Man, Nature and the Cosmos

GA 91 — 28 June 1905, Berlin

8. The Consciousness Soul

If we wish to understand the consciousness soul of a man, we must go back to his fourth incarnation. Those natures which assert themselves with especially strong energy have acquired it by especially strong activity four incarnations ago. People who have especially clear, combining mind and special feeling directions go back to three incarnations. Something that adheres to the sentient soul, feeling of beauty, tone of voice, timbre, goes back to the previous incarnation, In the case of the person who has not made it to the spirit self, we can only go back to four incarnations. We then see that something else is acting on him.

Everything is gradual in the world; new beings are always advancing. The higher, more perfect beings act upon those bodies of man over which he himself has no influence. Therefore his lower bodies are better organized than his astral body. The astral body is the result of human karma. Etheric body and physical body partly also, but other beings must cooperate, so that a special etheric body and physical body correspond to this astral body. We have seen that chelas can act on their etheric body, and masters, adepts on their physical body. On [every] human etheric body and physical body chelas and masters can also act. The difference is that the human being acts unconsciously, whereas the chela and master act consciously.

There are entities that still rise above these. On what do they have influence? On still higher things in man. Before man became a physical being, he was an etheric being and even earlier an astral being. Now nothing is lost on earth. What exists, remains, only it takes higher forms. The former etheric and astral bodies of men have become general; they work together as the astral bodies of the different nations. As masters work on our physical body, higher entities work on these "racial bodies"; "angels of circulating times>" they are called. They are the great regulators of national developments. They condition the appearance of a certain individuality in a nation - Luther, Bismarck. So there is more at play than human karma; it is intelligent direction.

Higher up is an even greater spirit, whose body is a mental one. In Christian esotericism they are called the "Archangels of the Circulating Times": seven great regulators of religious systems. Each sub-race has a system. The archangels together form the choir that regulates our root race: a choir of seven genii.

When you go up to the Arupa region, there we have what is called the body of genius that governs the whole root race; still higher, the genius that governs the whole round. Thus we come up to the seven who stand before the throne of God. All esotericism has this hierarchical division up to the top.

If we go back to the leader in the third root-race - Lemuria - who gave the impact to the impregnation with Manas, we see that it is a power even higher than the archangels of the circulating times. <"Exusiai> are called these powers, beings who regulate knowledge, while the archangels still regulate [in the unconscious] the religious.

So we see that the world becomes "entities" through and through. [Inwardly with its own body, outwardly other beings regulate karma]. He who does not know that everything is entity around him, does not know that from everywhere comes the counteraction to his action.

Astral Man
Ether man
Physical man
Etheric body
Astral body