Personal Identity - great question tdalek
if I may answer as best as I can.
Your EGO is your personal identity. You are your Ego and it is your Ego which re-embodies in progressing earth lives and within each life your Ego, you, project one out of the 12 patterns of personalties keeping the core of you throughout.
You are re-incarnating at the same time, more or less, with other people (possibly part of your group - brothers, sisters, parents - we tend to swop roles) so although it may seem like thousands of sisters its actually the same old sister you had in the year 2500 BC.
I'm copy out a table I have from Rudolf Steiner's work which I hope helps further in understanding the complexity of us humans;
The make up of the Human BodyPhysical Body– Earth, the sand or ground.
Decomposes following the law of physics.
Red charka, physical will to be, tuning into here and now.
Manas – the higher physical body – Thaliae
The Grace ‘Green and Fresh’ belonging to the seeds of music.
Orange charka, lower creative centre, reproductive and sexual energies.
*
Etheric Body– Water, waves from which she is born.
Life Body, Vital Force
Grows and rebuilds the physical body. Reproduces the physical body.
Yellow charka, Self awareness, emotional engine room, clear thinking.
Cannot illuminate without light of consciousness (astral body) would remain in sleep.
Buddhi – the higher etheric body – Aglaia
The Grace ‘Splendour belonging to the Solar Sphere’
Spiritual body of Memory.
Transmits emotions.
Green charka, group awareness, higher love, balance.
*
Astral Body or Sentient Soul– Air, Wind blown tresses.
The consciousness that sinks into sleep and rises when waking up.
Seperates from Ether body.
Awareness of sense impressions, feelings and instincts.
Turquoise charka, higher creative centre of communication, linking with the mental body (intellectual soul), self-expression.
Astral body needs the permanence of I (Ego)
Atman – the higher Astral body – Euphrosynes
The Grace ‘Joyful’ belonging to the starry world.
Spiritual body of imagination.
Blue charka, perceptive centre of higher comprehension and overview promoting intuition.
*
Intellectual (mental) or Spiritual SoulThinking, consciousness of eternal truths.
Permanence of knowledge, mental image.
Memory process of perceiving earlier experiences at later points in time.
Memory does not come from inward observing but from what we experience in relation to objects and processes in the outer world.
Violet charka, spiritual will to be, self realization, calmness and peace.
*
EGOSeat of control over the Will.
The Goddess of Beauty Venus.
Re-embodies in new physical, etheric and astral bodies in progressing earth lives.
Retainer of all memory.
*
The physical body would fall apart if the ether body did not hold it together. The ether body would sink into unconsciousness if the astral body did not illumine it. Likewise the astral body would repeatedly forget the past if the Ego did not rescue this past and carry it over into present.
Death belongs to the physical
Sleep belongs to the etheric
Forgetting belongs to the astral.
Ps: Still nice to have a huge 'welcome back' party
Caryn.