The Human Being as Body, Soul and Spirit

GA 347 — 9 August 1922, Dornach

III. The Human Being in Relation to the World – Creation and Dissolution

Question: A listener has brought stones back from his vacation. The question is whether stones also have life or have once had life and how they came into being.

Dr. Steiner: I may be able to take up these stones again at a later date; but perhaps it is also possible that I can still incorporate it into our present consideration.

Look, gentlemen, I will say the following: We have seen that there is actually a kind of killing of life within us, in the human being. We have seen that we have these little creatures crawling around in our blood, the white blood corpuscles, which creep through the blood vessels to our skin. I told you that it is a special delicacy for these little creatures when they come to the surface, whereas they are otherwise only inside the human body. This is, so to speak, the spice of life for them. So these are the living cells that crawl around. In contrast to this, I told you: the cells in the nervous system, namely those in the brain, are actually cells that are continually being killed, continually entering into the dead. The cells in the brain are such that they actually only begin to be somewhat more alive when you are sleeping. They start to be a little more alive. They cannot move away from their place because they are very cramped among the others; they cannot move like the white blood cells, but they start to live a little during the night while you sleep. And that is why, when these cells get a little more life and willpower from the body, the white blood cells have to stay a little calmer. And that is why, as I have told you, thoughts actually arise in the whole body.

Now let us pose the question: Where do thoughts actually come from? — Not true, the people who just want to think materialistically, that is, comfortably, they say: Well, thoughts just arise in the brain or in the nervous system of the human being. Thoughts grow there like cabbages in the field. — But if only people would think it through — “like cabbages in the field”! Cabbages don't grow in the field unless they are planted. So, things have to be planted first, so to speak. For my part, everyone can see a kind of field in the human brain for thoughts. But just imagine: if you have a beautiful field of cabbages, and the person who has always cultivated it were to move away and no one were to be found to continue the work, then no cabbage would ever grow in that field.

So it must be said: Just when one thinks that thoughts come out of the brain, one must first ask: Where do they come from? Well, just as the cabbage comes out of the field! - So the question must first be properly understood. And then we have to ask ourselves the following: What you see here has actually come into being out there in nature. I would like to explain to you how what comes into being out there in nature. I have said: We find everything in man when we understand everything in man's surroundings. When we looked at the plants and so on, we understood many things in man. Now we have this stone. Let's take a good look at this rock. You see, it is a very soft rock underneath and behind and above. You can scrape it off with a knife. The outer part, what is around it, is just a bit denser earth. So it is like this – I just want to draw the bottom here –: there is this soft rock at the bottom, and just as if they were growing out of it, there are all kinds of crystals on this soft rock, crystals that look like they are growing out of it. I would have to draw many, wouldn't I, but this is enough. There are such small crystals; they are down there, as if they had grown out, but they are terribly hard. You can't scrape them off with a knife; the knife doesn't affect them; at most, if you can get at one, you can cut it off as a whole, but you can't scratch into it. So these are hard crystals that are embedded there.

Now let us ask ourselves: How do such crystals get into the softer soil, which is only a little compacted? Such crystals are bodies that are very beautifully designed; they have such a longitudinal shape, and at the top they have a small roof on them. There would also be a roof at the bottom if it did not extend into the earth. If the earth were soft enough, this would be the case with every crystal; but it perishes when it enters the earth.

Where do these crystals come from? When plants grow, carbonic acid must be outside the plants. Otherwise the plants cannot grow. The same substance that we exhale must reach the plants. And then, when the carbonic acid reaches the plants, the plants absorb this carbonic acid, retain the carbon that is in the carbonic acid, and they exhale the oxygen. That is the difference between humans and plants. Humans inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide; we retain the oxygen while we release the carbon dioxide. The plant is connected to the earth. When the plant dies, this carbon returns to the soil and becomes the black coal that we dig out of the earth after centuries.

