Devas 133Access to this world, says Steiner, is available to all in a condition of
conscious sleep: "When we have drawn our astral bodies out of our
physical and etheric bodies, we are no longer unconscious, but have
around us, not the physical world, nor even the world of the nature
spirits, but another and still more spiritual world, a new order of spiri-
tual beings who have command over nature and all spirits."
The world he is describing, stacked above the angels, is said to con-
sist of eight more levels of spiritual beings whose functions are not
only to run the solar system but to be responsible, operating in their hi-
erarchical ranks, for all of creation. Nor, says he, are the functions of the
hierarchies alien to the future of humanity, quite the contrary. "As hu-
manity reaches maturity and develops its inner faculties, the direction
of Nature's activities will then begin to fall into man's hands."