The Rudolf Steiner Archive

This weekly journal has often pointed out the profound conflict between the world views of the Occident and the Orient. How understanding between the two cultural areas will come about depends on whether there is real insight into this contrast. And this understanding is necessary for the further development of humanity on earth. Economic cooperation can only develop on the basis of spiritual understanding. For this understanding, it is not necessary for one area of the world to adopt the spiritual character traits of the other. Only fanaticism could demand that. Understanding can only be achieved by having an unprejudiced view of the other and working together with him, without underestimating his peculiarities or wanting to suppress them.

The contrast is evident in a wide variety of fields. It is particularly pronounced in the views that people on both sides have of the human soul. The Orient has a culture that is based entirely on the inner experience of the soul. In the soul, the world reveals itself in its truthfulness and reality. Wisdom is not knowledge of anything. It is essence. It is life. And its life speaks from the depths of the human soul. The outer nature has only a value as the womb of the soul. Western culture has developed an eye for the intrinsic value of nature. The soul gives itself its value by penetrating the laws and secrets of nature. Wisdom is the reflection of these laws and secrets.

But all this is only the surface of the soul life. The soul does not reveal its essence through ideas, but through the emotional experiences that arise from its depths. There are undercurrents of the soul. The consciousness has no clear ideas about them, only more or less dark moods. But these form the basic coloration of the human being. The person feels them as his or her state of mind. He experiences them in their effect on the conscious soul life.

From this point of view, both the will and the thought are different for the Oriental than for the Occidental. For the feelings of the Oriental, something similar to the air we breathe is contained in the thought. The senses are [breaks off]

The Secret Doctrine is based on the experience that behind the world of sense is a spiritual world. Man can rise to the spiritual world by developing his spiritual essence. Thus man belongs to a twofold world: the manifest and the hidden.

The visible and the now hidden go back to an originally unified one. From this, man has developed. He carries the visible around with him because his senses reveal it to him. The hidden is veiled to him.

In visible nature, that part of the original unity is overcome by spiritual powers. Man as he is today has only become possible through this overcoming.

The fight against the dragon is the fight that man must also wage within himself. In nature, the fight is an older one; in man it is repeated. The gods are the older brothers of man; they have passed the fight: man has yet to pass it. In the fire, the bound power of God.

In the air, the victorious power of God. The air gods have wrestled themselves free.

Man has to undergo a development that has already taken place in the world around him. He has been what the older brothers, the gods, originally were. He will be what they are today. But the original form of the gods no longer exists today. Only the part that was overcome has found expression in visible nature. What lies behind this visible nature is the part of their being that was expelled by the gods.

The dragon and the snake have remained at the original stage.

A brief sketch of the introduction of our Vademecum, written for van Leer.

I. What is the aim of our new medical method?

The new medical method that is being announced here differs from the old one in that it is based on a different understanding of the human being. The old method, which has developed from the scientific views of modern times, seeks to gain all knowledge of the human being by breaking down the physical organization and rebuilding it in thought.

But man is not merely a physical organization. He is equally a superphysical one. This is revealed in his soul and spiritual experiences and activities. Just as the physical organization is the foundation of the soul and spiritual ones, so these are the formers and quickeners of the physical ones.

Without insight into this fact, no real knowledge of either the healthy or the sick human organism can be acquired.

Therefore, the new medical method adds the superphysical to the physical knowledge of the human being. Its essential point is that it comes to the realization that processes which, when they develop as spiritual processes in relative isolation from the physical processes in the human organism, represent the true nature of the human being, immediately become harmful when they come into the wrong connection with these physical processes.

The physical organization of the human being develops in such a way that it is able to be the carrier of the soul or spiritual. However, it must not enter into a connection with the soul and spiritual that goes beyond a certain measure. If it does, the person becomes ill.

The fact that a person is exposed to illness can be attributed to the same reason why he can be a spiritual and soulful being.

Only by observing the spiritual in the physical can one gain an understanding of the nature of illness. In the physical organization, the abnormal processes are recognized only as changes that are subject to natural laws in the same way as the normal ones. They can only be recognized in their characteristic nature as disease processes if one can pass from the physical to the superphysical. Because, as paradoxical as it sounds, a person falls ill when something in his physical organization develops too strongly towards the spiritual.

