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An Outline of Occult Science by Rudolf Steiner

IV. THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORLD AND MAN

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Now all the organisms do not attain full, adequate maturity during the Sun stage. Therefore there are organisms to be found on the Moon which are only at the Saturn stage, and others which have only reached the Sun stage. In this way two other kingdoms arise by the side of the normally evolved human kingdom. One consists of beings which have stopped short at the Saturn stage, and therefore have only a physical body, which even on the Moon is not yet able to become the vehicle of an independent etheric body. This is the lowest of the Moon kingdoms. A second consists of beings which have been left behind at the Sun stage, and which therefore do not mature sufficiently on the Moon to take on an independent astral body. These form a kingdom between the one just mentioned and the regularly developed human kingdom.

But there is still something else taking place: The substances containing only heat forces and those containing only air forces, permeate these human beings. Thus it happens that the latter have within them on the Moon both a Saturnian and a solar nature. In this way a kind of cleavage has taken place in human nature; and by means of this cleavage, something very momentous is called forth within the Moon evolution after the activity of the Lords of Form has begun. The first evidences of a cleavage in the cosmic body of the Moon becomes then apparent. One part of its substances and beings separates from the other; two heavenly bodies are formed out of one. One of these becomes the abode of certain higher beings who were previously more closely connected with the undivided celestial body; while the other is occupied by human beings, the two lower kingdoms described above, and certain higher beings who did not pass over to the first celestial body.

The first heavenly body, with the higher beings, appears like a reborn but refined Sun; the other is really the new formation, the "old Moon." The regenerated Sun, on going out, takes with it only "heat" and "air" from the substances which have been formed on the Moon; on what is left as the Moon there is the liquid condition as well as the other two substances. As a result of this separation the beings which have withdrawn with the newborn Sun are not, in the first place, hampered in their further evolution by the denser Moon beings. Thus they are able to continue their own progress without hindrance. But thus they attain just that much more power to act now upon the Moon beings from their Sun. And they in turn also acquire thereby new possibilities of evolution. Most important of all, the Lords of Form are still in union with them. These accentuate the passions and the desire-nature, and this expresses itself gradually also in a further condensation of the physical human body. What was previously nothing but liquid in that body assumes a densely viscous form; and the air-like and heat-like formations are correspondingly condensed. Similar processes take place in the two lower kingdoms.

The result of the separation of the Moon-body from the Sun-body is that the former bears the same relation to the latter as the Saturn-body once did to the whole cosmic evolution surrounding it. The Saturn-sphere was formed out of the body of the "Lords of Will" (the Thrones). From out its substance emanated back into cosmic space everything which the above-mentioned spiritual beings in the environment of Saturn experienced. And this radiation by degrees awakened independent life, by means of the subsequent processes. All evolution is due to the fact that independent beings differentiate themselves from their environment, then this environment like a reflection stamps itself upon those differentiated beings who then evolve further independently. The Moon-body, having likewise separated from the Sun-body, reflects at first the life of the latter. If nothing further had then happened, the following cosmic process would have taken place: There would have been a Sun-body in which spiritual beings adapted to that body would have lived through their experiences in the elements of heat and air.