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An Outline of Occult Science by Rudolf Steiner

IV. THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORLD AND MAN

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It will be readily understood that it is impossible to mention in this book all the details of the earth's evolution, as it has been spiritually perceived by occultists, in order to illustrate the way in which the supersensible world is reflected in the manifested. Nor was this what was intended when it was said that the unseen may everywhere be demonstrated by its manifest effects. It was meant rather that everything that man encounters may, step by step, become clear and comprehensible if he brings manifested events under the illumination of occult science. Only in a few characteristic instances will reference be made in the following pages to confirmations of the invisible by the manifest, in order to show how this may be done everywhere in the course of practical life, if desired.

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Pursuing the evolution of the earth backward according to the above method of scientific spiritual investigations we arrive at a spiritual condition of our planet. But if we go farther back along this path of research we find that everything spiritual had previously passed through a kind of physical incarnation. Thus we come upon a bygone physical planetary condition, which was afterwards spiritualized, and subsequently transformed into our earth by repeated materialization. Our earth is therefore presented to us as the reincarnation of a very ancient planet. But occult science can go back still farther; and it then finds the whole process twice repeated. Thus, our earth has passed through three previous planetary conditions separated by intermediate spiritual conditions of rest. The physical substance, however, proves to be finer and finer the farther back we follow the incarnations.

Now man, in the form in which he is at present evolving, makes his first appearance upon the fourth of the planetary incarnations which have been described, the Earth proper. And the essential characteristic of his form is that it is composed of four principles, the physical, etheric, and astral bodies and the ego. But that form could not have appeared if it had not been prepared by the preceding events of evolution. The method of preparation was that, in the earlier planetary incarnation, beings were evolved who already had three of the present four principles of man: the physical, etheric, and astral bodies. These beings who, in a certain sense, may be called man's ancestors, had as yet no ego, but they developed the three other principles and their mutual relationship to such a point that they became sufficiently mature to receive an ego. Thus man's ancestor attained to a certain degree of maturity of his three principles during the earlier planetary incarnation. This condition became spiritualized; and out of it a new planetary condition was formed in which man's matured ancestors were contained, as it were, in embryo. Because the whole planet had passed through a process of spiritualization and had appeared in a new form, it offered those embryos, with their physical, etheric, and astral bodies, which were contained therein, not only the opportunity of again evolving up to the level on which they had previously stood, but the further possibility, after having arrived at that level, of reaching out beyond themselves through receiving the ego.

The evolution of the Earth divides itself, therefore, into two parts. During the first period the Earth itself appears as a reincarnation of the previous planetary state. But that recurring state is a higher one than that of the previous incarnation, in consequence of the intervening period of spiritualization. And the Earth contains within itself the germs of man's ancestors belonging to the earlier planet. These were first developed up to the level they had previously reached. The attainment of this level marks the end of the first period. But now, owing to its own higher stage of evolution, the Earth is able to carry the germs still higher, that is, to qualify them for receiving the ego. The second period of the Earth's evolution is that of the development of the ego in the physical, etheric, and astral bodies.