148. We have now covered our analysis of terrestrial humanity's main areas of consciousness, and the individuals controlled by them. With regard to the identity of individuals as belonging to one or another of the categories or sections mentioned, that identity cannot truly be settled until an individual is over the age of thirty. The general rule (as will be seen later on in Livets Bog) is that during childhood and youth every individual has to go through and repeat a number of stages already surmounted in former lives, stages of a lower nature than the level of development reached in the last terrestrial life or existence, the latter not being reached again until thirty years have passed. Before a terrestrial person has reached this age he may well be an excellent representative of one or other category or section which he will completely abandon later in life to become an equally prominent representative of another and superior category to which his true stage of development belongs. His connection to this category will be of far longer duration when it is taken into account that genuine development has a much slower process than that of repetition.