This data is much too large to fit into one blog, but if you are like me and ponder the nature of reality, this site will help very much.  I found it a bit wordy but when you get into it more, then you see why it has to be... these hold very deep esoteric concepts, which when considered in depth reveal very much the machinations behind this world of ours :) 

http://www.rosicrucian.com/evw/evweng02.htm#16

In this final chapter on the Reflecting Ether we turn again to Max Heindel's statement that "this ether is the medium through which thought makes an impression upon the human brain. IT IS MOST INTIMATELY CONNECTED WITH THE FOURTH SUBDIVISION OF THE WORLD OF THOUGHT. This is the highest of the four subdivisions contained in the Region of Concrete Thought and is the home world of the human mind. There a much clearer version of the Memory of nature is found."

The fourth subdivision of the Region of Concrete Thought is termed the Region of Archetypal Forces. (COSMO, pages 50-63). Let us look farther into what we are taught concerning this region, in order to gain a clearer understanding of the Reflecting Ether, for it is the record in this Region which is reflected "down" into the Reflecting Ether, and the cosmic relationship existing between the World of Thought and the Reflecting Ether has its microcosmic replica within the aura of the embodied human being.

The records of the Memory of Nature are contained in the negative pole of the Reflecting Ether, and so is the individual memory. But the Ego directs its positive thought force into the brain by way of the positive pole of the Reflecting Ether. This positive thought force, which works through the positive pole of the Reflecting Ether in the brain and nervous system (the mind really works everywhere that the "gray matter" is present, throughout the body) is CREATIVE; it is not passively receptive. The negative pole is the receptor, and therefore contains the memory, being the storehouse of all images, as hitherto described.

Of the Region of Archetypal Forces, Max Heindel writes: "It is the central and most important Region in the five worlds wherein man's entire evolution is carried on. On the one side of this Region are the three higher Regions of the World of Thought, the World of Life Spirit, and the World of Divine Spirit. On the other side of the Region of Archetypal Forces are the three lower Regions of the World of Thought, the Desire and the Physical Worlds. Thus this Region becomes a sort of 'crux,' bounded on the one side by the Realms of Spirit, on the other by the worlds of form. IT IS A FOCUSING POINT, WHERE SPIRIT REFLECTS ITSELF IN MATTER." (COSMO-CONCEPTION, pages 50-51.)

In another place Mr. Heindel points out that from another viewpoint the world of Spirit proper really begins only with the World of Life Spirit, which he calls the first universal world, and that in the broad sense, the material universe begins with the Region of Abstract Thought, and that above this all is "pure" Spirit. The World of Abstract Thought is "chaos, the seed-ground of cosmos," in which the "germinal ideas"--the germs of all causation, and therefore of evolution, are created by spiritual intelligences in that world. In the COSMO-CONCEPTION, Diagram 1 page 52, we are shown a schematic drawing by which to understand the "relative permanency of the visible and invisible worlds," on the analogy of the stereopticon with its projected images. THE DIAGRAM IS DRAWN FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE VIRGIN SPIRIT, whose Will corresponds to the operator of the stereopticon machine; which conceives, in the World of Life Spirit, by means of the divine creative imagination, A CONCEPT; this concept takes the form of an Idea in the Region of Abstract Thought, and the Idea is posited before the Lens of the Mind, in the fourth subdivision of the World of Thought. THIS FOURTH DIVISION ALONE IS PROPERLY AND SCIENTIFICALLY DESIGNATED "THE MIND." The mind is the lens, but the light emanates from the Life Spirit, while the slide represents the permanent Idea created by the Virgin Spirit in the Region of Abstract Thought. That is, this Permanent Idea is the "Germinal Idea;" so called because it is the "seed" from which the exterior world-objects spring. The light of the Life Spirit projects the living, permanent Idea through the Mind, which lies specifically in the Region of Archetypal Forces, and, therefore, it is these Archetypal Forces which from this point on are represented by the beams of light which emanate from the World of Life Spirit. The Archetypal Forces ray downward through the Region of Concrete Thought and the Desire World, awakening the driving power of desire, and the image, corresponding to the image cast on the screen by the stereopticon projector. What are the Archetypal Forces? They are all the living beings who work on the Archetypes in the Second Heaven, which Archetypes are THOUGHT FORMS. They include human beings between incarnations, Nature Forces, and the celestial Hierarchies, such as Lords of Mind, Archangels, Angels, advanced members of our own life wave (Mercurians, Venusians), etc., and Adepts of our own humanity.