But there are also other substances. There is a substance that is quite similar to coal in a certain respect, but is different in other ways. This is silica. Suppose you have a soil that is rich in silica, with a lot of silica in it. Then, because oxygen is always present, oxygen takes effect. There is oxygen above it now. This oxygen does not initially affect the silica. But after some time, in the course of the development of the earth, you suddenly find that the oxygen has combined with the pebble. And just as we produce carbon dioxide when we breathe out, when the pebble from the earth properly combines with the oxygen, quartz, silicic acid is formed; crystals like these are formed. It only needs the pebble to combine with oxygen from the earth, and crystals such as those that are there are formed.

But oxygen does not have the power to combine with silica on its own. You can have as much silica as you like, and oxygen on top of it, it would not all form. Why do these beautiful shapes form? Yes, they form precisely because forces are at work in the universe from all sides and the earth is constantly in connection with the whole universe. Forces are constantly coming in from all sides, and these forces bring oxygen into the pebble, and that is how such crystals are formed. So all these crystals are formed because the earth is influenced by all the other stars. We can therefore say that these crystals are actually formed from the world.

Now, however, you can say the following: What are you telling us? The rock that the pea-flour has given us proves the opposite! — The rock is actually like this: there is loose earth below (see drawing), above it is more loose earth, and behind it is more loose earth. It is completely surrounded by loose earth, and these crystal forms here, they are not just growing upwards from below, as I have described them now, but you could say that they are already growing upwards if only they were there from below. But these are now those that grow towards us from above. Now you might say: But that cannot be explained from the universe, because then one would have to assume that the same forces come from the interior of the earth, which would then have to come from the universe if one were to explain them only from bottom to top.

Yes, you see, that is an apparent contradiction. There must be something behind it. Now I will tell you what is behind it.

Such rocks do not form on the open ground; they form in the mountains. And if it is on the open ground, it is also the case that there are layers of earth above and below, just as there are in the mountains. But let's assume we get it out of the mountains. Imagine we have such a mountain range, and I want to draw the slope of the mountain range. If you now go up there (see drawing), you go up like this, and of course you have to go past there, the path has to go there, the earth or the rock can overhang a little; you will find overhanging earth everywhere if you go into the mountains. Now imagine that a very, very long time ago, what I have drawn here in brown would have been there, would have been deposited there, and that would have been deposited there (see drawing). According to my explanation, crystals would have formed here through the forces of the universe, as I have explained, and therefore also such crystals. Crystals would have grown down there, as it were, through the forces of the universe, and up there too.

Then it later happened that what was up there fell down and covered it. So you see: When the upper falls down, it falls in such a way that it is then at the top (see drawing), and at the bottom are the crystals that originally went up, and because of the fall they fell over them so that they were held by those that were at the bottom and were thus superimposed on each other. Those who fell down lay on top of those below, so that what was at the top came to be at the bottom.

This is how it was in the mountains all the time. Those who study will find that landslides like this have occurred continuously in the mountains, where the upper layer has been laid on top of the lower layer. That is precisely what is interesting about studying mountains. When you walk in the plains, you get the feeling that one layer has been laid on top of the other throughout history, because it has only happened in the last few millennia. We could never say that about the Alps. The Alps were also formed in this way a long time ago; but then the higher parts plunged over the lower parts, and the Alps are completely jumbled layers of earth.

That is why it is so difficult to study the Alps, because you have to consider everywhere whether what is above has also originated in this way. Often it did not come about that way, but rather that there was a layer down there, a layer up there, and then something was pushed up, knocking over what was below; and it covered what was below. And so these folds, as they are called, have formed in the mountains over the course of millennia and millennia, bringing about such things. So that one must first explain these things by the fact that the mountains have thrown themselves over each other again. So one would have to say: the lower part was formed on such a slope (see drawing), the upper part on such a slope, and behind it there was of course the mountain range, so that it fell over it; it was laid over it. So that one can only explain such a thing, where crystals face each other from below and from above, if one knows that on Earth, over the course of millennia, everything has gradually been mixed up.

So in the whole inanimate realm we always have forces that come from the universe and that also work in us in such a way that we actually have to do something in us to prevent these forces from disturbing us.

You see, gentlemen, the pebble that is common in the earth is also found in us. It is not too much, but we have such substances in us, from which such terribly hard stones can arise. But if such hard rocks were to arise in us, as Mr. Erbsmehl has brought here, then we would be in a bad way! If, for example, a child who already has pebbles inside could not help it and such crystals, even if they were very small, would form everywhere (they would be tiny after all), that would be a very bad thing! They sometimes form during an illness.

