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.They cannot altogether have arrived there, for this would mean death to the whole organism.The etheric organism forms organs which have passed through the astral organization but are striving ever and again to withdraw from it; they have in them a force towards the dullness of sleep, they incline to develop this merely vegetative life.The astral organism forms organs which estrange the vegetative life.They can only exist if this vegetative life takes hold of them again and again.Having no relationship either with the radiating outward or with the radiating inward [field] forces of the earth, they would fall out of the earthly realm altogether if it did not again and again take hold of them.In these organs, a rhythmic interplay of the animal and plant like natures must take place.This determines the alternating states of sleeping and waking.In sleep, the organs of the astral forces, too, are in the dull stupor of a plant-like life.They have no active influence on the etheric and physical realm.They are then entirely abandoned to the domains of [field] forces pouring in toward and outward from the earth.CHAPTER VPlant, Animal, ManIn the astral body the animal form arises, outwardly the form as a whole, inwardly the formation of the organs.The sentient animal substance is, then, an outcome of the form-giving activity of this astral body.Where this process of formation is carried to its conclusion, the animal is produced.In man it is not carried to its conclusion.At a certain point on its way it is held up, blocked.In the plant we have material substance transformed by the forces raying inward to the earth.This is the living substance.It is continually interacting with the lifeless [matter].We must conceive that in the plant, living substance is perpetually being separated out of the lifeless.It is in the living substance that the plant form then appears as a product of the forces raying in towards the earth.Thus we have one stream of substance.Lifeless substance transforms itself into living; living transforms itself into lifeless.In this stream the plant-like organs come into being.In the animal the sentient substance comes forth from the living, as in the plant the living from the lifeless.Thus there is a twofold stream of substance.The life is not carried to the point of formed living in the etheric.It is kept in flow, and form inserts itself through the astral organization into the streaming life.In man, this latter process too is kept in flow.The sentient substance is drawn into the realm of a still further organization.This we may call the ego-organization.The sentient substance transforms itself once more.A threefold stream of substance is produced.In this, man's inner and outer form arises.Through this it becomes the bearer of self-conscious spiritual life.Down to the smallest particle of his substance, man in his form is a result of this ego-organization.We can now trace these processes of formation in their material aspect.The transformation of substance from the one level to the next appears as a separation of the upper level from the lower, and a building of the form out of this separated substance.In the plant, out of the lifeless substance the living is separated.In this separated substance, the etheric forces work, raying inward to the earth, creating form.To begin with, there takes place not an actual separation but an entire transformation of physical substance by the etheric forces.This, however, only happens in the formation of the seed.Here the transformation can be complete, because the seed is protected by the surrounding maternal organization from the influences of the physical forces.But when the seed formation is freed from the maternal organization, the working of the forces in the plant divides; in one direction, the forming of substance is such as to strive upward into the realm of the etheric, while in the other it strives back again to physical formation.Parts of the being of the plant arise that are on the way to life and those which are on the way to death.The latter then appear as the excretory members of the plant organism.The bark-formation of the tree is a particularly characteristic example in which we may observe this excretory process.In the animal there are dual processes of separation, and dual processes of excretion.The plant-process of excretion is not carried to a conclusion but kept in flow, and there is added to it the transformation of living substance into sentient.This sentient substance separates itself from the merely living
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