The ether body

 

Rudolf Steiner:

Ether Bodies — A subtle body underlying the crude (perceptible by the physical senses) human body (and the physical bodies of other organisms). Recent theosophists have described it as a system of forces that take their orderly content from the world's spiritual foundation and find their figuration (objectification) in the organic forms of the physical-sensible bodies. When the ancient vitalists spoke of the speculative-mystical "life force," they were not referring to the ether body. However, the ether  body does coincide well with the "schema" referred to as the "inner human being" by the early philosophers, and it also appears in the world pictures offered by Origenes and Augustine. In more recent times, it has found support in philosophers such as Troxler, J. H. Fichte, and others. It can also be found in Kant, though it has there been overturned by skepticism into the dreams of a spiritual seer as the soul's inner being, one that carries all aspects of the physical human's abilities with it into the inner life. For recent theosophy, the ether body is a reality that  can become perceptible when the "inner senses" of the observer are awakened and actualized through a prescribed method of spiritual education from the latent condition in which they find themselves in normal human life. Then the ether body shows itself to be a subtle figuration of a fluid (never taking on a specific form) system of forces that flow through the physical body and in the area in front of the physical body (ike a kind of mirror image of the back) transitions into the indefinite (into the forces of the cosmos). It forms a bridge between the physical body and the higher forms of human existence — the soul and the spirit. While a human being sleeps, the ether body remains fully connected to the physcial body while the soul and the spirit absent themselves from the regions of the physical sense organs and the central nervous system (though not from the other organs and the auxiliary nervous system). When a human being dreams, the spirit has left the physical sense organs and the central nervous system, but the soul most likely has not. (This departure should not be thought of spatially but rather dynamically.) In death, the ether body, soul, and spirit (the soul is also known as the astral body, the spirit as the human "I" or ego body) leave the physical-sensible corpse (both spatially and dynamically); these three aspects of the human being remain connected for a brief period of time (several days), then the ether body leaves the soul and the spirit. By natural law, it then crosses over into the realm of general cosmic forces: one part of it into the ether sphere of the Earth, another part into the ether world that does not belong to the Earth. This dissolution of the ether boy is entirely different and specific to each individual, according to the age and the character of that individual's life. An observation of the laws governing this dissolution is among the most difficult problems of spiritual science. This form of dissolution is connected to the character of the physical Earth and forms a portion of the destiny that the soul and spirit encounter after they have crossed over into the spiritual world following their separation from the ether body.

Related post: https://martyrion.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-etheric-body-as-reflection-of.html

Source: GA 196. What Is Necessary in These Urgent Times, pp. 292-3