Sugar can also form crystals, as you know. If you look at rock sugar, it also consists of crystals that are layered on top of each other. Now, we have a lot of sugar in us. Not everyone on earth eats the same amount of sugar. That varies. For example, people in Russia eat very little sugar, while in England they eat a lot of sugar – on average, of course. But then people also differ again. The Russian character is different from the English character. The Russians are very different people from the English. This is largely due to the fact that the Russians get little sugar in their food. The English eat things that contain a lot of sugar, foods that contain a lot of sugar.

This is connected with what I have already said. The forces of the universe are at work in everything. So man has a lot of sugar in him. Sugar always wants to become crystal. What can we do to prevent it from becoming crystal?

You see, I told you that there is a lot of water in us, living water: that dissolves the sugar. That would be a nice story if the water didn't keep dissolving the sugar! Such small crystals would form, like rock candy crystals, and we would have such small stuffy crystals inside us if the sugar were not constantly being dissolved. We humans need sugar in our food, but we can only use it if we dissolve it continuously. We have to have it. Why do we have to have it? Because we have to do this, to dissolve it! We don't live on it alone, but it is part of our life that we dissolve the sugar. So we have to get it into us.

But if we now have too little strength to dissolve this sugar, then these very small crystals form, and then they leave with the urine. And that's when diabetes comes. And that is the explanation for why people become diabetic: they have too little strength to dissolve the sugar they eat. They have to get sugar, but if they have too little strength to dissolve the sugar, diabetes occurs. The sugar must not get so far that it comes off in small crystals, but it must be dissolved. Man must have the strength to dissolve the sugar. That is his life.

If you think about something like that, you can also see from it that we not only have to have the strength to dissolve the sugar, but we also have to have the strength to continually dissolve these small crystals that always want to form in us as quartz crystals – there are few of them, but they want to form, these quartz crystals. They must not be allowed to form in us. If they were to form in a child, the child would come and say: It's terrible, it stings me everywhere! It stings everywhere!

What has happened if it stings the child everywhere? Yes, you see, there are the small pebble crystals that have arisen in the nerves, have not been resolved. They have remained lying. You must not imagine that these are huge masses. There are very few, tiny ones that you can not even find easily with a microscope; much smaller than one ten thousandth of a millimeter. When many tiny crystals have accumulated in the nervous system, then the person gets tiny pricks everywhere that they cannot explain. It stings them everywhere. And in addition, small inflammations are caused by this happening; very small inflammations are caused. And then the person has rheumatism or gout. Gout is nothing more than such tiny crystals settling. These pains that a person has come from this. And that a person with gout gets the gouty lumps comes from the inflammation. When you push a nail into yourself, an inflammation occurs. These little skewers come from within, pushing to the surface. There are small internal inflammations, and then these inflammations form these gouty lumps.

These are all processes that can take place inside a person. But from this you can see that we must always have forces within us that, let's say, have to work against gout, otherwise we as human beings would constantly get gout. But we must not get it all the time. So there must always be something behind it that we can work against.

What does that mean? Yes, you see, it means that forces are at work from the universe. They actually do not want to form too large, but microscopically tiny crystals in us. When these forces come in and form these crystals here, they also work in us, so that we are constantly permeated by these forces, and we have to develop those forces in our inner being that constantly bring this matter into nothingness. We must continually work against these forces. We must therefore have forces within us that work against these forces. These forces of the universe also enter into us; but we work against them – and particularly strongly in the nerves. If we did not work against them, mineral substances would continually arise in the nerves.

These mineral substances must arise because, you see, there are children who remain stupid and die young. If you then dissect such children who have remained stupid, you often find that they have too little of what is called cerebral sand. Everyone must have a little cerebral sand in them. This cerebral sand must arise and must be dissolved again and again.