And only from such an understanding of illness can a real therapy arise. For all extra-human substances and processes stand in a certain relationship to the human being. If one introduces such an extra-human substance or extra-human process into the human being, then everything in the human being that has a physical effect outside the human being has a superphysical effect inside the human being. This is counterbalanced by the fact that everything that has a physical effect inside the human being also has a superphysical effect in the extra-human world.

In the case of a true knowledge of man in his relationship to the external world, one can always find a substance or a process in the extra-human world that transforms an incorrect relationship between the superphysical and physical in man into a correct one. But such knowledge is only possible through insight into the superphysical of man.

Therapy without knowledge of the superphysical in human nature is an illusion. The fact that this is so is the reason for the dissatisfaction with conventional medical methods, which only want to build on the physical human being.

Physical science is only beneficial as the basis of inanimate technique; therapy needs a science that goes to the spiritual. The medical method recommended here aims to provide such a science. The essence of it is that it provides remedies based on physical and spiritual knowledge of the human being. And only through this can one recognize the healing power of substances and processes.

In testing these remedies, we will see how the sick human organism changes under their influence and thereby gain confidence in them.

II. Pathology and therapy in the new (anthroposophical) method.

The nature of the new remedies

The processes that take place in the human organism are not the same as those in the rest of nature.¹ Therefore, we cannot learn about them in the same way as we learn about the human organism. Only when a human being has become a corpse do the same processes take place in him that can be recognized through sensory observation and the intellectual operations based on them. As long as a person is alive, feeling and thinking, he continually wrestles his organism from mere natural processes. Processes take place in him that cannot be grasped by external knowledge of nature.

To regard the external knowledge of nature as the only possible knowledge is to renounce insight into the human being. But this external knowledge of nature can be contrasted with another. It is based on a spiritual view to be developed in the human soul. The abilities for this view are just as dormant in the everyday human nature as the soul powers that arise in later life are in the very young child.

A first ability that can be developed is the ability to think and the power of memory. These can be increased purely spiritually through exercise, just as muscular strength can be increased through exercise. This is achieved by repeatedly concentrating on very clear thoughts. In this way, one supplies one's thinking with strength from the depths of one's being. But one must direct all attention to the inner thinking activity itself. One must have thoughts, not to depict a thing or a process of the external world, but only to live with all one's inner strength in the thought. You then experience that thought, by virtue of your inner human nature, draws to itself a power that it had previously allowed to sink into the depths of the subconscious, so as to have nothing within itself and thus be able to absorb the impressions of external nature.

This submerged power is rediscovered in inner experience. Thinking becomes something that fills the human being like muscular strength. One feels a second person within oneself.

Once one has experienced this “second person” within oneself, one has also experienced a “second world” in the whole world. Here it is called the etheric world.

In this ethereal world, the human being, with his ethereal organization, is present in the same way that he is present in the physical world with his physical organization. However, this ethereal world has completely different laws than the physical world.

The substances that man takes in through nutrition are on their way to becoming purely physical in nature, or they are purely physical substances from the outset, e.g. table salt. But even that which man takes in from the plant or animal kingdom is on the way to becoming purely physical. After all, it is subjected to purely physical processes by dissolving, cooking, etc.

This purely physical aspect must begin the process of revitalization in man. This happens by incorporating it into the work of the etheric organization.

In the etheric organization, purely physical effects cease. Growth, nutrition, etc. are superphysical processes that are carried out by the etheric organization.

If the organism is strong enough to take care of the transformation of physical forces in its etheric part to a sufficient extent, then it is healthy. If this is not the case, if the etheric organization is too weak, then it becomes ill. It then contains substances or processes that are justified in extra-human nature, but which represent something alien within the human being.

The pathological part of medicine consists of the recognition of this foreignness in man.

If the organism cannot carry out the necessary transformation by itself, then it must be supported by external means.

An example will serve to illustrate how this may be the case. Suppose that the etheric organization proves to be too weak to give certain substances the consistency they need to fit into the bone structure in such a way that the bones are in the right proportion to the whole life process. The bones then withdraw too much into their own being. They withdraw their life from the organism. If this is observed in the right way, introducing lead into the organism in very small amounts has the same effect as if the etheric organism had just been strengthened in the direction in which it had previously been deficient.

