its pictorial, allegorical character, and second, something creative in it. This creativity is not inherent in day-consciousness. Day-consciousness presents the things of the environment as they are in the physical outer world. Dream consciousness adds something from another source.

How is this source opened? Through nothing other than the fact that the sense activity on which day consciousness depends has ceased during sleep. The silence of this sense activity is expressed by the fact that the self-consciousness of the person disappears. This self-consciousness is bound to the activity of the external senses; when these are silent, it sinks into an abyss. In occult science this fact is expressed by saying: the human soul has withdrawn from the physical world. If one does not want to assert that a person ceases to exist when falling asleep and is reborn when waking up, it is not difficult to recognize that during sleep a person exists in a world other than the physical one. This world is called the astral world. The reader may accept this term for the time being as a name for that world of which man gets a presentiment through his dreams. The justification of this term will appear from other chapters of this book.

During sleep, the human being dwells in the astral world. The facts and beings of this world present themselves in images. Consciousness perceives these images, but the self-consciousness of the human being is absent. A comparison with everyday life can give an idea of what is actually taking place here. The human being perceives an external world only insofar as he has organs for it. Without ears, there would be no world of sound for him; without eyes, no world of light and color, etc. If a person were to develop a new organ in his body, something completely new would appear in his environment, just as light and colors appear as something completely new for the blind-born after his operation.

Just as the physical body of man perceives the physical world through its [organs], so during the dream another body - a soul body through its own organs - perceives the other world, the astral world. Only that there is no self-awareness associated with this body. In this state, this is outside the realm of man.

If it were impossible for the human being to become self-aware in this state, he would never be able to understand the conditions under consideration here. However, this is possible through the higher schooling mentioned above and described in this book, which is also called initiation. Through this training, the human being learns to develop similar organs in his astral body to those in his physical body for perceiving the physical world. And when these organs are developed, then a self-awareness arises during the dream that is also similar to that which he has during the waking day. When such a level of existence is reached, the entire dream world is indeed transformed to a considerable extent. It loses the confusing colorfulness that it has in the ordinary sleeper; and in its place comes an inner order and harmony that not only does not fall short of the ordinary physical world, but in terms of these qualities, it greatly surpasses it. Man becomes aware that there was always another world around him, in the same sense that the world of light and colors is around the blind man. He could only not see it because of the lack of organs of perception, just as the blind person before his operation can not see the world of light and colors. The significant moment when the astral organs of perception begin to be active in man is called awakening or rebirth in the occult science.

In this moment of awakening, the human being experiences that he is surrounded by a higher world in which not only the things of the sensual world that he previously knew have different properties, but in which there are facts and entities that were previously unknown to him. - And now it also becomes clear to him that in this other world the images from which the things of the sensual world are formed are present. It is not an inappropriate comparison to say that the way the physical world arises out of the astral world is like 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 fluid element, so the astral world is 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 each other, transforms itself. And a physical thing or a physical being only comes into being when one of these flowing images freezes for a moment. Anyone who tries to apply the concepts of the physical world, with its fixed boundaries, to the astral realm, only reveals their lack of real insight into this very different world.

Just as the beings of the physical world are embodied in the physical body, so the astral images are the expression of entities that do not enter the physical world. They find this expression in a different substance from that of the physically living human being, who finds his in flesh and blood.

What then is this astral substance? It is none other than that which man actually has within himself. It is only during the waking hours of everyday life that it is, as it were, covered over by the sensual perceptions. These sensual perceptions are linked to human desires, wishes and abominations, to his sympathies and antipathies. He desires one object and rejects another. The source from which the dream consciousness also draws when it transforms things into symbols is to be sought in nothing other than these desires, wishes and abominations. The self-awareness of daytime life, with its external perceptions, provides the desires and longings with the corresponding nourishment. When the activities of the external senses cease, another creative force takes over and forms images out of the material of desires and longings. Secret Science says that the dreaming person is in the astral body, which is woven from desires and longings, and that the physical body is abandoned by the self-consciousness. In the case of the initiate or the awakened person, the situation is such that he has also abandoned his physical body, but his self-consciousness dwells in his astral body. Just as the physical body can mediate the perception of physical things because its organs are formed from 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 longings, in which they find their expression.

The difference between the uninitiated and the initiated person is that the astral world is not visible to the former as an external world, and is to the latter. This astral world remains for the unawakened a mere inner world; he experiences it in his desires and longings; but he does not see it. The initiate not only feels his desire; he perceives it as a thing of the external world, just as the unawakened perceives tables and chairs.

Now, the ordinary dream world is only a faint echo of this world of the initiate. It can only be this because self-awareness is not involved in it. But where is this self-awareness during the dream? It has withdrawn into a higher world in which the human being is not present as such at first. The relationship between the human being and this world can initially be clarified by means of a comparison. Think of a human hand and a tool that it is holding. As long as the hand holds the tool, the two form a unity, as it were. The latter performs the actions determined by the former. But as soon as the hand lets go of the tool, the tool is left to its own devices; and the movements of the hand are only expressions of the will in the person to whom it belongs. Thus, during the waking hours of daily life, the physical body must be seen as a tool of the limb of a higher being. When this higher being extends a member into the physical body, sensory activity and thus self-awareness occur in the body. When this member leaves the body, self-awareness ceases. Thus, the innermost being of the human being, which can have self-awareness, is a member of a higher being, from which it is temporarily extended and covered with the physical body. But we shall form an even better idea of this if we regard the stretching out as a severing, as if during wakefulness a drop detached itself from the higher being, and during sleep it is absorbed again. For during wakefulness man is not conscious of his connection with a higher entity; he is therefore actually cut off from it. During sleep he must lack self-consciousness, for it withdraws into the higher entity; this absorbs it; and he thus rests enclosed in it.

When dreamless sleep sets in, the world of images disappears. The physical body appears to lie there completely unconscious; in reality, however, its state of consciousness is only one that is even duller than in dream-filled sleep. The power that generates images has also left the physical body. Therefore, only the insights of the awakened can provide enlightenment about this state. The unawakened lack the perceptions about it. For the awakened, however, the image-generating body, which was previously loosely connected to the physical body, appears to be lifted out of it. And it is now not inactive, but has the task of restoring the physical body's energies, which are showing signs of exhaustion due to fatigue, to their proper strength. This explains the refreshing effect of healthy sleep. The physical body sinks into sleep exhausted. In this moment it surrenders its self-awareness to higher beings. In the intermediate state of dream sleep, the soul still remains in a loose connection with the physical body. The characteristic of this soul is its creativity. With the moment of waking up, it begins to apply its creative power to processing the perceptions mediated by the senses into the human inner life. At the moment of falling asleep, external sensory perceptions cease. In the intermediate state of dreaming, the creative process is still shaping itself into the symbols described; then these symbols also fall away; the soul applies its entire creative power to the body, which it now works on from the outside. - Anyone who wants to disregard the communications of esoteric science could, from the fact of refreshing himself in the morning upon awakening, see what characterizes the soul's nocturnal activity. The life of the day has something disharmonious and chaotic about it. The things of the physical environment affect people from all sides. Sometimes this, sometimes that, finds its way into their inner being. This disrupts the inner formative forces, which are accorded by their original nature. During the night, this is balanced out again. The soul restores order and harmony. During the waking life, the physical body gradually looks like an air mass, which is permeated on all sides by wind currents, and whose parts move in an irregular manner. When we awaken, however, it can be compared to an air mass that is set into regular vibrations by the rhythm and harmony of a piece of music. And in fact, for the initiate, the soul's work on the body during sleep appears as a resounding of the two. During sleep, the human being immerses himself in the harmony of the soul's life. And this is the same harmony from which he was formed. Before the physical body first opened itself up to the outer world through the sense organs, it was completely under the influence of this harmony, which structured it. This harmony permeates the whole world as the harmony of the soul. Man is surrounded by its sounds just as he is surrounded by the images described above. Just as this world of images becomes perceptible to the awakened one through schooling as his real environment, so too, on a still higher level, this third world. It begins to resound and resound around him. And in these tones, the meaning of the world reveals itself to him. Just as the form of the physical world arose out of 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 become form.

