V. The Seven Degrees of Initiation

If in spirit we look back over human evolution to the time when mankind still lived upon an ancient Continent lying between Europe and America, upon ancient Atlantis, passing over from there into the later post-Atlantean period, we can see how generation after generation has at last led right up to ourselves. If we consider from the standpoint of race the whole significance of human evolution from the 4th to the 5th Root-race, we can see, as it were, that out of an Atlantean humanity, wholly or completely immersed in the group-soul, the individual ego of the human personality gradually evolved and slowly matured in the post-Atlantean period. What the Christ brought spiritually through His powerful spiritual impulse had to be prepared gradually through other impulses. What Jahve did was to implant the group-soul ego in the astral body and by gradually maturing it, prepare it for the reception of the fully independent “I AM.” But men could only comprehend this “I AM” when their physical body also became a fit instrument for sheltering It. You can easily imagine that the astral body might be ever so capable of receiving an ego, but if the physical body is not a fit instrument for truly comprehending the “I AM” with a waking consciousness then it is impossible to receive it. The physical body must also always be a suitable instrument for what is imprinted upon it here upon the earth. Therefore when the astral body had been matured, the physical body had to be prepared to become an instrument of the “I AM,” and this is what occurred in human evolution. We can follow the processes through which the physical body was prepared to become the bearer of the self-conscious, ego-endowed human being.