VIII
To-day we shall
begin a series of studies which will throw light on the unfolding of
human karma from the side of the external bodily form as we encounter
it in the physiognomy, the play of gestures, in all the external
manifestations of the human being in the physical world. For in
considering individual karmic connections, I have already drawn
attention to the fact that it is precisely by observing apparently
insignificant trifles in the human being that karmic connections may
be perceived. It is also a fact that the external appearance of the
human being gives in many respects a picture of his moral and
spiritual tenor in his previous earthly life, or in a series of
previous lives.
Along these lines
certain types of human beings can be observed, and it will be found
that a certain type leads back to a definite attitude and behaviour
in one of the previous earthly lives. In order to avoid vague
abstractions, let us consider examples. — Suppose, for
instance, some human being's life on earth has been spent in
occupying himself very closely with the things which confronted him
in life; he has had intimate and real interest for many things, not
passing by or missing anything about men, things or phenomena of the
world. You will certainly have opportunity to observe this in human
beings in the present life.
We may meet people
who have a better knowledge — let us say — of the
statesmen of ancient Greece than of the statesmen of our own time. If
they are asked about somebody such as Pericles, Alcibiades or
Miltiades, they know all about them, because they learnt it at
school. If they are questioned about a person of the same kind
belonging to the present day, they can hardly give any information.
But the same thing exists in the sphere of the ordinary observation
of life. In this connection I have often mentioned details which have
certainly seemed strange to those who imagine that they are standing
at the highest peak of idealism. There are men, for instance, who, in
talking to you in the afternoon, will tell you that they saw a lady
in the street in the morning. When you ask them what sort of dress
she was wearing, they do not know! It is really incredible, but it is
a fact — there are such people.
Now of course,
such a thing can be interpreted in all sorts of different ways. It
can be said: This is a case of such lofty spirituality that a man who
happens to find himself in these circumstances considers it much too
trifling to take notice of such things. But this is not a sign of a
really penetrating spirituality. It may be lofty spirituality, but
loftiness alone is not the point; what really matters is whether the
spirituality is penetrating or superficial. There is not, in this
case, any penetrating spirituality, because, after all, what a human
being needs in the way of clothing is quite significant, and
in a certain sense it is just as significant as, for instance, the
type of nose or mouth he has. Again, there are human beings who are
attentive to everything in life. They judge the world according to
what they experience from it. Others go through the world as if
nothing in it were of the slightest interest to them. They have taken
in everything only as a kind of dream which quickly flows away
again.
These are —
I might say — two polar opposite types of human beings. But
however you may judge of it, my dear friends, whatever opinion you
may have about whether a man is at a high or low level because he
does not remember the dress worn by the lady he saw in the morning
— that is not the point. Today we want to discuss what
influence this has on the karma of the human being. It actually makes
a great difference whether a man pays attention to things in life,
whether he takes interest in every detail, or whether he does not pay
attention to things. Details are of enormous importance for the whole
structure of spiritual life — not because they are details, but
because a detail like the one mentioned points to a very definite
constitution of soul.
There was a
professor who always lectured extremely well and who, all the time he
was lecturing, stared at one point — the upper part of the
chest of someone in the audience; his eyes were riveted on this
particular point. He never lost the thread of his lectures, which
were always admirable. But one day he did lose the thread; he kept on
looking and then turning away. Afterwards he went to the person in
the audience and asked: “Why did you sew on the button that had
always been missing? It has made me lose my head!” He had
always been looking at the place of the missing button and this gave
him concentration. Always to be looking at the place where a button
is torn off or not, seems trifling, but as a matter of fact, so far
as the inner attitude of soul is concerned it is significant whether
such a thing is done or not. And when it is a question of observing
the lines of karma, it is of extraordinarily great
importance.