Thus, during waking hours, man is a being composed of three parts: the physical body, which perceives the physical world through the organs implanted in it from the external world and encompasses self-awareness; a body that has mobile character; its images are at the same time the archetypes of the physical body, whose clearly defined forms have arisen, as it were, through solidification from the changing images of the second body; and furthermore, both the physical and the image body are permeated by a harmony of sound, a third body. In the dream-sleep the soul withdraws from the physical body; it still remains in connection with the other two bodies, permeating the tone body and interspersing the image body with images. These latter penetrate into the physical body and communicate the shadowy images of the dream to it. In dreamless sleep the soul is connected only with the sound body; what was in the physical body during waking is now outside it and works upon it from without. The activity flowing from the soul into the physical body produces in it such a dull consciousness that it is not perceived by the person.

In fact, there are three states of consciousness of the physical body: waking consciousness, dream consciousness and dreamless sleep consciousness. For the initiate, the dullness of the last two states of consciousness brightens; through this illumination, he lives in higher worlds, just as the unawakened person lives in the physical world during waking life. There are thus five states of consciousness, which, according to their increasing brightness, can be categorized as follows:

> 1. the consciousness during sleep without dreams  
> 2. the dream-sleep  
> 3. the waking consciousness during the day  
> 4. the consciousness of the pictures of the initiate  
> 5. the consciousness of the sounds of the initiate.

If we consider that through training in esoteric science the last two states of consciousness are attained by the initiate as a higher stage of development of humanity, it will readily be apparent that the waking consciousness also represents a higher stage of the two subordinate states of consciousness, and thus has developed out of them. This is what is presented by esoteric science. It explains that in the distant past man passed through a stage of development in which he had only a dull consciousness of sleep, interspersed with no dream images; then he rose to a dull dream consciousness, to finally arrive at the waking day consciousness of today. The person to be initiated continues this line of development. He develops the two higher forms of consciousness. But now an even higher kind of consciousness is attainable for this initiate. It can be seen from the above that even in sound consciousness the soul is still connected with the human body. This connection can cease altogether. The soul can leave the body completely. This is what the initiate learns. And then he must have developed organs of an even higher kind than before if he still wants to perceive anything. If this is the case, then the meaning of the world is expressed directly in his surroundings, without the mediation of sound. This is called the highest level of consciousness, the spiritual or purely spiritual consciousness. In the sense of the preceding list of levels of consciousness, this would have to correspond to a state in the present-day human being that represents an even duller consciousness than the dreamless consciousness of sleep. In terms of meaning, this is certainly the case. But the present human being cannot live this state in reality. His soul would then have to be completely outside the body; the dreamless sleep would have to be interrupted by a completely soulless state. This would in fact be tantamount to the physical body being temporarily abandoned to itself, that is, to a temporary killing. The physical body must not be exposed to this if it is not to run the risk of no longer being receptive to the soul.

In development, however, this state has indeed preceded dreamless sleep consciousness, so that the complete series of human consciousness levels is this:

> 1. a low, dull consciousness  
> 2. a dreamless sleep consciousness  
> 3. a dream consciousness  
> 4. the bright day consciousness  
> 5. the image consciousness  
> 6. the sound consciousness  
> 7. the spiritual consciousness.

The human body has only penetrated as far as the fourth level of consciousness in the present. The initiate can reach the higher levels of consciousness. But they also lead him to higher worlds. The development of man is to be imagined in such a way that the physical body has formed itself through the first three stages and has currently assumed such a form that it still shows two other forms of consciousness during sleep as remnants of previous stages. The first stage has been completely erased by evolution. The three higher levels of consciousness of the initiate cannot at present express themselves in the physical human body because the body cannot develop organs for them. They are prophetic prefigurations of forms that this physical body will yet take.

If we start from these considerations and try to form a correct picture of the present world, it presents itself as fourfold: first the physical world of the bodily senses, then, enveloping and permeating the former, a world of images, then a world of sound that interpenetrates both of these, and finally a spiritual world that underlies them all.

This world was preceded by another in which man lived like a dreaming creature. His physical body was then in the state in which it is during dream-filled sleep. The surroundings resembled a panorama of moving pictures. There were no fixed outlines of things. This state was interrupted by another one, which corresponds to the present dreamless sleep. And this in turn was followed by one that can no longer be realized today and that was filled by the first of the forms of consciousness characterized above.

In an even earlier world, man could not rise to an experience of dream images either. His highest consciousness was that of dreamless sleep, and this state was interrupted by the lower, dullest consciousness, which is already blurred at present; this in turn was interrupted by a state that has lost all significance for present development.

In the first world, to which occult science points back, man also lacked the dull consciousness of sleep; the first of the described states is his highest; two others, which are not considered today, alternated with it.

Thus we look back into the remote past of evolution; we survey four stages through which the physical human body has passed. But we also look into the future, in which the three forms of consciousness, which are today accessible 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-aware human being will perceive an eternally moving world of images, and indeed see himself as such. And further on, one sees a world in which the images will be permeated by harmonious sounds that will express their inner essence. Finally, a world with a spiritual nature, but which will have poured out its spirit into physical nature.

This is how esoteric science presents the development of the world in which man passes through his successive stages. And it designates these stages of development by names, which have then been transferred to the planets surrounding the earth as designations. The stage of development at which man stood with the most dull consciousness is called Saturn development; the second, in which man lived with the consciousness of dreamless sleep, as solar development; the third, in which dream consciousness appeared, as lunar stage; the fourth, the present one, in which man has struggled to the point of clear day consciousness, as earth development. And the stages of the future, on which the levels of consciousness that are currently attained by initiates in higher worlds will find their physical expression, are successively called the Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan developments.

