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An Outline of Occult Science
intermediate between the awakening of contemporary man each morning, and his being born. And in the same way the gradual dulling of consciousness at the approach of the Sun period resembles a condition midway between falling asleep and dying. For on the old Moon there was not yet such a consciousness of birth and death as man now possesses. Man gave himself up to the enjoyment of the universe in a kind of Sun life. During this period he was carried beyond his own life; he lived more spiritually. We can only attempt an approximate description, by way of comparison, of what man experienced during such times. He felt as though the forces of the universe were streaming into him, pulsing through him. He felt as though intoxicated with the harmonies of the universe which he thus experienced. As such times his astral body was as though set free from the physical body; also part of the etheric body went with it out of the physical body. This organism, consisting of the astral and etheric bodies, was like a delicate, wonderful musical instrument, from the strings of which the mysteries of the universe reverberated. And the members of that part of the human being on which consciousness had but slight influence were shaped in accordance with the harmonies of the universe. For the Sun-beings worked in those harmonies. Thus this part of man was given its form by the spiritual sounds of the universe; and at the same time the alternation between the clearer state of consciousness during the Sun period, and the duller one, was not so abrupt as was that between the waking state and that of absolutely dreamless sleep in contemporary man. The picture-consciousness was not so clear as the present waking consciousness; but on the other hand, the other consciousness was not so dull as the dreamless sleep of the present day. Thus the human being had a conception, even though dim, of the play of the cosmic harmonies in his physical body and in that part of his etheric body which had remained united with the physical body. During the time when, so to speak, the Sun