What is so rare as a day in June?

The inner world and the outer world : piercing the veil of maya : the polarity of thinking and loving

Therapeutic Insights: Earthly and Cosmic Laws

Lecture 5 of 5

Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland, July 3, 1921:

After the studies we have been conducting recently, a basic fact of human life and nature will be able to stand clearly before our soul. It is precisely when we consider a more exact relationship of the human being to his environment that the riddle always arises: How did it come to be that one cannot penetrate into the real nature of the outer world? This outer world lies before us in its phenomena, in its events, and even if we have only a feeble need for knowledge we must presume that behind these phenomena that lie before us as colored, as resounding, as warming world, and so on, the real nature of reality is concealed. There is, as it were, a veil there, and only behind this veil is the nature of reality to be found.

A similar riddle exists in relation to what is within the human being. In the last few days I have suggested that this inner element of the human being reveals the riddles of its organs only if one really arrives at this inner element. The fact is, however, that to begin with in ordinary consciousness one cannot see so deeply down into one's own inner being that one is able really to penetrate the nature of the lungs, liver, and so forth, in the way we described yesterday.

This fact of the existence of two riddles — the riddle regarding the unknowableness of the outer world and the riddle of the unknowableness of the inner world — can be understood out of the knowledge of the whole being of man, if one permits oneself to consider once the whole human nature, which shows only one side between birth and death, having its other side between death and a new birth.

Let us study the human being as he presents himself to us here between birth and death. We need only look at an aspect of the inner soul that is connected with our entire, normal daily life. We need only consider the inner fact of memory. I spoke yesterday of how this memory actually is based upon a reflecting-back on the outsides of the inner organs. We need this memory, however, for our soul life. I have often pointed out facts that show how the disturbance of this memory can undermine the entire normal life between birth and death. I told you of an example showing that the capacity for memory can extinguish itself in the human being. Such cases are well known. You can read in psychological literature of numerous such cases. It is a well-known fact that this can occur, and in a lesser degree this phenomenon is much more frequent than is generally realized. With such human beings, you need only picture that these processes — without the person knowing it in the ordinary sense of the word — are just as they are for you during sleep every night: consciousness is extinguished. Such an abnormal discontinuity of consciousness, however, has an extraordinarily significant influence upon the whole consciousness of the personality. A human being who has undergone such an experience is not quite able to get along with himself; there is something horrifying in his life afterward. From this you can see how important it is for the ordinary life between birth and death — except during the sleeping state — to have continuity of consciousness.

This continuity of consciousness is closely connected with our memory. We need this memory, therefore, in order to maintain our ordinary life normally. When one undergoes an occult development, another fact arises, the fact that it is necessary to develop soul forces that actually, during the moments of spiritual seeing, also extinguish ordinary memory. As long as one maintains this ordinary memory, one is basically unable to see into the spiritual world. Pupils of an occult development usually experience that when they begin to work on their development they have certain visions; then later they begin to complain that they no longer have these visions — the visions stay away. The reason for this is that for such visions — if they are genuine, true visions, and not hallucinations — there is really no memory. It is not possible to recall a vision, for the vision is something real. If you look at a piece of chalk and then look away, you have a memory picture. If, however, you wish to have the chalk before you, the real chalk, then you must return again to the perception; you must have the reality before you again. To experience this reality, memory is of no help at all. If you touch a hot iron, you burn yourself. Regardless of how much heat you retain in your memory, however, you cannot burn yourself. You must return to the real experience, because the vision brings you into connection with something real and not a mere picture. It is a matter, then, of returning to the vision and not merely recalling it, for a real seeing is a real occult experience and cannot become recollection; one can come to it again only in an indirect way. One can say to oneself that before the vision appeared we had gone through this or that in ordinary consciousness. This can be recalled, and one must call this stage back to the point when the vision appeared. One returns to this point. The vision cannot appear directly; rather one must retrace the path, as it were. This is not taken into account by many people, who believe that a vision can be recalled in the ordinary sense.

One must therefore undermine memory in a certain respect in occult development. This is absolutely necessary and cannot be prevented. It therefore must be said that one who strives for such an occult development must above all be certain that in ordinary life he is a reasonable person, that is, that he has no false mystical tendencies but has a healthy intellect and a sound memory. He who in ordinary life already has a tendency to wallow in unclarity and sentimentality is not fit to undergo an occult development. One absolutely must have the ability to recall the events of the day in full clarity before one can risk pressing forward to visions for which there is no such recollection.

The precautions that are recommended for an occult development are actually rooted in the nature of occult development itself. You thus can say that for the ordinary consciousness there is memory, and it is part of normal life between birth and death to have this memory.

Now, I can sketch for you how human nature relates to the possession of this memory. Let me sketch it in this way: 

What I am drawing now does not exist in this way but can be perceived in the etheric body. With this line I am indicating schematically that which is really extended over the whole body, and you would have to picture that from the head — and therefore from the sense perceptions, the sense organs — up to this line is what is outside the organs. This line represents the schematic borderline for the organs of the human being: this is the point of reflection, and beyond this line, therefore, lie heart, lungs, liver, and so on. Here (arrows) is where the reflection occurs. This line is symbolic of the human memory. You can actually picture that we have within us a kind of membrane that is really the membrane separating the etheric body from the astral body; in reality, however, it is not spatial — I have merely indicated it schematically. What is perceived is thrown back by the force of the organs that are behind it. It is thereby reflected, but reflected here, and we cannot see through it in ordinary consciousness; we cannot see through this memory membrane into the inner element of the human being; the memory conceals from us the inner element of man. It must conceal man's inner being, for otherwise the human being would not be normal in the ordinary life between birth and death. Memory is what closes off for us our ordinary consciousness from what is within. As soon as this memory is interrupted, as soon as it is torn, as happens through occult development, we see into our organs, as I described it yesterday.

Now, you see, we have the answer to the riddle of the not-being-able-to-look-within. This inner element must be concealed, for otherwise we would not be able to be normal in life between birth and death. We need this memory. The inner element of our self is thus hidden by our memory reflection. This understanding is what is necessary for a solution to this riddle.

From the other side, from the direction of the outer world, we see the veil of the senses spread out, as it were, and we do not see behind it. Let us look at the matter in this way, asking ourselves: How would it be if we were not to perceive the veil of the senses, behind which lies the essence of the world: let us say that the sense veil were perforated everywhere — if one could look through it everywhere, how would it be then? We would always flow with our perception, with our observation, into the objects. We would merge with the objects. We would not be able to differentiate ourselves from the objects. What would be the result? We would never be able, if we were not able to differentiate ourselves from the objects, to develop feelings of love, for love is based upon the fact that one does not flow over into the other but rather remains an individuality, separated and yet “feeling across” (hinueberfuehlt). We are organized in such a way that we are capable of love between birth and death. In occult development this capacity for love must be replaced by Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition; we must, so to speak, break through the capacity for love. It would ruin our life totally and we would become brutal and cold if in our ordinary life we did not have love. Therefore it is necessary for one who attempts an occult development from this direction to develop above all, to the highest degree, the capacity for love. If he has developed it in such a way that he cannot lose it through occult development, that he maintains it in spite of this occult development, then he can dare to penetrate through the veil of the senses and look into the real objectivity. You thus see the second riddle placed before your soul. The human being must be organized in such a way that he is able to have memory and able to love. Because he must be capable of love, he is unable with his ordinary consciousness to see behind the veil of the senses, and because he must be able to remember, he is unable to look into his own inner being.

