Knowledge of the Soul and the Spirit

What is actually happening here? Let us try to visualize it: What is the astral body? It is nothing other than the sum of desires, drives, and passions, of pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow. Everything that works together in the human being is an expression of the spirit, spirit in some form, because everything is spirit. How is it possible for the I to work on the astral body? It is possible because the spirit reveals itself to the I in its very own form. The spirit is hidden in the passions, drives, and desires; there it appears in its expressions. It flows into the ego in its original form, and the ego allows it to flow back into the astral body, so that the ego mediates between the original form of the spiritual and its expression. This is how it is with the etheric body and finally also with the physical body, and thus a continuous spiritualization takes place during the transformation of the three human bodies or members of the human being. Just as it is true that everything we encounter in minerals is spirit — but spirit in its outer effect — so it is true that what we encounter in human beings is on the path to spiritualization through what the I itself pours into the lower being. But only by the Ego standing between this manifestation, the material aspect of the human being, his physical body, etheric body, and astral body, and the members of the spirit that shine into the three bodies — spirit self or manas, life spirit or buddhi, spirit man or atma — is this transition of the spirit into the three bodies possible. The I must stand between them. Then the higher can work on the lower.