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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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An Outline of Occult Science
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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An Outline of Occult Science
THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF COSMIC AND HUMAN EVOLUTION
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to know anything of the present and future of human
and cosmic evolution in the sense of spiritual science without a
knowledge of this evolution in the past. For what presents itself to
the perception of the spiritual researcher when he observes the hidden
facts of the past contains simultaneously all he can know of the
present and future. This book has dealt with the evolution of Saturn,
Sun, Moon, and Earth. It is impossible to understand the Earth
evolution, in the sense of spiritual science, if one does not observe
the facts of the preceding evolutionary cycles. For the facts of the
Moon, Sun, and Saturn evolutions are contained in a certain sense
within the conditions that confront the human being at present within
the sphere of the earth. The beings and things that participated in
the Moon evolution have evolved further. Everything that belongs to
the present earth came out of them. For physical-sensory
consciousness, however, not everything is perceptible that, having
come from the Moon, has become the Earth. A part of what has evolved
over from the Moon becomes evident only at a certain stage of
supersensible consciousness. When this knowledge is attained, then we
perceive that our earth is bound to a supersensible world, containing
the part of the Moon existence that has not condensed to the condition
of physical sense-perception. This supersensible world contains the
uncondensed part of the Moon as it is at present, not as it was at the
time of the ancient Moon evolution. Supersensible consciousness,
however, is able to obtain a picture of the previous condition. If
this supersensible consciousness concentrates upon the perception it
can have at the present time, it becomes evident that, quite by
itself, it gradually resolves itself into two pictures. One of these
presents the shape the Earth had during its Moon evolution; the manner
in which the other picture shows itself, however, reveals that it
contains a form that is still in its germinal stage and that will only
become real in the future in the sense that the earth is now real.
Further observation shows that, in a certain sense, the effect of what
happens upon the earth streams continually into this future form. In
this form we have, therefore, before us what is to be our earth in the
future. The effects of earth existence will unite with what happens in
the characterized world and out of this will arise the new cosmic
being into which the Earth will be transformed, just as the Moon has
transformed itself into the Earth. We may call this future form the
Jupiter evolution. If we observe this Jupiter stage with supersensible
perception, we can see that in the future certain processes must take
place, because in the supersensible part of the Earth that originated
on the Moon certain beings and things are present that will assume
certain forms when, within the earth of the physical senses, this or
that will have taken place. In the Jupiter evolution something will,
therefore, exist that has already been determined by the Moon
evolution, and it will contain new factors that enter into the entire
evolution only through terrestrial processes. Because of this,
supersensible consciousness may learn something of what will happen
during the Jupiter state. The beings and facts perceived within this
field of consciousness do not possess the nature of sense images; they
do not even appear as delicate, airy structures from which effects
might proceed which remind us of sense-impressions. They give us pure
spiritual impressions of tone, light, and warmth. The latter do not
express themselves through any sort of material embodiment. They can
be comprehended only through supersensible consciousness. We may,
nevertheless, say that these beings possess a body. Yet
this body shows itself within their soul nature, which reveals itself
as their present being, like a sum of condensed memories which they
bear within their soul. We are able to distinguish in their being
between what they now experience, and what they have experienced and
remember. The latter is contained within them like a bodily nature.
They experience it just as the earth man experiences his body. At a
stage of supersensible perception higher than the one just described
as necessary for the cognition of Moon and Jupiter, supersensible
beings and things become visible that are the further developed forms
of what was already present during the Sun evolution, but which has
attained at present such a high stage of evolution that it does not at
all exist for a consciousness that has only attained to the perception
of Moon forms. The picture of this world also resolves itself into two
pictures during inner meditation. One of these leads to the cognition
of the past Sun evolution, the other presents a future form of the
Earth; that is to say, the form into which the Earth will have
transformed itself when the effects of the Earth and Jupiter processes
have streamed into the forms of that world. What we thus observe of
this future world may be designated, in the sense of spiritual
science, as the Venus evolution. In a similar manner there is, for a
still more highly developed supersensible consciousness, a future
stage of evolution that may be designated Vulcan evolution. It has a
relationship to the Saturn evolution similar to the one the Venus
evolution has to the Sun evolution, and the Jupiter evolution has to
the Moon evolution. We may, therefore, if we consider the past,
present and future of Earth evolution, speak of Saturn, Sun, Moon,
Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolutions. Just as these
all-encompassing relationships of the Earth evolution result for our
consciousness, so also there result observations of a nearer future.