Let us therefore
look a little more closely at these two types of human beings of whom
I have been speaking. You need only remember what I have frequently
told you about the passing over of the human being from one
incarnation into the other. In earthly life man has his head, and he
has, as well, the rest of his body. This part of his body, outside
the head, contains a certain concatenation of forces. The physical
body of the human being is finally given over to the elements. The
physical substance, of course, is not carried over from one earthly
life into the other. But the concatenation of forces which a man has
in his organism, apart from his head, is carried through the life
between death and a new birth and becomes the head of the next
earthly life, whereas the head of the present incarnation has been
formed out of the limb-system and the rest of the organism of the
previous earthly life. Thus the non-head nature — if I may coin
this expression — of the one earthly life transforms itself
into the head of the following earthly life. The head is always the
product of the non-head nature of the preceding earthly life. This
holds good for the whole concatenation of forces in the constitution
of the human being.
When somebody goes
through life with great attentiveness to everything, he must, in the
nature of things, move about a great deal. Human beings who lead an
entirely sedentary life are very difficult to study to-day from the
point of view of karma, because there was no such mode of life in
earlier times. It remains to be seen what men with an exclusively
sedentary mode of life will be like in the next earthly life, for
sedentary existences have become customary only in this age. But
when, in earlier times, a man was attentive to the things in his
environment, he always had to go to them; he had to make his
limbs mobile, to bring his limbs into activity. The whole body was
active, not only the senses which belong to the head-system.
Everything in which the whole body takes part, when the human being
is attentive and observant, passes over into the structure of the
head of the next earthly life, and has a definite effect. The head of
the human being in the next earthly life is so constituted that he
has then a very strong urge to send into the rest of his organism
such forces as cause the forces of the earth to work very strongly
into his organism. In the first seven years of life, everything
contained in the organism, muscles, bones, etc., is formed from out
of the head. The head sends out these forces. Every bone is shaped as
it must be shaped, by means of the head. If, because of the type of
incarnation which I have described to you, the head has the tendency
to develop a strong relationship to the forces of the earth, what
happens then? Then by the grace of the head — if I may put it
so — the earth-forces are very much favoured during the
formation of the human being in the embryonic period, but also,
especially, in the life up to the change of teeth. The forces of the
earth are very strongly propagated by the head. The result is that in
such a human being there is a special development of everything that
depends upon the forces of the earth. He gets big bones, strong
bones, extremely broad shoulder-blades, for instance, and the ribs
are well developed. Everything bears the stamp of good
development.
But now, all that
is connected with the carrying over of the faculty of attention from
the past into the present earthly life, with the way the organism is
formed — all this, it is true, proceeds spatially from
the head, but nevertheless, in reality, from the soul and spirit. For
in all these formative forces the soul and spirit participate; from
such forces we can always look to the soul and spirit. In such human
beings the head has become related to the earth as the result of the
conditions in the previous earthly life which I have described. We
can see this in the brow, which is not particularly lofty — for
lofty brows are not allied to the earth — but it has
definition, strength, and similar characteristics.
So we see that the
human being develops in such a way that his bones are strongly
formed. And the strange thing is: when these forces that are allied
to the earth work forcefully over from the previous earthly life, the
hair grows very quickly. In observing children whose hair grows very
quickly we must always connect this with their powers of attention in
the previous earthly life. It is a fact that out of his moral and
spiritual attitude in any one incarnation the human being forms his
body in the next earthly life.
Now we shall
always find confirmation of how the forces of the soul and spirit
participate in this shaping of the human being. A man whose karma it
is, in the next earthly life, to have strong bones, well developed
muscles, as the result of attentiveness to life — such a man,
we shall see, goes through life with courage. Through this
attentiveness he has also acquired the natural force belonging to a
courageous life.
In times when men
ceased to describe successive earthly lives, they still had the
knowledge that really exists only when repeated earthly lives are
taken into account. This was still so in the days of Aristotle.
Aristotle has described this beautifully in his Physiognomics.
He was still able to show how the external countenance is connected
with the moral attitude, the moral tenor of a man.
