Lecture IV

Now, through the sun shining upon the earth from outside, and the sun-beings also working on it from outside, conditions on earth became completely changed. You can think of it in this way: as long as the earth was bound up with the sun, exalted Beings (who later went forth with it) were hampered in their own development, hence also in their powers, and power to govern—by the gross forces of the earth. But now that they had become free they could continue their evolution at a quite different rate from before, when they had to carry the very heavy weight of the earth mass with them. They freed themselves from the earth as regards their own evolution, and thus gained power to work on man more strongly from outside. Evolution would have been enormously accelerated through this, and human life would have been brought to an issue with extreme rapidity, if something else had not taken place. Man was unable to proceed at this rate of development, therefore from the totality of Spirits who existed previously, one, with his hosts, separated from the rest, and remained united with the earth.