But if we have too little strength to dissolve it, too much can remain. But, gentlemen, if you get the food into your blood, the sand will continually settle in your brain, because that is what you are constantly doing in your brain. It is continually being deposited. And the cerebral sand that is in there (it is drawn) is exposed to the forces of the universe just as much as what is outside in nature, so that tiny crystals are constantly trying to form in there. But they must not form. If we don't have cerebral sand, we become stupid. If the crystals were to form, we would constantly faint because we would effectively suffer from cerebral rheumatism or cerebral gout. Because otherwise the body just hurts; but if the brain contains these crystals, there is nothing you can do but faint. So you need brain sand, but you have to keep dissolving it. It is a continuous process of brain sand being deposited, dissolved, deposited, dissolved.

If too much is deposited, it can sometimes also damage the walls of the blood vessels in the brain. Then the blood comes out. Then there is the stroke, not just the fainting, but the stroke, the cerebral hemorrhage.

So when you study the disease process, you can see what a person actually has inside them. Because in illness, everything in us that is in a healthy person is just too strong. Being sick means nothing more than that we develop something too strongly.

This also happens in life, gentlemen. You have already seen that when a small child is there and you touch its cheek gently with your hand, it is a caress, you stroke it. And you can also make the same touch with your hand too strong; then it is no longer a caress, then it is a slap.

Well, you see, that's the way it is in the world. Things that can be a caress on one side can be a slap in the face on the other. And so in life, what has to be done in the brain, this gentle work in the brain sand, becomes a slap in the face when it becomes too strong, when the power in us is too weak, so that we cannot dissolve this mineral that we have within us. Then we would constantly faint or if it becomes too strong, when these crystals keep piercing our blood vessels, we would have a stroke. So these crystals must be continually dissolved by us. This thing that I have now told you is constantly going on in you.

I will now tell you something else. Let us make things very clear. Suppose you have the human being here – I will draw it very schematically – here is his brain, here is his eye, and here I will draw something that you are somehow looking at, so let us say there is a plant in front of your eye for the sake of argument.

Now turn your attention to this plant. See, when you turn your attention to this plant – you can only do this, of course, when it is daylight all around – and the plant is illuminated by the sun's rays, then it is bright, and you receive the light effect in your eye. But through the optic nerve, which goes backwards from the eye, what is the light effect goes into your brain. So when you look at a plant, you are directed towards the plant through your eye, and from the plant the light effect goes through your eye into your brain.

Gentlemen, when you look at a plant in this way, for example a flower, you are attentive to the flower. But that means a great deal: you are attentive to a flower. When you are attentive to the flower, you actually forget yourself. You know, you can be so attentive that you completely forget yourself. The moment you forget that you are looking at the flower, even just a little, a force arises somewhere in the brain that secretes some brain sand. So looking means secreting brain sand from within.

This secretion, you have to imagine it as a completely human process. You will have noticed that you not only sweat when you exert yourself, but also when, for example, you are terribly afraid of something. You do not exactly secrete brain sand, but other salts, and with that water through your skin. That is secretion. But looking means constantly secreting brain sand. When someone looks very intently at something, brain sand is constantly being secreted. And that is where we have to dissolve this brain sand. Because if we did not dissolve this brain sand again, then a tiny little flower would arise in us from the brain sand in the brain! To look at the flower, that actually means that a very small, tiny flower forms in us from the brain sand, which is then only directed from top to bottom, just as the little picture in the eye is also directed from top to bottom. That is the difference, gentlemen.

It is like this: when we look at a chair – it doesn't even have to be a flower – a little bit of brain sand forms in there through the act of looking, and if we were now to just abandon ourselves to this looking, we would get a very small – much smaller than it can be in the microscope – a tiny little image made of silica sand of this chair. And if I were to stand in such a room, and I had developed a certain power of observation as a human being, the whole room would be reversed in me, only with the floor at the top, as an image composed of tiny pebbles. It is quite colossal how we are constantly building in ourselves. Only we are not the kind of people to let it happen. Without our consciously doing so, we dissolve the whole thing again. In this respect, we are very peculiarly constituted as human beings. We look at the world. The world constantly wants to form such shapes in us that are like the world, only reversed. And if we were not there, if we did not observe, then — especially at night when we sleep, when we do not develop the strength to dissolve from within — such formations would continually form through that which is in the universe. These formations also mainly form when the earth is not illuminated by the sun, by light, but rather they are formed by forces that come from much further away. But we are always exposed to these forces. So that we can say: When we sleep, all kinds of mineral, inanimate forms want to form in us continuously through the universe, and when we look at them, forms want to form in us that are just like our surroundings. When we sleep, we recreate the universe. In the universe, everything is arranged in a crystalline way. What we see there (in the crystals) is so because the forces in the universe are arranged just like the crystals. Some go this way, the others go that way, so that the crystals are formed from the whole universe. But this is what we want to happen in us. And when we perceive, when we look at our immediate surroundings, what is in our immediate surroundings wants to form itself. We must constantly prevent this from becoming solid, must constantly dissolve it.