This is really the truth of the Kantian philosophy that is so erroneous. Kant wished to investigate human subjectivity, and he concocted a few abstract concepts that actually do not say anything. In reality it is so that we must understand the human being between birth and death as a being capable of both memory and love. In this life the human being learns to know what lives in sensation; he learns to know what lives in love, and this he must carry through the portal of death. We are here on Earth, therefore, in order to bring to fruition in ourselves these two faculties.

Now, if the human being, through memory, must hold apart his perceiving and thinking being, which pushes against the veil of the senses here, then he develops, primarily through the head (though the human being is head in total), the life that we designate as the life of consciousness. This life of consciousness goes no further than the thought. The thought becomes memory picture, but we do not penetrate any further than to the memory picture. There the thought is stopped. Only through the fact that it is stopped there can it return again as memory. There the thought is stopped, and our normal life between birth and death actually consists of preventing the thought from descending into the organs. Its forces do descend, as I described yesterday, but the thought as such, as it lives in us as picture, we must not allow to descend into the organs. At the moment when we die, the thought becomes what it should not become in the ordinary consciousness: the thought then becomes Imagination. This Imagination, which in occult development is striven for with all one's effort, occurs when the human being passes through death. All his thoughts become pictures; the human being then lives entirely in pictures. One therefore can understand the dead only if one learns to know this picture-language. Immediately after death the thoughts transform themselves into pictures. The human being lives with these pictures for some time between death and a new birth. Then the pictures gradually become Inspiration. The soul thus in fact grows further. The pictures become Inspiration; then the human being begins to perceive the Music of the Spheres. The Music of the Spheres becomes something real for him: he lives in the world of world-tones. Finally he grows together with the objective-spiritual universe: his soul becomes entirely Intuition. He becomes, as it were, one with the universe.

When this Intuition has existed for some time, we are at the same point at which the World Midnight Hour occurs, of which I also spoke yesterday. Now the return path begins, and Intuition is suited to take up something of what the human being has left behind in having lived here on Earth. When the human being goes through the portal of death, he lives by virtue of forces other than those that here on Earth we call the will. He lives into more cosmic forces. The will becomes absorbed, let me say; the will gradually disappears. When the human being has arrived at the Midnight Hour of the world, however — that is, after he has gone through the Imaginative stage, the stage of Inspiration, the Intuitive stage, and arrives, as it were, at the height of life between death and a new birth — then Intuition fills itself again with will. The thought again becomes permeated by will, and this will saturates the soul more and more; the soul wrestles through again to Inspiration and then to Imagination, undergoing Imagination for some time; then it is again ripe to be embodied here. Out of the pictures is formed, in the way I have described, what appears as the transformed metabolic-limb man of the previous incarnation. You see, therefore, that through those stages that are striven for in occult development, the human being ascends to the Midnight Hour of the world and then takes the reverse path down again to Imagination, arriving again at thought formation when he embodies himself (see drawing).

During this entire time the human being absorbs the will, and now, coming again into physical existence, we see how what works in out of the cosmos, what he absorbed from the previous incarnation, is as in a picture, and the will is still within this picture. We thus have here will-saturated Imagination.

When the human being therefore arrives at a new physical life, still before his conception, he does indeed have an Imagination, but a will-saturated Imagination. Out of the Imagination, which is essentially what existed already as picture, arises the head and what belongs to it, as well as the will, which takes hold now of the new limbs and the metabolism. This thus distributes itself over the head and the rest of the human being. The head is essentially, let me say, crystallized, frozen thought; what lives in the rest of the human being is organized will. Actually the human being can truly awaken only in the head. After all, you know your thoughts — your mental images in ordinary consciousness; one can say this about all present-day human beings. What happens in the will, as I have often mentioned, is just as unknown to man as what happens in sleep. How does one know, when one lifts an arm in ordinary consciousness, what is taking place? One perceives that an arm is lifted — we have this mental image — but the act of will as such remains in sleep, similar to the period between falling asleep and awakening. One therefore can say that regarding the metabolic-limb system, man also sleeps during the day. He awakens actually only in relation to the head-man. This all works together again.

You see, official science today speaks of a certain logic. It speaks in the logic of the mental image, of making judgments, and of drawing conclusions. Picture such a conclusion. The well-known conclusion, which resides in all logic, is related to the famous logical personality: all human beings are mortal; Caesar is a human being; therefore Caesar is mortal. This is the conclusion, and every part of the conclusion is a judgment: “All human beings are mortal” is a judgment; “Caesar is a human being” is a judgment; “therefore Caesar is mortal” is a judgment. The whole is a conclusion. Man, Caesar, are mental images. If you question a person today who is one of the very clever people — we must always consider the very clever people, for they determine the prevailing tone — he says, “Everything actually takes place in the nervous system; the nervous system is the mediator of the mental image, judgment, conclusion, even of feeling and will.” Already with this kind of forming mental images, making judgments, drawing conclusions, things are not as present official thinking believes them to be. Only forming mental images as such is actually the concern of the head. When you make a judgment, then you must feel, through the mediation of the etheric body, how you stand on your legs. You do not really make judgments with your head at all; you make judgments with your legs, although with the legs of the etheric body. He who makes judgments even when he is lying down stretches his etheric legs. Making judgments is not based on the head; it is based on the legs! Of course nobody believes this today; nonetheless it is true. Drawing conclusions is based on the arms and hands, and generally upon that which lifts man out of what the animal also has. The animal stands on its legs; the animal is itself a judgment, but it does not draw conclusions. The human being draws conclusions; for that purpose his arms have been liberated; that is what his arms are there for, not for walking. The human being has his arms free so that he can be a being that can draw conclusions. What happens when one stretches one's etheric legs or when one moves one's astral arm is a judgment, is a conclusion, which merely reflects itself in the head as mental image and then actually becomes a mental image. One thus needs the entire human being, not merely the nerve-sense human being, in order to arrive at judgments and conclusions.

Now, if you take this into consideration, you will say to yourself: the human being really lifts judgments and conclusions out of his limb system. These are fundamentally already acts of will, and this comes out of a much more indefinite state than forming mental images. We basically experience the same thing when we finish drawing a conclusion as when we wake up in the morning: we have lifted it out of the depths of our being. That which has become old from the previous life to this life, which lives itself out in the head, leads us to be able to have mental images. In the head we are old in relation to the cosmos when we are born. Our will is able to renew itself because in relation to the cosmos we have become young. What we carry with us as our head is always reminiscent of the previous incarnation. It is the old element. The metabolic-limb system, however, has been conquered by the will in entering this incarnation. It is actually mediated by the mother's body. The rest of the body — this can be confirmed by an outer, empirical study of embryology — is actually constructed from out of the cosmos in the mother. The head is simply a copy of the cosmos, brought about by outer forces. Whoever wishes to deny this should also say that it is nonsense that the magnetic field of the Earth positions the needle of the magnet. The physicist goes beyond the magnet's needle if he wishes to explain it; the physiologist, the embryologist, the biologist, remains in the mother's body when he wishes to explain the embryo. That is just as nonsensical as if one wished to explain the needle of the magnet only out of itself. One must proceed out to the whole cosmos.

