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An Outline of Occult Science by Rudolf Steiner

IV. THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORLD AND MAN

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We notice the following facts about man's being during the middle period of the Sun evolution. It is divided into a physical body and an etheric body. Within these the activity of the advanced Sons of Personality plays, conjointly with that of the Lords of Love. Now part of the backward Saturn nature is mingled with the physical body. In this plays the activity of the Sons of Fire. We now see in everything which the Sons of Fire effect on the backward Saturn nature, the forerunners of the present human sense-organs. It has been shown how these Sons of Fire were already at work on the elaboration of the sense-germs in the heat substance on Saturn. The first outline of the present human glands is to be recognized in what is accomplished by the Sons of Personality conjointly with the Lords of Love (Seraphim).

But the above described is not the whole of the activity of the Sons of Personality dwelling on the new Saturn. They not only extend their activity to the second Sun kingdom mentioned above, but they also establish a kind of connection between that kingdom and the human senses. The heat substances of this kingdom flow in and out of the germs of the human sense-organs. By this means the human being on the Sun acquires a kind of perception of the lower kingdom situated outside him. That perception is naturally a dim one, closely corresponding to the dull Saturn-consciousness previously described. And it consists essentially of varied heat effects.

Everything here described as taking place in the middle of the Sun evolution continues for a certain definite period. Then a time of rest again occurs. After that, things continue for a while in the same manner up to a certain point of evolution, at which the human etheric body is so far matured that a united action of the Sons of Life (Angeloi) and the Lords of Harmony (Cherubim) can set in. To clairvoyant consciousness, certain manifestations now appear within man's being, which may be compared with perceptions of taste, and which are made known externally as sounds. A similar thing has already been stated about the Saturn evolution. But here on the Sun the processes relating to human beings are more from within and are full of more independent life.

The Sons of Life thereby acquire that dim picture-consciousness which the Sons of Fire had already attained on Saturn. In this the Lords of Harmony are their helpers. They really behold clairvoyantly what is now being enacted within the Sun evolution; only they give up all the results of that contemplation, and the enjoyment of those revelations of Wisdom that arise from it, and allow them to stream, like splendid visions of enchantment, into the dream-like consciousness of the Sons of Life. The latter again work these pictures of their visions into the etheric body of man, so that it attains higher and higher stages of development.

Again an interval of rest ensues, again everything is awakened from "cosmic sleep"; and after further lapse of time the human being is sufficiently advanced to use its own forces. These forces are the same that were poured forth into man's being by the "Thrones" during the latter part of the Saturn period. This human being now evolves an inner life, which, in its manifestation to clairvoyant consciousness, may be compared with an inner perception of smell. But outside, in the direction of celestial space, man's being is manifested as a personality, though not one directed by an inner ego. It appears more like a plant with the character of a personality. It has been stated that at the end of the Saturn evolution personality is manifested somewhat machine like. And just as then, the first germ was developed of that which still remains a germ in contemporary man,--the Spirit-Man (Atma),--so at this point there is formed a similar first germ of the Life-Spirit (Budhi).