The therapeutic part of medicine consists in the knowledge of how the alien within man can be overcome so that the transformation of the physical can take place in the appropriate way.

However, man has not yet been fully understood if only the etheric organization has been grasped apart from his physical organization.

It is possible to develop other powers of the soul, besides thinking, to a spiritual contemplation.

When one has experienced the strengthened thinking that leads to the etheric world, one can suppress it through the inner power of the soul. In the normal process of life, sleep must occur through such an inner process. However, one can also train oneself not to let the soul fall asleep when suppressing the intensified thinking. The consciousness then remains awake, even though no more impressions come from outside. A real spiritual world then reveals itself to this consciousness. A spiritual world is added to the ordinary world. In this spiritual world one recognizes a third human organization, a kind of “third person”. One can call it the astral organization.

We now recognize that in our conscious or semi-conscious life, the sensations of our organs, our dark sense of life, our vague sensing of the organism in general, all these emanate from this astral organization. Hunger and thirst, satiety, fatigue, etc. also emanate from it.

Furthermore, it can be seen that this astral organism is not only the carrier of these conscious or semi-conscious states, but that this is only one side of its activity, the one that is inclined towards the consciousness of the soul. The other side extends down into the subconscious organic processes. The same astral body, for example, brings fatigue to consciousness; the same lives in the organs that produce fatigue.

However, the right balance must now prevail between these two sides of astral activity. This can only be the case if the etheric organization is placed in the right way between the activity of the astral and that of the physical organization. If the etheric organization is too weak, it is unable to keep the astral sufficiently far from the physical; the astral then intervenes too strongly in the physical.

For the normal life of the human being, it is necessary that the astral is kept sufficiently far from the physical and only functions as soul. For if the soul element encroaches too strongly upon the physical, the processes in the physical approach extra-human processes. The human organs themselves become foreign bodies, which then act like something alien that penetrates the human being and that cannot be transformed by the weak etheric organization.

Man owes the lower part of his mental abilities to the astral organization; but through it he is also exposed to illness in that this organization is not sufficiently separated from the physical organization in certain cases and thus something alien is incorporated into this organization in the wrong way.

We must know the extra-human substance or process that drives the astral out of the physical. And we will have a remedy for this substance or process.

All healing is therefore based on understanding the connections between the physical and the superphysical in the human organization, and then, when these connections take on an abnormal character, to find the means in the extra-human nature to counteract the abnormality.

There is a polar contrast between the purely physical and etherically oriented processes in the organism and those on which consciousness depends. The stronger the former are, the more the latter must recede. A physical-organic process that is effective in and of itself, according to its own forces and laws, suppresses consciousness.

The physical processes, which are the carriers of consciousness, cannot continue in their own way and according to their own laws if consciousness is to arise. They must be regressed, paralyzed, even destroyed in their very nature. What one recognizes in spiritual contemplation as the astral organization paralyzes the etheric organization. In order to shape the indeterminate, half-conscious and subconscious experiences, the life processes dependent on the etheric organization must be paralyzed.

But this does not give the whole human organization. Spiritual vision, which encompasses the astral organization, can go further. Then a fourth organization, a “fourth human being”, the ego organization, comes to the fore.

This ego organization counteracts the physical organization in the same way as the astral organization counteracts the one that depends on the ether organism. In the human being, physical substance must continually form itself in a living way. This corresponds to the activity of the physical and etheric organism. The latter carries out its processes by simultaneously dissolving in the liquid element that which wants to form into solid forms. The astral organization paralyzes the life-giving activity. This happens by simultaneously converting the liquid into the air-like. An example of this activity is the breathing process. It carries the living liquid of the organism into the air-like of the inhaled air and thus paralyzes it to such an extent that it can be the carrier of semi-conscious or subconscious soul processes.

The ego organization participates in these processes. But it takes everything that happens even further. It immerses all the processes taking place in the solid, liquid and gaseous forms in the organism's thermal differentiations. In the manifold heat processes of the organism, the ego organization continually transforms all the substance and all the processes of the organism in such a way that the organism can become the carrier of self-conscious soul life. If the force with which this transformation occurs is too strong or too weak, illness occurs. The task is then to recognize through diagnosis where the deficiency lies in the intervention of the ego organization. It may, for example, lie in an overall weakness of the ego organization, so that it does not process enough warmth in the body; it may lie in the fact that one organ system receives too much or too little influence from the ego organization at the expense of another, etc.