The difference between the states of consciousness of the initiate and the states of consciousness of future human beings during the Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan developments lies in the fact that the former must rise to higher worlds in order to live in the corresponding consciousnesses, whereas future human beings will have them in the physical world. This is because the initiate of the present time forms corresponding organs of perception out of the forces of the higher worlds; in the future, equivalent ones will arise out of the physical environment in the physical body of man. Man can perceive as his environment precisely that world which provides the material for his organs. In the future, the physical environment will have formative forces that currently still belong to the higher worlds alone. Thus, the development of the world can be described as a succession of higher and higher physical embodiments. The earth is a fourth embodiment. Its physical structure enables it to impress the organs for clear day-consciousness on the human body. In the sense of esoteric science, it developed out of another physical state in which it could imprint on the body only the organs for dream consciousness. This state is designated by the name 'moon'. Thus the earth forms out of this 'moon' by acquiring a new faculty, namely, the development of the organs for waking consciousness. The 'moon' has come into being out of the 'sun'. That which has now become Earth was therefore then “Sun”. Secret science describes as the “solar state” the state in which the world body that is in a human body can only generate the organs for dreamless sleep consciousness. And before the Earth was “Sun” in this sense, it was at the stage of “Saturn”.

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 that are ahead of us. By preforming the Jupiter organs in the present in higher worlds, the initiates create the possibility that the surrounding world of images takes on a physical character. The solidification into the physical-corporeal is effected by the forms that are to take it on first being there in a spiritual way. Thus the initiates become the transformers of the world body they inhabit. The formative forces radiate from them, as it were, which subsequently call into existence the things of the physical human environment.

Thus the initiates of the lunar stage have spiritually prefigured the physical form of the earth. The present-day earthly environment of man formed the content of their soul experiences. They perceived the earth as their object of a higher world.

In this sense, esoteric science recognizes seven great world cycles, or world periods, through which passes that being which, in its fourth stage, represents the earth. Each such period is linked to an upward transformation of the human body. - Out of this knowledge, this science sees in the “fourfold” that which characterizes the present stage of world development. What, for example, Pythagoras and his school designated by the “fourfold” is characterized by this. The “four” is the number of the “great world”, that is to say, of the world which man now inhabits. It has raised him to the fourth stage of consciousness.

Secret Science contrasts the human being with this “small world” of this “great world.” In his potentialities, he already has within him, as soul, that which the “great world” is to become physically. He is therefore on the way to expanding his inner “small world” into the “great world.” Within him is the creative womb of the latter. In this sense, esoteric science sees in the soul a creative germ for the future, an “inner being” that strives to realize itself in an outer being.

But in order to be creative in the outer world, this soul must first mature. It must first experience inwardly what it is later to shape outwardly. For example, before the soul possessed the ability to impress organs upon the physical body for the waking consciousness during the day, it itself first had to go through a series of developmental stages in which it gradually acquired this ability. Thus, the soul first had to experience within itself the first state of consciousness before it could create it; and so correspondingly for the other forms of consciousness. In The Secret Science, these developmental stages of the soul that precede the creation of the types of consciousness within it are called stages of life. There are therefore 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 to the outer world.

Applied to the earth, one can say that before the bright state of daytime consciousness appeared on it, this world body had to pass through four states, which can be understood as four stages of life.

The stages of soul experience arise when one thinks in an internalized way about what is perceived in the states of consciousness as the external world. First, there is the dullest state of consciousness that precedes dreamless sleep. In this latter state, the soul works harmoniously on the body; its corresponding state of life is the harmonization of one's own inner being. It thus permeates itself with a world of sounding movement. Before that, in the dullest state of experience, it was in its own motionless inner being. It felt this inner being through on all sides with indiscriminate indifference. This lowest state of life is called the first elemental realm. It is an experience of matter in its original state. Matter comes into being through the most diverse directions of movement and agitation. The first level of life is the first elementary realm, which is the self-awareness of this mobility. The second level is reached when rhythm and harmony arise from these movements. The corresponding level of life is the inner awareness of rhythm as sound. This is the second elementary realm. The third stage develops when the movements transform into images. Then the soul lives in itself as in a world of images that are both formed and dissolved. This is the third elementary realm. In the fourth stage, the images take on fixed forms: a single element emerges from the changing panorama. This means that it can no longer be experienced inwardly, but perceived outwardly. This realm is the realm of the outer bodies. In this realm, one must distinguish between the form that it has for the bright day-consciousness of man and the form that it experiences in itself. The body actually experiences its form within itself, that is, the substance forming itself into regular shapes. On the next level, this mere experience of form is overcome; instead, the experience of changing form occurs. The form forms itself and transforms itself. It can be said that at this stage the third elementary realm appears in a higher form. In the third elementary realm, movement from form to form can only be experienced as an image; in this fifth realm, the image solidifies into an external object, but this external object does not die in the form, but retains its ability to change. This realm is that of growing and reproducing bodies. And its ability to transform itself is manifested in growth and reproduction. In the next realm, the ability to experience the external in its effect on the internal is added. It is the realm of sentient beings. The last realm to be considered is that which not only experiences the effect of external things within itself, but also experiences their internal reality. This is the realm of compassionate beings. Thus the stages of life can be categorized as follows:

> 1. dull material experience  
> 2. experience of inner movement  
> 3. experience of inner shaping  
> 4. experience of a fixed boundary  
> 5. experience of transformation  
> 6. experience of the effects of the outside world as sensation  
> 7. experiencing the outside world.

The inner experiencing of the soul must first be preceded by the creative activity of this life. For nothing can be experienced that has not first come into existence. While the Science of Mystery designates the inner experiencing as soul-life, it designates the creative activity as spiritual life. The [physical body] perceives through organs; the soul experiences itself inwardly; the spirit creates outwardly. Just as the seven stages of consciousness are preceded by seven soul experiences, so these soul experiences are preceded by seven types of creative activity. In the realm of creativity, the dull experience of matter corresponds to the bringing forth of that matter. Matter flows into the world in an indifferent way. This realm is called formless. In the next stage, the substance divides and its parts enter into relationship with each other. Thus we are dealing with different substances that combine and separate. This realm is called the realm of form. On the third level, matter itself no longer needs to enter into a relationship with matter, but forces emanate from matter, matter attracts and repels matter, etc. This is the astral realm. On the fourth level, something material appears, shaped by the forces of the environment, which on the third level merely regulated the external relationships and which now work on the inside of the beings. This is the realm of the physical. A being at this level is a mirror of its environment; the forces of the latter work on its structure. Further progress consists in the fact that the being not only structures itself in accordance with the forces of its environment, but also takes on an outer physiognomy that bears the imprint of this environment. If a being in the fourth stage presents a mirror of its environment, then one in the fifth stage expresses this environment physiognomically. This is why this stage is called the physiognomic stage in esoteric science. At the sixth stage, the physiognomy becomes an emanation of itself. A being at this stage forms the things in its environment in the same way that it has only just formed itself. This is the stage of forming. And at the seventh stage, forming develops into creating. 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 thus divided into the following stages:

> 1. Formlessness  
> 2. Shaping  
> 3. Incorporation of power  
> 4. Shaping in the sense of the forces of the environment  
> 5. Physiognomic expressiveness  
> 6. Formative power  
> 7. Creative ability.

