Three Bodies, Page 3

As we shall see below, the three bodies are addressed in the Lord’s Prayer (bread/physical; debts, trespasses or guilt/etheric; temptation/astral). In The Lord’s Prayer (LP), Steiner gives helpful descriptions, calling the physical body “a continual thoroughfare,” for “in and out of it . . . the substances continuously flow that are at one time of the outer world and at another time within us,” and in the course of seven years are completely renewed. “The astral body .. . is the vehicle of .. . impulse, desire and passion, all that surges up and down in the soul as joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain. The etheric body .. . is the vehicle that represents and bears within it the more lasting qualities of the soul .. . [such as] temperament, character and tendencies that are persisting and continuing.” He compares the etheric body to the hour hand and the astral body to the minute hand of a clock, but one can carry the simile further by equating the three bodies as

In this analogy we can begin to see how the more volatile astral body (second hand) has an impact upon the less ephemeral etheric body (minute hand), and then through it eventually even upon the dense physical body (hour hand). Normally, however, the influence of the astral upon the physical, and to a lesser extent the etheric, must carry over from one life to another. Thus consider the healing of the physical body by the etheric body as portrayed in I-37.

The human being who appears to our senses today is the totality of fourfold-being. It is impossible, absent all such parts, for human life to exist on Earth.⁴ When the human being sleeps, the Ego and astral body withdraw from their imprisonment within the physical body, but the etheric or life body stays behind. Upon death, the etheric and astral bodies, along with the Ego, leave the physical body, but remain themselves joined together for a short time, up to about “Three Days,” measured by how long the person, starting from a position of rest following sound, restorative sleep, could remain alive and conscious without returning to sleep. During this time, the joinder of the two higher “bodies” and the Ego, freed from the constraints of the physical body, makes possible a tableau of the complete life just ended, with particular reference to its destiny at birth. At the end of this period, the non-perfected portion of the etheric body falls away into the general ether of the Earth, while the perfected extract remains for the Individuality to reenter in a future incarnation (as a “treasure laid up in heaven,” so to speak, Mt 6,20).

Then the astral body and Ego enter the astral world, a sojourn that gave rise, however imperfectly, to the Roman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory. Here all of the “astralities” of the soul in the life just ended must be burned away in the “refiner’s fire” (see “Purifying Fire”). Short of the ultimate fire reserved for Satan and his retinue (Rev 20,14), this can be said to be the “eternal” fires of hell (see fn 5 in “Lord of Karma”). All of one’s earthly sins must here be judged by, and in the painfully purifying “Light” of, the “Lord of Karma.” All of the astral body not purified on Earth must be burned, and fall away into the astral world at large. This is well portrayed in the account of “the rich man and Lazarus” (not Lazarus/ John) in Luke’s Gospel (Lk 16,19-31). There the consciousness of the astral body and the Ego is extreme. All the unpurified desires, addictions and shortcomings of the earthly life are felt with immeasurable urgency, but with no physical body to permit their satisfaction. Torment is severe. The “golden rule” of Mt 7,12 becomes real, for one experiences all of life’s dealings from the eyes of those dealt with or affected—including those who cried for help and were denied or ignored (cf. Mt 25,31- 46). What is experienced here is lived through in reverse, from the end of life back to its beginning (see “Last First, First Last”). This period lasts approximately one-third as long as the life just ended, being the amount of time spent in sleep—for during sleep the astral body was nightly shown these things. To the extent that earthly actions were in accordance with the divine, then those portions of this period in the astral world result in unspeakable joy. And just as the unpurified portion of the etheric body must fall away, so it is also with the astral body; but the perfected extract remains for future use by the soul. The individual animal, of course, has no such experience, for it has no Ego dwelling on Earth (see I-11).⁵

The portions of the three bodies that are purified on Earth become “Garments” that clothe the soul’s “Nakedness.” They are sometimes referred to as “wedding garments” (Mt 22,11-12), with special reference to that marriage of the “Bride/Bridegroom” in Rev 21,2. Ultimately then the three bodies cannot be properly thought of without their spiritual reflection on the other side of the “river”⁶ of the Ego, as shown in the sevenfoldedness and ninefoldedness of the human being. Some of the passages considered below seem clearly to envision both the lower and higher aspects of the three bodies.