As previously mentioned, the living being builds up its consciousness from the experiences it acquires through its physical sensory perception. These experiences are transferred through the being's physical senses to its spiritual structure and here become spiritual mental images. Such spiritual mental images comprise the being's consciousness. By virtue of these mental images, which constitute experiences and knowledge, the being can in turn form new mental images that can be experienced not only on the spiritual plane but can also be transferred, through the physical organism, to the physical plane and here be fashioned in physical matter as pure image formation or in writing and speech, in sound and colour. Thus a being's consciousness consists partly of image formations that are copies of its outer surroundings, and partly of image formations that are its own original ones. The being expresses its consciousness through these original mental constructions and the thought-form copies of the mental images from the physical world, just as they also form the basis for the being's view of life and its ensuing moral perception, desire, exercise of will, sympathies and antipathies.