In development we have, to begin with, the head, and the rest of the body is only attached to it; this part the will conquers for itself, having approached Imagination during the passage through life between death and a new birth from the Midnight Hour of Existence onward. Now, when we study this human being (see first drawing) we find that everything pertaining to thinking and perception lies above the membrane of memory, while everything pertaining to willing lies below this membrane. The will works up from below, works up out of the unconscious, and one finds it only in the way that we explained yesterday. There the will works upward. In regard to the will, we are sleeping. We thus actually have the human being as a duality in the life between birth and death. It is true the human being is a monad, but he is this in regard to the whole world, and this monadic quality must be brought about in becoming; he must renew it again and again. In reality, however, the human being between birth and death is dualistic: the thought, to some extent, with the perception on one side, the will with the feeling (Gemüt) on the other side.

The human being is thereby actually the average, I would like to call it, of two worlds. Be honest and ask yourselves, in every moment of your life what do you have in consciousness? Your memory pictures — what you experienced at age two, three, five, or six — are the content of your consciousness. What comes through from below, welling up out of the will, is love, the capacity for love. The human being is actually nothing other than what in the average of two worlds appears as memory pictures and love. Basically the human being is organized in such a way that above is a world that is cosmic thought, while below is a world that is cosmic will. The human being is continually a point of attack for Lucifer from the side of will and a point of attack for Ahriman from the side of thought (see drawing). Ahriman continually strives to make the human being all head. Lucifer continually strives to cut the head off so that the human being cannot think at all, so that everything streams out in warmth by way of the heart, overflows with world love, flowing into the world as world love, as an excessively sentimental cosmic being flows out.

In our age, in our highly praised civilization, it is chiefly Ahrimanic influences active in us. These Ahrimanic influences have always been sensed by sensitive human beings. When I was still a very young man, I spoke once with an Austrian poet who was quite well known at that time; he had a fine feeling for what is emerging in our civilization, and he expressed it in a half-pictorial way; this half-pictorial quality was for him, however, a reality. He said to me — and it seems to me as if it were happening today — “Considering how we human beings are today, and especially if things continue along the lines they are going now, humanity will actually be confronted by a terrible fate, for the human being will gradually lose the agility of his limbs; he will no longer be able to walk properly; he will always want to ride a bicycle and to travel mechanically. He will lose the agility of his hands, and everything will become technical. Just as a muscle atrophies if it is not used, so everything in the human body will atrophy and the human being will become merely a head. The head will become bigger and bigger until finally the human being will just roll along, with the rest of his organism totally crippled.”

This picture hovered like a nightmare before this Austrian poet — Hermann Rollett was his name — and he described it very visually, for it weighed upon him terribly, this picture that human beings will become rolling heads due to our civilization. There is something quite true underlying this picture, however. What underlies it is that, in fact, in our time the powers are extraordinarily strong that would like to develop our heads more and more. With the physical head they will not succeed so well, but with the etheric head they will be more successful. It is therefore so, in fact, that in our time the Ahrimanic powers would like to make us thoroughly head-men; they would like to transform us completely into mere thinkers.

For the human being in a healthy development, however, the other pole exists, the will pole, which always counteracts this, so that when we die the will has grasped the thought. Thought must not yet be alone. You see, when we are born, we have gathered new will, but the thought separates itself and finds our head; the will takes hold of the rest of the body. While we live on the Earth there is within us a continual interaction between will and thought. The will takes hold of the thought, and we must carry this fusing of will and thought through death. Ahriman would like to prevent this. He would like for the will to remain separate, for the thought alone to be particularly cultivated. We would lose our individuality if we were finally to arrive at the point toward which Ahriman strives. We would completely lose our individuality. We would arrive, in the moment of death, at an excessively, intensively cultivated thought. We human beings would be unable to hold this thought, and Ahriman could lay hold of it himself and integrate it into the rest of the world so that this thought would work further in the rest of the world. This is, in fact, the destiny that threatens humanity if we persist in the present-day materialism; then Ahrimanic powers would become so strong that Ahriman could steal thoughts from the human being and incorporate them into the Earth in their effectiveness, so that the Earth, which actually ought to come to an end, would become consolidated. Ahriman works toward consolidating the Earth, toward the Earth remaining as Earth. Ahriman works against the saying “Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” He wishes the words to be cast aside and Heaven and Earth to remain. This can be accomplished only if the thoughts of human beings are stolen, if human beings are de-individualized.

If Ahriman could continue to work as he has been able to especially since the year 1845, human brains would become more and more rigid, and human beings would live as though subject to compulsive thoughts, to materialized thoughts, as I explained yesterday. This would show itself particularly in human beings being guided in their education in such a way that they would no longer have mobile thoughts; rather, when they reached a certain age, they would have completely fixed thoughts. Now ask yourselves whether that is not already true to a great extent in our time! Just think how fixed the thoughts of many human beings are today. Is it possible to teach much to human beings today? Their thoughts are so rigid, so solid, that it is almost impossible to teach them very much. This is already being used by Ahriman. Ahriman strives more and more to intensify the process of making thoughts into compulsive thoughts. An active product in the scientific realm of these compulsive thoughts is atomism. In atomism, the spirit behind the veil of the senses is not intimated but only atoms, everywhere vibrating, whirling atoms. Of course you cannot reach behind the veil of the senses in any other way than with thoughts. Ahriman, however, has confused people so much already that they have materialized their thoughts. They no longer believe that they themselves have actually merely constructed a world with thought-atoms; they consider this as reality. They therefore have externalized the thoughts. This is a thoroughly Ahrimanized world. Today we have an Ahrimanized science, Ahrimanized through and through.

That this is actually the case can sometimes be encountered in a frightening way. I received, for example — maybe thirty-five years ago — a manuscript. It was a very scholarly manuscript. It intended to give the human differential — I am telling you a true story! By the human differential was meant the differential that if one integrates it will result in the human being. If one therefore integrates from foot to head, one will get the human being. It was a very scholarly treatise, and the physician who brought it to me said “You may meet the author personally,” for he was in his clinic. When I became acquainted with the man, he said “Yes, this is so; I have experienced it myself. I consist altogether of differential atoms. Everywhere there are differentials, and I am only an integral.” He conceived himself as differentiated exclusively into atoms; that was an intellectual-Ahrimanic form of consciousness. In the last analysis, however, it is merely the system of atomism grown rigid. When this manuscript was brought to me, I was led to recall that there is a LaPlacian world formula: according to it, it should be possible, by integration from the processes of atoms, to calculate, by inserting a specific value, when, let us say, Caesar crossed the Rubicon, or something similar! Here one does not integrate from foot to head, but rather one merely needs to integrate from the world's beginning to its end. This can be done simply by bringing atoms into the world formula in the appropriate way. This whole way of thinking looks suspiciously similar to the treatise of the man who considered himself an integral locked in between the borders of foot and head. By viewing such matters correctly, one can receive clear insight into the progressively Ahrimanic nature of our culture.