Every picture of the past corresponds also to one of the future. Yet
in speaking of such things something must be emphasized which, of
necessity, must be given due consideration. If we wish to recognize
such matters we must discard completely the opinion that philosophical
reflection, trained merely by external reality, is able to discover
anything about them. These things cannot and never should be
investigated by such a mode of thinking. If a person were to believe,
when he has received communications through spiritual science about
the Moon evolution, that through such reflection he might discover how
things will appear on Jupiter by combining the relationships of Earth
and Moon, he will fall prey to enormous deceptions. Research into
these relationships is only to be made when supersensible
consciousness has lifted itself to higher observation. Only when what
has thus been discovered is communicated can it be understood without
supersensible consciousness.
Concerning the communications about the future, the researcher of the
spiritual is in a position different from the position concerning
those about the past. The human being cannot, at the outset, confront
future events as impartially as he can confront the past. What will
occur in the future stirs human feelings and will; the past is endured
in quite a different manner. Whoever observes life knows how true this
already is for ordinary existence. To what an enormous degree this
increases, what forms it assumes in regard to the hidden facts of life
only he can know who is cognizant of certain things of the
supersensible worlds. This is the reason why the knowledge of these
things is fixed within quite definite limits.
Just as the great cosmic evolution can be presented in the succession
of its states from the Saturn to the Vulcan evolution, it is also
possible to present smaller time-divisions; those of the Earth
evolution, for example. Since that enormous catastrophe that brought
the ancient Atlantean civilization to an end there have been
successive stages within human evolution that in this book have been
designated as the ancient Indian, the ancient Persian, the
Egypto-Chaldean, and the Greco-Latin epochs of culture. The fifth
period is the one in which mankind now stands, the present. This
period gradually began during the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth
centuries A.D., after it had prepared itself since the fourth and
fifth centuries. From the fifteenth century onward it emerged quite
clearly. The preceding Greco-Latin culture began about the eighth
century B.C. At the end of its first third, the Christ event occurred.
The condition of the human soul and all the human faculties changed
with the transition from the Egypto-Chaldean to the Greco-Latin
cultural period. In the former there was not yet present what we now
know as logical cogitation, as intellectual comprehension of the
world. What the human being now acquires as knowledge through his
intellect he received in the form that was fitting for that time:
directly through an inner, in a certain respect, supersensible
knowledge. He perceived objects, and while perceiving them their
concept, their image, needed by the soul, arose in its inner being.
With the power of cognition described, not only images of the physical
sense world emerge, but from the depths of the soul there arises a
certain knowledge of non-sensory facts and beings. This was the
remnant of ancient dim clairvoyant consciousness, once the common
possession of all mankind. During the Greco-Latin period there arose
more and more human beings who lacked such faculties. Instead of these
faculties, intellectual reflection upon objects began to appear. Human
beings were by degrees removed from a direct, dreamlike perception of
the world of soul and spirit and were ever more dependent upon a
picture of that world, formed by their intellect and feeling. This
state continued in a certain respect throughout the entire fourth
post-Atlantean period. Only those individuals who had preserved the
ancient soul condition like a heritage could still receive the
spiritual world directly into their consciousness. These individuals,
however, are stragglers of a more ancient epoch. The kind of knowledge
they possessed no longer fitted the new age. For it is a consequence
of the laws of evolution that an ancient soul faculty loses its full
significance when new faculties appear. Human life then adapts itself
to these new faculties, and it is no longer able to exercise the old
faculties. There were, however, also individuals who in a quite
conscious manner began to develop, besides the acquired powers of
intellect and feeling, other higher faculties that again made it
possible for them to penetrate into the world of soul and spirit. They
had to begin to do this in a manner quite different from what was
customary for the pupils of the ancient initiates. The latter did not
yet have to consider the soul faculties first developed in the fourth
cultural period. In that period the method of spiritual training began
that has been described in this book as the present-day method. But it
was at that time only in its infancy; it could be properly developed
only in the fifth cultural period, actually since the twelfth and
thirteenth chiefly the fifteenth centuries of our era. Human beings
who in this way sought to ascend into the supersensible world were
able to experience through their own imagination, inspiration, and
intuition something of higher realms of existence. Those who remained
satisfied with the developed faculties of intellect and feeling could
learn only from tradition, what ancient clairvoyance knew, and which
was transmitted from generation to generation by word of mouth, or in
writing.