When the development of Saturn began, the human body was in a state of formlessness. It first had to develop the 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 come so far that 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 quite lifeless. It only comes to life at the seventh stage, when the body becomes creative. And it must now awaken, because the body expends substance in its creative activity. These must be replaced by the soul. And now a second cycle begins. The substance that flows into the body as a replacement passes through the seven stages from formlessness to creative ability. When it has reached this point, the soul no longer limits itself to the experiences that the movement of the incoming substance brings about, but instead begins a new stage of life. The incoming substance, having itself become creative, begins to fill the body internally. Before, it only made up for what was lost; now it is deposited in the body. And again it passes through all forms from formlessness to creative ability. First it is deposited in the body without taking on form, then it gradually takes on forms, develops powers, fashions structures, gives them a physiognomic expression, etc. During this entire cycle, the soul undergoes its third stage of life. It harmonizes this inner structure and balances what has been disturbed by the inner processes. When the material has been shaped internally, it then proceeds to a fourth stage, in which it allows the outside world to have an effect on it. It can do this because the soul that inhabits it has now matured to experience the impressions of its surroundings in a dull way and thus to repeatedly restore order to the disorders caused by the outside world. In the next cycle, the body no longer stops at organizing itself; it transforms itself under the influence of the outside world. The soul has matured 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 level of existence. Finally, the body has reached its last stage: it can experience the outside world. The soul is now so far that it experiences a next stage, namely the next level of consciousness in a higher world for the Saturn existence. It thus undergoes the dreamless state of sleep during this last Saturn cycle. And it now transfers this to the physical body during the first solar cycle.

It is evident that the physical human body has gone through a physical stage seven times during the Saturn cycle. Each time it reached such a stage, the soul attained a higher level of experience. At the seventh stage, it went beyond Saturn's development and pointed to the stage of the sun in its experience.

When the solar cycle begins, the physical body is ready to take on its own form. Whereas the soul used to be the regulator of this form, it now has its own form within it. This is called the etheric body. The soul is no longer in direct contact with the physical body; the etheric body stands between them as a mediator. Its experiences are transferred to this etheric body, as they were previously transferred to the physical body. Now, the seven formative states must first be passed through again by this etheric body, from formlessness to creative activity. As the etheric body has a formative effect on the physical body, it loses its tension progressively. And this is repeatedly regulated by the soul. In a similar way, the development of the sun also passes through seven physical stages. And in each of these, the soul appears at a higher level; in the seventh, it presents a new state of consciousness. While it is still witnessing 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 undulates within it.

During the first cycle of the moon, she transfers this world of images to the etheric body, which now shapes the physical body in accordance with these soul images. Just as the formative etheric body has been interposed between the physical body and the soul at the stage of the sun, so now the characterized image body is interposed between the physical body and the soul. In esoteric science, it is called the sentient body. For just as human sensations flow from the outside world into the inside world, as it were, and thus make the content of the outside world the property of the inside world, so the images of the image body work from the inside out, imprinting their content on the ether body, which in turn transmits it to the physical body.

During the development of the moon, the human being again passes through all states of form seven times, 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 experience everything that is going on around it on the world body, so that its world of images is an expression of the whole moon world. At the same time, it has the heightened state of consciousness of the next stage as a previous experience; it begins to see fixed forms within its world of images. This makes it ripe to also affect the etheric body in such a way that it forms organs within itself that have something lasting. - And with that, the transition can be made to the first earthly cycle. Within it, the physical body takes up the fixed forms of images; these become its organs. Thus a fourth link begins to develop in the human being. Between the image body and the soul, the perceptions of external objects are inserted. In a certain sense, the body has now outgrown the soul; it has become independent. What occurred in it before were the results of the images that the soul has appropriated from the outside world. Now the outside world directly causes perceptions in it. And the inner life of the soul proceeds as a co-experiencing of these perceptions. The expression of this inner life of the soul is self-consciousness. But self-consciousness matures only gradually. First, the human being must go through a cycle of forms in which only a 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 body of images also becomes capable of reproducing the external world. It now stimulates the organs in such a way that they themselves produce images that live within them, but are not yet copies 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, with which it enters into opposition as an inner, independent being. But now it is also the case that from time to time the bodily organs it uses become exhausted. Then the possibility of being in contact with the outer world ceases. Sleep sets in, during which the soul again acts on the physical body in a balancing way through the image and etheric bodies. Thus, for esoteric science, sleep appears as a vestige of earlier stages of development. In the present day, human beings have gone a little way beyond the middle of the fourth Earth cycle. This is expressed in the fact that they not only perceive external objects in their clear day-time consciousness, but also the laws on which they are based. The soul has begun to experience the inner transformation of things.

During the Saturn development, the human body was at the stage of dullest consciousness. However, one should not assume that other levels of consciousness were not present in beings that had their existence in connection with this earlier embodiment of the earth at that time. Above all, there was a being present at that time that had a consciousness equivalent to the present waking day consciousness of man. But since the conditions in the vicinity of Saturn were quite different from those on Earth, this level of consciousness also had to operate in a significantly different way.

The Earth human has minerals, plants and animals around him as objects of perception. He regards these entities as being below him, and regards himself as a higher being in relation to them. With the Saturn being, the opposite was the case. It had three groups of entities above itself and had to consider itself the lowest link in the realm of what was perceptible to it. In The Secret Science, these three higher groups of entities were given different names, depending on the language of the people and the time to which the secret teachers belonged. The designations of Christian esoteric science, listed from top to bottom, are: dominions (Kyriotetes), powers (Dynamis) and authorities (Exusiai). The being characterized joins as the fourth and lowest link, just as the earthly human being joins the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms as the highest link. In keeping 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 reaches as his third stage, beyond waking day-consciousness: spiritual consciousness. It is as if the impressions do not come to the senses from external objects, but as if they push their way to the senses from within, flow outwards from them and encounter objects and beings out there, in order to reflect on them and then appear in their reflection to consciousness. This was the case with the Saturnian being. It poured its life-force out upon 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 form of a mirror image. And the things that reflected back its essence were the beginnings of the physical human body. For the planet consisted of them. What was otherwise perceived did not appear on the planet, but in its surroundings. The beings called Exusiai (forces) appeared as radiant beings that illuminated the world body from all sides. Saturn itself was a dark body in itself; it received its light not from dead sources of light, but from these beings that inhabited its surroundings and illuminated it as radiant beings. Their light revealed itself to the perception of the Saturn being in the same way that the animal body is presently perceived by man. The beings, which are called Dynamis (Powers), revealed themselves in a similar way from the periphery through spiritual tones, and the Kyriotetes (Dominions) through what is called in esoteric science the world aroma, a kind of impression that can be compared to the present smell.

