body on which he lives--the earth.

Occult science traces this connection by means of a knowledge which
obtains its data from observation quickened by spiritual organs of
perception. It traces man backwards in his course of development, and the
fact becomes evident to occult science that the real inner spiritual being
of man has progressed through a series of lives on this earth. Occult
research arrives in this way at an epoch far back in the remote past, when
for the first time that inner being of man made its entry into "external
life" as we understand it. It was in this first earthly incarnation that
the ego began to function in the three bodies--the astral body, the etheric
or vital body, and the physical body; and it then carried over the results
of that activity into its next life.

If in our investigation we proceed backwards, in the manner indicated, as
far as that epoch, we discover that the ego finds an earth condition in
which the three bodies, physical, etheric, and astral, are already
developed and in which they bear a certain relation to each other. The ego
is, for the first time, united with the being composed of these three
bodies; and henceforth takes part in the further evolution of the three
bodies. Hitherto, up to the stage at which that ego came in touch with
them, they had evolved without a human ego.

Occult science must now go back still farther in its researches if it is
to answer the questions, "How did the three bodies reach that stage of
evolution at which they were able to receive an ego within them?" and "How
did that ego itself come into being and acquire the capacity for working
within these bodies?"

It is possible to answer these questions only when the gradual development
of the earth-planet itself is studied from the occult point of view. By
such investigation we arrive at a beginning of the earth-planet. That
method of examination which is based only on the facts of the physical
senses cannot arrive at conclusions concerning the beginning of the earth.
A certain point of view which avails itself of such conclusions arrives at
the result that everything material on the earth was formed out of a
primeval essence, or vapour. It is not the purpose of this work to enter
more fully into such conceptions of our planet's origin; for in occult
science the important matter is not merely to inquire into the material
processes of the earth's evolution, but first and foremost to discover the