course of his evolution between death and re-birth. But he does not
experience these impulses directly; they are brought to him by beings
belonging to the spiritual world. And if these are considered, everything
that happens reveals itself to man. But the special conditions of these
beings, that which they themselves require in order to guide human
evolution, can only be observed by means of a cognition that transcends
intuition. We thus have a glimpse of worlds which we must so picture that
within them the most highly spiritual features of the earth are there
among the lowest. Logical decisions, for example, count among the highest
things within the earthly sphere; while the activities of the mineral
kingdom are among the lowest. Now in those higher spheres, logical
decisions correspond to about what the mineral activities are on earth.
Above the domain of intuition, lies the region in which the cosmic plan is
woven out of spiritual causes.

The Principles Of Man

When it is said that the ego works on the human principles, on the
physical, etheric, and astral bodies, and transforms them in reverse order
into Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man, this statement relates to
the work of the ego on the human being by means of the highest faculties,
the development of which was begun only under earthly conditions. But this
transformation is preceded at a lower level by another change, giving rise
to the sentient-, the intellectual- or rational-, and the
consciousness-soul. For while, in the course of human evolution, the
sentient-soul is being formed, changes are taking place in the astral
body; the growth of the intellectual-soul expresses itself in
transformations in the etheric body; and that of the consciousness-soul in
similar transformations in the physical body. Fuller information on this
subject has been given in this book in the accounts of the evolution of
the earth. Thus in a certain sense we may say that the sentient-soul
itself is the result of a transformed astral body, the intellectual- or
rational-soul of a transformed etheric body, and the consciousness-soul of
a transformed physical body. But we may also say that these three
divisions of the soul are parts of the astral body; for example, the
consciousness-soul is only possible because it is an astral entity
existing in a physical body suited to it. It lives an astral life within a
physical body fashioned to be its dwelling place.

The Dream State