Lecture IX

We might say that the important stage of passing over into the earth which has become spiritualized, is wonderfully expressed in the Bible where it says that everything which man now accomplishes within himself in the physical body during the earth period is like a sowing whose fruit will appear when the earth has become spiritual. “And that which thou sowest is not the body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat or of some other grain. But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body” (1 Cor. xv. 37), That is, the body which is the expression of the soul of the individuality. “There are also celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial, but the glory of the celestial body is one, and the glory of the terrestrial body is another.” The earthly bodies will be dissolved, the celestial will appear as the luminous expression of what the soul is. “It is sown corruptible and will rise incorruptible.” The incorruptible body will then be resurrected. “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.” Paul calls the etheric or life-body, spiritual body, after the physical has dissolved and the etheric passes into the astral earth. Paul here sees beforehand the incorruptible spiritual body, as he calls it.