Overview, Page 3

The makeup of the human being is threefold, fourfold, sevenfold or ninefold, depending upon how it is viewed. These are demonstrated by the following tabulation from Chart I-9:

The essential nature of the body and soul components is as follows:

The ninefold division corresponds with the nine Hierarchies and is reflected in the nine Beatitudes as well as in the nine characteristics of the “one like a son of man” (Rev 1,13-16). The sevenfold corresponds with the seven “Conditions” represented by the days of the week. The fourfold corresponds with the “Four Elements” and with the four Conditions that have existed thus far, namely, Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon, and Earth. Finally, the threefold represents the threefold division expressed by Paul in 1 Thess 5,23, “body, soul and spirit.” In fact, all such multifold divisions are merely different ways of referring to the same entity.

The fourfold human of Earth evolution is composed of three bodies (physical, etheric or life, and astral or sense) plus an Ego. The physical body is not synonymous with the mineral body, for the latter is an attribute of the physical only during Earth evolution. A comprehension of this distinction is essential if one is to understand the physical body as the “resurrection body.” The physical body had its origin on Old Saturn, the etheric or life body on Old Sun, and the astral or sense body on Old Moon. Not until Earth evolution were these joined by the Ego—the “I Am.” The existence of these bodies is represented profusely in hidden language in scripture. The physical is the oldest and most perfected, the Ego the youngest and most immature, the etheric and the astral fall progressively in between. The Animal Kingdom has the three bodies on Earth, the Plant Kingdom the older two, and the Mineral Kingdom only the oldest, the physical. Each lower kingdom has the other bodies, as well as the Ego, but only in the higher worlds (to be more fully explained in due course). Human beings did not evolve from the lower kingdoms; the latter evolved as by-products, so to speak, of human evolution. Human beings came first, but descended into mineral materiality last. Thus, the skeletons, fossils and remains of the lower three kingdoms, in succession, demonstrate themselves to archaeology, whereas the skeletal remains of humanity are of but recent origin without any connecting link to its origin existing in mineral form.

Earth evolution, or the Earth Condition of Consciousness, is itself progressively divided and subdivided again and again into seven stages, as shown in different ways in I-1, I-2 and I-3 in Charts & Tabulations in this volume. Each level, at its outset, recapitulates what has gone before but on a higher plane. It is important for us to see, for instance, particularly as we approach the conditions revealed in Gen 1,2, that this phenomenon applies to the first three “Evolutionary Epochs” of the Mineral Physical Conditions of the earthly Condition of Consciousness. The Polarian, Hyperborean and Lemurian Epochs respectively recapitulate the Old Saturn, Sun and Moon Conditions of Consciousness. These three Conditions represent the following stages of “descent” of the human being into materiality:

However, each element moved a notch further toward materiality, “densification,” with each progressive Condition. Thus, not until the fourth stage was there any “Earth” or solid matter. What was Water in the third stage became Earth in the fourth, and so on. So, in the third Epoch of Earth evolution only Water, Air and the fourth element, Fire (i.e., heat), existed, the Fire having been created first.