Chapter II: The Nature of Humanity

Now the activity of the Ego is not exhausted with the work upon the astral and etheric bodies. It extends also to the physical. We see a faint suggestion of the influence of the ego on the physical body when, for example, a human being blushes or grows pale. For the *I* is here the underlying motive power of a process taking place in the physical body. If now, through the Ego's own activity and initiative, its influence upon the physical body undergoes essential changes, the Ego will then be working in unison with the hidden forces of the physical body. It will be united, in effect, with the same forces which bring about the physical processes in this body. The Ego itself may then be said to be working upon the physical body to transform it. But this expression must not be misunderstood. It must not be supposed that the work is of a crude material kind. For what appears crudely material in the physical body is merely what is manifest in it. Behind this manifest there lie the hidden forces of its being, and these are of a spiritual kind. Here we are speaking, not of a working upon the material appearance of the physical body, but of a spiritual working—a working upon the invisible forces to which the coming-into-being and also the decay of the physical body are due. In ordinary life man can at most become very dimly conscious of this work of the Ego upon the physical body. Full clarity is only reached when under the influence of spiritual knowledge he takes the work consciously in hand. It then becomes manifest that there is yet a third spiritual member in the human being. It may be called, in contrast to the physical man, the ‘Spirit-Man.’ (In Oriental wisdom it is called ‘Atma.’)