The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Lecture IX

[ 1 ] Let us try to understand the physical body a little more closely. We currently distinguish four components in the human being: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I. In our study of the physical body, we must now go into detail. Human beings already existed in some form when they transitioned from a very distant past existence to the Saturn stage. The physical body is the oldest and most perfect component that human beings possess today. The physical body consists of four parts, whereas the other bodies do not. It was already developed in its rudimentary form on Saturn. The etheric body was added only on the Sun. There, the physical body developed into greater perfection. The astral body was added on the Moon; there, the physical body underwent yet another stage of development. On Earth, the “I” was then added, and the physical body underwent a fourth stage of development. Thus, the physical body is, so to speak, already in the fourth grade, while the etheric body is in the third, the astral body in the second, and the “I” in the first grade.

[ 2 ] Therefore, only the physical body as such possesses self-awareness; the other three bodies do not. The moment a person closes his physical sense organs—when he sleeps—self-awareness ceases; when he opens them to the outside world, he has self-awareness. Self-consciousness is attained through the ability to observe the surroundings with one’s organs. Only the physical body is capable of opening its organs to the outside world. If the etheric and astral bodies could observe the surroundings with their organs, a person would also attain self-consciousness in them. But this requires organs. The physical body, too, possesses self-consciousness only through its organs. These organs of the physical body are the senses.

[ 3 ] Let us consider the senses in their sequential order. In truth, there are twelve senses. Of these, five are already physical, and two others will become physical during further development on Earth. The five senses we already possess are smell, taste, sight, touch, and hearing. Human beings will gradually develop two other senses into true physical senses. These two are predisposed in the mucous body (hypophysis) and in the pineal gland (epiphysis). These will develop the two future senses in the physical body. Seven senses are relevant to the physical body. To understand the senses in their sequential order, we must realize that human beings, insofar as they are self-conscious beings, are on a downward arc. Even though the body is on an upward arc, the senses are on a downward one.

[ 4 ] From the higher fundamental aspects of the human being, Atma developed on Saturn, Buddhi on the Sun, and Manas on the Moon. The Monad once came together piece by piece and then, during the Lemurian epoch, moved into the house it had built for itself. Now the Monad has descended to the fourth level: Atma, Buddhi, Manas, Kama-Manas. This descending arc is expressed in the development of the senses. In fact, at the beginning on Saturn there was only one sense: the sense of smell. The senses that arose later must descend from higher to ever lower regions.

[ 5 ] In nature, we distinguish between the solid, the liquid, the gaseous, the heat ether, the light ether, the chemical ether, and the life ether. These are the seven levels of the material world. In the process of descending, human beings have passed through these stages from top to bottom. When evolution began, the first human seed of life could only manifest itself in the etheric of life. This corresponds to the sense of smell. At that time, human beings possessed their first sense, the sense of smell, of which only a faint echo remains today. As we saw a few days ago, the solid has its life on the Mahaparinirvana plane, the liquid on the Parinirvana plane, the gaseous on the Nirvana plane, the thermal-etheric on the Buddha plane, the light-etheric on the mental plane, the chemical-etheric on the astral plane, and the life-etheric on the physical plane; therefore, we can also speak of the atomistic ether there.

Proportions of the Plane	States of Matter and	Senses
Physical Plane	Vital Ether	Smell
Astral Plane	Chemical Ether	Taste
Mental Plane	Light-Etheric	Sight
Buddhi or Shushupti Plane	Heat-Etheric	Keys
Nirvana Plane	Gaseous, Air	Hearing
Parinirvana Plane	Liquid	Mucous Body
Mahaparinirvana Plane	Solid	Pineal Gland

[ 6 ] A body can only be smelled if it approaches the olfactory organ and comes into contact with it. The olfactory organ must unite with the substance itself. Smelling means perceiving with a sense that enters into a relationship with the substance itself.

[ 7 ] The second stage is the chemical-etheric. This is where the sense of taste developed. This is based on the fact that what is to be tasted dissolves. Here we are not dealing with the substance itself, but with what is made from the substance. This is a chemical-physical process through which something else is first made from the substance. The tongue can perform this; it can first dissolve and then taste.

[ 8 ] The third stage is located in the light-etheric realm. This is where vision develops. There, we do not perceive what has been broken down chemically and physically, but rather we perceive an image of the object that is formed by external light.

[ 9 ] The fourth is the warmth-etheric. It is through this that the sense of touch develops. Here, one no longer perceives an image, but rather something less than an image. Heat is a state that passes over the body, a state that belongs to the body only for that moment. We speak here of the sense of touch as perceiving heat and cold; it is actually the “sense of warmth.”

[ 10 ] Fifth, we have the airy aspect. This corresponds to the sense of hearing. Here, we no longer perceive a state of the body in question, but rather what the body tells us. Here, we enter into the body’s interior. In the case of the sound of a bell, we are no longer interested in the bell itself—not its exterior, not the material—but rather what it reveals from within. Hearing is a connecting with that which announces itself as the spiritual within the material. At this stage, sensory activity shifts from the passive to the active. The sound passively received becomes active in the human being through speech. In this, the human being expresses the soul.

[ 11 ] Sixth is the fluid. The sense of the fluid is the mucous body. It is located in the brain, in an elongated cylindrical structure.

