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An Outline of Occult Science by Rudolf Steiner

IV. THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORLD AND MAN

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At the time when the etheric body still further densifies and changes from a light-body into a fire or heat-body, the stage of evolution has been reached at which, as described above, parts of the solid earth-element are incorporated into man. Because the etheric body has condensed to the consistency of fire, it is now able, by means of the forces of the physical body previously implanted in it, to combine with those substances of the physical earth attenuated as far as the fire-state. But by itself it would no longer be able to introduce air substances into the body which has meanwhile become more solidified. Then, as indicated above, the higher beings dwelling on the sun interpose, breathing air into the body. While man, by virtue of his past, is able of himself to become permeated with earthly fire, higher beings direct the breath of air into his body. Heretofore the etheric body of man, as a receiver of sound, had been the director of the air current. It permeated man's physical body with life. Now the physical body gets life from without. The result is that this life becomes independent of the soul part of man. On departing from the earth, the soul leaves behind not only the seed of its form, but also a living image of itself. The Lords of Form now remain united with that image, and the life they have bestowed, they transfer to man's descendants, when his soul has left the body. Thus comes about what may be called heredity, and when the human soul once more appears on earth it feels that it is in a body animated by the life of its ancestors. It feels itself especially attracted to just that kind of a body. In this way something like a _memory_ is formed of the ancestor with whom the soul feels itself to be at one. This memory passes through the line of descendants in the form of a consciousness possessed in common. The ego thus flows down through the generations.

At this stage of evolution man, during his life on earth, was conscious of himself as an independent being. He felt the inner fire of his etheric body to be combined with the external fire of the earth. He could feel the heat that was streaming through him as his own ego. In those heat currents, interwoven with life, are to be found the first beginnings of the circulation of the blood. But in what flowed into him as air, he did not exactly feel as his own being. Indeed, it was the forces of the higher beings we have described that were working in that air. But still there was left to him, within the air that flowed through him, that part of the active forces which belonged to him by virtue of his previously formed etheric powers. He was master in one part of those air currents. And to that extent, it was not only the higher beings who were shaping him, but he himself. He formed the air parts of his being in accordance with the images of his astral body. While air was thus flowing into his body from without, a process which became the basis of respiration, part of the air was formed within him into an organism which became fixed and was the basis of the subsequent nervous system. Thus man at this period was connected with the external earth by heat and air.

On the other hand, he was not conscious of the introduction within himself of the solid element of the earth. Although it contributed to his own embodiment, he could not perceive directly what was being supplied but could only do so through a dim consciousness in the image of the higher beings who were active in the process. In the same kind of picture-form, as an expression of the beings above him, man had previously perceived the introduction of the fluid element into the earth. Through the densification of his earthly form the pictures have now undergone a change in his consciousness. The solid element has been mixed with the fluid. This incoming of the solid element must also be seen to be the work of higher beings operated from without. It is no longer possible for the human soul to have the power of directing the supply for that supply has now to serve his body, which is being built up from without. He would spoil its form if he were to direct the influx himself.

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