Just as the terrestrial man rises above the perceptions of external things to ideas that only live within him, so the Saturnian being, in addition to the entities mentioned, which revealed themselves to him from within, also recognized entities that he perceived from without; in Christian esoteric science they are called seraphim, cherubs and thrones. There is nothing in the sphere of experience of man on earth that can be compared with the exalted characteristics in which they appeared at that time. Finally, this Saturn being was aware of a third kind of fellow inhabitants. 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 you want to get an idea of these bodies, you can do so by comparing them to automata made of the finest ethereal material during the times when they appeared in physical form. As such, they reflected the life of the Saturn beings; but they themselves were completely without life and without all sensation. But they were inhabited by two kinds of beings, which developed their life and their ability to feel within them. These needed a certain basis for this. For they lacked their own physical body, and yet they were so predisposed that they could only develop their higher abilities in one. Therefore, they used the human physical body.

Thus, the physical, soul and spiritual elements were present on Saturn in a similar way to how they occur on Earth. However, on Earth they come together to 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 of the physical, the etheric body and the sentient body; the soul of the sentient soul, the intellectual soul and the consciousness soul; the spirit of the spirit self, the spirit of life and the spiritual man. On Saturn, the physical, the soul and the spiritual are not present as members of one entity, but as independent entities: the physical body as the first formation 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 the characterized Saturn being itself, the mind soul by the forces, the consciousness soul by the powers, the spirit self by the dominions, the life spirit by the thrones, the spiritual being by the cherubim; the seraphim stand above all.

Saturn, in the times when it was on its physical level, thus represented a composite body consisting of fine etheric bodies; within it, the angels and archangels ruled as the life and nerve forces currently do in the human body. And just as the human body has sensory organs on the outside, so Saturn itself was covered with nothing but senses on its surface; only these senses were not receptive, but reflective. They reflected everything that made an impression from the orbit of the world body. There the luminous powers irradiated the surface of Saturn, and their light was reflected back many times over from the surface of the same. Sounds from the powers resounded, and these sounds were reflected back into space as a manifold echo; finally, the surface of Saturn was illuminated by the aroma of the powers, and it returned this in a manifoldly changed form. And the soul life of that marked Saturn being consisted in the perception of all these reflections. One can call this being the actual planetary spirit of Saturn. For there was indeed only one of its kind, just as in the human being there is a multiplicity of members, senses, etc., but only one self-consciousness. The whole of Saturn was the body of this planet spirit.

The development of Saturn now consisted of seven cycles, which represent the unfolding of the soul's 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 Dominations; 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 is only then that it actually experiences the planetary processes in a spiritual way. Thus, in the fifth cycle, it can itself work as a soul. 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 been developed for them into the appropriate instruments. This enables them to lead the sixth cycle as independent souls. The same applies to the seventh cycle with the angels.

In the fifth cycle, the planetary spirit of Saturn could not function as a soul in the way characterized if it remained within the body of Saturn. For the nature of the latter does not permit such a thing. The Saturn spirit must therefore step out of the body of Saturn and act upon it from the outside. Thus, in this cycle, a separation of Saturn into two celestial bodies takes place. Of these, however, the one that has emerged can be described as the soul of Saturn. It is, as it were, the prophetic prefiguration 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.

Something similar must occur in the sixth cycle for the archangels. They leave the mass of Saturn and orbit it as a new planet, which is called Jupiter in the secret science. And in the seventh cycle, something similar happens with regard to the angels. They draw their mass out of that of Saturn and orbit it as an independent planet. In esoteric science, this planet is called Mars. These are processes that have already taken place in a similar way during the previous Saturn cycles. In the third cycle, the forces guided the soul's development. During the fourth, they left the planet and orbited it as a brightly shining independent planet, which in esoteric science is called Mercury. In the third cycle, the same thing happened with the powers, which became independent as the planet Venus.

Within the development of the sun, the previously automatic body of man comes to life within itself. This happens because the light, which previously irradiated Saturn from the orbit as an emanation of the luminous beings, is now absorbed by the components of the solar body itself. The Sun becomes a shining planet. The perfected human bodies develop a shining life. The world aroma now sounds in from the surroundings, and it flows from the corresponding beings.

A transformation has taken place with the Saturn planetary spirit. It has multiplied. Seven have come out of One. Just as the seed is one and in the ear that forms out of it there are many, all of the same nature as the one, so out of the One Saturn Planetary Spirit, in the transition to the sun stage, seven shoots germinate. And his life now becomes different. He acquires the ability to perceive a sphere that stands one stage lower than he does. This is possible because a number of human bodies, having remained behind in their development, have stopped at the Saturn level. They are thus unable to receive the radiant life of the Sun. They form dark spots within the radiant Sun planet. They perceive the seven Sun Spirits, who have emerged from the Saturn Planetary Spirit, as a kingdom of nature standing above them. And so these seven entities live on the surface of the sun. Among them they perceive a realm whose beings have bodies that are one level lower than the bodies of the human beings on the sun. These bodies themselves, however, give them the nourishment they need in the light they radiate. While the Saturn bodies were only the reflectors of the Saturn spirit, the sun bodies take on the same position in relation to the sun spirits that the sun currently occupies with its light in relation to the beings of the plant kingdom. In terms of bodily organization, the human being during the development of the sun is on the same level as a plant being. 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 unique conditions of the earth. If one wants to use a comparison in this regard, one would have to imagine the human body of the sun as a plant being that turns towards its own planet organs similar to those that a plant currently develops as a flower. And just as the present plant receives its light from an external sun, so the human sun plant received its light from its own planet, which was, after all, a sun. What the plant sinks into the earth as its root was turned towards the incoming sounds and odours in the solar body; it absorbed them and processed them within itself. One could call the present plant a human body that has remained at the stage of the sun and has turned completely around. It therefore stretches the organs of growth and reproduction, which the human being has covered and turned downwards, chaste towards the sun upwards.

In this way, the human body was only fully developed during the fourth solar cycle. The three previous cycles were a preparation for this. The first cycle is actually only a repetition of the existence on Saturn. And its seven stages of formation are seven repetitions of the stages of life in the cycle on Saturn. But it is only in the second solar cycle that life flashes in the human body. The human body is not yet fully developed enough for the archangels, who take up their position on the sun that the planetary spirit occupied on Saturn, to find satisfaction in this life. Rather, the powers that can flow from this life absorb the strength. During the third cycle, the seven entities that arose from the spirit of Saturn take their place; and during the fourth cycle, the archangels live in the life of the earthly bodies, as the planetary spirit was reflected in the bodies of Saturn. During the fifth course of the sun, the archangels ascend to a higher level of existence, and the angels take their place on the planet. During the sixth course of the sun, the angels have also developed so highly that they no longer require the physical part of the human body; they only use the incoming and outgoing light 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, so to speak, a living sensory instrument, but its perceptions are not absorbed by itself. It lacks the necessary degree of consciousness for this. He is in a plant-like sleep, which is his highest level of consciousness. What is conceived in him as perceptions passes into the consciousness of the angels, archangels, etc., depending on the sequence of the various solar cycles. These higher beings watch over the sleeping human body.