And now let us
think of cowards, faint-hearted men. They are those who took no
interest in anything during the previous earthly life. You see, the
study of karma has a certain significance for taking one's
place in life in connection with the future. After all, it is only a
craving for knowledge that we satisfy — though not only this
craving — when we trace back a present earthly life to earlier
lives. But if we go through our present earthly life with a certain
amount of self-knowledge, then we can prepare for the next
earthly life. If we drift superficially through life, without taking
interest in anything, then we can be sure that we shall be a coward
in the next earthly life. This is because a detached, inattentive
character forms few links with its environment, and consequently the
head-organisation in the next life has no relation with the forces of
the earth. The bones remain undeveloped, the hair grows slowly: very
often such a person has bow-legs or knock-knees.
These are things
which in a very intimate way reveal the connection between the spirit
and soul on the one side and the natural-physical on the other. Yes,
my dear friends, from the very details of the shape of the head and
of the whole structure of the human being, we can as it were look
over into the previous earthly life.
These things are
not said, however, in order that the observation itself shall be made
through them. All the observations of which I have told you here, as
a preparation for studies of karma, have not been made in an
external, but in an entirely inner way, through spiritual-scientific
methods. But precisely these spiritual-scientific methods show that
the human being in his external form cannot be studied as is
done in modern physiology and anatomy. There is really no sense in
simply becoming familiar with the organs and their interconnections.
For the human being is a picture. In part he is the picture of
the forces holding sway between death and a new birth, and in part a
picture of his previous earthly life. There is no sense in working at
physiology and anatomy as they exist to-day, where the human being is
taken and one organ after another in him is studied. The head, for
instance, is much more closely connected with the previous earthly
life than with the body which the human being receives in his present
earthly life.
We can therefore
say: certain physical processes are to be understood only when we
look back to previous earthly lives. A man who learnt to know the
world in a previous earthly life has quick-growing hair. A man who
learnt to know little of the world in a previous life, has
slow-growing hair. The hair grows very slowly; it lies along the
surface of the body; whereas those who interested themselves
intensely in life during a previous earthly life, who interested
themselves all too intensely and poked their noses into everything,
have loose, straggly hair. This is an absolutely correct connection.
The most manifold bodily configurations can be referred back to
experiences in one of the preceding earthly lives. This holds good
into the very details of the constitution.
Take for instance,
a man who ponders much in one incarnation — who thinks and
ponders a great deal. In his next incarnation he will be a thin,
delicately made man. A man who ponders little in one earthly life,
but lives a life more concerned with grasping the outer world, tends,
in the next life, to accumulate a good deal of fat. This, too, has a
significance for the future. Spiritual “slimming cures”
cannot well be managed in one earthly life; for this one must resort
to physical cures — if indeed they are of any help! But for the
next earthly life it is certainly possible to undergo a
“slimming cure” if one ponders and thinks a great deal,
especially if one thinks about something that calls for effort, of
the kind I described yesterday. It need not be meditated, but simply
pondered about a great deal, with the willingness to make many inner
decisions.
There is an actual
connection of this kind between the spiritual and moral way in which
a man lives during one earthly life, and his physical constitution in
the next earthly life. This cannot be emphasised
sufficiently.
Take another case.
Suppose, for instance, that in one earthly life a man is a thinker. I
do not mean a professor — (this is not a joke!) — but a
man who, possibly, walks behind a plough and who yet can think a
great deal. It does not matter at all in what circumstances of life a
man thinks, for he can be a real thinker when he follows a plough or
is engaged in a handicraft of some sort. But because in his thinking
the forces which fall away when earthly life comes to an end are
mainly engaged, and he leaves unused those which are carried over
into his next incarnation and take part in the building up of his
head, such a man will appear again in a new earthly life with soft
flesh, with delicate soft flesh.
