LECTURE IV.
It is only by means of
conceptions which are comparatively difficult that the nature of what
is commonly called matter can be grasped. If we wish to give some
description of matter in an occult sense we have first to ask, what
is its outstanding characteristic? And if we proceed to investigate
without prejudice we find that it is its extension in space. No one
would think of ascribing occupation of space to feeling, thought or
will. It would be ridiculous to suggest that some thought — let
us say the thought you have about a hero — were five square
yards larger than the thought you have about any ordinary person. One
sees at once that this feeling of space, this extension in space,
cannot be applied at all to things of the soul. But there is another
characteristic of matter, namely weight. This, as we shall see in the
course of these lectures, is not so simple. For merely in observing
the world we do not so immediately notice anything of the weight, but
only of the extension in space.
Now we know that this extension
is usually reckoned according to three dimensions, height, breadth
and depth or length. It is, you will agree, a common, almost a
trivial truth that things are extended in space according to three
dimensions. We must, therefore, recognise as the most evident
characteristic of matter its extension in three dimension. Now, as we
saw, we cannot apply conditions of space to what lies in the soul. It
is, therefore, obvious that something else must exist in the world,
other than what fills up space as substance or matter. For we have
evidence, even on the physical plane, of processes and conditions
that are not extended in space — soul experiences, as we call
them.
Now if we approach soul
experiences with as little prejudice as we did the conditions of
matter in space we shall very soon find in them another quality
without which these soul experiences would not be there at all. And
that is, we are bound to admit, that soul experiences take their
course in time. Although we cannot say that a feeling or an
impulse of will is five yards long or five square yards in size, yet
we must admit that what we think or feel, in short all soul
experiences, take their course in time. It is not only that we need a
particular period of time for experiencing them, but also one soul
experience comes earlier, another later. In short, what we,
experience in the soul is subject to time. Now as a matter of fact,
in our reality, in all that surrounds us and in what we ourselves
are, space and time conditions are everywhere mixed. In the outer
world things happen in such a way that they are spread out in space
and also follow one another in time, each requiring for itself a
certain time. Before we can come to the occult truth about all this
we must put the question: How then does space stand in relation to
time? And so, you see, in this anthroposophical course of lectures we
come quite innocently up against a very great philosophical question,
one upon which — to speak metaphorically — countless
heads have been broken! We come, that is, to the relation of time to
space. Perhaps it will not be easy for you to follow the train of
thought fully now that we have in such an innocent way come up
against the relation of time to space; for the greater number of you
have had no special philosophical training. But if you will take a
little trouble to try to follow, you will see how fruitful such
thoughts are, and how, if you work them over in meditation, they can
lead you further in your study.
It is good to take your start
from the time which you experience in your own soul. Ask yourself how
you experience time in your own soul? Let me speak more clearly. I do
not ask you to think of time as you see it on the clock; there you
only compare your inner experience with outer processes. I want you
now to put right out of your mind all reading of the clock and other
outer events. Consider only how does the time relationship express
itself in your soul? Ponder over it as deeply as you will, and you
will find that you can think of nothing as a standard for time but
the following: you can grasp a thought when it is aroused in you by
some external perception. You are looking at something, and a thought
or idea arises in your soul. When you enquire more exactly into the
relationship between yourself and the idea or the thought, you have
to answer: While I have the thought, I myself am actually the
thought. Try and think the thing over to the very end and you will
say: While I am engrossed in the thought, then I am, in my innermost
being, the thought. It would be mere prejudice to say that together
with this concept you had also the idea of the “I am.”
The “I am” is not there while you have surrendered
yourself to the thought. You are yourself the thought. Without a
certain practical training you cannot be something else
simultaneously with the thought which you hold.
