full satisfaction from the spiritual world into which it is transplanted.
But life has given it other desires as well. It has kindled in it a
longing for pleasures only to be enjoyed by means of physical organs,
although these pleasures themselves do not originate in the nature of
those organs. It is not only the three bodies which demand gratification
from the physical world, but the ego itself finds pleasures in that world,
for the enjoyment of which there exist no means whatever, in the spiritual
world.

During life the ego has two kinds of desires: those that spring from the
bodies and must therefore be gratified within the bodies, but which must
also come to an end with their disintegration; and those that arise from
the spiritual nature of the ego. As long as the ego lives in the bodies,
those cravings are satisfied by means of the bodily organs. For in the
manifestations of the bodily organs the hidden spiritual element is at
work, and the senses receive something spiritual as well, in everything of
which they are cognizant. That spiritual element is also present after
death, although in a different form. Everything spiritual that the ego
longs for while in the world of sense, it still possesses when the senses
are no longer there.

Now if a third kind of wish were not added to these two, death would mean
only a transition from desires which may be satisfied through the senses
to such as are fulfilled by the revelation of the spiritual world. The
third kind of desire is that which is created by the ego during life in
the sense-world, because it finds pleasure in that world, even when no
spiritual element is revealed in it. The humblest pleasures may be
manifestations of the spirit. The satisfaction afforded a starving
creature by taking food is a manifestation of the spirit, for by taking
food something is thereupon brought about without which, in a certain
sense, the spiritual nature could not develop. But the ego can go beyond
the pleasure, which in this case is the outcome of necessity. It may even
long for the delicious food quite apart from the service rendered to the
spirit by taking nourishment.

It is the same with other things in the sense-world. Desires are created
in this way which would never have appeared in the sense-world if the
human ego had not been incorporated in it. Neither do such desires arise
from the spiritual nature of the ego. The ego must have pleasures of the
senses as long as it l