An Outline of Occult Science

by Rudolf Steiner

Man became an individualized soul-being on earth. His astral body, which had been poured into him on the Moon through the Lords of Motion, now became organized on earth into the sentient-intellectual-and consciousness-souls. And when the consciousness-soul had progressed so far that it was able to form for itself during earth-life, a body adapted to that life, the Lords of Form endowed that body with a spark from their fire. The “ego” was enkindled within it. Every time man left the physical body he was in the spiritual world, in which he met the beings who, during the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions, had given him his physical, etheric, and astral bodies, [pg 217] and who had developed them as far as the earth-stage. Since the spark of ego had been enkindled during earth-life, there had also come about a change in the disembodied life. Up to this point of evolution, man had had no independence in the spiritual world. Within that world he did not feel himself a separate being, but as though he were a member of the exalted organism which was composed of the beings superior to him. The “ego experience” on earth now takes effect also in the spiritual world. Henceforth man feels himself to be, to a certain degree, a unit in that world. But he feels also that he is unceasingly linked with it. In the disembodied state he again finds the Lords of Form, in a higher aspect, and this aspect he had perceived in their manifestation on earth by means of the spark of his ego.

At the separation of the moon from the earth, the disembodied soul began to have experiences in the spiritual world which were connected with that separation. To develop such human forms upon earth which could receive soul individuality, only became possible through the fact that a part of the shaping forces passed over from the Earth to the Moon. Thus human individuality came within the sphere of the Moon-beings. And in the disembodied state the reminiscence of earthly individuality could only operate because, even in that state, the soul remained within the sphere of those mighty spirits who had brought about the separation of the moon. The process worked in such a manner that immediately [pg 218] after leaving the earth-body the soul could only see the exalted Sun-beings as though in a lustre reflected from the Moon-beings. And it was only when sufficiently prepared by gazing at that reflected splendor, that the soul attained to the vision of the exalted Sun-beings themselves.

The mineral kingdom of the earth also arose out of what was ejected from human evolution in general. Its structures are what remained solidified after the moon was detached from the earth. The only soul-element which felt attracted to those structures was that which had been left behind at the Saturn stage, and was therefore only adapted for developing physical forms. All the occurrences treated of here and in what follows were enacted in the course of exceedingly long periods. But the question of chronology cannot be entered into here.

The events described, present the evolution of the earth from without. Seen spiritually from within, the facts present themselves as follows: The spiritual beings who drew the moon out of the earth and incorporated their own existence with the moon,—thus becoming earth-moon beings,—brought about a certain formation of the human organism by means of the forces which they sent to the earth from the moon. Their influence affected the “ego” which man had acquired, and made itself felt in the interplay of that “ego” with the astral, etheric, and physical bodies. They made it possible for man to reflect within himself consciously and to reproduce within his cognition, the wisdom revealed in the cosmos. [pg 219] It will be remembered that during the old Moon-period man, owing to the separation from the sun at the time, acquired a certain independence in his organism, a more unfettered stage of consciousness than that which he had been able to derive directly from the Sun-spirits. This free, independent consciousness—a heritage from the old Moon-evolution—appeared again during the earth-period in question. But it was just this consciousness which, through the influence of the described earth-moon beings, could again be brought into union and harmony with the universe and be made a reflection of it. This would have happened if no other influence had asserted itself. Without that influence, man would have become a being whose consciousness would not have reflected the world in pictures of cognition, through his own free volition, but through natural necessity. But things did not happen in this way. At the time when the moon split off, certain spiritual beings interposed in human evolution who had retained so much of their Moon nature that they could not take part in the exodus of the sun from the earth, and were shut out from the influence of the spirits who from the earth-moon had exerted their activity upon the earth. These spirits with the old Moon nature were, so to say, banished to the earth, but with an irregular development. In their Moon-nature was that which had rebelled against the Sun-spirits during the old Moon-evolution, and which had so far been a blessing to man that it had led him to a free, [pg 220] independent state of consciousness. The consequences of the peculiar development of these spirits during the earth-period entailed their becoming adversaries of the spirits who, acting from the moon, desired to make human consciousness an automatic reflector of the universe. What had helped man to a higher state of development of the old Moon, proved to be in opposition to the possibilities which had arisen through the evolution of the earth. The opposing forces had brought with them from their Moon nature the power of working upon the human astral body, namely,—as above indicated,—the power of making it independent. They exercised that power by giving the astral body a certain degree of independence—even throughout the earth-period—compared with the automatic (involuntary) state of consciousness which had been brought about by the spirits of the earth-moon.

