V. Sickness and Healing
If the human being were able to bring with him in a similar manner his physical body and ether body each morning on waking up, then he would be able to form them from out of the spiritual world; but he would also have to transform them. But birth means waking up from a state of sleep which encompasses the physical and ether bodies in the existence before birth. It is at this point that the astral body and ego descend into the physical world, into the physical body and the ether body, into which they can now sculpt everything which they could not form into the complete bodies of the previous life. Now, in a new life, they can express in an ether body and a physical body everything which they were able to raise to a higher stage of development but which they were unable to put into practice in the previous life because the complete ether body and physical body made it impossible.