Now when we come to the Physical World, where the image is objectified, we are shown seven subdivisions, of which the four upper are the ethers which are the subject of these chapters; and of these four ethers, the Reflecting Ether is the uppermost. It is, Max Heindel says, an Hyper-ether. THIS ETHER IS THE SCREEN UPON WHICH THE IMAGE IS PROJECTED FROM THE MIND. But the forces of the Desire World are present with the image, just as the heat, light, and electricity of the stereopticon machine are involved in projecting the image inscribed on the glass slide on to the screen--or, in another analogy, the moving picture projected from the film strip.

But the projected image of the stereopticon or moving picture is flat and two-dimensional. The projected image contained WITHIN (not on) the Reflecting Ether, is three-dimensional. It is projected in depth, and with life and force. THE MEMORY OF NATURE AND OF THE HUMAN MIND is comparable, on this analogy, to art galleries and newspapers which carry pictures and symbols, but these are only a portion of THE ENTIRE PHYSICAL WORLD ITSELF, the so-called time-space continuum of modern physical science.

The time-space continuum as a whole correlates with the Reflecting Ether, and therefore modern scientists speak of "traveling in time," or "the annihilation or collapse of space," and "the collapse of time." Where the occultist says that he "reads in the Memory of Nature"--particularly the Reflecting Ether--the scientists says that he "travels in time." And many scientific fantasies show this traveling in time as if it were possible for a person living in the 20th century to return, in actual fact, to a former time and way of life, retaining as he does his present-day personality and knowledge. The occultist questions such a reversal of the time stream. He does, indeed, travel backward in consciousness in the course of his Initiations, where he reviews, and remembers, his previous existences--not only his embodiments as a human being in the Earth Period but his former existences as animal-like, planet-like or even mineral-like beings of earlier periods of evolution.

But whereas those periods were experienced with no self-awareness, the Initiate now views them and enters into them sympathetically (or with empathy, empathically), in full waking self-consciousness, and in so doing becomes able to use the forces voluntarily which he then used involuntarily--negatively or passively--under the guidance of higher spiritual beings.

Now just as the physical body of man is surrounded by and derived from the world around him, so that Divine Spirit and Life Spirit are surrounded by and derived from their corresponding macrocosmic worlds of Spirit; so also the Human Spirit is differentiated within the World of Abstract Thought, and the Mind and Desire Body from their corresponding worlds; while the vital body consists of the ethers which surround it on all sides, and the physical body is made up of physical substances as said.

But from another point of view we may say that the universe consists solely of Spirit: the Divine Spirit which is "reflected" or condensed into the physical body as its representative; the Life Spirit, which is "reflected" or condensed into the Vital Body, as its representative; the Human Spirit which is "reflected" or condensed into the Desire Body AND Concrete Mind, as its twofold representative. BUT--as we see from a process of elimination--IT IS THE MIND ITSELF WHICH IS THE FOCUS, CONDENSATION, OR REFLECTION, OF PURE VIRGIN SPIRIT. AND THE REFLECTING ETHER IS, AS IT WERE, A KIND OF LOWER POLARITY OR OCTAVE OF THE MIND; THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND, IN THE SENSE THAT IT OCCUPIES A PLANE BELOW THE TRUE MIND.

To call the Reflecting Ether the "lower octave" of the mind is of course a musical analogy, but such an analogy bears a high degree of accuracy as regards the World of Thought, for that world is the great cosmic world of tone, or sound; each cosmic sound pattern created in Cosmic Root Substance by a Creative Idea sent forth by the Three-fold Spirit in the way shown in Diagram 1 of the COSMO-CONCEPTION. The World Archetype sings a song emanating from the Solar Logos and the Great Spirits before His Throne who are the Planetary Logoi; and Man, as Virgin Spirit, is part of this Song, and he also sings along with the innumerable spirits of the celestial Hierarchies.

It is known to musicians--and to physicists who have drawn up a science of sound--that when a certain note is struck, say on a piano, other keys harmonious to it will vibrate in sympathy, creating overtones, undertones, chords, and octaves, as the case may be. (See COSMO-CONCEPTION, pages 122- 123.) So the harmony of the threefold Spirit sounds, and by sounding creates tone-patterns in the World of Concrete Thought, which are translated into form and substance in the Physical World. This is why it is said that the reflecting Ether is the "lower octave" of the fourth or Archetypal Region of the World of Thought, and therefore reflects, or RESOUNDS WITH the pictures of the Memory of Nature, AND WITH ALL OTHER FORCES WHICH BELONG TO THAT HIGH REALM.