The physical body is built up by the forces of
the physical world, the etheric body by those of the life-world, and the
astral body is formed out of the astral world. Now when the ego is
transferred to the spirit-world it is met by just those forces which
remain hidden to physical perception.

What appear to man's view in the first region of the spirit-world are the
spiritual beings that are always surrounding him, and that have built up
his physical body. Thus in the physical world man perceives nothing but
the manifestations of those spiritual forces which have formed his own
physical body. After death he is in the very midst of these moulding
forces, which, previously hidden, now appear to him in their true forms.
In the same way, in the second region, he is in the midst of the forces by
which his etheric body was organized, and in the third region there pour
in upon him the potencies out of which his astral body was formed. The
higher regions of the spirit-world also direct toward him those forces
from which he was built in the life between birth and death.

These denizens of the spiritual world are at present working in
co-operation with that which man has brought with him as the product of
his last life, which now becomes a germ; and through this co-operation man
is, first of all, built up anew as a spiritual being. The physical and
etheric bodies are still joined in sleep; the astral body and the ego are,
it is true, outside them, but still connected with them. Whatever
influences the astral body and the ego receive, in such a state, from the
spiritual world, can serve only to recuperate the forces exhausted during
the waking state.

But when the physical and etheric bodies have been laid aside, and, after
the time of purification, also those parts of the astral body still bound
by their desires to the physical world, then everything pouring in upon
the ego from the spiritual world is not only a reforming but a
reorganizing force. After a certain period, to be dealt with in later
chapters, the ego again gathers round it an astral body which will be able
to live in such an etheric and physical body as man possesses between
birth and death. A man can once more pass through birth and renew his
earthly existence, in which, however, will be incorporated the results of
his former life. Until the rebuilding of his astral body, man is a witness
of his reconstruction. As the powers of the spirit-world are not
manifested