In all these cases, it is possible to bring the ego organization to its proper level. If one is familiar with the processes of destruction in the natural world, one can always find a substance or a process that, when introduced into the body, will help the ego organization. For example, it can be diagnostically determined that too little warmth is supplied to some organ. A substance that releases oxygen is introduced into the organism, which releases oxygen because it has been previously subjected to a process that gives it this ability. This can compensate for the damage.

In this way, a truly rational therapy is established with the help of insights into the superphysical in human nature. One arrives at an exact understanding of the effect of the remedies in the human organism as a whole. In such a medical way of thinking, all mere trial and error with remedies is overcome. This is how the remedies recommended by the pharmaceutical laboratory at the Goetheanum came about. They are the result of a rational and exact medical way of thinking. Some are similar to what has already been used. Here, the new way of thinking provides the necessary insight into why the remedy works. But by far the majority are new remedies because their healing effect only arises from the new medical knowledge of the nature of the human being outlined here. —

• 1. This essay is concerned only with humans. One can certainly learn a great deal about the human organism by observing animal organisms, but this essay will not take such observations into account for the time being.

[Handwriting Ita Wegman: How is the coming karma related to the heart?]

ad. I.) The rhythmic human being is the mediator between the nervous-sensory and metabolic-limb human beings.

The nervous-sensory human being of this incarnation is the result of the metamorphosis of the metabolic-limb human being of the previous incarnation.

The rhythmic human being is the result of the supersensible forces that are effective between death and rebirth. These forces change in such a way that they form the middle-ground human being on earth. They are integrated into the outer forces of the air circle, while between death and rebirth they are integrated into the outer forces of the planetary cycles.

Karma is now formed in this way: in the metabolism-limb-organism there is complete unconsciousness during life on earth. Man is (for ordinary consciousness) in a continuous dreamless sleep. Into this sleeping part of the soul, a judgment about the value or lack of value of human actions is recorded by the elemental forces (archai) that permeate this part of the soul. This judgment undergoes a metamorphosis during the time between death and rebirth of the metabolic-limb organism into the nerve-sense human being of the next earthly life. But the metamorphosed impulse (that is, the judgment of the value or worthlessness of the deeds, transformed into the will to be balanced by other deeds) does not consciously enter the human being, but rather into the angelic being that belongs to him. For this reason, karma remains unconscious to the human being (the ordinary consciousness).

The heart is only involved in the formation of karma to the extent that it belongs to the metabolism-limb-organism. Not as an organ of the rhythmic human being.

[Handwriting Ita Wegman: How does the blood process in the lungs relate to that in the heart?] ad II.) Blood process in the lungs and heart.

The lungs absorb cosmic forces with the inhaled air. World thoughts flow into these forces. These are, after all, the same forces that work in the human being as forces of growth and formation. When they enter the organism through the lungs, the world thought forces metamorphose by bifurcating at the same time. That is, one part goes (essentially upwards) into the nerve-sense organization and becomes the physical support of human thoughts; another part goes (essentially downwards, to the heart) into the metabolic-limb organism and is woven into the limbs of the human organization, which are connected in the broadest sense with the forces of the earth.

To see this point clearly, we must consider the following. Through his metabolic-limb system, the human being places himself in the workings of the earth. Observe how the human being walks: He puts his leg in front, that is, he brings it into a very specific position in relation to the earth's gravity. And so the human being moves within the dynamics of the earth. Metabolism proceeds in earthly chemistry. These earthly dynamics and this earthly chemistry cease beyond the rhythmic system. It is a complete illusion to believe that earthly things have an effect on the nerve-sense human being.

It can be seen from this that something extraterrestrial is absorbed into the lungs with breathing. This is then transferred into earthly things. The breathing current is the refined repetition of the descent of the human being from the spiritual into the physical world through birth. Only in this descent into the physical and etheric organization are the forces sent, while in breathing the forces flow in that correspond to the physical and etheric correlate of the astral body and the I.