It is difficult to express in the language of to-day the effects on man, in that far-off time of the spiritual beings referred to. They must not be thought of as analogous to natural influences of the present time, nor yet as similar to the influence of one human being on another, when the first awakens in the second inner powers of consciousness by words which help the second person to understand something, or which stimulate him to virtue or vice. The effect referred to as operative in that primeval age was not a force of nature but a spiritual influence, conveyed in a spiritual way, which descended upon man as a spiritual influx from higher spirits, conformable [pg 221] with man's state of consciousness at that time. If we think of this influence as a force of nature we altogether miss its essential reality. If we say that the spirits with the old Moon nature tempted man in order to lead him astray for their own ends, we are using a symbolical expression, which is good as long as we remember that it is but a symbol and are at the same time clear in our minds that a spiritual fact underlies the symbol.

The influence brought to bear on man by the spirits who had remained behind during the Moon-evolution had a two-fold result. Man's consciousness was divested of the character of being merely a mirror of the universe, because the possibility was aroused in the human astral body of regulating and controlling, by means of this astral body, the images in the consciousness. Man became the ruler of his own knowledge. But on the other hand it was the astral body that was the starting point of that rulership, and consequently the ego set over the astral body came to be continually dependent upon it. Hence man was from this time forth exposed to the lasting influences of a lower element in his nature. It was possible for him in his life to sink below the height on which he had been placed by the spirits of the earth-moon in the course of the world's progress. And subsequently he was open to the lasting influence on his nature of the irregularly evolved Moon-spirits. We may call these Moon-spirits Luciferian, to distinguish them from the other spirits who, from the earth-moon, made consciousness into [pg 222] a mirror of the universe, without bestowing free will. The Luciferian spirits endowed man with the possibility of developing free activity in his consciousness, and at the same time created the possibility of error and evil.

As a result of these events man was brought into a different connection with the Sun-spirits from that which had been destined for him by the spirits of the earth-moon. These wished to develop the reflecting human consciousness in such a manner that within the whole life of the human soul, the influence of the Sun-spirits would have become dominant. These purposes were thwarted, and an opposition was thus created in human nature between the influence of the Sun-Spirits and that of the spirits who were irregularly developed on the old Moon. Owing to this opposition, the inability to recognize the physical Sun-influences as such also arose in man; they were hidden by the earthly impressions of the outer world. Filled with these impressions, the astral part of man was drawn into the sphere of the ego. This ego,—which otherwise would have felt only the spark of fire bestowed on it by the Lords of Form, and which would have submitted to the bidding of those spirits in everything that had to do with external fire,—henceforth worked upon external heat phenomena through the element with which it had itself been inoculated. A bond of attraction was thereby established between the ego and the earth-fire.

In this way man became more involved in earthly materiality than had been ordained for him, which [pg 225] was effected through the earth-moon spirits in man's body. The real individual ego was thereby set free from the mere earth-ego so that although man during earth-life only partially felt himself to be an ego, he at the same time felt his earth-ego to be a continuation of that of his ancestors through the generations. The soul was conscious of a kind of “group-ego” in earth-life, dating back to remote ancestors; man felt himself to be a member of this group. Only in the disembodied state could the individual ego be conscious of itself as a separate being. But this state of isolation was impaired because the ego was still burdened with a memory of the earth-consciousness (earth-ego.) This memory clouded its vision of the spiritual world, which began to be covered as with a veil between death and birth just as it is hidden from physical vision upon earth.

The many changes which took place in the spiritual world while human evolution was passing through the conditions just described, found physical expression in the gradual adjustment of the mutual relations existing between the sun, moon, and earth (and, moreover, between other celestial bodies).

The alternation of day and night stands out as one result of those relations. (The motions of celestial bodies are regulated by the beings who inhabit them. The earth's motion, of which day and night are the result, was induced by the mutual relations of various spirits superior to man. The moon's motion had been brought about in the same way, in [pg 226] order that after the separation of the moon from the earth, the Lords of Form might, by means of the revolution of the former around the latter, work upon the human physical body in the right way, and with the right rhythm.) The ego and astral body of man now worked within the physical and etheric bodies by day; at night that activity ceased: for the ego and the astral body then left the physical and etheric bodies and came wholly within the sphere of the Sons of Life or Angels, the Sons of Fire or Archangels, the Sons of Personality, and the Lords of Form. Besides the Lords of Form, the Lords of Motion, of Wisdom and the Thrones also included the physical and etheric bodies in their sphere of influence at this time. The injurious effects produced on man by the errors of his astral body during the day, could thus be counter-balanced.