The peculiar
point, however, is this. — When a man thinks a great deal,
then, in his next earthly life, he will have a good skin; the whole
surface of the body, the skin of the body, will be very well
constituted. Again, when you see people whose skin has spots, for
instance, then you can always infer from this that they did little
thinking in their past life. (Of course, one needs other grounds for
this inference as well; it is not possible to deduce with absolute
certainty from one symptom. Nevertheless, in general, the indications
which I have given to-day about the inter-connection of the soul and
spirit with the physical are correct). When you see people with some
impurity in their skin, you can always conclude that they did little
thinking in their past earthly life. People with many freckles have
certainly not been thinkers in a previous earthly
life.
These are the
things which show at once that Spiritual Science does not pay
attention merely to spiritual abstractions, but also to the working
of the spiritual in the physical. I have often emphasised that what
is harmful about materialism is not that it pays attention only to
matter; the harmful element, the tragedy of materialism, is that it
cannot really know anything about matter, because it does not
recognise the spiritual workings within matter.
It is precisely in
the study of the human being that attention must be paid to matter,
for in matter, above all in the human form, in the whole human being,
the working of the spiritual is expressing itself. Matter is the
outer revelation of the spiritual.
You can glean from
the “Leading Thoughts” which have lately appeared in the
News Sheet issued with the periodical Das Goetheanum, that the
head of man is observed in the proper way only when Imaginative
cognition is applied even to its external appearance. For the human
head in its formation, in the formation of the ears, particularly
also in the formation of the nose and eyes, is actually according to
the pattern of Imagination. It consists of outwardly visible
Imaginations.
This is also
connected with the life of the human being. There are human beings in
whom the lower part of the trunk is longer than the upper part; that
is to say, the part from the lowest point of the trunk up to the
breast is longer than the part from the centre of the chest up
to the neck. If the part from the centre of the chest to the neck is
shorter than the lower part of the trunk, then we have to do
with a human being who, in the life between death and a new birth,
has made the ascent to the mid-point very quickly. He passed through
this period very quickly. Then he descended slowly and comfortably to
the new earthly life.
| Diagram 1 Click image for large view | |
Where, on the
other hand, the upper part from the neck to the middle of the chest
is longer than the lower part from the middle of the chest to the end
of the trunk, we have to do with a human being who passed slowly and
sedately as far as the middle of his life between death and new
birth, and then descended more quickly into earthly
life.
In the
physiognomy, indeed, in the proportions of the trunk, we find the
after-effect of the way in which the human being passed through the
first period of his existence between death and a new birth, in
comparison with the latter period.
Truly, what is
physical in the human being is through and through a copy of the
underlying spiritual. This has a consequence in life. For those who
have the long lower trunk and short upper trunk are of a type showing
from the outset that they need a great deal of sleep; they like to
have long sleep. (The diagram is, of course, rather exaggerated).
With the other type, who have the short lower trunk and long upper
trunk, this is not so; they do not need so much
sleep.
Thus, according to
whether a human being needs sleep or not, which again expresses
itself in the proportions of his trunk, you can see whether he has
gone through the first part of the life between death and a new birth
quickly or slowly, and also whether he has gone quickly or slowly
through the second part of this life.
But this again is
connected with the previous incarnation. Take the case of a man who
was dull — not so much in disposition as because of his
education and his mode of life. I do not mean that he was altogether
lacking in interest, but he was dull; he could not really do anything
properly, he never set about getting a real grip of things; he may
have been attentive enough to poke his nose into everything, but it
did not go beyond curiosity and a superficial understanding. He
remained dull. Such a man has no interest for the first part of his
life between death and a new birth. He develops an interest only when
he has left behind the midnight summit of this life and begins his
descent.
On the other hand,
a man who is accustomed to penetrate everything both with his mind
and with his feeling — he takes great interest in the first
half, in the ascent, and then quickly completes the descent. Thus
again it can be said: When you meet a man who is a sleepy-head, then
this is to be traced to a dull life, such as I have described, in the
previous incarnation. A man who is not a sleepy-head, who may even
have to do something in order to go to sleep — we know there
are books which can be used for the purpose of sending one to sleep!
— a man who needs these things has not been dull, but
attentive; he has been active with his mind and his
feeling.
