Lecture VIII

We have often spoken of the soul-spiritual evolution of the human being. While bearing in mind this spiritual evolution, we had to show the way in which this spiritual evolution of the human being, that is, what is spiritually active in him, arises out of his work together with the beings of the higher hierarchies, in the realms above man. If we look again into the particular nature of these higher beings, we shall be referred back to past ages of the cosmos. From my Outline of Occult Science we know how those beings whom we place in the realm of the angeloi, for example, went through their human stage during the evolution of the ancient Moon, how the archangeloi went through their human stage during the ancient Sun evolution, and how the archai underwent this stage during the ancient Saturn evolution. In short, if in the human being as we perceive him today we are able to understand something of the cosmos, if we wish to understand in this way these higher realms, we must look back to ages far in the past. We therefore can say that if we wish to understand the being of man as spirit, we must look up to the present evolutionary stage of beings who, in ages long past, have in their particular way gone through what the human being is going through today, during his earthly existence. To view the spiritual unfolding of the human being, we therefore must look up to higher beings as they were in the past.