Steiner wrote: “‘Ether’ is another term which is far from popular today. … The element, which is more subtle and ethereal than the physical body, is an etheric body which is spiritual by nature.” Steiner further writes, “We have created the spiritual and etheric archetypes out of the world of spirit long before we come down into a life on earth. It contains forces which we may call forces of spiritual magnetism and which draw us to the parents who we feel will give us the hereditary attributes which will allow us to enter life on earth.” Steiner further asserts it “… is the spiritual part of your physical body, it is the spirit which enters into every part of your physical body and fills it with its powers. The wisdom which radiates towards you is the activity, the mobility, or your ether body.” What is Creator’s perspective?

This question immediately illustrates what we were addressing in our prior answer, that much discussion about the so-called "ether" leads to vague understandings and the need to fall back on much jargon that is devised to help describe particular phenomena, not truly understanding whether they are part and parcel of the ether or a variant, or an extension or a subcomponent, or something simply using the ether in some fashion but truly comprised of something separate, and so on. Because of the complexity of understanding creation in its various forms, there is much room for confusing and confounding things, and jargon is a frequent reason this happens, because each person's jargon may well differ, and all that does is create a kind of smokescreen around a subject. So, depending on your point of entry going through one intuitive versus another, you will enter the smoke with preconceived ideas of what the interior will look like, and it will begin to shape your own thinking in how you see something, in how you understand it, and create your own description. This is why people wanting to probe something of interest, using other work done before them as a starting point, create new complications as well as clarification, oftentimes. We do like general broad concepts and we do like using conventional language as much as possible rather than relying on vague metaphysical terms, given this checkered history of variable definitions and applicability, varying according to individual intuitives' understandings and perceptions, and then rendering a kind of assessment or judgment about what it all means. If there are fine points that are glossed over, that is always a hazard, and this is no different than in any other sphere of knowledge, that the general outlines are just that, a starting point, a kind of broad overarching framework, but that does not preclude there being many twists and turns, variations, subcomponents, and much going on mechanistically to connect things together to make things happen, and so on. So we would say that the concept of "ether," as applied to the workings of the body, is better described by talking about "consciousness." So even though consciousness has varying forms and makeup, if you substitute the word "ether," it is true about ether as well. So we prefer one general term over the other because we think it will better bridge to newer thinking and an ultimate better understanding of how things are truly operating in the world and the universe beyond. For example, the idea of your essence as a spiritual being, being truly an expression of consciousness, better connects to the capability you have to project your consciousness forth beyond the body, to go anywhere within the universe, in fact, and witness and even experience many things remotely while sitting comfortably in an armchair or reclining in a state of meditative relaxation to facilitate the journey. That is more straightforward and we think better grasped by people than saying, "There was an out-of-body journey while inhabiting the etheric body." That gives people a label for something still not well understood or differentiated as to mechanism, but will think of it more as a shadow of the self or a layer of the self, perhaps a kind of vibrational replica that is less physical but more vibrational in its totality, and thus able to exhibit quite unique properties compared to the physical matter of the physical body itself. So people understand they can assume spirit form and might journey down from heaven in spirit form to meet up with the physical body and then, on death of the body, emerge back in spirit form to ascend to the heavenly realm, ideally. If that is a body of consciousness launched from heaven, coming down to enter a physical housing, and present to enliven it, literally bring it to life as a sentient being and not a collection of animal flesh, it is a union of consciousness, with physical material to provide a container, and this is a more direct description, even though simplistic still, but without too much jargon getting in the way.