Firstly then, man is in the
thoughts and feelings which are directly given to him. Suppose you
let this piece of chalk incite you to a thought; then, if you exclude
everything else, if you are absorbed in the idea that has been
stimulated in you by the perception of chalk, your inmost being is
one with the idea of chalk. But now suppose you have grasped this
idea and all at once you remember that yesterday you also saw chalk;
and you compare the idea of chalk that has been given you by direct
perception with what you experienced yesterday. And you will be aware
that though you are completely identified with the chalk observed
to-day you cannot identify yourself with the chalk of yesterday. This
latter is a memory picture and must remain so. You have truly become
one with the chalk of to-day, but the chalk of yesterday has become
something external for you. The chalk observed to-day is identified
with your own inner being of to-day; your memory picture is, to be
sure, something upon which you look back, but in comparison with the
other it is objective and external. And it is the same with
everything you have experienced in your soul with the exception of
the present moment. The present moment is for the moment your inner
being; everything that you have experienced — you have rid
yourself of, it is already outside you. You may imagine, if you wish
to have a picture of it, that the present moment with your concepts
is a snake, and what you put outside you is the cast-off skin of the
snake. And as the snake casts its skin again a second and a third
time so you can have ever so many cast-off ideas which are for you
something external in comparison with your temporary present
inwardness. That is to say, as far back as you can remember, you have
continually been making outward what was first inward. The idea of
the chalk, for example, which you now have, the very next moment you
have made it external to you, while you yourself have passed on to
something else. That is to say, you are working at a continual
exteriorisation. You are perpetually creating something within you
and then leaving it behind; this innermost that you have in you at
once becomes an outer, just like a sloughed skin. Our soul-life
consists in this — that the inner is continually becoming an
outer; so that within our own being, within this inner spiritual
process, we are able to distinguish between the real innermost and
the outer within the inner. We are all the time within our own being,
but we have there to distinguish two parts: first, our real
inwardness, and secondly, the part of our inwardness which has become
an outer.
Now this process which we have
seen accomplished of the inner becoming an outer — this really
gives the content of our soul-life; for if you think it over you will
find you can call your “soul” all you have experienced,
right back to the time which you first remember in early childhood.
One who has forgotten all that he has ever experienced would actually
have lost his ego. Thus in the fact that we can put memories behind
us, and yet keep them, like continually cast-off skins — in
this possibility lies the reality of our soul-life. Now one can
conceive of this reality of soul-life as being fashioned in all
manner of different ways. Let me ask you to observe how in each
single moment the soul is shaped differently from what it is in any
other moment. Suppose you go out into a beautiful starlit night or
suppose you listen to a Beethoven symphony; you have in those moments
identified with your own inner being a wide region of soul-life.
Suppose you step from this starlit night into a dark room; it is as
if this soul-life of yours were suddenly shrunk together; only a few
ideas are there. Or suppose the symphony comes to an end; then the
region of ideas, in so far as they come from hearing, dwindles away
for you. And when you sleep then your soul-life shrinks right up
until you wake up again and spread it, like a bird ruffling its
feathers. So you have a continuous re-shaping of the soul-life. And
if we now draw — but this is only a symbol; for we must draw in
space, and yet we mean time, which is not spatial — if we would
draw the content of our life of soul, then we could form it in many
different ways. Here (a) it is shrunk, here (b) it expands,
we should have to think of it as shaped most variedly, while here (c)
there is always the content of soul-life. From this symbol, making the
invisible visible, you can recognise the shrinking and the enlarging.
A soul-life which listens to a symphony is richer than one which
hears only a single note. So one can say that the soul-life opens out
and then draws itself together, expands and contracts — only as
we say this we must not let any space conceptions mix in with it.
During this expansion and contraction one thing is unquestionably
present, and that is inner spiritual movement. Movement! Soul-life
is movement.
| Diagram 2 Click image for large view | |
Only we must think of movement
not as movement in space but as we have described it. And this
expansion and contraction gives forms. So you have movement, and the
outer expression of movement in certain forms. But there are no space
forms. The forms here meant are not spatial forms, but forms of
expanding and contracting soul-life. And what lives in this expansion
and contraction? You will get near the reality if you consider a
little what must live therein. Therein live your feelings, thoughts,
impulses of will, in so far as that is all spiritual. It is like
water which swims along, moving in forms, but it is all spiritual.