This must, of course, be counteracted, which can happen only if our concepts are again led to have a pictorial quality, so that we do not merely work with abstract concepts but rather bring to our concepts a pictorial quality. Then, when passing through the portal of death, we will already be bringing pictures with us, and we will find the connection to what the world demands. Otherwise humanity approaches the danger of losing itself. What actually ought to be individualized by the flowing of the will into the thoughts will become mineralized, will be made into universal Earth. The Earth thus would become a world-being, but humanity would in terms of its soul flow into a great cemetery.

Such overviews of civilization must occasionally be made. In our time it is absolutely essential to make such overviews, for whoever is able to oversee more precisely the matters of evolution today knows how rapidly this ossification of our civilization is approaching us. On this occasion I would not like to forget to mention that until the year 869 A.D., until the Eighth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople, man's members were considered to be body, soul, and spirit. At this Eighth Ecumenical Council the following formula, to which I have repeatedly drawn attention, was established for the West: it must not be believed that man consists of body, soul, and spirit, but only of body and soul, and the soul has a few spiritual properties. This decision then passed into the world. In the Middle Ages it was heresy to believe that man consisted of body, soul, and spirit. Today philosophy professors discover by means of "unprejudiced science" that man consists only of body and soul. This "unprejudiced science" is nothing but a decision by the Eighth Ecumenical Council. That, however, strives toward something else. One could say that through this Eighth Ecumenical Council humanity has lost the consciousness of the spirit, which must be regained. If we proceed further along the path I have just described to you, however, humanity will also lose consciousness of the soul.

Among the materialists of the nineteenth century this consciousness of the soul had already disappeared to such an extent that it was said that the brain secretes thoughts just as the liver secretes bile. It seemed, therefore, as if only a consciousness of the bodily processes remained. In fact, already today, without people knowing it, there are all kinds of underground societies that work toward things that lead in a direction similar to the one decided upon in 869 at the Council of Constantinople. They work to explain that man does not consist of both body and soul but rather that man consists only of the body and that the soul is merely something that develops out of the body. It is therefore impossible, if you take this viewpoint, to educate man from the aspect of soul; one must find a substance, a material substance, that can be injected into a human being at a certain age; then he will develop his talents by injection. This tendency definitely exists. It is right in line with the Ahrimanic development: no longer establish schools in order to teach, but inject certain substances instead. This is possible. It is not as if it were not possible. It is indeed possible, but the human being is made thereby into an automaton. One would speed up immensely what would otherwise be achieved by means of developing ready-made thoughts, with an education that overpowers thinking. There are already such substances that can be developed, substances that if injected at seven years of age, for example, could make the public schools altogether expendable; the human being would then become a thought automaton. He would become exceptionally clever but would not have a consciousness of it. This cleverness would just run off like a machine. What do many people today care, however, whether the human being has an inner life or not, as long as outwardly he walks around and does this or that? Such human beings that submit themselves by preference to the Ahrimanic civilization — and they do exist today — strive for such ideals. After all, what could be more tempting than the attitude, such as today is spreading far and wide, which would prefer to find an injectible substance to struggling with the children for years and years? One must present these things as being drastic. If one does not present the situation as being drastic, humanity today would not notice toward what goals it is striving. By such an injectible substance one would simply achieve a loosening of the etheric body in the physical body. As soon as the etheric body is loosened, the play between the etheric body and the universe would become exceedingly lively, and man would become an automaton. The physical body here on Earth must be developed through spiritual will.

Out of the full consciousness that one faces when confronting the automization of the human being, the methods for the Waldorf School, the pedagogical methods for the Waldorf School, were discovered. In this regard they should be motors of civilization that will lead again to a spiritualization, for basically — one can already say this — today above all it is necessary for the spiritual life among human beings to be particularly nurtured. One therefore should look courageously upon all that appears as symptoms of the improvement of individual human beings. I have often mentioned before how humanity strives today to place routine in place of a real practice of life — routine, which is truly the mechanization of life.

I was overjoyed recently when I read that there are still people who, going beyond the ordinary routine of life, have already perceived the practical life as something important. Recently a news item spread through the world, describing how Edison tested the people he wished to prepare for some sort of practical work. It did not interest him at all whether or not a merchant was able to keep books. That, he said, can be learned in three weeks if one is a reasonable, intelligent person. None of these specialties interested him at all; these one can learn. When Edison wished to know whether people would be of any use in practical life, however, he tested them by asking them questions like "How large is Siberia?" Thus when he wished to discover whether someone was a good bookkeeper, Edison did not ask whether he could conduct an audit properly, but he asked “How large is Siberia?” or “If a room is five meters long, three meters wide, and four meters high, how many cubic meters of air are contained in this room?” and similar questions. He posed questions like “What is standing at the place where Caesar crossed the Rubicon?” and so on, just general questions. And according to the extent to which a person could answer such questions, Edison hired him as a bookkeeper, or whatever. He knew that if a person could answer such a general question this was a proof that his schooling had not been in vain, that as a child he had developed mobile thoughts, and this is what Edison demanded.

This is how practical life really should be conducted, whereas in recent times we have steered precisely in the opposite direction, succumbing more and more to specialization, so that finally one could really despair of finding the people needed for practical life. It is impossible to get anyone to do something outside the pigeonhole into which he wants to fit. Already today it must be said that in this way too we must work toward the mobility of thoughts. If there is such a working toward the mobility of thoughts, then these thoughts will not harden, and Ahriman will be in a difficult position. You can see yourselves, if you look at life, how few Edisons there are who have such practical principles. It is necessary to work toward a pictorial quality of concepts; whoever works toward the pictorial quality of concepts will no longer be able to say that he does not understand spiritual science. It is precisely that tug which a person giyes himself in order to receive from abstractions the pictorial quality of concepts that presents on the one hand the possibility of grasping that the Earth evolved out of ancient Moon, Sun, Saturn; on the other hand, for the inner life, the life of feeling intermingles with the pictorial conceptions, with the imagination. The fully human being thus will arise.

Source: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA/GA0205/19210703p01.html

Donald Trump: Psycho Cheeto

I can't seem to face up to the facts
I'm tense and nervous and I
Can't relax
I can't sleep 'cause my bed's on fire
Don't touch me I'm a real live wire

Psycho Cheeto
Qu'est-ce que c'est

fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa

Better run run run run run run run away

Psycho Cheeto
Qu'est-ce que c'est
fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa
Better run run run run run run run away

You start a conversation you can't even finish it.
You're talkin' a lot, but you're not sayin' anything.
When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed.
Tweet something once, why tweet it again?

Psycho Cheeto,
Qu'est-ce que c'est
fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa

Better run run run run run run run away

Psycho Cheeto
Qu'est-ce que c'est

fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa

Better run run run run run run run away

Ce que j'ai fais, ce soir la
Ce qu'elle a dit, ce soir la
Realisant mon espoir
Je me lance, vers la gloire ... OK
We are vain and we are blind
I hate people when they're not all white

Psycho Cheeto,
Qu'est-ce que c'est

fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa

Better run run run run run run run away

Psycho Cheeto,
Qu'est-ce que c'est

fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa

Better run run run run run run run away

oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh....