In breathing, the cosmos forms and shapes the human being. It is different with blood circulation. This comes from what is integrated into the dynamics and chemistry of the earth. But as blood flows from the sphere of earth dynamics and earth chemistry into the heart, it takes up the impulses of the human astral body and the I. And so, in the blood of the heart, the spirit and soul of the human being strive out of the individual being towards the cosmic being. Blood in the heart striving towards the breath in the lungs is the human being's striving towards the cosmos. The air we breathe in our lungs striving towards the blood of the heart is the human being's being blessed by the cosmos. Blood striving towards the heart is the refined process of dying.

Blood as a carrier of carbonic acid from the human body represents the refined process of dying.

In this way, the human being continuously flows into the cosmos through the bloodstream, a process that takes place radically after death, in that it takes hold of the whole physical human being through the blood.

Starting from these considerations, we then find the bridge to the question extension with regard to Christ Jesus and the mysteries. It is true that the southern mysteries were more concerned with the secrets of the bloodstream - the heart - (of man) and the northern mysteries more with those of breathing - the lungs - (of the cosmos).

The Christ Mystery is the unveiling of the great miracle that takes place between the heart and the lungs: the cosmos becomes human; the human being becomes cosmos. The sun carries the human being from the cosmos to the earth; the moon carries the human being from the earth into the cosmos. Transposed into the great: what flows from the lungs to the heart is the human correlate of Christ's descent to earth; what flows from the heart to the lungs is the human correlate of the guiding of the human being after death through the Christ impulse into the spiritual world.

In this respect, the mystery of Golgotha lives in a human, organic way between the heart and lungs.

[Typescript, question from Mrs. Margarete Bockholt: If I imagine that the formative forces of the trunk without the present head are left to the forces of the cosmos without the influence of the earth, then a rounding must occur. If I try this on myself, I bend the spine, the upper end of which meets the symphysis, thus becoming the occiput. The present diaphragm then arises as a partition between the nasal and frontal sinus cavities. The sacrum is pushed forward and becomes the bridge of the nose; if the legs are drawn up, they clearly represent the lower jaw; the arms with the shoulder girdle represent the upper jaw and ear. The internal organs should be transformed in such a way that the kidneys become the eyes and the adrenal glands the lacrimal glands. (The shape of the adrenal glands corresponds to the exhalations from the nostrils, as Dr. Wachsmuth describes it as crescent-shaped and triangular. This is perhaps connected to the transformation of the lacrimal glands.) The lungs would become the lateral lobes of the brain. How the spleen and liver relate to the formation of the brain is not clear to me; the heart would be in the position of the epiphysis, the genital organs in that of the pituitary gland. Perhaps the 20 milk teeth could also be related to the 10 fingers and 10 toes each.

ad III.) Yes, this is based on good plastic representations. But it is best to include the plasticizing forces latent in the organism in the representation in this way:

The head is influenced by the cosmic formative forces; the earthly forces are atrophied in it (how the two relate to each other will be clear when the book we are working on with Wegman is published).

The metabolism-limbs-human being is influenced by the earthly formative forces; the cosmic ones are atrophied in it.

If we now imagine the atrophied earthly powers at the back of the head becoming developed, the back of the head metamorphoses into a metabolic-limb system; the reverse applies to the metabolic-limb system.

The middle organism (associated with rhythm) contains the organs pointing in both directions. This middle part is the head, which strives towards the limb system, and the limb system, which strives towards the head.

One looks for illness in disruptions of the organism, which are caused by all kinds of effects on it, and to which it cannot adapt through its own activity. It is said that in this way, reduced life processes arise and the activities of the body parts are reduced.

As long as one only aims to get to know the phenomena that occur in the human physical body during the course of an illness, such a judgment will suffice. However, this is no longer the case if one wants to proceed to healing the disease. This is because there is nothing analogous to a healing process in the interaction of one physical substance with another. In the physical world, the effect of one substance on the other takes place. A change can then occur in the latter; the concept of healing is completely inapplicable to this.

This is due to the fact that even in a healthy organism, the substantial composition, form and mode of action of the whole and of the individual organs is not exhausted by the effect of the physical.

We can observe the physical body with the means available to us. But we cannot understand it through this. We can only understand it if we see the expression of spiritual processes in physical ones. What can be perceived by the senses through a physical organ is the manifestation of something behind it that can only be grasped spiritually.