Now, gentlemen, a peculiar process is taking place here. Imagine that the flower in there wants to form an inanimate image of itself out of stone. This must not be allowed to happen, otherwise we would not know the flower, but would get a headache. So that must first be dissolved.

I will make this process, which is constantly going on, even more clear to you by saying the following. Suppose you had a pot of lukewarm water here and someone blindfolded you, and after you were blindfolded, they brought some object that could be dissolved in this lukewarm water. You were to reach into this lukewarm water with your hand. You cannot see the object because you are blindfolded. But the other person can now ask you: “Reach into the water with your hand; can you feel something in there?” — “Yes, the lukewarm water.” — “Can you feel anything else in there?” — “Yes, it is cold around the fingers.

Where can that come from? The other person has put an object into the water that is dissolving! And this dissolution causes the lukewarm water around the fingers to become colder. He feels this dissolution around his fingers and can say: Something is dissolving in there.

But this is the case all the time when we have formed the object in here and have to dissolve it again. We feel the dissolution and then, because we feel the dissolution, we say: Yes, the object is out there, because it formed an image for us, and we dissolved the image. Because we have dissolved it, we know what the object looks like. Thus the thought of the object comes to us, because we must first dissolve the image of the object. Thus the thought comes. We would faint if we only had the image. But if we are strong enough to dissolve the image, then we know about it. So that is the difference between fainting when we see something or having knowledge of it.

So, consider someone who is, say, a little sickly, and there is a terrible thunder – that can happen. From this thunder, even if not through the eye, but through the ear, brain sand is deposited in him, an image is formed. He cannot dissolve this quickly enough. He may faint, lose consciousness. If he is healthy, he does not lose consciousness, which means that he has dissolved his brain sand quickly enough. So fainting means not dissolving the brain sand quickly enough. Not fainting means dissolving the brain sand quickly enough. We must always, by looking at the things around us, dissolve the brain sand quickly enough.

This brings us to the question of man's relationship to the forces in the whole universe. Last time I told you: if man's relationship to the forces in the universe is such that the brain cells in his brain are constantly dying, then they are indeed totally inanimate, and he has to handle them. That is his soul-spiritual with which he handles them. Now we even find the force that is constantly dissolving the brain cells. The cerebral sand is constantly killing the cells. The fact that cerebral sand is mixed in is what keeps killing the cells. And we have to work against that. And that, you see, is the reason why we are human: so that we can work against the cerebral sand in a certain way.

This is not the case with animals in the same way. An animal cannot work against the brain sand as much as we humans can. That is why animals do not have a head like ours, except for the higher animals. We have a head that can dissolve everything that constantly enters us. This dissolving of what comes into us is what enables a person to feel that he is saying 'I'. This is the strongest dissolution of the cerebral sand when we say 'I'. — Then we imbue our speech with consciousness. So the cerebral sand dissolves, all the nerve sand dissolves. This is not the case with animals. That is why it makes an animal scream or something similar, but not real speech. That is why no animal has the ability to feel itself, to say 'I' to itself like a human being, because a human being dissolves the brain sand to a much greater extent.

So that we can say: We are not only working against what is on earth, but we are also working against the forces of the universe. The forces of the universe would crystallize us inwardly. We would become a mountain range inside with all those layers of crystals. We are working against that inwardly. We are constantly dissolving that. We are constantly working against the forces of the universe with the dissolving forces.

