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An Outline of Occult Science by Rudolf Steiner

IV. THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORLD AND MAN

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Man's external bodily form was an image of this inner psychic condition. Those parts were most fully developed which contained the first fore-shadowing of the later form of the head. The other organs appeared only as appendages. These were shadowy and indistinct. Yet earth-beings varied with regard to form. There were some in whom the appendages were more or less developed, according to the earth-conditions under which they lived. This varied with people's different dwelling places on the earth. Where they were more involved in the things of earth, the appendages became more prominent. Those human beings who at the beginning of physical development on earth were the ripest, owing to their previous evolution, having come in contact with the fire-element at the very beginning before the earth had been condensed into air, were those now able to develop the first beginnings of the head most completely. They were those persons possessing most inner harmony.

Others were ready for contact with the fire-element only when the earth had already evolved air within it. They were more dependent upon outer conditions than the first mentioned, who distinctly felt the Lords of Form through heat, and during their earth-life felt as though they retained a memory of having belonged to those spirits and of having been connected with them in the disembodied state. The second species of human beings only had the memory of the disembodied state to a more limited degree; they were conscious of their fellowship with the spiritual world chiefly through the light-influences of the Sons of Fire (Archangels). A third type of human beings was still more entangled in earthly existence. It was they who were unable to come in contact with the fire-element until the earth was separated from the sun and had absorbed the watery element within itself. Their feeling of fellowship with the spiritual world was especially slight at the beginning of earth-life. Only when the activities of the Archangels, and more especially of the Angels, influenced the inner imaginative life, did they feel this connection to any degree. On the other hand, at the beginning of the earth-period they were full of active impulses for performing deeds which can be accomplished under earthly conditions only. In them the extremities were particularly strongly developed.

When the Moon-forces, before the separation of the moon from the earth, tended more and more to harden the latter, it happened that among the descendants of the embryos left behind upon the earth by man, there were some in whom human souls returning from the disembodied state could no longer incarnate in consequence of the Moon-forces. The form of these descendants was too much solidified and through the Moon-forces, had become too unlike the human form to be able to reassume it. Consequently certain human souls no longer found it possible, under these circumstances, to return to earth. Only the ripest and strongest of these souls felt competent to transform the earth-body during its growth, so that it could blossom into a human form. Only a portion of the bodily descendants of man became the vehicles of earthly human beings. Another part, because of its solidified form, was able to receive only souls on a lower level than those of men. But there was one group of human souls, however, which was prevented from participating in the earth-evolution of that time. In this way they were driven to embark on another course.

There were souls who, as far back as the separation of the sun from the earth, found no place on the latter. For their further evolution they were removed to a planet which, under the guidance of cosmic beings, was detached from the universal world-substance,--that substance of which the earth formed a part at the beginning of its physical evolution, and from which the sun had separated. This planet, in its physical expression, is the one known to outer science as "Jupiter." (Here we are speaking of celestial bodies, planets, and their names exactly in the sense of a more ancient science, and as is in harmony with occult science. Just as the physical earth is only the physical expression of a great psycho-spiritual organism, so is every other celestial body. And as the seer does not denote only the physical planet by the word "earth," nor only the physical fixed star by "sun," so when speaking of "Jupiter," "Mars," and the other planets, he signifies far-reaching spiritual relationships. The form and mission of the heavenly bodies have, in the nature of things, been essentially changed since the times of which we are here speaking,--in a certain respect even their position in celestial space has been changed. It is possible only for one who follows with the seer's vision the evolution of those celestial bodies back to remote ages of the past, to apprehend the connection of contemporary planets with their predecessors.) On Jupiter the souls that have been described continued their evolution.

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