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An Outline of Occult Science by Rudolf Steiner

IV. THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORLD AND MAN

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What, therefore, reaches him from without appears to him to be directed by authoritative orders issuing from the higher beings who are at work on the shaping of his body. Man feels himself to be an ego; he has within him, as part of his astral body, his intellectual-soul, through which he inwardly perceives, in the form of pictures, what is happening externally, and by means of which he permeates his delicate nervous system. He feels himself to be descended from ancestors, by virtue of the life flowing down through the generations. He breathes, and feels it to be the effect of the higher beings who have been described as the Lords of Form. He is likewise subject to their impulses in all that which comes to him from the outside (as his food). What he finds most obscure is his origin as an individual. As to that, he only knows that he has been under the influence of the Lords of Form expressing themselves in earth-forces. In his relations with the outer world, man was guided and ruled. This finds expression through the fact that man has a consciousness of the psycho-spiritual activities operating behind his physical environment. It is true that he does not see the spiritual beings in their own form, but he is conscious in his soul of sounds and colors. He knows, however, that it is the actions of spiritual beings that are realized through that world of images. What those beings communicate to him, reaches him as sound; their manifestations appear to him in light-pictures.

The innermost concepts, of which earthly man becomes conscious, are those conveyed to him by the element of fire or warmth. He can already distinguish between his own inner heat and the heat currents of the earth's periphery. In these latter are manifested the Sons of Personality. But man has only a dim consciousness of what is behind the currents of external heat. It is in those very currents that he feels the influence of the Lords of Form. When powerful effects of heat are produced in man's environment, the soul feels that spiritual beings are now heating the earth's circumference--beings, from whom a spark has been detached, which warms his inner being.

In the effect of light, however, man does not yet distinguish in quite the same manner between the outer and the inner. When light-pictures appear around him, they do not always produce the same feeling in the soul of the earth-man. There were times when he felt them as external images. This was during the period when he had just descended from the disembodied state into incarnation. It was the period of his growth on earth. As the time approached for the embryo to be developed those images faded, and man only retained something like inner memory-pictures of them. The actions of the Sons of Fire (Archangels) were contained in those light-pictures, which appeared to man to be the servitors of the Fire-spirits who sent down a spark into his own inner being. When their outer manifestations died away, man felt them inwardly in the form of images (memories). He felt himself united with their forces. And so indeed he was. For by means of what he had received from them, he was able to work upon his surrounding atmosphere. This, under his influence, began to emit light.

At that time nature forces and human forces were not as yet separated from each other as they subsequently became. What happened on earth still emanated to a great extent from human forces. Viewing nature processes on the earth from the outside, one would then have seen in them not only something independent of man, but also the effect of human activity within those processes. Sound-perceptions assumed a still more different form to the earth-man. From the beginning of earth-life they had been perceived as outer tones. Whereas the external air pictures were perceived up to the middle of earth existence, the external tones could be heard even after that middle period. And only toward the end of his life did the earth-man become insensible to them. But the memory-pictures of those sounds remained. In them were contained the manifestations of the Sons of Life (Angels). When, toward the end of his life, man felt himself inwardly united with those forces, he was able, by imitating them, to produce mighty effects in the earth's watery element. The waters surged in and above the earth under his influence. Man had perceptions of taste only during the first quarter of his earth-life, and even then they seemed to the soul like a memory of the experience of his disembodied state. As long as they lasted, his body continued to grow more and more solid by assimilating external substances. In the second quarter of earth life growth still continued, but the form was already fully developed. At this time man could perceive other living beings near him only through their heat, light, and sound effects; for he was not as yet capable of imagining the solid element. During the first quarter of his life he received the taste-impressions described, only through the watery element.

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