And now we shall need still another conception in order to realise
the whole. We said: Thoughts live therein, conceptions, feelings,
impulses of will. But the impulses of will are, in a certain sense,
more fundamentally necessary than the thoughts themselves. For if you
consider how this soul-life is at times in quicker motion and at
times in slower motion, you will perceive that it is really will
itself which brings it into motion. If you stimulate your will you
can bring the thoughts and feelings into quicker flow; if the will is
indolent then it all moves along more slowly. You need the will in
order to expand your life of soul. So we have seriatim, first,
Will; then, all that lives in feelings and conceptions, all that is
within our soul-life — I say advisedly, our life of soul —
and this we can grasp as a manifestation of Wisdom; then we have
Movement — expansion and contraction; and then Form, which
appears as the expression of movement. You can quite exactly
differentiate within your soul-life: will, wisdom, movement, form.
These weave and live within the life of soul.
It is a pity that this cycle of
lectures could not last a month for then we could speak more exactly
and fully. And you would see how it can be accurately established
that there, in your own soul-life, a process takes place which has
its root in the will, and contains within it wisdom and movement and
form. Now you will see that the series we have here given for the
life of soul follows, in a wonderful way, the names we had to give
for the successive hierarchies — Spirits of Will, of Wisdom,
and of Movement, and Spirits of Form. In presenting our soul-life in
this manner we have, so to say, surprised the hierarchies in one
spot, we have really caught them inside there. There they reveal
themselves in a most singular way in the inner soul-life of man —
and they reveal themselves in such a way that their activity is
entirely unspatial. And if we have gained nothing more, we have at
least established this important point; we have gained, as it were, a
first conception of an important quality of these four hierarchies, namely
that they are not of space. We know, therefore, that by “Form”
is meant the unspatial spiritually formative power of form. That is
very important. So when we speak of “forms” created by
the Spirits of Form we do not mean external forms in space but those
inner formations that only exist for consciousness and that we can
grasp in the course of our soul-life. Everything passes there in time
alone. Without time you cannot imagine it at all. If you look away
from the illustration, which is of no importance for the thing
itself, you must imagine it in so far as you remain within the
soul-life, as unspatial space.
And so, my dear friends, when we
say that the Spirits of Will worked first on Old Saturn, the Spirits
of Wisdom on Old Sun, the Spirits of Movement on Old Moon and the
Spirits of Form on the Earth, we must bear in mind the purely inner
quality of the Spirits of Form, and we shall have to say: The Spirits
of Form created man on the earth in such a way that he still has an
invisible form. This agrees, in a wonderful way, with what emerged
yesterday. Invisible forms, not forms of space, were first given to
man by the Spirits of Form at the beginning of his earthly evolution.
And now we must at the same time bear in mind that not only we
ourselves but all outer objects that come to meet us, and of which we
are aware in the outer world by means of our senses, are nothing less
than an external expression of an inner spiritual. Behind every
external material thing in space we have to look for something
similar in kind to what lives in our own soul. Only, of course, we do
not encounter it with the outer senses; it is behind what the outer
senses offer.
How can we now represent an
activity out beyond that of the Spirits of Form, beyond what they
create as not yet spatial form? This is the question we now have to
face. When this activity goes further — beyond will, wisdom,
movement, form — still further beyond form, what happens then?