Something of the real nature of the Christ event could also be known
only from tradition by those born after the event, if they had not
attained a perception of the supersensible worlds. There were,
however, certain initiates who still possessed the natural clairvoyant
perception of the supersensible world and who through their
development could elevate themselves to a higher world in spite of the
fact that they paid no attention to the new powers of intellect and
soul. Through such initiates a transition was created from the old
method of initiation to the new. Such personalities existed also in
subsequent periods. It was the chief characteristic of the fourth
cultural epoch that the soul's exclusion from direct intercourse with
the world of soul and spirit strengthened the human being in his
powers of intellect and feeling. The souls who were incarnated at that
time with highly developed powers of intellect and feeling carried
over the result of this development into their incarnations in the
fifth cultural period. As a compensation for this exclusion from
intercourse with the world of soul and spirit the mighty traditions of
primeval wisdom were then available to man and especially those
concerning the Christ event traditions that by the very power of their
content gave the souls a confident knowledge of the higher worlds. But
human beings always existed who developed the higher powers of
knowledge in addition to the faculties of intellect and feeling. It
was their task to experience the facts of the higher world and chiefly
the mystery of the Christ event through direct supersensible
cognition. From them there flowed into the souls of other men as much
as was comprehensible and good for them. In harmony with the meaning
of Earth evolution, the first spreading of Christianity had of
necessity to occur just at a time when the powers of supersensible
cognition had not been developed in a large portion of mankind. It was
because of this that the force of tradition was so powerful at that
time. The strongest possible force was needed to lead men, who were
themselves unable to behold this world, to a trust in the
supersensible world. There were almost always if we disregard a brief
period of exception in the thirteenth century individuals who were
able to elevate themselves to higher worlds through imagination,
inspiration, and intuition. These men are the post-Christian
successors of the ancient initiates, of the leaders and members of the
institutions of mystery wisdom. They had the task of recognizing, by
means of their own faculties, what had been comprehensible through
ancient mystery wisdom, to which they had to add the knowledge of the
essential nature of the Christ event.
A knowledge thus arose among these new initiates that included
everything that was the subject of ancient initiation, but in the
center of this knowledge there radiated the higher wisdom of the
mysteries of the Christ event. Only in a small degree could such
knowledge flow into general life, while the human souls of the fourth
period of culture had to consolidate the faculties of intellect and
feeling. Thus it was at that time a very hidden knowledge.
Then the dawn of the new age broke, which is to be designated as the
fifth cultural period. Its nature consists in the advance of the
evolution of the intellectual faculties, which have unfolded to an
exuberant blossoming and will unfold still further in the present and
into the future. This prepared itself slowly, beginning with the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in order to accelerate its advance
from the sixteenth century onward into the present time. Under these
influences, the chief objective of the evolution of the fifth cultural
epoch was the fostering of the powers of the intellect, whereas the
confident knowledge of former ages, traditional knowledge, lost more
and more of its power over the human soul. But in its place there
developed what may be called an increasingly stronger influx into
human souls of the knowledge gained through modern supersensible
consciousness. The hidden knowledge flows, although quite
unnoticed at the beginning, into the mode of thinking of the men of
this period. It is only self-evident that, up to the present,
intellectual forces reject this knowledge. But what must happen will
happen, in spite of all temporary rejection. The hidden
knowledge, which from this side takes hold of mankind now and
will take hold of it more and more in the future, may be called
symbolically the wisdom of the Grail. If this symbol, as
it is given in legend and myth, is understood in its deeper meaning,
we shall find that it is a significant image of the nature of what has
been spoken of above as the knowledge of the new initiation, with the
Christ mystery at its center. The modern initiates may, therefore,
also be called initiates of the Grail. The way into the
supersensible worlds, the first stages of which have been described in
this book, leads to the science of the Grail. This
knowledge has the peculiarity that research into its facts can be made
only if one has acquired the necessary means that have been described
in this book. If, however, such research has been made, these facts
can then be understood through the soul forces developed in the fifth
cultural period. Indeed, it will become more and more evident that
these forces, in an ever higher degree, will find satisfaction through
this knowledge. We move now in an age in which this knowledge ought to
be received more abundantly into general consciousness than was
previously the case, and it is from this point of view that this book
desires to impart its information. To the degree to which the
development of mankind will absorb the knowledge of the Grail, the
impulse given through the Christ event can become ever more
significant. To the external aspect of Christian development the inner
aspect will be joined more and more. What may be known through
imagination, inspiration, and intuition about the higher worlds in
connection with the Christ mystery will increasingly permeate the
thought, feeling, and will-life of humanity. The concealed
knowledge of the Grail will be revealed; as an inner force it
will permeate more and more the manifestations of human life.
