445. Already in its earliest thought-forming infancy it is in the nature of a living being to accept all outer phenomena or experiences as "expressions of life", that is to say, as expressions of will or manifestation on the part of living beings. Thus primitive people assume there to be a "spirit" or "spirits" behind every phenomenon in nature. They regard a storm, cold, heat, water-courses, darkness, light, stones, cliffs, mountains, trees, flowers and so forth, as the expression of mystical living beings. And the same applies to their experiences of sorrow, misfortune and suffering as well as all their good fortune. In these areas too – according to their understanding – there are mystic beings who are cooperating in their good or evil fate.
      Thus we see that primitive people who have not yet attained any particular use of the ability to analyze, comprehend quite "instinctively" – i.e. purely automatically – everything around them as an expression of life or consciousness. But this actually constitutes in principle the same life-form in which the "cosmically conscious" being lives. The only difference is that the primitive being does not possess the intellectual ability to analyse, as does the "cosmically conscious" being, and cannot grasp the mystical living beings behind physical phenomena, just as, on account of an inability to analyse he cannot clearly comprehend the fundamental basic laws of life or of the Universe. In short, he will undoubtedly have to live by his "instinct", that is to say by the experience of C knowledge which is an inherited habitual function from the previous spiral's intellectual zone. Through the "kingdom of bliss" the being's longings for a primitive zone have indeed become so important that in the new spiral's first zones – the "mineral kingdom", "plant kingdom", and "animal kingdom" – it is completely orientated towards becoming satiated by the experience of primitiveness or the culmination of everything ranging under the concept of disharmony, in other words being in opposition to the laws of existence. This inwardly dominating incentive will undoubtedly influence its creation of bodies. These kinds of bodies will thus become excellent tools for primitiveness and the infringement of life's laws and reach culmination in the form of those bodies belonging to beasts of prey.
      At their departure from the "kingdom of bliss" the beings have no interest whatsoever in that high intellectuality which, in the "divine world", had given them such a great degree of satiety with harmony and perfection; consequently there is no aspiration at all in the new spiral which can keep their "cosmic consciousness" alive. In its first stages or zones in this new spiral, the individual's manifested bodies cannot therefore be built up as tools for "cosmic consciousness" – on the contrary, in this respect they are impossible tools. However, they constitute the most excellent tools for a form of consciousness in which individuals are gradually enabled to make physical experiences realistically comprehensible.
      By creating this form of day-consciousness the living being has thus, voluntarily, shut himself off from true intellectuality and the supreme knowledge of existence and consequently also from its highest absolute perfection and most glorious harmony.
      But the "spiral journey", or that which we call here on Earth "evolution", does not progress in jumps. Beings cannot suddenly jump from the harmony and perfection of the "divine world" and from their acquired habit of living in, or making use of, the most perfect bodies in the spiral, to using its most imperfect and primitive tools of manifestation. The high intellectual existence has become a fundamental habit of consciousness and, on this account, can only be overcome by creating a new habit of consciousness. And such creation can only be brought about by acquiring a new familiarity or training which, again, is the same as a permanent repetition of the forms of manifestation which make up the practises through which the desired mastery can be brought about. Thus, the "spiral journey" itself can be carried out only at a certain definite speed. This, as we shall see later, may still sometimes be either forced forward or delayed a little, but can never be carried out in jumps or sudden jerks. For the most part, it runs a very even and harmonious course.
      The various factors mentioned here in this way are the reasons why we meet the spiral's first living beings manifesting conscious physical expression, as beings who now retain nothing more of their former "cosmic consciousness" than its "C knowledge" and that only appearing in a rather advanced form of degeneration. Naturally it must degenerate for, as we have said, on account of the great satiation with a divine condition, there is in the individual's consciousness not the slightest desire to keep that former cosmic consciousness alive but rather, there is a fundamental repulsion for it. Instead, in that particular part of the spiral, the individual has a great longing for a purely primitive physical existence or experience and in due course this form of life will necessarily have an all-pervading dominance over the individual's behaviour.