43. Consciousness – Life – Form

The inner experiencing of the soul must first be preceded by the creative activity of this life. For nothing can be experienced that has not first come into existence. While the Science of Mystery designates the inner experiencing as soul-life, it designates the creative activity as spiritual life. The [physical body] perceives through organs; the soul experiences itself inwardly; the spirit creates outwardly. Just as the seven stages of consciousness are preceded by seven soul experiences, so these soul experiences are preceded by seven types of creative activity. In the realm of creativity, the dull experience of matter corresponds to the bringing forth of that matter. Matter flows into the world in an indifferent way. This realm is called formless. In the next stage, the substance divides and its parts enter into relationship with each other. Thus we are dealing with different substances that combine and separate. This realm is called the realm of form. On the third level, matter itself no longer needs to enter into a relationship with matter, but forces emanate from matter, matter attracts and repels matter, etc. This is the astral realm. On the fourth level, something material appears, shaped by the forces of the environment, which on the third level merely regulated the external relationships and which now work on the inside of the beings. This is the realm of the physical. A being at this level is a mirror of its environment; the forces of the latter work on its structure. Further progress consists in the fact that the being not only structures itself in accordance with the forces of its environment, but also takes on an outer physiognomy that bears the imprint of this environment. If a being in the fourth stage presents a mirror of its environment, then one in the fifth stage expresses this environment physiognomically. This is why this stage is called the physiognomic stage in esoteric science. At the sixth stage, the physiognomy becomes an emanation of itself. A being at this stage forms the things in its environment in the same way that it has only just formed itself. This is the stage of forming. And at the seventh stage, forming develops into creating. The being that has arrived there creates forms in its environment that replicate, on a small scale, what its environment is on a large scale. This is the stage of creativity.