That is the question. You see, if a process in the universe has come
as far as Form — which is still altogether in the realm of soul
and spirit, and is not spatial at all — if the process has
advanced as far as this super-sensible form, then the next step is
only possible through the form, as such, breaking up. And that is
exactly what shows itself to occult knowledge. When certain forms,
created under the influence of the Spirits of Form, have developed up
to a certain point, then they break to pieces. And if you now fix
your mind upon these shattered forms, if you think of something that
arises through the breaking up of forms that are still super-sensible
— then you have the transition from the super-sensible to the
sensible and spatial. Broken-up form is matter. Matter, as it occurs
in the universe, is for the occultist nothing more than form broken,
shattered and split asunder. If you could imagine that this chalk
were invisible and yet had this characteristic parallelepiped form,
and if you were then to take a hammer and strike the chalk smartly so
that it crumbled into a lot of little pieces, then you would have
broken up the form. Supposing in the moment in which you broke up the
form the invisible were to become visible — then you would have
a picture of the origin of matter. Matter is spirit that has
developed as far as form and then burst and broken into pieces and
fallen together in itself.
Matter is a heap of ruins of the spirit.
It is extraordinarily important to grasp this
definition. Matter is a heap of ruins of the spirit. Matter is,
therefore, in reality spirit, but shattered spirit.
When you come to think it over,
my dear friends, you will perhaps say: “Yes, but we have
spatial forms such as the beautiful crystals; in the crystals we have
very beautiful spatial forms — and now you say that all matter
is ‘a heap of ruins of the spirit,’ is ‘shattered
spirit.’” Let me give you a picture of it.
| Diagram 3 Click image for large view | |
Think of a falling cascade of
water [see diagram (a)]. But imagine it is invisible, you do not see
it. And here (b) you put an obstacle in its way. When the water
strikes here (b) it scatters into drops (c). Now we are
imagining that the cascade of water is invisible, but that what is broken
up becomes visible. Then you would have here a cascade shattered in
pieces, and would have a picture of the origin of matter. But now you
must think away this obstacle down below, for it does not exist; if
it did we should have to assume that there was already matter there.
You must imagine it in this way. Without there being any such
obstacle you have matter — spiritually, that is, supersensibly
— you have matter in movement. In the act of assuming form, it
is in movement; for movement precedes form. There is not anything
anywhere but is permeated by the deeds of the Spirits of Movement.
And this movement, this form, arrives at last at a point where it
becomes, so to say, exhausted and splits asunder in itself. We must
so grasp it that we have, to begin with, something streaming out
which is entirely soul and spirit. Its impetus is limited, it comes,
as it were, to the end of its energy, is thrown back upon itself and
thus breaks to pieces. So wherever we see matter we can say: Behind
this matter lies a super-sensible, which has come to the limit of its
activity and there split up. But before it split up it still had —
inwardly and spiritually — form. And when it shattered the
spiritual form went on working in the separate scattered ruins. Where
it works strongly, then, after the breaking and scattering, the lines
of the spiritual forms continue, and in the lines they then describe
we can still trace an after-working of the spiritual lines. There you
have the origin of crystals. Crystals are reproductions of spiritual
forms which through their own impetus still kept their original
direction but in the opposite sense.
What I have here sketched for
you is very nearly exactly what occult observation finds in the case
of hydrogen. The origin of hydrogen is as though a ray rushed out
from eternity, became exhausted and flew asunder; but we must draw it
as if here the lines overshot themselves and so kept their form.
| Diagram 4 Click image for large view | |
This is what hydrogen looks like
to the occult observer. There is something like an invisible ray
coming from endless world distances and finally breaking — like
a ray which flies asunder. In short, matter everywhere can be called
broken spirituality. Matter is indeed nothing else than spirit, but
spirit in a broken-up condition.
There is still another difficult
idea which I must place before you, which is connected with what I
said at the beginning of the lecture. I said that within the soul and
spirit itself we have to distinguish between an outer and an inner.
Now it is of such contrasts that all space dimensions are really
composed; so that everywhere where you have a dimension of space you
can think of it as proceeding somewhere or other from a point. That
point is the “inner,” and all the rest is the “outer.”