Throughout the fifth cultural period the knowledge of supersensible
worlds will flow into human consciousness, and when the sixth period
begins, mankind will have been able to re-attain at a higher stage
what it has possessed of non-sensory perception at an earlier period
in a still dim way. The new possession will, however, have a form
quite different from the old. What the soul knew in ancient times of
higher worlds was not permeated by its own power of intellect and
feeling; that knowledge came as an inspiration. In the future the soul
will not merely have inspirations, but it will comprehend them and
feel them as being of its own being. If knowledge about this or that
being or thing dawns upon the soul, the intellect will then find it
justified through its own nature; if a knowledge of a different kind
asserts itself knowledge of a moral law, or a human relationship the
soul will then say to itself: My feeling can only justify itself when
I act in accordance with this knowledge. Such a soul state is to be
developed by a sufficiently large number of human beings of the sixth
cultural period. What the third, the Egypto-Chaldean cultural period,
has bestowed upon human evolution repeats itself, in a certain way, in
the fifth period. In the third period the soul still perceived certain
facts of the supersensible world, but the perception of this world was
disappearing. The intellectual powers were preparing themselves for
their evolution, and they were, for the time being, to exclude the
human being from the higher world. In the fifth cultural period the
supersensible facts, which in the third period were perceived by a
hazy clairvoyance, again become manifest. Now they are permeated with
the forces of human intellect and personal feeling. They become
permeated also with what can be imparted to the soul through the
knowledge of the Christ mystery. Hence they assume quite a different
form from the one possessed previously. Whereas the impressions
received from the supersensible worlds were felt in ancient times as
forces giving impulses to the human being from an external spiritual
world in which he did not dwell, these impressions will be felt,
through the development of the modern age, as proceeding from a world
into which the human being grows and in which he participates
progressively more and more. No one should believe that the
Egypto-Chaldean culture will repeat itself in such a way that the soul
will simply receive what existed at that time and has been handed down
by tradition. The Christ impulse, rightly understood, works in such a
way that the human soul who has received it feels, recognizes, and
conducts itself as a member of a spiritual world, outside of which it
had previously dwelt. Whereas in this way the third epoch reappears in
the fifth, in order to permeate human souls with what the fourth epoch
has brought as something completely new, something similar will be the
case with the sixth epoch in regard to the second and the seventh in
regard to the first, the ancient Indian epoch. All the marvels of
wisdom of ancient India that the great teachers of that time could
proclaim will be able to reappear as truth of life of human souls in
the seventh cultural epoch.
The transformations in the things of the earth existing outside the
human being occur with a certain relationship to humanity's own
evolution. After the seventh cultural period has run its course, the
earth will be visited by a catastrophe that may be likened to what
occurred between the Atlantean and post-Atlantean ages, and the
transformed earth conditions after this catastrophe will again evolve
in seven time periods. Human souls who will then be incarnated will
experience, at a higher stage, the union with the higher world
experienced by the Atlanteans at a lower stage. Only those human
beings, however, in whom are incarnated souls that have developed in a
manner possible through the influences of the Greco-Latin epoch and
the subsequent fifth, sixth, and seventh cultural epochs of the
post-Atlantean evolution will be able to cope with the newly formed
earth conditions. The inner being of such souls will correspond to
what the earth has then become. Other souls will then have to remain
behind, whereas previously they would have had the choice of creating
the conditions for advancement. Souls who will have created the
possibility for themselves, in the transition from the fifth to the
sixth post-Atlantean period, of penetrating supersensible knowledge
with the forces of intellect and feeling, will have the maturity for
the corresponding conditions following the next great catastrophe. The
fifth and sixth periods are, so to speak, decisive. In the seventh,
the souls who will have reached the goal of the sixth will develop
correspondingly further; the other souls, however, will, under the
changed conditions of the environment, find but little opportunity of
retrieving what they have neglected. Only at some future time will
conditions appear again that will permit this. Evolution thus advances
from age to age. Supersensible cognition not only observes such future
changes in which the earth alone takes part, but it is also aware of
changes that occur in co-operation with the heavenly bodies in its
environment. A time will come when the evolution of the earth and
mankind will have advanced so far that the spiritual powers and beings
that had to sever themselves from the earth during the Lemurian age,
in order to make possible the continued progress of the earth's
beings, will be able to unite themselves again with the earth. The
moon will then reunite with the earth. This will occur because at that
time a sufficiently large number of human souls will possess so much
inner strength that they will use these moon forces for the benefit of
further evolution. This will occur at a time when, alongside the high
level of development that will have been reached by a certain number
of human souls, another development will occur that has taken the
direction toward evil. The laggard souls will have accumulated in
their karma so much error, ugliness, and evil that they will form, for
the time being, a special union of evil and aberrant human beings who
violently oppose the community of good men.