We can go further.
There are men ... how shall I speak of them? Let us say they are
ready eaters; they are fond of eating. Others are not so fond of
eating. I do not want to say gluttonous people and non-gluttonous
people for this would hardly be in place in a serious study. But I
will say: there are people who are fond of eating and there are
others who are less fond of it. This too is connected in a certain
sense with what the human being experiences in his passage between
death and a new birth, before and after the midnight summit of
existence. The middle point here is the midnight summit of
existence.
There are human
beings who, as I will put it, ascend very high into the spiritual,
and there are others who do not rise so high. Those who ascend very
high will eat in order to live. Those who do not rise so high will
live in order to eat.
These are
certainly differences in life, and if we look at the way in which a
man behaves in such actions as are connected with the fostering or
non-fostering of his physical existence, we can say that here is
something which enables us to perceive how his karmic life is flowing
over from a previous existence.
Those who have
acquired powers of observation in this direction perceive, for
instance, in the way a man takes something at table, in the way he
helps himself, a gesture which points very strongly indeed to the way
in which the past earthly life is shining over into the
present.
To-day I am
speaking of the physical. To-morrow I shall speak more about the
moral sides, but the physical must certainly be kept in mind,
otherwise the opposite will become less intelligible. Men who help
themselves vehemently, who when they so much as take a pear into
their hands at table do it — well, with enthusiasm — are
those who clung more to the trivialities of life in the previous
incarnations who could not rise above trivialities; who were stuck in
habit, convention, etc., unable to get a moral grasp of life. This,
too, has great practical significance. As we are not used to such
considerations, these things will often seem curious and we laugh
about them. But they are to be taken with the deepest seriousness,
for you see, there are in society to-day certain classes of people
who spend their time and energy in the trivial customs of life; they
do not willingly make anything their own which goes beyond the
ordinary, habitual customs of life.
Nor must these
things be applied merely to modes of behaviour. They can likewise be
applied, for instance, to speech. There are languages in which you
cannot say anything arbitrarily because everything is strictly
prescribed in the construction of the sentence; the subject cannot be
put in another place, and so on. There are other languages where the
subject may be placed wherever you like, and the predicate too. These
languages are of such a character that they help human beings to
individual development.
This is only an
example of how trivial habits are acquired, and how the human being
cannot get out of triviality. An earthly life spent in such
triviality leads to one in which the human being is gluttonous. He
does not rise high enough in the life between death and a new birth
— he becomes gluttonous.
In our day the
time should dawn when men no longer reckon only with one earthly
life, as was the case in the materialistic epoch of evolution, but
take into account the whole of earthly evolution, in the knowledge
that what is done and achieved by a man in one earthly life is
carried over into the next earthly life; that what happens in one
epoch is carried over into another by human beings themselves. As
this awareness has to come, it is necessary that such knowledge
should find a place in the education of growing children as well as
of adults.
I should like to
speak of two more types. There is a type of human being who can take
everything seriously, and here I do not mean merely the external kind
of seriousness. There may quite well be thoroughly serious people,
who may even have a strongly tragic vein in their souls, but who all
the same can laugh. For if a man is not able to laugh, if everything
goes by him — and there are countless things in life to make
one laugh — if he lets everything go by and cannot laugh at
anything, then he must be dull. After all, there are things to laugh
at! But a man may be able to laugh heartily at something that is
funny, and still be, fundamentally, a serious man.
Then there is
another type of person who does nothing but laugh, whom everything
incites to laughter, who laughs when he is telling anything, whether
or not it happens to be funny. There are people whose faces distort
into laughter the moment they begin to relate anything, and who speak
of even the gravest matter with a kind of grin, with a kind of
laughter. I am describing extremes here, but these extremes
exist.