The Trump Presidency: A Clockwork Orange Horrorshow

His Royal I-ness, Donald Trump, dowsing for his lost soul

"In off the moors, down through the mist bands,
God-cursed Grendel came greedily loping.
The bane of the race of men roamed forth,
Hunting for prey in the high hall.
Under the cloud-murk he moved toward it..."

Donnie and the Droogs

"Darkness is good. Dick Cheney, Darth Vader, Satan. That's power. It only helps us when [liberals and the media] get it wrong. When they're blind to who we are and what we're doing." —chief Donald Trump strategist Steve Bannon, in a post-election interview

Jesus Christ:

"And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God."

"Not I, but Christ in me"

Related post:  http://martyrion.blogspot.com/2017/04/its-karmageddon-we-have-sown-wind-and.html

A work of art by a first-grader

We did the soft wind

We danst   slowly  We swrld

Aroned  We danst soft

We lisin to the mozik

We danst to the mozik

We made personal space.

Source: Carolyn Jourdan

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=118460531969113351#editor/target=post;postID=2467039176592071442

Guy Behavior

Dave Barry:  You take a man and a woman, knock them both out with chloroform, put them into an airplane, fly them to South America, and leave them in the heart of the Amazon jungle in the middle of a starless night without a compass, and the instant they wake up, the man will announce: 'We want to go this way.'

Dave Barry:  I'm not saying that women don't think about sex also. I'm saying that women are capable, for at least brief periods of time, of not thinking about sex, and that most guys are not. This is why, when an attractive woman walks past a group of guys, no matter what activity they are engaged in, they will suffer an attack of Lust-Induced Brain Freeze (LIBF):
     BOMB-DISPOSAL EXPERT (calmly but urgently): Okay, we have fifteen seconds to bypass the timer circuit. On the count of three, I'm going to switch to auxiliary power, and I want you to short out these contacts, got it?
     SECOND EXPERT: Got it.
     FIRST EXPERT: Okay, one, two . . . (An attractive woman walks by.)
     FIRST EXPERT: Whoa.
     SECOND EXPERT: Yes.
     FIRST EXPERT: Mmm-MMM.
     SECOND EXPERT: YES.

     FIRST EXPERT: Whoa momma.
     SECOND EXPERT: YESSSS.
     BOMB: Boom.

Our bodily organs and our next incarnation : therapeutic insights

Therapeutic Insights: Earthly and Cosmic Laws

Lecture 4 of 5

Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland, July 2, 1921:

Today I have something further to add to what I began yesterday. I am reminding you of something that most of you have already heard from me. When the human being passes through death, the physical body remains behind within the earth-forces; the etheric body dissolves itself into the cosmic forces; and the human being finds his further life, his existence, throughout the realms that lie between death and a new birth. I said that within the human being himself we can follow the formative forces that reach from one life into the next. We know that man is essentially a threefold being, with three independent members; I am referring at first to the formative forces of the physical body, the physical organization. We have the nerve-sense organization, which extends over the whole body, of course, but is localized essentially in the head; we have the rhythmic organization, including the rhythm of the breath, of the circulation, and other rhythms; and we have the metabolic-limb organization, which we consider as one, because man's movements are intimately and organically connected with the metabolism.

You know that every human being has a differently formed head. If we now consider these forces that form the human head — of course you must not think here of the physical substances but rather of the formative forces, of that which gives to the head its physiognomy, its whole character, its phrenological expression — if we consider these forces, we find them to be those of the metabolic-limb system from the previous incarnation that have now become form. We thus have in the head a metamorphic transformation of the metabolic-limb organization of the previous incarnation. If we consider again what we possess as our metabolic-limb system in this present incarnation, these formative forces are found to be undergoing a metamorphosis and shaping our head for the next incarnation. If we understand the human formation, therefore, we can look back directly, by means of an appropriate cultivation of the metamorphic thought, from the human head of today to the metabolic-limb system of the previous incarnation; and we can see from the present metabolic-limb system forward to the head organization of the next incarnation.

This conception — which in our spiritual science and throughout the spiritual science of all ages has played a particular role — of the truths concerning repeated earthly lives does not remain airy, without substantiation; rather, whoever understands the human organization can read these truths directly from the human organization. The present trend of natural science, however, is as far as possible from embarking upon the sort of investigation that would be necessary here. If one studies the human being through anatomy and physiology alone, it is naturally impossible not to arrive at the foolish conception that the liver can be investigated in the same way as the lungs. One places the liver next to the lungs on the dissecting table and regards them as organs of equal value, since both consist of cells, and so on. One can obtain no knowledge of these things in such a way, and two organ systems that are as different from one another as the lungs and liver cannot be studied merely outwardly by comparison of their cellular configuration, as will necessarily follow from present-day conceptions.

If we really wish to discover the pertinent relationships, methods must be employed by means of which a conception of these things may be gained. If the methods that I described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment are sufficiently developed, human cognition is greatly strengthened, reinforced. I am repeating here certain things that I already explained in lectures given last autumn in the Goetheanum. Our ordinary cognition is strengthened, that cognition through which we look out, by means of the senses, into our environment and through which we also look into our inner being, where we at first perceive our thinking, feeling, and willing. If we broaden this cognition, if we broaden it as is possible through the exercises that have often been described, our view in relation to the outer world changes, and in such a way that as a consequence one sees that it is absolute nonsense to speak of atoms as is done with the present world conception. What is behind sense beholding, behind sense qualities, behind yellow and red, behind C-sharp, G, and so forth, is not vibration but spiritual beingness (Wesenhaftigheit). The world from without becomes ever more spiritual the further we press forward in cognition. One thereby really ceases to take seriously all those constructions derived from chemical or similar conceptions. All atomism is thoroughly driven from the mind when one broadens cognition from without. Behind the phenomena of the senses there is a spiritual world.

If through such a broadened cognition we look more deeply into the inner being, there arises — as I pointed out yesterday — not that confused mystical beholding, which does indeed form a transition that is quite justified, but there arises instead, when cognition of the inner being is developed, a psychic cognition of the organs. We learn really to recognize our inner being; while from without our cognition is more and more spiritualized, from within it is at first materialized. Working from this inner being, the real spiritual researcher — not the nebulous mystic — will become acquainted with each single organ. He learns to know the differentiated human organism. We reach into the spiritual world by no other path than by way of this observation of our inner materiality. Without learning to know lungs, liver, and so forth, one also does not learn to know, by way of this inner being, any kind of spiritual enthusiasm, which works away from the confusion of mysticism and works toward a concrete cognition of the inner organs of the human being.

At all events, one learns to know more precisely the configuration of the soul element. To begin with, one learns to give up the prejudice that our soul element is merely connected with the nerve-sense apparatus. Only the world of mental images is connected with the nerve-sense apparatus, while the world of feeling no longer is. The world of feeling is connected directly with the rhythmic organism, and the world of will is connected with the metabolic-limb organism. If I will something, something must take place in my metabolic-limb organism. The nervous system is there only in order that one can have mental images of what actually takes place in the will. There are no "nerves of will," as I have often stated; the division of nerves into sensory nerves and motor nerves is nonsense. The nerves are all of one kind, and the so-called nerves of will or motor nerves exist for no other purpose than to perceive inwardly the processes of will; they too are sensory nerves.

