spiritual causes lying behind what is material.

If we see before us a man raising his hand, we may consider his action in
two different ways: we may examine the mechanism of the arm and the rest
of the organism, in order to describe the process as it takes place from
the purely physical standpoint, or we may direct the spiritual vision to
what takes place in the man's soul and there discover what constitutes the
inner motive for raising the hand. In this way an investigator, trained in
occult research, sees spiritual processes behind all the events of the
physical sense-world. In his eyes all transformations of the material part
of the earth-planet are manifestations of spiritual forces lying behind
what is material.

But if occult observation of this kind goes farther and farther back in
the life of the earth it comes to that point in evolution at which
material things first came into being. The material element is evolved out
of the spiritual. Up to this point the spiritual element was the only one
existing. By occult investigation the spiritual element is perceived, and
the observer can see how it becomes partly condensed, as it were, into
matter. We have before us a process which is taking place--on a higher
level--much as though we were observing a lump of ice being formed by
artificial means in a vessel of water. Just as we see the ice being
condensed out of what was previously only water, so may we, by means of
occult observation, watch the condensation of what was previously entirely
spiritual, so to speak, into material things, processes, and beings. In
this way the physical earth-planet was evolved out of a cosmic spiritual
essence; and everything that is combined materially with the earth-planet
has been condensed out of what was previously united with it spiritually.
We must not, however, think that _everything_ spiritual was at any one
time changed into material form; but, in the latter we have before us
merely the transformed portions of what was originally spiritual. Thus,
even during the period of material evolution, it is always Spirit that is
really the guiding and ruling principle.

It is obvious that the mode of thought which restricts itself to the
processes of physical sense--and to what reason is able to infer from
them--is incapable of expressing an opinion about the spiritual element of
which we are speaking. Let us assume that a being might exist to whose
senses ice would be perceptible, but