What, then, are the causes under the influence of which the sun developed out of Saturn? We can recognize them by taking a look at the final stages of Saturn's development. Let us assume that the seventh cycle has reached the fourth stage of form, the physical. The human body has developed to such an extent that it can serve the angels as sensory organs that reflect their nature. At this stage, they have a kind of human consciousness, which, however, is only granted to them through the use of the senses of the human body. Higher beings work on the planet from the same orbit. They successively develop the higher levels of consciousness. At the moment when the angels also develop into such higher forms of consciousness, they can no longer make use of the human body. The consequence of this is that they leave the body. The person must die. But this means nothing other than that the physical Saturn body disintegrates before the physiognomic form of the seventh orbit develops. This physiognomic stage is therefore no longer physical at all. The planet only exists as a soul planet. The physical form sinks into the abyss. In the soul-planet the angels live in a superphysical consciousness of images. And the higher beings are active in it with corresponding higher forms of consciousness. At the moment when the angels, too, have outgrown this consciousness of images, the soul-planet must also disintegrate. In its place comes another on which the formative form is developed. But it only hovers 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 planet, which belongs to an even higher world at the end of the seventh Saturn cycle. In it, the creative form of existence is realized. It has been shown that as the higher beings ascend into corresponding forms of consciousness, side planets of Saturn always separate out and have to float in higher worlds because Saturn's main form cannot accommodate such types of consciousness. But now Saturn itself is ascending to such higher worlds. The consequence of this is that every time he arrives in such a higher world, he unites with the secondary planet that is present in the same world. At the end of Saturn's seventh cycle, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury and the Sun are reunited with Saturn for this reason. Everything forms one world again. But in this One World is found the creative form of the Saturn life-power. Through this world, which has spiritualized itself in the manner indicated, is led back again to the lower stages of existence. This takes place in the evolution of the sun. In the course of its cycles, the planets formed out of Saturn emerge again. Each of them now appears only one step closer to physical existence.

If a human observer with senses could watch the development of the planets in their present form, he would only see the world body emerging from the darkness at certain intervals; in the long periods in between, when it only exists in higher worlds, it would disappear from such an observer. It would only remain recognizable to an observer whose consciousness can dwell in higher worlds. Therefore, one differentiates between the physical states of planetary existence during twilight or nighttime. However, one should not imagine that during such interim periods the planet and its beings fall into inactivity. This activity only falls into higher worlds and expresses itself in a much more real existence than the mere physical.

When the sun has completed its seven cycles, the time begins when the human body is so far developed that it can not only receive the influxes of light and be enlivened by them, but it acquires the ability to let the world of sound that flows around it, which is formed from the “powers”, take effect within itself and to reproduce it as sounds. At this stage of existence, which is called the development of the moon, the human body becomes a resounding entity. While the sound reflected back from the planet into the environment at the Saturn level was only an echo of the surroundings, it now sounds out into this environment in a changed way. It is so changed that it reflects what is going on in the human bodies in the most diverse way. These human bodies have thus taken up a third element into their being, the sentient body. For it is their inner nature: their world of feeling that resounds outwards. — But the seven entities that developed out of the Saturn spirit during the development of the sun have become seven times seven. Their environment has now become such that they experience their own world of feeling in the sentient bodies that have formed. These sentient bodies are the bearers of their bright day consciousness. They now feel themselves surrounded by two realms that are below them, and one that is above them. This realm hovering above them can be sensed from the realm of space as the aroma of the world; they experience themselves as sounding beings, and the two realms that are below them have come about because one area of human bodies has remained at the Saturn level, and a second at the sun level. Thus these moon beings are surrounded by automaton-like beings, who continue their Saturnian maturity on the moon under completely different conditions than they existed on Saturn itself; and furthermore, by plant-like sun bodies, which are in a similar situation. Thus, three types of beings are present in the actual mass of the moon. Those automaton-like beings that are dark within themselves and that have retained from Saturn the ability to radiate life around them. They are not inanimate beings in the sense of the present minerals. A mineral foundation such as the earth has did not exist on the moon at all. In its place was one that consisted of the characterized being. One gets an idea of it if one imagines it with a life that runs through it completely, so that on the moon, for example, instead of the mineral arable soil of our planet, there is a living, pulpy mass; in this, lignified parts are inserted like the rock masses into the softer rock of our earth. In this living foundation, which in its parts can be called plant minerals, the characterized solar beings were rooted, standing on a level between the present animal and the present plant. And the mobile beings that inhabited the moon were the human bodies, standing in the middle between animal and human in terms of their development. They were the hosts of the descendants of the Saturn planet spirit. But this could not have developed an alert day-consciousness in them. To live in such a consciousness, these beings had to step out of their bodies each time. When they were within the body, that is, when they were living its life, then they were only imbued with a consciousness filled with dream images. In this consciousness, they saw nothing of their physical surroundings; but they sounded their inner experiences into the environment. What was expressed in sounds during the sleep of the moon beings were their passions and desires. To emphasize only one aspect of this experience, it should be noted that what is now called the love life, for example, and which underlies reproduction, took place on the moon during the dream-filled sleep. The waking life of the day was without love or desire, devoted entirely to observing the world around him. The human ancestor on the moon knew nothing of sexual relationships in his waking life. What man today feels in sexual love was played out on the moon in dream images that only expressed in symbols what is now objective reality. Thus it was not the human forebears who experienced the world of images in an awakened state on the moon; rather, the beings who stood immediately above humanity, the angels, lived in this world. For them, the dream world of humanity played out, as it were, as bright reality of day. They watched over the dreaming world of humanity as the archangels watched over the world of the sun as it slept in a plant-like state.

The first two lunar cycles were only repetitions of earlier developmental states. The seven forms of the first cycle repeated the seven Saturn cycles, and the seven forms of the second the seven solar cycles.

In the third lunar cycle, the human body is so developed that the beings on the archangelic level 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 planet spirit can use the human body to such an extent that, when they envelop it from the outside and make use of it, they attain a bright 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, but it only attains a low level of consciousness in relation to these perceptions. During this time, these beings require only 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.

The moon is a re-embodiment of the sun planet. Now, in the period in which the stage of sun development is repeated on the moon, that is, in the second cycle, the sun body emerges from its mass. Within this emerged sun body live those beings who have attained a level of consciousness and life for which no conditions can be found on the moon itself. During the second cycle, these are the elemental forces; during their life on the sun they have also experienced the life of the physical human body. Now on the moon, this stage of the sun only leads a stunted, retarded existence in the animal plants described above. The elemental forces cannot live in them. Rather, they animate these beings from the outside, 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 level where they can no longer find existence on the moon. And so, during the fourth cycle, the archangels leave the moon, which in this period of time is also the dwelling place of the “angels”, just as the earth is later, in its fourth cycle, the dwelling place of human beings.