If we study this thoroughly, we come at last to consider the human organization in its entirety. Take the lung organization, the liver organization, and so forth. You reach a point, looking inward, at which you survey, as it were, the surface of the individual organs, of course by means of a spiritual gaze directed inward. What exactly is the surface of our organs? This surface is nothing other than a reflecting apparatus for the soul life. What we perceive and also what we work through in thought reflects itself upon the surface of all our inner organs, and this reflection signifies our recollections, our memory during life. Thus, after we have perceived and worked through something, it mirrors itself upon the outer surface of our heart, lungs, spleen, and so forth, and what is thus thrown back constitutes our recollections. With a not very intensive training you already notice how certain thoughts ray back over the whole organism in recollection. The most varied organs take part in this. If it is a question of remembering very abstract thoughts, let us say, then the lungs participate very strongly, the surface of the lungs. If it is a question of thoughts colored by feeling, of thoughts that have a nuance of feeling, then the surface of the liver is strongly involved. Thus we really can describe in detail very well how the individual organs of the human being take part in this raying back that appears as memory, as the power of recollection. When we focus on the soul element we must not say that in the nervous system alone lies the parallel organism for the soul life — rather, in the entire human organism lies the parallel organization for the human soul life.

In this connection much knowledge that once existed as instinct has simply been lost. It still exists in certain words, but people no longer sense how wisdom is preserved in these words. For example, if someone had a tendency to come to his recollections in a state of depression, it was called in ancient Greece hypochondria, meaning a process of cartilage-formation or ossification of the abdomen, where, as a result of this ossification, the reflection was brought about in such a way as to make memory a source of hypochondria. The entire organism is involved in these things. This is something that must be kept in mind.

When speaking of the power of recollection, I spoke of the surface of the organs. Everything we have experienced strikes the surfaces, as it were, is reflected, and that leads to recollections. Something also enters the organism at the same time, however. In ordinary life this is transmuted, undergoes a metamorphosis, so that the organ produces a secretion. The organs having this function are mostly glandular organs. They have an inner secretion, and such forces as enter during life are transformed into secretions. Not everything is transformed in this way into organic metabolism and the like; rather, certain organs instead absorb something that becomes latent within them and constitutes an inner force. For example, all thoughts that we absorb in this way are connected mainly with outer objects. The forces developed in these thoughts are stored, as it were, in the inner aspect of the lungs.

You know that the inner aspect of the lungs comes into activity through the metabolism, through the movement of the limbs, and these forces are transmuted in such a way that during life between birth and death our lungs are a reservoir, as it were, of forces that are continually influenced by the metabolic-limb organism. When we die, such forces have been stored up. The physical matter, of course, falls away, but these forces are not lost; they accompany us through death and through the entire life between death and a new birth. And when we enter a new incarnation, it is these forces that were in the lungs that form our head outwardly, that stamp upon our head outwardly the physiognomy. What the phrenologist wishes to study in the outer form of the head must be sought in an earlier form in the inner aspect of the lungs in the previous incarnation.

You see from life to life how concretely the transformation of forces may be traced. When this is done these things are no longer seen as merely abstract truths but will be beheld concretely, as one can also behold physical things concretely. Spiritual science becomes truly valuable only if one penetrates into individual concrete facts in this way. If one speaks about repeated earthly lives and so forth only in generalities, these are mere words. They acquire meaning only if one can enter into the individual concrete facts.

If what has been stored in the lungs is not controlled in the right way, it is pressed out, as I said yesterday, in the same way as water in a sponge is pressed out, and then, from what actually should only form the head in the next incarnation there arise abnormal phenomena that are usually designated as compulsive thoughts or illusions. It is an interesting chapter in a higher physiology to study in persons suffering from lung disease the strange notions that arise in the advanced stages of the disease. This is connected with what I have just explained to you, with the abnormal pressing-out of thoughts.

You see, the thoughts that thus are pressed out are compulsive thoughts, because they already contain the forming force. The thoughts that now we ought normally to have in consciousness must be only pictures; they must not have in themselves a forming force; they must not compel us. Through the long period between death and a new birth these thoughts do compel us; then they are causative, they work in a forming way. During earthly life they must not overwhelm us; they must use their force only during the transition from one life into another. This is the point to be considered.

If you now study the liver in the same way as I have just explained regarding the lungs, you will discover that within the liver are concentrated all the forces that in the next incarnation determine the inner disposition of the brain. Again by way of the metabolic organism of the present life, the inner forces of the liver pass over, this time not into the form of the head, as with the lungs, but into the inner disposition of the brain. Whether or not someone is to be an acute thinker in the next incarnation depends upon how he behaves in the present incarnation. Thus by way of the metabolism there may appear within the liver certain forces; if these forces are pressed out during the present incarnation, however, they lead to hallucinations or to powerful visions.

You therefore see concretely now what I pointed out yesterday in abstractions: that these things arise through being pressed out of the organs; then they push their way into consciousness, and, out of the general hallucinatory life that should extend from one incarnation into the next, they assert themselves within a single incarnation and make their abnormal appearance in this way.

If we study in the same way everything that is connected with the kidney-excretory organs, we will see that they concentrate within themselves the forces that in the next incarnation influence the head organization more from the emotional side. The kidney organs, the organs of excretion, bring forth in preparation for the next incarnation essentially that which has to do with the temperamental tendencies in the broadest sense, but by way of the head organization.

If these forces are pressed out during the present incarnation, they display all the nervous conditions, all the conditions connected with over-excitement of the human being, inner or soul over-excitement specifically, hypochondriacal conditions, depression, and so forth, in short all the conditions connected particularly with this side of the metabolism.

In fact, everything that is memorable more from the feeling or emotional side is also connected with what is reflected from the kidneys. If we consider lung or liver reflections, we find them to be more memory pictures, actual memory pictures (Gedaechtnisvorstellungen). If we turn to the kidney system, we see there what we have as lasting habits in this incarnation, and within the kidney system are being prepared the temperamental tendencies in the broadest sense which, by way of the head organization, are intended for the next incarnation.

Let us study the heart in a similar way. For spiritual scientific research, the heart is also an extraordinarily interesting organ. You know that our trivial science is inclined to treat knowledge of the heart quite lightly. It looks upon the heart as a pump, a pump that pumps the blood through the body. Nothing more absurd than this can be believed, for the heart has nothing whatsoever to do with pumping the blood; rather the blood is set into activity by the entire mobility (Regsamkeit) of the astral body and of the I, and the heart is only a reflection of these movements. The movement of the blood is an autonomous movement, and the heart only brings to expression the movement of the blood caused by these forces. The heart is in fact only the organ that expresses the movement of the blood; the heart itself has no activity in relation to this movement of the blood. Contemporary natural scientists become very angry if you speak of this issue. Many years ago, I think in 1904 or 1905, on a journey to Stockholm, I explained this issue to a natural scientist, a medical man, and he was almost apoplectic about the idea that the heart should not be regarded as a pump but that the blood itself comes into movement through its own vitality, that the heart is simply inserted in the general movement of the blood, participating with its beat, and so on.

