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the finer parts, in particular the human astral body, extricate themselves from those coarser organisms. They reach a condition in which the higher forces of exalted Sun-beings are able to act upon them very powerfully. After the interval of rest they again interpenetrate those parts of man's being which are composed of the coarser substances. Because they received such powerful forces during the pause--in a free state--they are able to make those coarser substances ripe for the influence, after a certain time, of the Sons of Personality and the Sons of Fire, who have progressed normally. In the meantime these Sons of Personality have raised themselves to a level upon which they possess the "consciousness of inspiration." Here they are not only able--as was the case with clairvoyant picture-consciousness--to observe the inner state of other beings in images, but to apprehend the inner nature itself of those beings, as though in a spiritual tone-language. But the Sons of Fire have risen to that height of consciousness possessed on the Sun by the Sons of Personality. Thus both kinds of spirits are able to influence the now more developed life of the human being. The Sons of Personality act on the astral body, the Sons of Fire on the etheric body of this human being. The astral body thereby acquires the character of personality. It now not only experiences pleasure and pain, but relates them to itself. It has not arrived at a complete ego-consciousness, that says to itself, "I am here"; but it feels itself upheld and protected by other beings in its environment. When looking, as it were, up to these, it is able to say, "This, my environment, keeps me alive." The Sons of Fire now work upon the etheric body. Under their influence the movement of forces in that body becomes more and more an inner function of life. What then results finds physical expression in a circulation of fluids and in phenomena of growth. The gaseous substances have become condensed into liquid substances; we may speak of a kind of nutritive process, in the sense that what is received from without becomes transformed and elaborated within. Perhaps if we think of something intermediate between nutrition and respiration in the present meaning of the terms, we may get an idea of what then happened in this respect. The nutritive matter was drawn from the animal-plant kingdom by the human being. We must think of those animal-plants as floating or swimming-
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