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An Outline of Occult Science by Rudolf Steiner

IV. THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORLD AND MAN

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In such matters as the one brought forward as a comparison, it is easy to see where facts demand the end of the inquiry. It is not so evident when we are face to face with great cosmic questions. But as the result of really exact observation, it will nevertheless be seen that all inquiry as to origins must come to an end at the Saturn condition portrayed above. For we have reached a region in which beings and events are no longer justified by that from which they proceed, but by themselves.

As a result of the Saturn evolution it appears that the human germ developed up to a certain point. It attained the low, dim state of consciousness described above. We must not imagine that its evolution does not begin until the last of the Saturn stages. The Lords of Will carry on their work through all conditions. Only the result is most striking to clairvoyant perception in the last period. There is nothing like a fixed boundary between the activities of the several groups of beings. If it is said that the Lords of Will work first, then the Lords of Wisdom, and so on, it is not meant that they are working only at that time. They are working all through the Saturn evolution; only their activity can best be observed during the periods specified. The several groups have, as it were, the leadership at those times.

Thus the whole Saturn evolution appears as a working out of what streamed forth from the Lords of Will through the Lords of Wisdom, Motion, Form, and the rest. Through this process those spiritual beings themselves experience evolution. For instance, after they have received their life reflected back from Saturn, the Lords of Wisdom stand on a different level than before. The result of that activity exalts the faculties of their own being. The consequence is that, on the completion of such activity, something similar to human sleep comes upon them. To their periods of activity in connection with Saturn succeed other periods, during which they live, as it were, in other worlds. At these times their activity is withdrawn from Saturn. On this account clairvoyant perception sees an ascent and a descent in the Saturn evolution that has been described. The ascent lasts until the formation of the heat condition. Then, with the play of light, the ebb-tide sets in. When the human phantoms have assumed form through the Lords of Will, the spiritual beings have also gradually withdrawn themselves. The Saturn evolution dies away; as a phase of evolution, it disappears. A kind of resting pause occurs.

The human germ at the same time enters upon a state of dissolution; not, however, a state in which it passes away, but one like that of a plant seed, resting in the earth in order that it may ripen into a new plant. Thus the human germ reposes, until a new awakening, in the depth of the cosmos. And by the time the moment of awakening has arrived, the spiritual beings described above have acquired, under other conditions, the faculties by means of which they can further advance the human germ. The Lords of Wisdom have, in their etheric body, gained the faculty not only of enjoying the reflection of life as they did on Saturn, but of pouring life forth from themselves, and endowing other beings with it. The Lords of Motion are now as far advanced as were the Lords of Wisdom on Saturn. Then the lowest principle of their being was the astral body; they now possess an etheric, or vital body; and in a corresponding degree the other spiritual beings have reached a further stage of evolution. All these spiritual beings are therefore able to work at the further evolution of the human germ in a different way than on Saturn.

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