This is a
fundamental trait of the soul. We shall see to-morrow how it has its
moral side. To-day I shall deal mainly with the physical side. This
trait, in its turn, leads back to the karmic stream of evolution. A
man who has a trait of gravity in his life, even if he can laugh too,
has strong, steady forces working out of his previous incarnation
into his present earthly life. In meeting a serious man of this kind,
a man who has an understanding for the grave side of life, who stops
to observe the grave side of life, we can say: one can feel in this
man that he is bearing in his being and nature his past earthly life.
A serious conception of life arises when the past earthly lives
continue working, working on in the proper way. On the other hand, a
man becomes an incessant chatterbox, laughing even when he is talking
of the gravest matters, when past earthly lives are not working on in
him. When a man has gone through a series of earthly lives — or
at least through one — in which he has lived as if half asleep,
then, in his next earthly life, he becomes a person who is never
serious, who is unable to approach the things of life with the
necessary seriousness. Thus from a man's attitude it can be
seen whether he has spent his past earthly lives to good purpose, or
whether he has more or less slept through them.
All this leads us
to realise how false it is to take a mechanical view of a human being
when he comes before us in his human guise, or even to see no further
than the stereotyped pattern of his organism. This is quite wrong.
The human being in his form, and right down into his possibilities of
movement, must be regarded as an image of the spiritual
world.
First of all there
is the head-organisation. This is essentially determined by the
previous earthly lives. We observe a human head in the right way when
we learn to know all there is to be learnt about Imaginative
ideation. Here, in connection with the human head, and nowhere else,
we can apply, in the sense-world, Imaginative ideation, which is
otherwise used for gazing into the spiritual world. We must begin
with Imagination if we wish to look into the spiritual world. Then,
first of all, the spiritual-etheric pictures of the spiritual beings
appear before us. In the physical world, with the exception of the
human head, there is nothing that is reminiscent of Imagination. But
in the human head, right into its inner organisation, right into the
marvellous structure of the brain, everything is really a physical
mirror-image of the Imaginative.
Then, proceeding
further, you may begin to study in the human being something that is
really much more difficult to observe, although it is generally
thought to be easy — that is, to gain an understanding of how
the human being takes breath, how he sets his rhythmic system in
movement, and how the breath leads over into the blood circulation.
This tremendously living play, which penetrates the whole body, is
far more complicated than it is thought to be. The human being takes
in the breath, the breath transforms itself into blood circulation,
but on the other side the breath again passes over into the head and
is related in a definite way to the whole activity of the brain.
Thinking is simply a refined, delicate breathing. The blood
circulation, again, passes over into the impulses of the movements of
the limbs.
This rhythmic
system of the human being does not express itself in a static
condition but in a continuous mobility, and this difference must be
clearly observed. The head of man is best studied by considering it
as a self-contained formation at rest; by studying its
interior, the various parts of the brain, for instance, and how one
part lies alongside another. Nothing can be known about the head if,
say, the blood circulation in the head is studied by means of anatomy
or physiology; for what the blood circulation achieves in the head is
not connected with the head itself; it is connected merely with what
the head needs from the rhythmic system. What can be seen when a
portion of the cranial bone is raised, and the circulation exposed,
is not really connected with the head. The head must be studied as an
organ which is at rest, and where one part lies alongside
another.
This method is not
applicable to the rhythmic system, which has its seat in the breast.
Everything there must be studied in its mobility, in the mobility of
the blood circulation, of breathing, of thinking, of self-movement.
This process can even be traced much farther into the
physical.
Consider the
breathing process as it passes over into the blood-process, and
thence works over also into the brain. Carbonic acid is formed in the
first place: that is to say, an acid is formed in the human organism.
But when the breathing process passes over into the brain and into
the nervous system, salt substances are formed out of the acids; salt
substances are deposited.