The good humanity will through its development acquire the use of the
moon forces and thereby so transform the evil part also that, as a
special realm of the earth, it may participate in further evolution.
Through this work of the good humanity, the earth, united with the
moon, will be able, after a certain period of evolution, to reunite
also with the sun and with the other planets. Then, after an
intermediate stage, which presents itself as a sojourn in a higher
world, the Earth will transform itself into Jupiter. Within this
state, what is now called the mineral kingdom will no longer exist;
the forces of this mineral kingdom will be transformed into plant
forces. The plant kingdom, which in contrast to the present plant
kingdom will have an entirely new form, appears during the Jupiter
state as the lowest kingdom. To this a higher kingdom is added, the
transformed animal kingdom; above it there is a human kingdom, which
proves to be the progeny of the evil community that arose on the
earth; above all these are to be found the descendants of the good
community of earth men, a human kingdom of a higher order. A great
part of the activity of this latter human kingdom consists in the work
of ennobling the fallen souls of the evil community, so that they may
still be able to find their way back into the actual human kingdom.
The Venus evolution will be one in which the plant kingdom also will
have disappeared; the lowest kingdom at that time will be the
retransformed animal kingdom; this will be joined on an ascending
scale by three human kingdoms of different degrees of perfection.
During the Venus state the earth remains united with the sun; during
the Jupiter state, however, evolution proceeds in such a way that at a
certain point of time the sun departs once more from Jupiter and the
latter receives its effects from the outside. After a time, the union
of sun and Jupiter [ Jupiter minus the sun in contradistinction to
Jupiter with the sun. (Tr.)] again occurs and the transformation
gradually proceeds over into the Venus state. During that state a
special cosmic body splits off that contains all the beings who have
resisted evolution, a so to speak irredeemable moon, which
now moves toward an evolution, for the character of which no
expression can be found because it is too dissimilar to anything that
man can experience on earth. The evolved mankind, however, advances in
a completely spiritualized existence to the Vulcan evolution, the
description of which does not lie within the scope of this book.
We see that the highest imaginable ideal of human evolution results
from the knowledge of the Grail: the spiritualization that
man acquires through his own efforts. For this spiritualization
appears finally as a result of the harmony that he produces in the
fifth and sixth cultural periods of present evolution between the
acquired powers of intellect and feeling and the knowledge of the
supersensible worlds. What he there produces in the inmost depths of
his soul is finally itself to become the outer world. The human spirit
elevates itself to the tremendous impressions of its outer world and
first divines and afterwards recognizes spiritual beings behind these
impressions; man's heart feels the boundless sublimity of the
spiritual. The human being can also recognize that his inner
experiences of intellect, feeling, and character are the indications
of a nascent world of the spirit.
Whoever believes that human freedom is not compatible with
foreknowledge and predestination of the future condition of things,
should consider that free human action in the future depends just as
little upon the character the predestined things will have as this
freedom depends upon his resolve to live in a house a year hence, the
plan of which he determines today. He will be as free as it is
possible for him to be according to his inner nature, precisely in the
house he has built for himself; and he will be as free upon Jupiter
and Venus as his inner life permits just within the conditions that
will arise there. Freedom will not depend upon what has been
predestined by antecedent conditions, but upon what the soul has made
of itself.
