XVII. What is seen on looking back into Man's previous Lives between Death and the new Birth (I)

It was not so in a period that preceded this one. There, Man was not yet far advanced in the development of his Self-consciousness. The power then acquired upon earth was not yet sufficient to carry his detachment from the divine spiritual world to the extent of an individual existence between death and new birth. Although Man was no longer within the divine spiritual beings themselves, he was still so much within their sphere of action that his willing was essentially their willing, not his.