A healthy organ is one in which the physical can be the perfect expression of what is behind it spiritually. If physical processes take place in the organ that are not the expression of the spiritual, or if the spiritual in it develops too strongly, so that the physical cannot follow, then illness occurs.

The sick organism must therefore be understood in the same way as the healthy one, in terms of the human spirit. This is not done in today's conventional medicine. Now, however, a medical method is coming to the public's attention that seeks to understand both the healthy and the sick organism in terms of the spiritual. Only in this way can a real understanding of the connection between illness and healing arise.

The prerequisite for this is to be willing to really recognize the spiritual in the human being. This does not mean the “spiritual” that is experienced in the soul. This has a relatively great independence from the body. Its laws are moral, aesthetic and logical. When it comes to these, one does not ask what is going on in the body, but one treats the soul as independent of the body.

But everything physical, human and non-human, is based on something spiritual. The fact that this is either not admitted at all for the physical nature, or that the spiritual in the physical is not considered appropriate for scientific treatment, stems only from the fact that at present scientific knowledge is taken almost exclusively from inanimate (inorganic) nature. And one also stops at this when considering the living, the sentient, the conscious. One simply seeks to recognize how the processes observable in the inorganic continue to work in the plant, animal, and human organism.

This leads to scientific illusions. It is true that in an inorganic substance one cannot initially discover a spiritual element. The inorganic substance alone has come into being. And if one looks in spirit at its origin, one also finds the spirit at work.

Take arsenic, for example. As it is found, it shows no spiritual element. It exists in itself in grape-like and kidney-shaped forms. As it appears there, it proves to be the result of processes that are the expression of a spiritual. This spiritual has been at work in the past in the formation of the earth. Only the physical form of the arsenic remains from this effect. It stands there like the memory of a past spiritual effect.

In the human organism, this spiritual effect is still present as a present one. It is as if the premature arsenic effect had been stored by the earth formation in this organism.

Certain organs, which take shape in the organism with certain outlines, develop out of the liquid and gaseous parts of the organism, in which they do not have fixed outlines. The power by which this happens is the same as that which was at work in the formation of the arsenic. These human organs are on the way to becoming what occurs in the inorganic world as the lifeless arsenic. They do not become such only because they are in the organism and thus do not complete the process of becoming arsenic.

Two things can now happen. On its way to becoming arsenic, an organ can lose its connection with the spiritual part of the organism. It then progresses too far in this process of becoming arsenic. If, under certain conditions, the organism is supplied with substances containing protein, for example, the connection between the physical process in the organ and the spiritual part of the organism can be restored. The protein-containing substance proves to be a remedy.

Or the spiritual can have too strong an effect on the organ. Then the organ does not progress far enough in its processes with regard to becoming arsenic. If arsenic is then introduced into the organism, this supports the becoming arsenic. It is deposited in the organ, so to speak, in a supportive way. The physical process that has been left behind is continued to the extent necessary for the organism. Arsenic proves to be a healing agent again. It pushes the spiritual away from the organ.

Without insights of the kind described above, it is impossible to arrive at an understanding of the disease process, much less at the choice of a remedy. Present-day natural science, which is entirely oriented towards the inorganic, can serve as a basis for technical work, but it cannot be such a basis for the healing of diseases. For the essence of being ill lies where the connection between the spiritual and the physical is. If one wants to claim that science, as the only possible science, cannot approach the spiritual because of its limitations, then one must also declare that there can be no real medicine. The inner courage that expands the passive powers of knowledge through the active ones is part of the knowledge of the spiritual. Present-day natural science has lost this courage because it searches everywhere for the sensory-perceptible foundations on which valid insights are to be developed. It cannot be the science on which medicine is based. Therefore, a medical method is developed here on the basis of an insight into the spiritual existence.

The point is to correctly experience the essence of nature: then we will express knowledge of nature in archetypal phenomena instead of in abstract laws.

In cytology, we have an image of what is experienced in the realm of ideas. Those who are familiar with the real processes in the life of ideas sense that cytology is a related field. Concepts gained through the senses are not applicable here. One feels that they do not encompass the phenomena. Only inspired concepts can penetrate into this sphere. Ed. v. Hartmann remarks:

The preliminary stages of the development of a cell, up to the point where it becomes sexually mature, if such a thing exists, will always remain shrouded in mystery for us, partly because any representatives of

it have long since died out, and partly because they occur at submicroscopic dimensions.

