43. Consciousness – Life – Form

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.