Thus we may say:
when the human being thinks, solids are precipitated. In the
circulation, we find fluidity. In the breath, the
gaseous. And in the principle of mobility when this passes
over into movements, we find the fiery. The material elements
are contained in all this, but the elements in mobility, in a
constant state of arising and passing away. This process cannot
really be grasped by sense-observation. Those who set out to grasp
it, anatomically, by means of sense-observation, never really
understand it; much must be added out of the inner creative force of
the spirit if this process is to be understood. If we listen to
explanatory discourses on the rhythmic process, as they are given in
ordinary lectures on anatomy and physiology, we feel that it is all
very remote from reality. (Those of you who have had this experience
will be able to substantiate what I am saying). Yes, whoever listens
to all this with an unbiased mind, and then watches the audience,
actually feels as if the barrenness offered to the listeners must
cause their very death; as if they must remain fixed to the desks,
unable to move, unable even to crawl away! For this system of
circulation ought to be described with such living vitality that the
hearers, being continually carried from the sensible into the
super-sensible, from the super-sensible back again into the sensible,
enter into a kind of musical mood during the
description.
When this is done,
the human being develops inner habits of soul through which karma can
be understood. We shall speak of that to-morrow. But what we have
here is a sense-picture of Inspiration. Whereas in the study
of the head we have a sense-picture of Imagination, so we have
a picture of Inspiration in a study of the rhythmic system of
the human being, if this study has the right
character.
We pass now to the
metabolic-limb system. In what modern anatomy and physiology have to
say of the metabolic-limb system, we do not come to the forces
of this system, but only to what falls away and is discarded by it.
Everything that in the modern view is the content of the
metabolic-limb system does not belong at all to the real human
structure and organisation, but is expelled. The content of the
bowels is only the extreme instance. Whatever else is physically
perceptible in the metabolic-limb system does not belong to the human
being but is deposited by him; some of it remains within him for a
longer time, some for a shorter time. The content of the bowels
remains a short time; what is deposited by the muscles, nerves, etc.
remains longer. Any physical substance that can be found in the
metabolic-limb system does not belong to the human being; it is
excretion, deposit. Everything that belongs to the metabolic-limb
system is of a super-sensible nature. So that in studying the
metabolic-limb system of man we have to pass over to what has a
purely super-sensible existence within the physical.
We must therefore
picture the metabolic-limb system in such a way that physical arms,
etc., are in reality spiritual, and within this spiritual the Ego
unfolds. — When I move my arms or my legs, deposits are
continually taking place, and these deposits are observed. But they
are not the essential. You cannot refer to the physical when you want
to explain how the arm or the hand grasps something; you must refer
to the spiritual. The spiritual that runs all along the arm —
that is the essential in the human being. What you perceive is
merely a deposit of the metabolic-limb system.
| Diagram 2 Click image for large view | |
How, then, can we
even start on a study of karma if we believe that what we see in the
metabolic-limb system is the human being? The human being is not this
at all. We can only start on a study of karma when we know what the
human being really is. We must include something that is to be found,
certainly, in the sense-world, but which is, nevertheless, a
super-sensible picture of Intuition.
And so, my dear
friends, you can say: A study of the head is an Imaginative
process, projected into the sense-world; a study of the rhythmic
system must be truly Inspired, though active in the realm of
sense-observation, within the sense-world; a study of the
metabolic-limb system must be Intuitive, a super-sensible
activity in the sense-world.
It is very
interesting to find that in the study of the human being we have
images for Intuition, Inspiration and Imagination. In a proper study
of the metabolic-limb man we can learn what Intuition really is in
the super-sensible. In a proper study of the rhythmic man we can learn
what Inspiration really is in the super-sensible. In a proper study of
the head we can learn what Imaginative observation is in the
super-sensible.
Study of the Head:
Imaginative, projected into the sense-world.
Study of the Rhythmic System:
Inspired, working in the sense-world.
Study of the Metabolic-Limb System:
Intuitive, supersensibly in the sense-world.
This is what is
indicated in the latest ‘Leading Thoughts’, and it is
something which everyone who carefully studies the existing
Lecture-Courses can indeed find for himself.
To-day, my dear
friends, we have tried to consider karmic connections in relation to
the physical. To-morrow we will pass on to a closer study of karmic
connections in relation to the moral and spiritual nature of
man.
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