Within the Earth evolution is contained what has evolved during the
preceding Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions. The earth man finds
wisdom in the processes that take place in his
environment. This wisdom is present as the result of what had happened
previously. The Earth is the descendant of the ancient Moon which,
with all that belonged to it, formed itself into the cosmos of
wisdom. The Earth is the beginning of an evolution through which
a new force is added to this wisdom. It brings the human being to the
point where he feels himself an independent member of the spirit
world. This rests on the fact that his ego is fashioned by the Spirits
of Form during the Earth evolution, just as upon Saturn the Spirits of
Will formed his physical body, upon the Sun the Spirits of Wisdom his
life-body, and upon the Moon the Spirits of Motion his astral body.
The manifestation of wisdom appears through the co-operation of the
Spirits of Will, Wisdom, and Motion. The Earth beings and Earth
processes can harmonize in wisdom with the other beings of their world
through the work of these three classes of spirits. From the Spirits
of Form the human being receives his independent ego. In the future
this ego will harmonize with the beings of Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and
Vulcan through the power that is added to wisdom by the Earth
evolution. This is the power of love. In earth humanity this power of
love must take its beginning, and the cosmos of wisdom
unfolds itself into a cosmos of love. Everything that the
ego is able to unfold within itself is to become love. The exalted Sun
Being Whom we are able to characterize in the description of the
Christ evolution manifests Himself as the all-encompassing
archetype of love. Thus the seed of love is planted into
the innermost core of human nature. And from there it is to flow into
the whole of evolution. Just as the previously formed wisdom reveals
itself in the forces of the sensory external world of the earth, in
the present-day nature forces, so in the future love will
reveal itself in all phenomena as a new nature force. It is the
mystery of all evolution into the future that knowledge and all that
the human being does through a true understanding of evolution is a
sowing of seed that must ripen as love, and the greater the force of
love coming into being, the greater will be the accomplishments of
creative force in the future. In what will be created from love will
lie the strong forces leading to the above described culminating
result of spiritualization. The greater the amount of spiritual
cognition that flows into human and earth evolution, the greater will
be the number of fertile seeds for the future. Spiritual knowledge is
transmuted by its very nature into love. The entire process that has
been described, beginning with the Greco-Latin cultural epoch and
extending through our present epoch, shows how this transformation is
to take place, and also shows that the beginning of development into
the future has been made. What has been prepared during the Saturn,
Sun, and Moon evolutions as wisdom acts in the physical, ether, and
astral body of man; there it shows itself as cosmic
wisdom; in the ego, however, it becomes inner
wisdom. From the Earth stage onward, wisdom of the
external world becomes inner wisdom of man. Intensified in the
inner life, it becomes the seed of love. Wisdom is the pre-condition
of love; love is the result of wisdom reborn in the ego.
Whoever could be misled by the preceding expositions into believing
that the described evolution bears a fatalistic stamp, would have
misunderstood them. Whoever were to believe that in such an evolution
a certain number of men would be condemned to belong to the kingdom of
evil humanity, fails to perceive how the mutual
relationship between outer world and the world of soul and spirit
takes shape in this evolution. Both outer world and the world of soul
and spirit form, within certain limits, separate evolutionary streams.
Through the forces inherent in the sensory stream there arise the
forms of the evil human kingdom. The necessity for a human
soul to incarnate in such a form will only occur if this soul itself
has created the conditions for it. The case might also arise that the
forms originating from the forces of the sensory could not find human
souls originating in the previous age, for these souls might be too
good for that type of body. These forms would then have to be ensouled
from the cosmos by something quite different from former human souls.
Human souls will incarnate in the forms characterized only when they
have made themselves ready for such an incarnation. Supersensible
cognition is bound to state what it perceives concerning this sphere,
namely, that in the future indicated there will exist two human
kingdoms, one good and one evil, but it does not abstractly deduce
from the present state of human souls a future state appearing as
though with the force of self-evident necessity. Evolution of human
forms and evolution of soul-destinies must be sought by supersensible
cognition on two quite separate paths; any attempt to mix the two in
the conception of the world would be a remnant of a materialistic
attitude that, if present, would project itself dangerously into the
science of the supersensible.
Last Modified: 07-Oct-2024
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