152 @ Tlie Secret L$e of NatureEvery night, when we leave our physical and etheric bodies asleep,
we find ourselves in the astral world where we encounter the beings
who gave us our physical, etheric, and astral bodies. Between death and
rebirth we learn, says Steiner, to know these spiritual beings directly in
their real spiritual essence, witnessing how they "shine forth with
gentle phosphorescence, how they spread streaming warmth, how they
speak out of their own essence, each spiritual form apparently differ-
ent, kyriotetes differing from exusiai, yet constituting the only real
things in the universe.The created world is nothing but the outer gar-
ment, the outer glory, of creating hierarchies. Actual reality is only at-
tained with knowledge of the spiritual beings at work in the various
heavenly bodies. In the stars we contemplate the bodies of divine be-
ings, and finally the Divine in general.They are the true reality. Noth-
ing else is real, neither space, nor time, nor matter."
Dionysius the Areopagite, following the sages of the East, carefully
differentiated among the various degrees of divine spiritual beings, but,
as Steiner points out, "Those who grasp the unity of cosmic wisdom
are well aware of the fact that they are but different names of the same
being."