But in the life of the imagination, its macroscopic archetype is given. Imagination is based on a trans-sensual process that is interrupted before the transition into the sensually perceptible, insofar as it remains a life process. If it is continued into the sensual, then it becomes a process of consciousness.

Description of mitotic cell division: It starts from the central corpuscle, seizes the nucleus

and the entire filamentous structure, splits all parts lengthwise, moves them and rearranges them so that instead of a centralized cell content, there are ultimately two, which separate from each other.

Through anesthesia, the life process is prevented from transitioning into cell life by means of paralysis. The supersensible part of a perception has a paralyzing effect; the sensory part occurs as a result of the paralysis.

Just as one is in the sphere of the life of the imagination when dealing with the disputes of the cell physiologist before he proceeds to the fertilization process, so too one is in the sphere of feeling when reading the explanations of this physiologist when he describes division, conjugation, etc. Imagined perceptions serve as orientation here.

As soon as the egg leaves the mother, we run into difficulties of comprehension. We can only get by assuming a process external to the mother for the formation of the egg and conceiving of the full development of this process as impossible under present-day conditions. Then the mother only provides the protective shell through which the process is removed from the conditions that are impossible for the egg under present-day conditions. But all this remains hypothetical if it is not corroborated by the fact that such a process is perceived. But it is perceived in the emotional life. In this, one recognizes an existence within the conditions that are not fulfilled in the physical environment. But this perception is never a presence. Ed. v. Hartmann puts in the place of perception: the principle of minimal effort and the principle of lawful development.

Gustav Theodor Fechner.

I just think that his experimental aesthetics are concerned with the exact measurement of things that are generally accepted as trivial truths; like trying to determine “exactly” how the rising and falling action in tragedy can be expressed in terms of time using numbers. The interesting thing about these things does not go as far as where measurement is possible, because that is where, more often than not, the triviality begins.

The overestimation of achievements such as Fechner's is ultimately based on a fundamental trait of the human mind, which, as a rule, is not satisfied with truths that can be fully understood in their derivation, but which wants truths that are based on deductions where the method is considered correct, but otherwise the result arises from the assumptions with a kind of natural necessity, like the sum of the addends that cannot be seen. The same is the case with all mathematical truths. There is always something like philosophical cowardice and faint-heartedness in such a way of thinking. One does not want to determine the truth from within oneself, from one's own personality, but through something else that is removed from the influence of the subjective: the method. One has too little intellectual backbone, so one creates a staff in the method to hold on to. This is nothing more than a relinquishment, a giving up of the subjective and the personal. The method is a crutch for lame thinkers.

Strong minds of noble thought know no method, only themselves and the object. Nothing comes between the two for them.

1. At present, much good is said in individual fields. But people have no conception of the great elementary facts. They cannot observe there. And so one separates the state of sleep from the state of waking, whereas the state of sleep also accompanies waking life as a partial life, and indeed in feeling and desire (will). Today one can work with microscopes and telescopes, but one does not observe what is immediately there.

2. Only the outside of the body is perceptible. Only the inside of the spirit. The breathing process is only conscious in dreams; but so is the process of imagination by the spirit. The metabolism remains completely unconscious: only its soul correlate in disposition, hunger, thirst, etc. becomes conscious; likewise, the emotional and volitional process from the spirit.

3. The scientific world view demands that people understand themselves. However, it has no means of doing so. Indeed, with its research it departs from the actual human being. Natural science and spiritual science can exchange their gifts.

4. Imagination is the surface of a real process that takes place in the formative forces.

5. Feeling is the surface of a real process that has to do with the coming into being and passing away of the human being itself. 6. Volition (desire) is the surface of a real process that is rooted in the eternal aspect of the human being.

