A doctor in Russia asked the simplest, and yet most profound, question in the entire archive. What is the biography of the human “I AM?” Where does it come from? What are its stages of growth and development? What should a person look for to find the human ego consciousness?
The conversation that followed was not a definition. Definitions rust over time and obviously the ego evolves. The Russian doctor asked for a an answer that is more like a watercolor panorama, an imagination that feeds, not a concept that granulates into obscurity. What they offered was a map of the topology of the ego that this Akasha Series has been circling since the first talk. Essentially, there is an earthly ego you use like a tool. There are also three higher egos you barely know. The tool of the earthly ego is mortal in function, even if its spiritual spark is not.
Our three higher egos, that are above us in consciousness, are already complete and whole in a realm that does not incorporate human ideas of time and space.
Steiner’s Study of Man upset one particular teacher so much that he threw the book across the room in total frustration as he was trying to understand the human ego in all its many parts and functions. This teacher had taught the course on the Study of Man many times before the surface of the question finally broke open into a revelation. And yet, the source and nature of the ego still remained partially hidden, no matter how much frustration the question created, because the outcome of ego evolution has yet to be determined.
Three below, three above, three in the soul, and an ego that will not sit for a portrait and moves between all the parts like electricity. Your overall bodily constitution is at least sevenfold; or, ninefold if the soul’s three parts are counted. Physical, etheric, astral (Sentient Soul, Intellectual Soul, and Consciousness Soul), ego, Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Human are the generally recognized parts of the human body, soul, and spirit. But the earthly ego develops over time out of the lower bodies into the higher bodies of the Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Human – the three higher egos.
Awakening the Three Higher Egos
The physical body is loaned to us by the mineral kingdom. The etheric life body is the gardener of the physical body and is invisible and the true reason restorative sleep is not a death of the physical body. The astral body of desires is much like the zodiac rushing at a person—animal if it rules you, angel if you rule it.
Then there is the earthly “I AM”, the ego consciousness of this incarnation and many other incarnations which is born each incarnation around age twenty-one but is not fully educated and developed until age forty-two. The I AM is so hard to locate and pin down that a standing prize for finding Steiner’s sentence that clearly indicated that “the ego is here” went unclaimed for many years as I taught the Study of Man to Waldorf teacher trainees. The ego is a mysterious wonder of the spirit that is singular in the physical world but a trinity in the spiritual world that is connected to the higher group consciousness of the collective higher egos of humanity.
The heavenly I AM is still forming its full threefold glory. It is supposed to govern the three bodies below it – astral, etheric, and physical. But it does not do this alone. Angels help develop the astral body of desires, archangels infuse and develop the etheric life body, while archai (time spirits) support the physical body of humans. When those three lower members are transformed and resurrected at a higher level, they become the three higher members:
- Astral, transformed → Spirit-Self (Manas, nirmanakaya). Moral Imagination. Light.
- Etheric, transformed → Life-spirit (Buddhi, sambhogakaya). Moral Inspiration. Sound.
- Physical, transformed → Spirit (Man or spirit-human (Atman, dharmakaya). Moral Intuition. Word.
The Vedic and Buddhist names given here are not esoteric decorations, they are living beings and realms that create our world and our bodies, our soul conditions, and our moral and spiritual willpower. They are the same three bodies (egos) spoken of in other traditions because they coincide directly with them. All Mystery traditions perceived the same spiritual beings, even though those beings are continuously evolving into higher beings and thus appear somewhat different at various times in evolution.
Our presentations in the Akasha Series already pointed out that the path of spiritual initiation is not on the physical plane. It is work that is done in realms that the Earthly Ego (“Lower Ego” or “Lower Self”) cannot perceive with the five senses that are accepted by materialistic science. The idea of heterochrony is crucial in these considerations because different stages in linear time add up to kingdoms that are always evolving cumulatively as they are metamorphosing. Your future angel/self is not just waiting around for your slow spiritual development to catch up with it. Since there is no conception of linear time for angels, your future angel/self can be a guest who is welcome now.
Our higher nature always offers a hand to help us ascend the steep climb to our heavenly self.
Why is the earthly ego so hard to find; let alone the three higher egos? Part of the reason is that the ego is completely spiritual not physical or material. Technically, the ego is not an actual body, per se. Many people have never met their own earthly ego or I AM. They give their ego development over to teachers, societal mores, and cultural and educational norms, not human freedom birthed by a self-aware ego consciousness.