For the plane, the straight line is an inner and all the rest an
outer. Space is, therefore, nothing else than something that
originates together with matter when spirit is shattered and thereby
goes over into material existence.
Now it is extremely important to
understand the following. Suppose this breaking-up of spirit into
matter happens in such a way that the spirit breaks, shatters, of
itself, without having come up against any kind of external obstacle
that should cause it to split up and shatter. Imagine that the
breaking-up takes place, so to say, in the void. If spirit breaks
into the void then mineral matter results. Thus spirit must first of
all actually break up in itself from out of spirit: then mineral
matter arises. But now suppose you do not have a process that takes
place in the universe in such a virginal way; suppose you have a
breaking that takes place out of the spirit but finds a world already
prepared; a breaking in pieces that does not take place into the void
but, for example, into an etheric corporality that is already there.
As I said, if it develops into the void the result is mineral matter.
But we are supposing now that it develops into an already present
etheric corporality. Thus the spirituality splits up and breaks into
an etheric body, and the breaking material and the etheric body are
already present and prepared. Not into the “virgin soil”
of the world but into the etheric body, spirit breaks and becomes
matter. And when this is the case plant matter originates.
Now
yesterday we came across a peculiar etheric substance. You will
remember what we wrote on the blackboard. We found an etheric body
which outweighed the astral substance, which, so to say, overshot the
astral substance. And we said that that was due to Luciferic
influences which had been brought to bear upon man. But we found
something more. We found also physical corporality which had a
preponderance over etheric substance, that is to say over the etheric
body. As a matter of fact, we found that first, did we not? I want
you now to give your attention for a moment to this remarkable
connection that we found in the badly combined organisation of man —
a connection between the bodies which is really entirely due to
Luciferic influence. There, where the physical meets with the etheric
body and the etheric body is everywhere diverted by the preponderance
of the physical body, we have, not a condition where spirit breaks
and scatters merely into etheric substance as such, but where it
rushes into a bodily condition that is certainly etheric, but which
is outweighed by the physical. And when spirit breaks into such a
substance, then nerve substance, nerve material, arises. Spirit
streaming into etheric corporality that is overweighed by physical
corporality gives rise to nerve matter.
We have now three stages in
materiality. First, the ordinary mineral matter that we come across
in the sense world. Then the matter that we find in the bodies of the
plants; and, lastly, the matter that we find in the body of man and
of animals, and that arises owing to the presence of irregularities
in these bodies. Now think of all we should have to do if we wished
to reckon up all the various conditions that give rise to the
manifold kinds of matter in the world! We saw yesterday what a number
of irregularities can occur through the Luciferic influence. We saw,
for example, how the etheric body may outweigh the astral body.
When spirit rushes into an
astral body of this kind, that is, into an astral body which is
outweighed by an etheric body, then we have muscle matter. This is
why the matter of which nerves and muscles are composed has such a
strange and unique appearance; you cannot compare it with anything
else. It is because in both cases the matter comes into existence in
such a complicated manner. It
will help you to form a true picture if you think of the different
results you obtain when you take some molten metal, and first let it
spurt up into the air, then into water and then, let us say, into a
hard firm substance. In a like complicated way do the various kinds
of matter in the world arise. My main purpose in all I am telling you
to-day is to show you into what depths of existence we have to
descend if we want to investigate these things at their, foundation.
Consider, for instance, a condition that takes us still further into
matter; consider the irregularity brought about where the ego
outweighs in its ego-ness the astral body, when you have spirit
spraying and dispersing into this condition, the result — but
only after long détours — is bony matter. It all depends
ultimately, as you see, on the conditions under which the matter
sprays up and scatters when it arises out of spirit. Keep well in
mind what I have told you even if you have not been able to follow
every thought in detail. You will have grasped the main point, which
really comes to this — that we have to look upon matter always
and everywhere as spirit that is splitting up and scattering, but
that there can also be something already there which opposes the
breaking spirit. And according as this or that meets it, the spirit
will spray out into something different; and thus arise the various
configurations of matter — matter that composes nerves,
muscles, plants, etc.
