Lecture II

Thus we see that while living in Imaginative knowledge we, as it were, withdraw from the physical body to the etheric body, imprinting no further traces into the physical body. Through this it comes about that, for anyone who makes this first step in initiation, the physical body from which he withdraws becomes objective and is then outside his astral body and ego. Formerly it was within, now it is outside. He thinks, feels and wills in the astral body. He has an influence on the etheric body, leaves traces in it, but he no longer influences the physical body and looks upon it as something external.