Lecture V

You will obtain an idea of the mission of the Sun condition if you observe what is called the human etheric body and if to it you connect feeling. You have already been told that the etheric body may be traced back to the old Sun. The after-effects, however, are such that man could later unfold the inner forces of feeling. Finally if we glance at the Moon condition we see that the astral body of man and human thinking are connected with that. So we say: In order that these forces of the inner and the outer man,—physical body, etheric body and astral body, willing, feeling and thinking—could so develop that man now possesses them as an outer and inner life, three successive cosmic missions were necessary. And those Beings whom we have described as belonging to the hierarchies, were obliged—in order that the task of the three successive incarnations of our earth might be fulfilled and that man might be endowed with what is manifested in his whole constitution at the present time—to work together every time with the requisite reciprocal activity.