[ 12 ] Seventh is the sense of solidity. The pineal gland is the sense of solidity.

[ 13 ] Later, just as humans now speak and influence the air, they will also come to influence liquids. The “I think” and thought in general express themselves in the air, specifically in forms such as a crystal. At the next stage, feeling also plays a role in thought. The development goes further back. The warmth of the heart is then expressed in vibrations and flows outward together with thought. And human beings have reached the final stage when they create real beings that are enduring; when they bring forth the will through the word. Expressing feeling is merely a transitional phase. When a person becomes creative through the will, the beings they bring forth will truly exist.

[ 14 ] Human beings will later project into their surroundings what they feel. This will be communicated to the element of liquid. All the liquid substance of the next planet (Jupiter) will become an expression of what human beings feel. Today, human beings send out words; they are inscribed in the Akashic Records. They remain there, even as the airwaves dissipate. From this, Jupiter will later be formed. So if people speak recklessly today, reckless structures will be erected on Jupiter! That is why so much attention must be paid to what one says, and why so much importance must be placed on people mastering their speech. Later, human beings will also send out their feelings; the state of Jupiter’s fluid will be a result of the feelings on Earth. What human beings speak today will give Jupiter its form; what they feel will give it its inner warmth. And what human beings now imbue their will with will become the individual beings who will inhabit Jupiter. Jupiter will be built up from the fundamental forces of the human soul.

[ 15 ] Just as we can today deduce the Earth’s rock structure from its earlier states, so the rock structure of Jupiter will be the result of our words. Jupiter’s ocean and Jupiter’s heat arise from the feelings of present-day human beings. The beings of Jupiter arise from human will. Thus, the inhabitants of the preceding planet actually lay the foundation for the next one. And beings who today still hover above... (gap in the text), just as the Monad once hovered above our Earth, will incarnate on Jupiter. There will then be a kind of Jupiter-Lemurian race. Then the beings we have created as the Pitris will be there. Just as we have derived the grotesque forms from the Moon, these beings will then inhabit the forms we develop with our pineal gland.

[ 16 ] We continue to build the house for subsequent, future monads. A very similar process lay at the foundation when humankind evolved from the Moon to Earth. This will make it very clear how everything external is, in essence, created from within.

[ 17 ] The purely physical body is difficult to separate from what has been formed by a person’s missteps. A hunchback owes his hump to the astral body and to karma. The outer form, the physiognomy, and so on depend on karma. What modifies the physical body is therefore dependent on the higher bodies. If one strips away everything that depends on karma, the physical body is in fact wisely designed. Everything that is diseased consists of aberrations that manifest in the physical body. All illnesses have been wrongdoings in the past; every wrongdoing will become an illness in the future. When people become worthy, they will create the solid beings they will form into equally wise bodies.

[ 18 ] All wisdom, feeling, and will will truly exist as form and being in the next stage of evolution. In all ancient religions, the physical body—because it is so wisely constructed—is called a temple. It is not correct to speak of the physical body as the lower nature, for what is low in human beings actually lies in the higher bodies, which are still in an infantile state today.

[ 19 ] Here we can also consider an important karmic connection. We live in a materialistic age, and it is the result of a preceding age. This materialistic age has achieved much, not only externally but also internally. Consider, for example, the decline in mortality due to hygienic measures. This is indeed a form of progress brought about by external hygienic facilities. Such external progress is always a karmic effect of the progress that was made internally in the past. These physical advances are the result of the inner progress of the Middle Ages. It is therefore very wrong to look back today on the “dark” Middle Ages. Our most prominent materialists were initially educated as idealists—Faeckel, Büchner, and Moleschott, for example. That is why their systems are so beautifully coherent intellectually, but they owe this to their idealistic education. Today’s materialism is, in fact, the external expression of the preceding idealistic period.

[ 20 ] We must continue to lay the groundwork for the future even now. When the karmic effect of the earlier idealistic period manifested itself in materialism, a new beginning for idealism and spiritualism had to be made. The leading figures acted in accordance with this law when they founded the Theosophical Movement.

[ 21 ] The 14th century marked the height of the era of city-building. Within a few centuries, independent cities had emerged in all European civilized nations. The citizen is now the founder of materialism in practical life. This was expressed in the myth of Lohengrin. Lohengrin, the emissary of the Grail Lodge, was the wise guide who intervened in the Middle Ages and paved the way for the founding of cities. He carries the swan as his symbol; the third-degree initiate is the swan. Consciousness is always portrayed as something feminine. Elsa of Brabant represents the consciousness of the materialistic urban spirit. Spiritual life, however, must be saved; this is achieved through Christian Rosenkreutz’s founding of the Rosicrucian Order. Spiritual life remained within the secret schools. Today, materialism has been taken to extremes. That is why a new direction had to emerge in our time. The same movement intervened back then that today, through Theosophy, is popularizing the fundamental teachings of spiritual life in order to create a new inner reality that can later manifest itself in the outer world. The inner world always expresses itself externally at a later time. An illness is the karmic consequence of a past wrongful act, such as a lie. When such an act becomes a reality, it becomes an illness. Epidemics stem from long-past injustices committed by peoples. They are something imperfect that has moved from the inside to the outside.

[ 22 ] The sixth sense is the Kundalini light manifested as a radiant sensation of warmth; the seventh is the synthetic sense.