Just as the other planets gradually emerged during the development of the sun, so it happens to them again during the development of the moon. Only this time they are 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. During the fifth orbit, Mars, which is then inhabited by angels, takes on a fine, ethereal-physical form in the vicinity of the moon; during the sixth orbit, a similar process takes place in relation to Jupiter, the dwelling place of the archangels. During the seventh lunar cycle, finally, the same thing happens to Mercury. Mars and Jupiter have become even denser in the meantime; the former has a density that enables it to develop heat through the movements of its components and to flow out into space.

The development of the earth takes over the fruits that have ripened on the moon. The human body has passed through three stages of development. In the first stage, it was able to serve as a physical instrument of perception for those beings who had already advanced so far at the solar level that they could dispense with such an apparatus. Thus they already belonged to those beings who, from the outside, could dedicate their activity to the sun planet as creators. The place they held on Saturn was taken by the archangels on the sun. The Saturn planetary spirits did not have their corporeality on the sun planet, but in the creative powers that sustained the sun life. On the moon, the archangels had then become the creative powers. The angels of the moon, who at that time had a bright day-consciousness, could admire their corporeality when they looked up at their creators.

These three planetary stages of development were now repeated in the first three earth cycles. During these, the human body was to prepare itself to transform into experiences the images that had formed during the moon consciousness. It had to become capable not only of harboring a life and image body within itself, but also of inwardly reflecting its environment in its images. On the moon, he had progressed so far that his images could be contemplated by the angels. The moon body of man was the environment of the angels. And they had also progressed at the same time in the contemplation of the moon man; they had struggled through so that they could now create at a higher level what they had perceived on the moon. After all, in addition to the two realms that were below them, they still had the beings of their own kind in their environment. After the developments on the moon had come to an end, they were able to imprint their nature on the human body. The human being on earth could then see this in his physical surroundings while inhabiting his body, which the angels on the moon could only see when they ascended to a higher world: their own kind.

But only gradually could the human body be directed to such an ability. And that happened during the three earth cycles. In the first, he was able to perceive himself as he was on Saturn; in the second, as he was on the sun; in the third, as he was on the moon. During the first cycle of the earth, his fellow human beings were still nothing more than walking automatons to him; during the second, they appeared to him as plant-like creatures; and during the third, with animal-like characteristics.

When the fourth cycle began, man had become able to perceive the creations of the angels, his own kind, around him. But the angels were three levels of consciousness above him. They could create what he perceived. The human body now acquired four aspects: the physical aspect, which became a mirror of the environment; the living aspect, which could translate perceptions of the environment into internal movement; the aspect of images, which was able to transform internal movements into the character of symbols , and finally the body, which became the carrier of bright day-consciousness, which harmonizes the inner images with the impressions of the environment, and thus creates the connection between inner experience and the processes of the environment. But the bright consciousness of day remains limited to the outer world of the physical; the processes of life and the images of the body of images are experienced inwardly, but not perceived as the environment. His body of images remains the object of the next higher level of being, the angels, and his life body even that of the archangels. Everything in a person that is connected to the life body, the laws of its growth and reproduction, is therefore hidden from the person themselves; they only have the consciousness of it that is present in dreamless sleep. For the archangels, however, these processes are things of the external world and their workings, just as a person's work on a physical machine is present for them. And everything that is connected with the consciousness of images, the laws that are more mysterious to man, that give his face a certain expression and play of features, his walk etc. certain forms, thus what is expressed in his character, temperament etc., that is under the rule of the angels. Only what he achieves in his environment is under his own laws.

In the fourth cycle on earth, man has developed into a being that can be characterized in this way. But the angels, who during the stage of the moon had developed to the consciousness of creators, could no longer find a place for themselves on earth at the moment when the body of images began to belong to man himself, that is to say, from the time when the second cycle had passed its midpoint. Then they withdrew to a higher community with new living conditions; the sun separated itself from the earth again and from then on sent its forces to it from the outside.

In the third cycle of the earth, those human bodies that had not progressed far enough in the second cycle to have their image body supplied by the powers gathered on the sun, had to decline to a subordinate existence. They sank to the animal level from the animal-human level. Where could they now get the powers for their image body? They were no longer receptive to the solar powers of the perfected angels. But at every stage, beings fall behind in their development. They had fallen behind in their development until the third cycle of angels, and therefore could not find a place on the sun. During the second half of the third earth cycle they could not yet find the disposition to ascend to the sun. But they were also not made to continue to work on the image bodies of the perfecting human being. They had the gift of working only on such image bodies that had remained at the stage of lunar 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 the development of the earth in a hardened state, as it were. It is the dwelling place of those entities that did not want to become creators of the perfect human body. Their activity is found in the image bodies of animals; but they also continually direct their attacks at the image body of man, which is, after all, the sphere that has grown out of them. As soon as man strays even a little from devotion to his higher nature, which is revealed to him through the impressions of his senses, as soon as he falls prey to the powers that work in his image body, these beings gain influence over him. Their activity shows itself in wild dreams, in which the animal desires coming from his lower nature are reflected.

When the third cycle of the earth reaches beyond its center, where the earth has become physical for the third time, there are initially no conditions for the existence of the form of the physical human body, which can receive external perceptions. The physical element decays. The consequence of this is that the omission sin of the remaining angels is no longer felt so painfully by the beings that have ascended to the sun. The moon is therefore re-incarnated into the earth body. And when the cycle continues, when the whole earth has ascended to a higher world through the existence of images, it also reunites with the sun. In this way, the forces in the human body that were only able to see the animated body in their environment in the third cycle acquire creative ability. This enables them to enter the fourth cycle. At first, they are still in a world that can only be perceived by 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 ethereal form. The physical body thus acquires the abilities of its earthly form. This is also the point in time when the earth can no longer be a place of activity for the perfected angels; the sun emerges with them from the earth and shines on it from the outside. The physical body continues to develop. The images of the image body acquire a vividness that was previously not their own; the organs of the physical body feed them in the mirror images of external objects. The time has come when the outer earthly environment snatches these images from the remaining angels. These have to draw the part of the earth that can be their dwelling place out of the earth. The moon separates again from the earth and orbits it as its satellite planet.

What is the state of the human body at this point in time? It has developed its fourfold nature. It is organized in such a way that it can be the carrier of an etheric or life body, that it can house an image body. And 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 level. It reflects inward, just as it reflected outward the essence of the Saturn planet spirit on Saturn. As a result, that part of this spirit, which was then the lowest link of the same, can now live in him. This part therefore disconnects from the Saturn planet spirit; it loses the ability to receive the revelations of the upper realms and becomes the carrier of human self-awareness. Man learns to perceive himself as an 'I'. From now on, he bears within himself the nature that on Saturn the planetary spirit revealed like a circumference of the planet.

Thus, man has reached the stage at which the archangels revealed themselves in his [etheric body], the angels in his image body, and the planetary Saturn spirit in his self-awareness. He can now ascend to the level at which the Saturn spirit within him is able to have a relationship with the image body that is similar to that which the Saturn spirit itself attained when it gradually outgrew its own planetary existence and became an inhabitant of Jupiter. But since man remains an inhabitant of the earth, such forces can only have an effect on him from the outside. That is, 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 have an external effect on the etheric body from Mars. The earthly human being comes under the influence of Mars.

