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Rudolf Steiner, from the lecture "Moral Impulses and Their Physical Manifestations"
The inner effects of our moral imagination create a vertical stream up into our head. Nothing immoral can stream in the vertical direction. It is pushed back, pressed together, and makes the person ahrimanic. Only what is moral can stream in the vertical direction. In fact, the physiognomy of the immoral is repelled in its vertical movement already in the etheric, already in the warmth ether of the blood. Our head does not take it in. However, the moral enters our head with the warmth of the blood already in the warmth ether, and even more so in the light ether, the chemical ether, and the life ether. Then we permeate our head with our own being.
What happens there is indeed an intervention of the moral in the physical organization, for we can say that our etheric head organization has an affinity for the moral in us but not for the immoral. Of course, if we do not go beyond physical, sensory perception, we cannot see how our moral impulses work into our physical organization by way of the etheric. We have to look at the human being as a whole, including the etheric and astral organization, to see how the moral intervenes in the human organization.
As you can see, this looks different when we are dead. If our head has repelled the forces of our remaining organization, then in our etheric body, which we cast off after a few days, there will be nothing left of us. Then we cannot have much of an effect on the world, and we cannot work on the further development of the Earth because we do not send forces into what will last into the future. If we have developed moral impulses that have entered our head, then our etheric body leaves us after death in the form of a human being.
The etheric body of immoral persons, on the other hand, looks completely ahrimanic when it leaves them. We can get a good idea of the shape of Ahriman even without trying to meet Ahriman hemself: we only need to look at the etheric body of immoral persons, whose form has become completely ahrimanic, merging into the cosmos. However, the etheric body that leaves the I and the astral body of a moral individual two or three days after death will be humanized, well-rounded, and serene.
Such individuals assimilate their experiences during life with their head, and through the head's resemblance to the cosmos, they can then give them to the cosmos. As I said, our head resembles the cosmos, but the rest of our organism does not. Instead, after it has been given over to the cosmos, the rest of our organism will be scattered and fall back onto the Earth or enter streams that circle the Earth. However, our morality that we have imprinted into our head will be poured out into the cosmos, and that is how we participate in the reshaping of the cosmos.
In other words, by being moral or immoral we actively work on the future of the Earth. Immoral people present the forces surrounding the Earth with what drizzles down onto the Earth etherically and reunites with it, or what lives in the orbit around the Earth. These surrounding forces are important for all Earth activity because the physical of the Earth develops eventually out of the etheric. On the other hand, moral people have taken into their head the forces that develop especially through moral impulses, and they therefore give to the cosmos what they have achieved on Earth.
...
To understand the reality and effectiveness of the moral we have to enter the supersensible realm. The physiognomy turned toward the inside, the gesture turned inward — they are supersensible. Depending on whether they are moral or immoral, they are either taken in or rejected by the head, and then either flow into the cosmos or shatter on the Earth, burst, and are scattered everywhere.
Continued:
The Mystery of the Holy Spirit
Source: February 17, 1923. GA 221. Earthly Knowledge and Heavenly Wisdom, pp. 116-119
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