284. As we have stated before, it is the living beings' experiences from previous lives which form or characterize them in their present existence. In other words the individual's present physical body in its deepest analysis is the result of his past physical lives. According to later analyses the qualities and distinctive characteristics of past lives are always carried over to his present physical life through his other bodies or his spiritual existence. Thereby this life is synonymous with an expression of whatsoever shape or form of experience that living being has been through in his previous life. But as these experiences on the same step can be highly different in kind, the living beings - although they may be at the same age in evolution - will thus appear as being of a widely differing nature. Indeed, cosmically seen, this analysis applies to such a degree that in the whole of the universe no two beings can exist as absolutely alike.
      As the manner whereby individuals can meet with the same experiences is endless in its variations, so there will be no limit on the same step to the variations in their appearance, manifestations and bodily form, and it is only their moral standard which indicates which living beings belong to the same evolutionary step. The diversity between living beings will again depend on the differences in areas of experiences, for in spite of showing the same moral standard these can also differ widely. Furthermore, with regard to the evolution of living beings one should understand that in no case whatsoever are they bound to the planet on which they live at the moment, but have had a previous, and will have a subsequent development on quite different planets in the universe. The evolutionary course of living beings in this way stretches out from planet to planet. A being's present stage of manifestation, that is, its terrestrial existence, will thus be synonymous with the total result of a previous existence on other planets. And so every terrestrial being also during its present single life carries the stamp of its pre-terrestrial existence. Those living beings who find themselves on one and the same planet at present but who have come into this world from quite different ones in a previous existence will therefore have completely dissimilar characteristics to the same degree as their earlier existences deviated from how they would have been on the same planet. These characteristics can be of such different natures that those beings will be analysed as unrelated. As more or less related beings are those who have been on more or less similar planets in their previous existences then, as we mentioned earlier, it is here that eternal evolution - through those related beings - becomes visible as constituting "lines". As these lines contain innumerable planets and aeons of time they have been defined in Livets Bog as "cosmic evolutionary lines". As these lines in reality are the extreme consequences of the individuals' passage through related zones of experience, their manifestations in day to day existence are here visibly expressed as "species". The cosmic lines of evolution are in this way the source of the origin of the different species. Eternal evolution thus manifests itself in the form of evolutionary lines, which shows that living beings come into existence in the form of related or unrelated species, this being the reason why life - as regards varieties in bodily structure and modes of living - presents itself as so multiform.