IV. Body, Soul and Spirit

This arrangement of the members of man can be expressed in a simplified way, but one entirely consistent with the above. Although the human “I” lights up in the consciousness-soul it nevertheless penetrates the whole soul-being. The parts of this soul-being are not at all as distinctly separate as are the limbs of the body: they interpenetrate each other in a higher sense. If then one regards the intellectual soul and the consciousness-soul as the two sheaths of the “I” that belong together, with the “I” itself as their kernel, then one can divide man into physical body, life-body, astral body, and “I.” The expression astral body designates here what is formed by soul-body and sentient soul together. This expression is found in the older literature, and may be applied here in a somewhat broad sense to that in the constitution of man which lies beyond the sensibly perceptible. Although the sentient soul is in certain respects energised by the “I” it is still so intimately connected with the soul-body that, in thinking of both as united, a single expression is justified. When, now, the “I” saturates itself with the Spirit-self, then this Spirit-self makes its appearance in such wise that the astral body is worked over from within the soul. In the astral body there are primarily active the impulses, desires, and passions of man, in so far as they are felt by him; sense-perceptions are also active in it. Sense-perceptions arise through the soul-body as a member in man which comes to him from the external world. Impulses, desires, and passions, etc., arise in the sentient soul, in so far as it is energised from within, before this “inner” has yielded itself to the Spirit-self. If the “I” saturates itself with the Spirit-self, then the soul energises the astral body with this Spirit-self. This expresses itself in the illumination of the impulses, desires, and passions by what the “I” has received from the spirit. The “I” has then, through its participation in the spiritual world, become ruler in the world of impulses, desires, etc. To the extent to which it has become this the Spirit-self manifests in the astral body. And the astral body is thereby transmuted. The astral body itself then appears as a two-fold body—in part untransmuted and in part transmuted. Therefore the Spirit-self, as manifested in man, can be designated as the transmuted astral body.