Something is reflected from the surface of the heart that is no longer merely a matter of habit or memory but is life that is already spiritualized when it reaches the outer surface of the heart. For what is thrown back from the heart are the pangs of conscience. This is to be considered, I would like to say, entirely from the physical aspect: the pangs of conscience that radiate into our consciousness are what is reflected by the heart from our experiences. Spiritual knowledge of the heart teaches us this.

If we look into the inner aspect of the heart, however, we see gathered there forces that also stem from the entire metabolic-limb organism, and because what is connected with the heart, with the heart forces, is spiritualized, within it is also spiritualized that which is connected with our outer life, with our deeds. However strange and paradoxical it may sound to a person who is clever in the modern sense, the fact remains that the forces thus prepared within the heart are the karmic tendencies, they are the tendencies of karma. It is revoltingly foolish to speak of the heart as a mere pumping mechanism, for the heart is the organ which, through mediation of the metabolic-limb system, carries what we understand as karma into the next incarnation.

You see, if one learns to know this organization, one learns to differentiate it, and it manifests then in its connection with the entire life, which extends beyond birth and death. One sees then into the entire structure of the human being. We have not been able to speak of the head, in speaking about transformations, for the head is simply cast off; its forces are fulfilled with this incarnation, having been transformed from the previous incarnation. What we have in these four main systems, however — in lung-, liver-, kidney-, and heart-systems — passes in a form-building way through the metabolic-limb system and forms our head with all its tendencies in the next incarnation. We must seek within the organs of the body for the forces that will carry over into the next incarnation what we are now experiencing.

The human metabolism is by no means the mere simmering and seething of chemicals in a test-tube that modern physiology describes. You need only take a single step, and a certain metabolism is produced. This metabolism that is produced is not merely a chemical process, which may be examined by means of physiology, of chemistry, but bears within it at the same time a moral coloring, a moral nuance. And this moral nuance is, in fact, stored in the heart and carried over as karmic force into the next incarnation. To study the entire human being means to find in him the forces that reach beyond earthly life. Our head itself is a sphere. Only because the rest of the organism is attached to it is this spherical shape modified. When we go through death we must, in the soul-spiritual organization that remains to us, adapt ourselves to the entire cosmos. The entire cosmos then receives us. Up to the middle point of the period between two incarnations — I have called this point, in one of my Mystery Dramas, the Midnight Hour of Existence — up to this moment, if I may express myself in this way, we continue to expand into the environment. We gradually become identical with the environment, and what thus proceeds from us into the environment gives the configuration for the astral and the etheric of the next incarnation.

This is determined essentially out of the cosmos within the mother. Through the father and fertilization comes that which is formed in the physical and what is in the ego. This ego, as it is then, after the Midnight Hour of Existence, actually passes over into an entirely different world. It passes over into that world through which it can then take this path through the paternal nature. This is an extremely significant process. The period up to the Midnight Hour of Existence and the period following it — both periods between death and a new birth — are actually very different from each other. In my lecture cycle in Vienna in 1914 (The Inner Nature of Man) I described these experiences from within. If we look at them more from the outside, we must say that the I is more cosmic in the first half, up to the Midnight Hour, and prepares in the cosmos that which then enters the next incarnation indirectly, by way of the mother. From the Midnight Hour of Existence until the next birth, the I passes over into what the ancient Mysteries called the underworld. On the detour through this underworld it takes the path through fertilization. There the two poles of the human being basically meet, through the mother and the father: from the upper world and from the underworld.

At least as far as I know, what I am now saying was an essential content of the Egyptian Mysteries, coming out of the instinctive ancient knowledge. The Egyptian Mysteries led particularly to knowledge of what they called at that time the upper and lower gods, the upper world and underworld of the gods; and it may be said that in the act of fertilization a polar equilibrium of the upper world and underworld of the gods is brought about. The I between death and a new birth goes first through this upper world and then through the lower world. In ancient times there were not at all the strange connotations that many today connect with upper world and underworld. People of today nearly always look upon the upper world as the good and the underworld as the bad. These connotations were not originally connected with these worlds; they were simply the two polarities that had to participate in the general world formation. In directly experiencing the upper world, one perceived, beheld, it more as the world of light, and the underworld more as the world of heaviness: heaviness and light as the two polarities, if one wishes to express it more outwardly. You thus see that things can be described concretely.

Regarding the other organs, I have told you that the outflowing of organic forces can become hallucinatory life, especially what is pressed out of the liver system. If the heart presses out its contents, however, this is really a system of forces, pushed out and brought into consciousness, that call forth in the next incarnation that strange inclination to live out one's karma. If one observes how karma works itself out, it may be said from the human side that this living out of karma can only be described as a kind of hunger and its satisfaction.

This must be understood in the following way. Let us proceed first from the standpoint of ordinary life. Let us take a striking event: a woman meets a man and begins to love him. Now, as this is usually regarded, it is somewhat as if you were to cut a little piece from the Sistine Madonna — for example, a little finger from the Jesus boy — and were to gaze at it. You have, of course, a piece of the Sistine Madonna, but you do not see anything. Neither do you see anything if you merely consider the fact that a woman meets a man and begins to love him. The matter is not like that; one must trace it back. Before the woman met the man, she had been in other places in the world; before that she had been somewhere else, and still earlier somewhere else again. You can find all sorts of reasons that the woman went from one place to another. This conceals itself, of course, in the subconscious, but there is reason in it, there is an inner connection throughout, and by going back into childhood one can retrace the path.

The woman in question — and this is directed at no one in particular — follows the path from the beginning, which culminates in the event under discussion. The human being, when he is born, hungers to do what he does, and he does not give up until he satisfies this hunger. The pressing forward to a karmic event is a result of such a generalized spiritual feeling of hunger. One is driven to the event. It just so happens that the entire human being has such forces within him that lead to later events, in spite of the freedom that exists nevertheless but plays itself out in a different realm. The forces that manifest themselves as such a hunger, leading to karmic fulfillment, living themselves out in this way, are concentrated in the heart; and when they are pressed out and thereby come into consciousness in the present incarnation, they create pictures that form a stimulus, and then raving madness results. Raving madness is basically a premature living out in this incarnation of a force of karma intended for the following incarnation. Think how differently one must accustom oneself to look upon world events if these connections are understood. Of course, if a person suffered from raving madness in the present incarnation — or if one were that fellow who ruled Spain once — he would say that if God had permitted him to rule the world, he would have done it better! People thus ask questions such as "Why did God create raving madness?" Raving madness has plenty of good reasons for existing, but everything working in this world can appear at the wrong time, and the displaced manifestation, in this case brought about by Luciferic forces — everything that works prematurely in the world is brought about by the activity of Luciferic forces — the manifestation in this incarnation of karmic forces intended for the next incarnation creates raving madness.

You see, what is to be carried over and continued in another life can actually be studied in the abnormalities of a present life.

