The Threshold of the Spiritual World
GA 17
XV. Summary of Part of the Foregoing
Man bears within him a real ego, which belongs to a super-spiritual world. In the physical world this real ego is, as it were, concealed by the experiences of thinking, feeling, and willing. Even in the spiritual world man only becomes aware of his real ego when he effaces in himself the memories of everything which he is able to experience through his thinking, feeling, and willing. The knowledge of the real ego emerges out of forgetfulness of what is experienced in the physical world, the elemental world, and the spiritual world.
The human physical body is revealed in its true nature when the soul beholds it from the super-spiritual world. Then it becomes evident that that body first took its rise out of the universal cosmic process during a Saturn period which preceded the Sun period of the earth. Subsequently, during the Sun, Moon, and Earth periods, it developed into what the human physical body is at present.
In accordance with the foregoing, man's collective being may be expressed in tabular form as follows:
I. The physical body in the environment of the physical world. By its means man recognises himself as an independent individual being or ego. This physical body was formed, at its first beginning, from the universal cosmic essence during a long-past Saturn period of the earth, and through its development during four planetary metamorphoses of the earth has become what it now is.
II. The subtle, etheric body in the elemental environment. By its means man recognises himself as a member of the earth's elemental or vital body. This body was formed, at its first beginning, from the universal cosmic essence during a long-past Sun period of the earth, and through its development during three planetary metamorphoses of the earth has become what it now is.
III. The astral body in a spiritual environment. Through it man is a member of a spiritual world. In it is situated man's other self which realises itself in repeated earth-lives.
IV. The real ego in a super-spiritual environment. In this man finds himself as a spiritual being, even when all experiences of the physical, elemental, and spiritual worlds, and therefore all experiences of the senses and of thinking, feeling, and willing, sink into oblivion.