But
now a question will arise in your minds. You will ask: How would it
have been with man if the Luciferic influence had not entered into
him in this connection? We related yesterday how it would have been
in many different aspects, but what would have happened in this
connections. Well, you see, man could not have had such nerves as he
has to-day. For these nerves only arise in their particular form of
matter through the fact of the irregular connection of the bodies of
man. Similarly he could not have had bones or muscles if it had not
been for the Luciferic influence. In short, we have seen how the
various kinds of matter arise through forms being spiritually poured
into something which is only there at all because of Luciferic
influence. None of these different substances — muscle, nerve,
etc. — could have come into existence without the Luciferic
influence. With still more intensity than we did yesterday must we
ask the question: What then is man altogether as material man? Man as
he meets us externally is simply and solely a result of the Luciferic
influence. For unless the Luciferic influence had been there he would
have had no nerves, no muscles, no bones in the present-day sense of
the words. Materialism describes nothing but what Lucifer has made of
man. Materialism is thus in the most eminent degree discipleship of
Lucifer; it rejects all else.
Let us then ask: What would man
be like if he had remained in Paradise? In order that tomorrow we may
be able to carry our study further — and with rather easier
conceptions — I will give you now to-day a brief sketch of what
man would have become if it had not been for the Luciferic influence.
If it had not been for this influence, then we should have in human
evolution on the earth, to begin with, what came from the influence
of the Spirits of Form. For the Spirits of Form were the last Spirits
of the higher hierarchies who worked into man. Now these Spirits of
Form created a purely super-sensible form — nothing spatial at
all. What man would have been — I will only sketch it for you
in quite a cursory manner to-day — what man would have been, no
outer eye could see, no outer senses could perceive; for pure soul
forms cannot be perceived by outer senses. What man would have been
coincides with something I have described in
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
— it coincides with what is there given as
Imaginative knowledge. An “Imagination” would
man have been, created by the Spirits of Form. Nothing of a sense
nature, purely super-sensible Imagination.
If we were to draw a rough
diagram of what man would have been like — (see following
diagram) — we should have an Imagination picture of what the
Spirits of Form created as an Imagination of man. But it would also
be permeated with what remained over in man from the creative working
of the earlier hierarchies. We should have to show it in our diagram
as permeated first of all with what was left in man from the Spirits
of Movement, the Spirits of inner Movement (2). That would reveal
itself to us as what we have described in
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
with the words “Inspired Knowledge.” For these
movements would only be recognisable as Inspiration. This means that
we should have first the complete man, consisting of Imagination, and
then we should have as well movement — Inspiration. And what
the Spirits of Wisdom give would be Intuition. This would be a
positive inner content with which all the rest would be in a manner
filled out. We must put here (3) Intuition, that is to say, immediate
being — Beings. And the whole we would behold as proceeding out
of the cosmos and enclosed in an egg-shaped aura which would be the
outcome of the working of the Spirits of Will. Such would be the
super-sensible nature of man, consisting of contents which would be
accessible to super-sensible knowledge alone. Fantastic as it may
appear, it is the real Man.
| Diagram 5 Click image for large view | |
If we may say so symbolically,
it is Man in Paradise, who does not consist of the material contents
of which man now consists but who has a super-sensible nature
throughout.
And what happened through the
Luciferic influence. Breaking-up spirit (that is to say, matter),
spurted, as it were, into the Imaginations, and the result stands
there to-day in the bony system of man. The bony system is the Man of
Imagination filled out with matter. Matter does not belong to what is
really the higher Man; through the Luciferic influence it has been
shot into what would otherwise only be Imagination. We must picture
to ourselves — if such a thing were not absurd — that
there was a time when one could quite easily pass through a human
being, but that then these Imaginations drew together, and, in
addition, were afterwards filled out with bony substance. Nowadays we
should knock up against bones if we tried to pass through a human
being. But man only later became impenetrable.
