ised. It could
already create forms. It had to develop for that for long times.
It had already gone through
long developmental states. These have been completed on other heavenly
bodies, of course. How have we to imagine such a development on other
heavenly bodies? All the abilities which the soul had acquired were
in such a way that they could work in the physical. It was led from
former developmental states. The soul had to have already gone through
physical states several times, because only within the physical world
certain abilities can be developed. The human being could not speak
and think today unless he had got into contact with the physical nature.
What we work today becomes our ability later. I have often pointed to
the child that learns to write and read. When the child has grown up,
it can write and read. What was labour, what was intercourse with the
outside world before has disappeared, but the fruit, the result has
remained. This is the ability of writing and reading. What we have in
the soul has originated from the intercourse with the outside world.
The theosophical world view
calls it involution. If the human being again works out from within
what he has acquired, we call it evolution. Between involution and evolution
all life takes place. What the soul has done in the evolution is based
on the fact that the abilities have emerged from the soul. These abilities
were acquired once by involution. This involution took place again in
another physical body. We have there an important moment that has happened
on our earth; this is the moment when the human being was able to become
a warm-blooded being from a cold-blooded one, because the lunar matter
had emerged. This is the important point of the earth development. In
all mystic schools this is emphasised. The human being takes the heat
into him and reworks it inside. The myth which always shows the great
truths figuratively preserved this in the Prometheus legend. Prometheus
got down the fire from the heaven. This is the warmth of the human being
that he got down there, not the external heat. Thus the human being
had to get down all remaining abilities from the heaven, too.
I would like to lead you
still to a point that is also very important for the earth development.
This is the moment when the human being takes up in him what we have
once got to know as the inside of the soul. We have seen that pictures
have risen up in the human being which he associated with the objects.
The human being possessed this ability to develop light in him in the
first time. He acquired that sooner as well as he acquired the ability
later to develop warmth. The human being developed the ability to sense
light around him or still more properly speaking to sense the objects
around him in the light. This took place on a planet which the theosophical
world view calls “Moon.” However, this was not our physical
moon. When the soul had acquired the ability of the inner light, the
connection was there, and who knows the circumstances of the past, knows
that it evoked the soul ability of seeing colours, the inner luminescence.
We have to realise once how this abilities are connected. The development
of warmth is connected with all life on our earth, with the present
kind of reproduction, with the way the human being can bring something
into real existence. Everything else is combining; only the reproduction
is a real creating, and this is connected with warmth. We have a similar
level of development when the inner luminescence appeared. The human
being developed the luminescence on a previous planet. This was a luminescence
from within like it is warmth from within today. It was luminescence.
With it we have come to the most excellent characteristic of the human
being in his pre-physical state on another heavenly body. Everything
that went out from the human being was luminous as his aura shines today.
The human being was a luminous being, and the perception of the human
being was the perception of his luminescence. At that time, luminescence
developed down to the physical. It was a 