At present, one is not understood when one speaks of the spirit. People believe that one then fantasizes. One fantasizes no more than the physiologist and the anatomist fantasize when they describe the physical processes that underlie the subjectively unconscious respiratory or metabolic processes. Mind, however, cannot be grasped by the microscope; but just as the microscope makes the small visible by enlarging it, so mind comes to perception when the soul powers are so strengthened that the soul makes use of its own being in order to perceive. The spiritual essence of a plant is perceived immediately if one adjusts oneself in such a way that one still experiences something, if one distracts oneself from sensory perception. When you look at the plant, like a word when you read. You can describe the word according to its letter forms. You can learn as little about the spirit through mere inner contemplation as you can learn about the stomach by contemplating the feeling of hunger or satiety. The imagination, feeling, etc. of the mystic is only based on the spiritual. He does not yet have it. The body must be anatomized in order to get to know the processes of metabolism, etc.; the spirit must be condensed, strengthened - in order to get to know it. One must seek how it carries the human being from an 'other' world, how it lets him arise and pass away; how it sustains him throughout physical life. If one gives oneself over to scientific conceptions, then one weans oneself from the contemplation of the spirit. But if the spirit is not paralyzed, it also comes into independent activity through this. Through natural science, human beings have, as it were, overcome their visionary illiteracy. —

Only an unfinished product enters into perception; one could not worry about perception if it produced a finished impression - man describes the unfinished remainder as matter.

Memory contains more than thought; we would have no memories if a physical process did not follow thinking. We speak of consciousness as we speak of a mirror. We mean something through which one cannot see and which yet reflects only the transformed memories like mirror images.

Anthroposophy seeks to understand matter in the human mind; and that of consciousness in the outside world.

An anthroposophical researcher can only be someone who is protected by healthy, realistic, vigorous thinking from falling into dreaming, hallucinating, hysterically indulging in their own physicality; and whose interest in the sensual outside world, cultivated through Goethe, prevents them from tearing shreds out of this outside world to patch together a natural philosophy with them.

[missing part of the manuscript] One is in pictorial-uniformity with heightened experience of one's own self. One experiences a reality that was hidden before. One has one's own self with its part of the world before consciousness. And this self is free of the body, i.e. free of the physical body. One experiences oneself in a reality in which the physical body is not. One experiences oneself in etheric reality. It becomes clear to consciousness that an etheric body underlies the physical body. One has broken through to etheric reality through abstract thinking. One now knows that thinking is rooted in this etheric reality and that ordinary thinking is the imprint of an etheric event in the physical body.

It is important to realize that one should not tap into the ether any more than one should into the dimensions and weight ratios of physical existence. For the latter, external instruments are required. To perceive in the ether, it requires a breakthrough to a reality that is measured, counted and weighed with inner forces. Thinking about the external world is only beneficial if it creates the conditions under which the world reveals itself through measure, number and weight. Likewise, thinking inwardly must be the mediator, not the dogmatist.

Through the development of the ability just described, the whole person becomes a sense organ. One must be completely clear about this fact. One experiences a great deal through the awakening of the imaginative power. But this is not the objective world. In relation to this objective world, everything is only an image. But as an image, it has reality. This reality can only be evaluated through vigorous thinking. Through orientation in the world of images, the inwardly effective and the outward are separated. One cannot keep the outward from the images, but one can distinguish between the inward and the outward through vigorous thinking.

Of the outer world, only the spiritual-soul remains in the human and animal kingdoms; the plants and minerals are lost from the field of vision that now exists. The latter two kingdoms of nature are still there as results of the etheric. The moon ceases to be a reality in the world now being viewed. By contrast, the sun appears to have been transformed. It becomes a force permeating the world.

[missing part of the manuscript]

The impression that a person makes is much more than what is captured by the senses. Think of someone who claims to have seen Bismarck. What is at work there, besides the image, and from within. Interest is aroused. Desires assert themselves. The memory is not caused by the power of the image, but by the power of the impression and by the interest from within.

The development of the imaginative faculty depends on the formation of that which leads to remembering apart from the sensory image. This points to forces of the human soul that lie fallow in ordinary life. They are stimulated by the external world, but not by the power of the will itself. The power of interest, which when heightened to the highest degree appears as love, and the power of allowing oneself to be stimulated by a content, can be aroused by one's own will.

In this way, one develops the ability on which remembering is based; but without remembering itself coming about. But something else comes about. The power arises in the soul to live in images, without external stimulus. This image-forming power must be developed for anthroposophical research.