Christmas Course II

The easiest way will be to start from the ego organization. What is this ego organization, in reality? In the physical world, it is to be perceived in the form of the physical body. In the physical world, of course, both the inner and the outer form must be included. Looking at the physical body of man as it stands in the physical world, we must realize that it has nothing fundamentally in common with the forces working in the physical world. For the moment a human being passes through the Gate of Death, and the ego organization leaves the physical body, this body begins to be subject to the forces of the external world. This means that the body is no longer built up but is destroyed. If you remember that the physical body is destroyed by the forces that are working in external nature, you will realize at once that the body cannot, in its form, be subject in any way to the forces of the physical world. When the ego organization is forming and shaping the physical body, therefore, this means that it removes the body from the forces that are present in man's earthly environment. In other words, the ego organization is something quite different from all that is to be found in the physical world.