You can easily imagine what a strong distinction exists between what now rests in our heart through our entire incarnation and the condition in which this will be once it has gone through the long development between death and a new birth, then coming into appearance in the outer behavior of a human being in the new life.
However, if you look into the inner aspect of your heart, you can perceive quite well — though of course only latently, not in a finished picture — what you will do in your next life. We need not confine ourselves to the general, abstract statement that what will work itself out karmically in the next life is prepared in this one, but we can point directly to the vessel in which resides the karma of the following incarnations. These are the things that must be penetrated concretely if one wishes to practice a real spiritual science.
You can imagine what enormous significance these things will gain when they are studied and made a part of the general education. What does modern medicine know of the possibility of a liver or heart disease when it does not know the most important fact of all, that is, the actual purpose of these organs? And this it does not know. It has not even discovered a correct connection between excitatory hallucinations and, let us say, the kidney system, nor does it understand that calm hallucinations, those that merely appear, are liver hallucinations, as it were. Hallucinations that appear as though crawling on a person so that the victim wants to brush them off come from the kidney system. These are excitatory hallucinations, which have to do with the emotional system, with the system of temperament. From such symptoms a much more sure diagnosis can be made than by the diagnostic means in ordinary use today. Diagnoses based upon purely outer evidence are very unsure in comparison with what they would be were these things studied.

Now, all these things are connected with the outer world. The lungs, as inner organs or organ system, actually contain the compressed compulsive thoughts and everything that we take up in perceiving outer objects and concentrating these in the lungs. The liver relates to the outer world in an entirely different way. Precisely because the lungs preserve, as it were, the thought material, they are structured quite differently. They are more closely connected with the earthly element, with the earth element. The liver, which conceals hallucinations, particularly the calm hallucinations, the hallucinations that merely appear, is connected with the fluid system and therefore with water. The kidney system, paradoxical as it sounds, is connected with the air element. One naturally thinks that this ought to be the case with the lungs, but the lungs as organs are connected with the earth element, though not only with it. On the other hand, the kidney system — as an organ — is connected with the air element, and the heart system as an organ is connected with the warmth element; it is formed entirely out of the warmth element. This element, therefore, which is the most spiritual, is also the one that takes up the inclination for karma into these exceptionally fine warmth structures that we have in the warmth organism.

Since the entire human being stands in relationship to the outer world, you can say to yourself that the lungs have a particular relationship to the outer world in connection with the earthly element, and the liver in regard to the watery element. If you examine the earthly qualities of plants you will find in them the remedies for everything connected with diseases that have their origin in the lungs (this must be considered, of course, in its broadest implications). If you take what circulates in the plant, the circulation of the plant's juices, you will have therein the remedy for all disturbances connected with the liver organization. Thus a study of the reciprocal relationship of the organs to the environment offers, in fact, the foundation for a rational therapy.

Our present therapy is a jumble of empirical notes. One can come to a really rational therapy only by studying in this way the reciprocal relationships between the world of organs within the human being and the outer world. Of course the sensual longing for subjective mysticism must then be overcome. If the aim is to reach no further than the well-known "little divine flame" of Meister Eckhardt and so on, if the outpouring of a mere sensual delight in the inner world is the aim, having beautiful images without penetrating through this entire element to the concrete configuration of the inner organs, then one cannot really penetrate to significant therapeutic knowledge. For this knowledge yields itself upon the path of a true mysticism, which advances to the concrete reality of the inner element of the human being. Just as there we penetrate into the inner element of the human being and by way of this inner element learn to know the passage through the incarnations, just as we learn to know this inner life of the human being, so we reach, when we study the outer world, through the sense world, through the tapestry of the senses, into the spiritual. We ascend into the world of the spiritual hierarchies, which we did not find by way of inner mysticism. The hierarchies are found by way of a deeper view of the outer world. Upon this path something yields itself that may first be expressed in analogies. They are not merely analogies, however, for there exist much deeper relationships.

We breathe, of course, and I recently calculated for you the number of breaths we take in 24 hours. If we count 18 breaths to the minute, we have in an hour 60 x 18, and in 24 hours 25,920 breaths, in a day and a night.

Let us take another rhythm in the human being: the rhythm of day and night itself. When you awake in the morning, you draw into your physical and etheric bodies the astral body and I. This is also a breathing. In the morning you inhale the astral body and I, and when you fall asleep at night you exhale them again; thus one complete breath in twenty-four hours, in one day. There are 365 such breaths in a year. Take the average age of a human being, 72 years, and you arrive at approximately the same figure, 25,920. If I had not started with 72 but a figure somewhat lower, I would have reached the same figure. That is to say, if you take the entire earthly life of the human being and you see each single day, each falling asleep and awakening, as one breath, you have then in an entire life as many inhalations and exhalations of the astral body and I as you have breaths in twenty-four hours. You take in the course of your life just as many breaths of the astral body and I as you take daily in breathing the air. These rhythms are in absolute correspondence, and we see how the human being is fitted into the world. The life of one day, sunrise to sunset, therefore a single circuit, corresponds to an inner sunrise and sunset that lasts from birth to death.

You see, the human being incorporates himself into the entire world, and I would like to close these considerations by pointing out to you an idea, asking you to think it through, to make it a subject of meditation. Science today pictures a world process, and within this world process the Earth is thought to have arisen. Natural science believes that in the end, when entropy is fulfilled, the Earth will end in a warmth death, and so on. If today one forms for oneself a view such as the Copernican view, or any modification of Copernicanism, one takes into consideration only the forces that formed the Earth out of the primeval mist, and human life basically becomes a sort of fifth wheel on the wagon, for the geologist, the astronomer, does not take the human being into consideration. It does not occur to him to seek at all within the human being for the primal cause of a future shaping of the world. For modern science, the human being is everywhere present in this world process, but he is the fifth wheel on the wagon — the world process takes its course, but he has nothing to do with it. Picture it in this way: this whole world process comes to an end, ceases, dissolves itself in space. It ceases, and the primal causes of what then happens lie within the human skin, within the human being; there they continue. The origin of what is now the world lies far back within the human being in primeval ages. This is a reality. Just as the books of ancient wisdom relate such things to us in their own language, so the word of Christ Jesus also point to these things: “Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” All that constitutes the material world passes away, but that which comes from the spirit and the soul and is expressed in words survives the destruction of the Earth and lives on into the future. The primal causes of the future do not lie outside our skin, and the geologists need not look for them in the ground. Rather we must seek them within, in the inner forces of our organization, which at first pass over into our next earthly life but then continue in other metamorphoses. Hence when you search for the future of the world you must look into the human being. Everything that is outer perishes utterly.

The nineteenth century erected a barrier against this knowledge, and this barrier is called the law of the conservation of energy. This law of the conservation of energy carries forward the forces residing in man's environment, but all these will dissolve and disappear. Only what arises within the human being builds the future. It is impossible to think of anything more false than the law of the conservation of energy. In reality its result is simply to make the human being a fifth wheel in the world process. It is not the statement of the law of the conservation of energy that is correct, but rather that other saying: “Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” This is the correct statement. These two statements are diametrically opposed to one another, and it is simply a lack of thought when today certain adherents to this or that positive denomination wish to be believers in the Bible and at the same time adherents to the theories of modern physics. This is simply dishonesty, which appears today to be culturally creative. This dishonesty must be driven from the field of creative culture — which it actually opposes — if we are to emerge from these forces of decline into forces of ascent.

Source: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA/GA0205/19210702p01.html