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, the only ones present with a body in a liquid state were the descendants of the human animals of the Moon. The offspring of those lunar beings that lived there as plant minerals had reached the solid state. In addition to the liquid human animals, however, there were still animal-plant-like creatures in this [earth body] that had emerged from the plant animals of the moon. But while the former had a more watery appearance, the animal-plant-like creatures consisted of a dense, pulpy mass that, when it became coarse, approached the substance that currently forms mushrooms.

When the sun drew its matter out of the earth, so that the latter only had the mass of the moon left in it, all conditions on the planet changed. The substance of human bodies condensed into a liquid substance, which can be compared to today's blood. The previously liquid beings took on a solid form, and the solid plant minerals acquired a very dense materiality. Before the departure of the sun, the life of the human body was essentially a kind of breathing, an absorption and release of air-like material. After that, a way of nourishing itself developed out of the liquid environment. And reproduction was also connected with this nourishment. The viscous human body was fertilized from the reproductive material of its environment and split under such 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. He could not yet form solid, bone-like limb inlays during this time, because the earth mass was not suitable for this as long as it contained the moon. Only with the departure of the moon, when the coarsest materiality was removed, did a solid framework develop in the human body. And this was also the time when the possibility of taking the fertilizing substances from the environment ceased. With the mass of the moon, the earth substances also lost the ability to have a fertilizing effect on the human body. In the time before, there were not two sexes in the human body. Man was a being of a feminine nature, to which the masculine essence in the earth environment itself was. The whole moon earth had a masculine character. With the departure of the moon, some of the human bodies were transformed into those with a male character. Thus, it absorbed the fertilizing forces that were previously contained 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 emerging masculinity. All this happened because a kind of double-sex human body changed into a single-sex one. The earlier human body fertilized itself with absorbed substances. Now the one form of the human body, the female, only received the power to mature what had been fertilized. This happened in such a way that the male power in her lost the ability to prepare the fruit material. This power remained only in the etheric or life body, which has to bring about the ripening. The male form of the human body lost the ability to do anything with the fruit material within itself. The feminine in her was limited to the etheric body. Thus it is that in present-day humans, the etheric body of man is female, but that of woman is [male]. The acquisition of these abilities coincides with the development of a solid skeleton.

But this was preceded by another important process. When the human body changed from an airy to a liquid consistency, the ability to absorb airy matter in a special organ was created at the same time. This marked the beginning of separate breathing. One must only realize that at that time the earth did not yet have a separate atmosphere. The substances that later formed the liquid and solid masses out of the common mass were still air-like themselves at that time, enclosed in the air. And when the liquefaction began, the human body did not live on solid ground, but in the liquid element. A kind of floating suspension was its locomotion. And the air above the liquid element was much denser than the later air. It contained not only all the later water, but many other substances in dissolution. Accordingly, the entire respiratory system of the human body was different.

Before the departure of the sun, the whole breathing process had a different purpose than in the period that followed. It consisted of absorbing and releasing heat from the environment and into it. One can say that the warmth that humans today produce within themselves through their blood circulation was then inhaled and exhaled by them from the environment. It was only after the exodus from the sun that the process was transformed in such a way that the air, after it has been taken in, generates warmth through its effect in the body. Thus, with breathing in the present form, the human body had become a generator of warmth within itself.

This transformation in the human body is connected with a cosmic event that is called in esoteric science the withdrawal of Mars from the earth. Mars is the planet whose inherent forces in the human body before this withdrawal brought about what the blood circulation subsequently took over in the human body itself. 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 became one that worked from the outside. Physically, this came about because iron became an important component of blood; and iron is the substance on which the forces of Mars have a particular effect. Thus, the present form of breathing is connected with this withdrawal of Mars. But through this, man received everything that can be called the inner power of his blood. The inspiration was thus given. Indeed, with the breathing of the air, man breathed in his living soul.

As long as the earth was connected to the sun, the sun's power was what regulated the other effects in the human body. The solar force contained what worked simultaneously as male and female in the human body. And under its influence, the absorption and release of heat emanating from Mars also acquired law and order. When the sun moved out, certain human bodies began to change in such a way that they became infertile. These were the forerunners of the later male natures. As long as the lunar forces were still connected to the earth, the other part retained the ability to self-fertilize. With the moon's withdrawal, it lost it. From now on, the sun was at work, and the beings who now inhabited it, the angels, worked on 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 the beings whose realm had become the moon. Accordingly, the woman's physical body came under the influence of the sun's forces. After all, it had developed the form corresponding to it when the sun was already shining on the earth from the outside. The male physical body, on the other hand, came under the influence of the moon because it had taken on its form, which is infertile in terms of reproduction, under the influence of the planet still united with the earth. Alongside all these processes, the senses are developing at the same time, bringing the world of images of the sentient body under the influence of the earthly environment and thus placing the human being under the influence of the descendants of the Saturn planetary body. Furthermore, the pulsating power of the blood is developed within, whereby the soul is formed and, with the sensory perceptions, an inner life, sympathy and antipathy with the environment can develop.

Man has arrived at this stage when the earth emerged as an independent physical planet in its fourth cycle and had detached itself from the sun, moon and Mars.

At that time, man had thus completed the separation into two sexes. He looked through his senses into his surroundings. He felt attraction and repulsion towards his surroundings. And because he was different from his surroundings, he was endowed with the beginning sense of self. The human body had become a fourfold being. And within the fourth limb, soul inwardness had arisen through the blood, which allowed the forces of Mars to enter.

Thus man had developed within himself all that he could have as the fruit of the first three planetary stages of development. And he had a fourth limb of his body, which had come into being because other influences, which could have nothing to do with its development, had withdrawn from the earth.

In occult science, this humanity is called the third main Earth race. Actually, one can only speak of race formation from this point in time onwards. For only now did human reproduction occur, and with it differences within humanity, which were brought about by the interaction of human beings themselves. That which can be called inheritance and kinship arose. But now the earth, the fourth planetary form of development, had no influence yet. The perceptions of the surroundings had only taken hold of the images of the sentient body. The etheric body was not yet influenced by the earth's environment. The fourth planet had no influence on the inheritance conditions. Only the first three. Therefore, the race in which this was the case is called the third.

It was followed by the fourth, within which the earth environment itself had an effect on the ether body. This could only happen when beings gained influence over humans who had reached such a level in their development that they lacked the creative ability to influence the etheric body in the sense of fertilization, but who were nevertheless beyond merely receiving sensory impressions from the physical environment, just like humans. Those beings who had not ascended to the level of creative beings on the moon, that is, during the previous embodiment of the earth, were those who could populate the sun, but who had nevertheless reached the stage beyond which one can merely lead an inner life through the images of the human body. Within the evolution of the earth, they have the ability to perceive through the senses of man, but not to create these senses. These beings can... [breaks off]