The ego is not found in flesh, blood, and bones even though the ego uses them as a foundation for consciousness. Animals, generally speaking, keep their group-ego consciousness outside of their bodies in the collective group-soul of the specific species’ astral body. But the human being is quite different because it has passed through the group-soul stages long ago and now has an independent ego consciousness that is individual and has the possibility of freedom and love. A spiritual stream flows in whenever a human being says I AM in full consciousness. It is then that their angel-self arises leaving behind the group souls of the animals, plants, and minerals.
In the human being, the organ that can consciously realize the true nature of the I AM is found at the root of the nose in the two-petaled chakra when a person conceives the thought “I AM.” It is called the “third eye” in many Eastern traditions. The pineal gland (brow chakra) is the crossing point where a stream of etheric energy from the heart and spine meets a stream from the crown chakra and initial awareness of the I AM takes place.
This process is sometimes called “thinking about thinking.” This is where the angel-self, the higher ego, can connect with the lower or earthly ego. The larynx and heart hold the sixteen- and twelve-petaled chakra flowers that belong to further spiritual development of higher feeling and higher willing. Good nutrition, a healthy rhythmic life, and the moral stature of a person either feeds those spiritual organs or starves them.
The earthly ego’s job is not to become famous, rich, or powerful. It is to become a chalice that openly receives cosmos nutrition in the form of love, and then let that love flow through them to others. Egotism is not the same as egoism; one is a disease of the ego, the other is the higher nature of ego development and evolution. We must become a selfless chalice devoid of egotism to begin the processes of ascension to the higher self. But it is hard to be selfless before the age of twenty-eight because the earthly ego is still finishing its growth and development. You were just recently handed the instrument of the ego around the age of 21. Demanding saintliness of a twenty-one-year-old is a categorical error. After forty-two, the excuses are thin. By then, the development of wisdom is supposed to begin because many life lessons have been experienced and hopefully understood. To truly develop a spiritual ego, love is the most effective technique.
Rudolf Steiner’s book, The Philosophy of Freedom does not provide you with three spiritual egos without effort. It indicates three moral capacities that must be developed with earnest effort. Moral Imagination, Moral Inspiration, and Moral Intuition are the home of the three higher egos. If higher thinking, feeling, and willing are not moral, they become illusion, delusion, and egotism. All three higher egos arise from love and can only do so out of total freedom. Even the first spiritual ego is already tinged with the third. They can act together or separately. That is how fragments of the future higher self (angel/self) can act in the present.
Synchronicity rules the realms of the three higher egos, not the limitations of chronology. The initiate can use forces from the future in the present and don their angel body for limited periods of time. Even the forces and blessings of the archangel-self and archai-self are available for great initiates and masters to utilize selflessly.
What the soul offers upward is called, in the language of the Mystery Schools, the Virgin Sophia—the purified soul-content of the individual. But before you can enter the spiritual realms — doubt, hatred, and fear will meet you at the threshold between realms because they are the baggage of the unredeemed earthly ego that cannot enter the pure spiritual world. Initiation can be terrifying for an immoral person. Their own double, or darkness, becomes the obstacle for spiritual advancement as they approach the threshold between worlds.
The group-souls of minerals, plants, and animals are the prior stages of human development. They are the rungs that evolving human beings climbed in the far distant past. The spiritual hierarchical rank of beings called the Dynamis still hold the animal group-souls; the Kyriotetes hold the plant species’ group-souls; and the Thrones hold and support the mineral group-souls. Each human being contains those three kingdoms within their body, soul, and spirit constitution. Redeeming the astral body of the animals is somewhat like taming a dragon who is the combined nature of the entire animal kingdom’s desires. Redeeming the etheric body of life is like taking up the task of being a gardener of the entire plant kingdoms of the earth. Redeeming the physical body is like the endless work that makes a human being into a spiritual being who can one day manage an entire cosmos.
The “Great I Am” – Christ as Cosmic Ego – is higher than the nine ranks of the spiritual hierarchies that work directly with the Holy Trinity and is the Being who donated the human I AM to all human beings through the Spirits of Form called the Elohim or Exusiai. When this original template was created, a sister soul stayed above, unfallen, outside of space and time as the perfect example of what humans were designed to become. The Mystery of Golgotha implanted in human blood a resurrected template of the heavenly ego that could become free enough to sin and wise enough to seek forgiveness. Christ became the Lord of Karma through this loving act. Christ is also the midwife of the three higher egos that become the future Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Human.
