x. Extrusion of the Moon

One can say that man was striving to ascend. He was to develop qualities in the fire mist which in a human sense were higher than those he had previously possessed. The other beings, however, were striving downward toward the material They were on the way to bringing their creative powers to bear on increasingly dense material forms. This does not represent a degradation for them in the broader sense of the term. One must be quite clear on this point. It requires a higher power and capacity to direct denser forms of substantiality than to control those less dense. In earlier periods of their development, these higher beings too had had a limited power like that of man today. Like present-day man, they once had power only over what took place “within them.” At that time, coarse, external matter did not obey them. Now they were striving toward a condition in which they were to direct outer events magically. Thus they were ahead of man in the period described. Man strove upward in order that he might first embody the understanding in more refined matter, so that later it could act toward the external; they had already incorporated the understanding into themselves at an earlier period, and now received magic power in order to articulate the understanding into the world around them. Man was moving upward through the stage of the fire mist; they were penetrating downward through the same stage, toward an extension of their power.