XVI. What is seen on looking back into Man's repeated Earth-lives

> 1. On looking back into a man's repeated earth-lives, they may be distinguished into three different stages: First a very early one, in which Man is not yet existent as an individual form of being, but as a life-seed amid divine spiritual being. Looking back into this stage, one finds not as yet a Man, but only divine Spirit-Beings (the Principalities or Primeval Powers, the Archai.) > 2. Following on this comes a middle stage in which Man is already discernible as an individual form of being, but not yet detached from the thinking and willing and being of the divine-spiritual world. He has not yet, as that time, his present personality, which is involved with his appearance on earth as an entirely distinctive being, detached from the divine spiritual world. > 3. The third stage is the present one. Man realizes himself, as he stands forth in his own human form, detached from the divine spiritual world; and he realizes the world as an environment over against which he takes his place as an individual personality. This stage began in Atlantean times.