“Not I, but Christ in me” is the simplest instruction for ascension. In the East, the aspirant strives to become the deity he worships. In the West, we follow the three stages of ascension called preparation-enlightenment-initiation. If you cannot extinguish the selfishness of the Earthly Ego, then you cannot attain the highest stage of Moral Intuition in the processes of initiation. You must have faith that the human soul and spirit are immortal and cannot die, then you know that you will eventually become a being of Moral Intuition, a Christened Spirit.
The three higher egos are not found solely in the body but use the astral, etheric, and physical bodies to transform into the three stages of angel, archangel, and archai. Preparation is how you prepare to receive the higher template of yourself. Enlightenment happens as soon as you know for certain that you are immortal. Initiation happens when you consciously develop the three higher aspects of your soul and spirit. You must prepare your heart for these guests like an alchemical wedding of soul to spirit welcomes the bride and groom. We should build a bridge to cross the threshold between the physical and spiritual worlds to attend this sacred wedding. We must greet every guest with unconditional hospitality, for we never know who it is that knocks upon our door as a wandering pilgrim.
The old rituals of offering food to a visiting stranger actually indicates the true method of sacrifice that opens the heavens. The spiritual hierarchies consume our spiritual deeds as food, and then in reciprocation, feed us the spiritual nourishment we need to continue the ascension process of initiation. Communion with the spirit is a table set with moral, virtuous nutrition. The earthly and cosmic nutrition streams that run through the etheric heart prepares the meal offered by humans to the gods, and then, the moral offerings of gods are given to humans which provide health, peace, and endless blessings.
To practice a visualization that might open the awareness of the I AM, simply sit with the thought that you are an individual “I AM”, focused at the root of the nose (pineal gland), not as a slogan but as a living presence of all that you were created to be. When you do this, you are developing a “third eye” that can see beyond earthly sense-perception into the spiritual world.
Other moral practices that enhance the development of the higher ego can include choosing your food, nourishment, and environment as if the moral larynx- and heart-chakras were scrutinizing all of your choices. Thus, we should put only good and virtuous “food” into this communion with the spiritual hierarchies. Another practice of ascension entails asking a question of the planet Saturn before you go to sleep and then listening to the Moon upon awakening for the answer. This conversation with the spiritual world can bring great insight into developing the higher egos.
Ascension | Learn more about the process of ascension from the video below:
Do not try to become immediately selfless and ascend on a schedule. It takes many incarnations to perfect even the lower ego, let only the higher three egos. We must be patient and wait until after the earthly ego has had its education, then, we might notice that a spiritual thought arises that is better than your normal thinking—and then you might realize that the higher thought is only lent to you for your advancement by spiritual beings above you.
Witnessing that somewhat unusual higher thought is often the first touch of the Spirit-Self. It is an angel illuminating a moral thought. Or, you might hear the “meaning” of a warmed-up thought and understand something you never understood before. That meaning might be the whisper of an archangel sending a moral feeling into your consciousness. This is the music of Life-Spirit sounding in your moral heart. Or again, you might do a deed out of love and freedom that is simply the right thing to do at the time without any outside compunction demanding this selfless act. A moral deed can incarnate the love of angelic hosts. This is the nature of Moral Intuition acting in the realm of Spirit-Man where the archai live and inspire the moral deeds of human beings.
The three higher egos are not accessories. They are the human being’s future ranks in the spiritual hierarchy. They are somewhat like trying on new moral clothes in preparation for virtuous ascension into the while tunics of Wisdom and Love. The earthly ego is the foundation and midwife of the Virgin Soul’s ascension who births the Spirit-Self as the higher aspect of the lower ego – the earthly ego.
If we intend to ascend back into our home in heaven, we must reverently tend the birth of our soul into a spirit child whose care and evolution are the greatest concerns of the spiritual world. Until we embody our three higher egos and leave the sense-bound ego behind, we will need to keep our eyes on the three higher egos and their development knowing that they are the mystery key to ascension back to our heavenly home.
Our Spirit 