10. The Experience of the Soul's Will Nature

Then, however, it comes about that we are increasingly caught up by our consciousness which has lived its way into the cosmic-etheric world. Since our etheric organism is now not strictly separated from the cosmic-etheric world, it flows out into it, so to speak. We feel ourselves to be in this cosmic-etheric world, and when we look back upon our etheric body, it already appears larger to us. This continues until at last we no longer possess the etheric body. Then, clad in our astral organism, we find our way into the cosmos and into our new consciousness. It is then that there emerges in man what I have characterized as a being which represents the actualized valuation of man's moral-spiritual qualities. Man feels himself burdened with this being. His nature is then composed of what flows out of him into the cosmos, and the being to which he must return again and again in his experiences after death, namely the being that actually represents the sum total of his moral qualities.