32. The Origin of Man

Take coal, it is a mineral substance today. But long ago it was plants. What is now coal was once present as [graphite-containing] plants [in mighty forests]; the organic has transformed into the inorganic, the plant has become stone, the living has become physical. If you are able to do spiritual scientific research, you can see how all stones were originally living beings. We can investigate and prove that stones, rock crystal, were plants in primeval times, just like stone coal. Just as the mineral part of us originally came to life, so too was the human physical body once separated from the etheric body. As you see today] the many coral animals that build the coral reef, the physical, [you see how they grow out of it], see how the living creatures work this physical reef out of their own body. So in a time of man [ancestor] only this etheric body was present, [the astral body, and the] physical body is out of the etheric body [through a process] like ice from the water; the etheric body is a condensation, in condensed, other form, and there we come back to the original state of humanity.