That which is in man from the
Spirits of Movement is filled out with muscle substance, and that
which would be perceived as Intuition is filled out with nerve
substance. It is only when we get beyond all these that we come to
the super-sensible. With the etheric body of man we are already in the
super-sensible. The etheric body is to-day only in the smallest degree
material; it appears as very fine jets or sprays of the etheric,
giving rise to a matter finer than that of which nerves are made, a
kind of matter that does not really come into consideration for us
here at all.
So
you see, man is really a being who has undergone a great coarsening
in his nature. For were he as he was originally intended in the
purposes of the Gods he would have no bones, but his form would
consist in super-sensible “Imagined” bones; he would have
no muscles to serve as an apparatus for movement, but he would have
super-sensible substance moving within him; whereas now what moves in
him has been everywhere interlarded with muscle substance. The
super-sensible movement which was given to man by the Spirits of
Movement has become physical movement in the muscles, and the
intuition given by the Spirits of Wisdom has become in the man of the
senses nerve substance. Nerve substance has been, so to say, crammed
into the Intuition. And so when you find a drawing of the skeleton in
an anatomy book you can think to yourself: It was originally intended
to be a pure Imagination and has become so coarsened by the Luciferic
and Ahrimanic influences that it meets us to-day as dense, thick,
hard bones that can be broken and fractured. So fast and firm have
the Imaginations become! And now do you still say that man cannot
find in the physical world any reflection of the world of
Imagination! Whoever knows what the skeleton really is may find, when
he looks at it, a picture of the world of Imagination. And when you
see a picture of the man of muscle you really ought to say to
yourself: That is an utterly unnatural picture, it is inwardly
untrue. In the first place I see it, whereas I ought to hear
it spiritually. For the true state of the matter is this —
rhythmic movement has been interlarded, by a super-sensible process,
with muscle substance which does not really belong to it at all; what
remains ought not to be seen but heard, like the swaying movement of
music. You should really hear Inspirations. And what you see
pictured there as the man of muscle — are the Inspirations of
Man made rigid in matter.
Finally we come to the man of
nerves. The man of nerves we ought really neither to see nor to hear,
but only to perceive in an altogether spiritual manner. From a cosmic
point of view there is a complete distortion in the fact that we have
visibly before us what should only be grasped in purest spirituality.
It is in reality a spiritual sheath that has been, so to speak,
injected with physical matter. We see before us visibly what should
only be perceived as an Intuition. The expulsion from Paradise means
simply this — that man was originally in the spiritual world,
that is to say, in Paradise, and he there consisted of Imagination,
Inspiration and Intuition — that is, he was in an entirely
super-earthly existence. And then, owing to the very conditions he
had himself induced under the Luciferic influence, he received into
him an inrush of breaking spirit, of matter. Matter is thus something
with which we are filled but which does not belong to us. We bear it
in us, this matter, and because we bear it in us we must die a
physical death. There you have, in point of fact, the cause of
physical death, and of much besides. For inasmuch as man has left his
spiritual condition he lives here in physical existence only until
matter gains the victory over what holds it together. For the nature
of matter is such that it is perpetually trying to break up and go to
pieces, and the matter in the bones is only held together by the
power of Imagination. When the power of the bones gains the upper
hand then the bones become incapable of life. It is the same with the
muscles and the nerves. So soon as the matter in the bones, muscles
and nerves gains the upper hand over Imagination, Inspiration and
Intuition and is able to break asunder, in that moment must man lay
down his physical body. There you have the connection between
physical death and the Luciferic influence. We shall follow it up
to-morrow by showing how evil, too, and many other things —
illnesses, etc. — have come into the world.
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