And so we not only dissolve silicic acid – because that is silicic acid, which these crystals form here – we dissolve everything possible; we dissolve the components that sugar has and so on.

You can literally follow these stories. Suppose a person knows nothing at all about it properly, because such things happen like an instinct in man, but he still feels something vague in himself. Imagine, the person feels: Oh, I can't really think properly, I can't really hold my thoughts together.

A journalist who writes an article every day can very easily get into this mood. Yes, gentlemen, writing an article every day means dissolving an awful lot of brain sand! It's a really disgusting business, writing an article every day, because it means dissolving an awful lot of brain sand. And so you start, when you're supposed to be writing the article – at least that's how it used to be – nibbling on the back of the pen shaft. This is something that journalists in particular have been said to do, that they bite the back of their pen stems to draw out the last of their strength. It's true, when you bite something, you draw the last of your strength from your whole body, to have it in your head, to conquer this brain sand. You have to dissolve a lot of brain sand.

All this happens so instinctively. Of course, the journalist does not say to himself: I will bite my pen handle to get thoughts. — That can go on. In this instinct, he then goes to the coffee house and drinks black coffee. They do not think anything of it, the journalists, because they know nothing about these processes. But if they have now drunk black coffee – by Jove, there goes the story, they can write again when they have drunk black coffee.

Where does this come from? It comes from the fact that in this case the so-called caffeine is absorbed with the black coffee. This is a toxic substance that contains a lot of nitrogen. Nitrogen is in the air. But we can get it back in again. With breathing, we always get a certain amount of oxygen and nitrogen. Now, the person who has to dissolve the brain sand needs a force that lies particularly in the nitrogen to dissolve the brain sand. We draw this force from the nitrogen to dissolve the brain sand.

That is why we are more exposed to nitrogen at night when we sleep than when we are awake, and we said that by breathing in more oxygen we live much faster; if we breathe in more nitrogen, we would live much more slowly and would therefore be around for longer. We could dissolve more.

The journalist who drinks coffee unconsciously relies on this nitrogen, which he gets from coffee, and through this nitrogen, which he gets from the caffeine, he is able to create more brain sand and then also be able to dissolve more. Then he no longer needs to nibble on the quill but can write with the feather because his thoughts are connecting more and more again.

So you see how the human ego works. The human ego conveys, because you get nitrogen-rich food into the stomach, caffeine conveys this nitrogen into the brain, and this facilitates the dissolution of the cerebral sand, and we are thus able to connect one thought to another.

Some people, on the other hand, have the peculiarity that their thoughts stick together too strongly, that they cannot get away from their thoughts. They are so predisposed that they are actually always working on their brain sand. Yes, they do well when they do the opposite process. While one person's thoughts are held together by the fact that he can develop some coherent train of thought, the other person has to help himself with caffeine, with coffee. But if you don't want to hold your thoughts together too tightly, but rather let them shine and sparkle, if, as they say, you want to throw thoughts at people, which looks very witty, then you drink tea. This has the opposite effect. It scatters the thoughts. And it supports another dissolution of the cerebral cortex.

So that this story that goes on in the human being is actually an extremely interesting and complicated one. Each food works in a different way, and we must always add the opposite to what actually wants to arise. We have to dissolve it again. This is actually now our highest spiritual, through which we are constantly actually dissolving our human being internally.

And you see, when a person eats in a certain way, in that for a while they get too little of food that contains enough nitrogen, then what happens is precisely what makes them so sleepy, and one of the gentlemen also asked me about that.

So this is due to the fact that we do not get enough nitrogen with our food. And that is why, in such a case, when we become too sleepy, we must try to take in more nitrogen-rich food. This can, of course, be done in a variety of ways. But it happens especially when we try to take in, say, cheese or egg white, that is, eggs. Then the nitrogen in us is repeatedly replenished. So we have to work in the human being so that he is able to work with that which is his I in this matter.

I said to you at the beginning today: the field can be there, cabbages can grow on it; but they will not grow if the person who cultivates the cabbages is not there. But the field must also be properly prepared. So our brain must contain the necessary substances so that our I can work inside it. But this I is connected with the whole wide range of forces in the universe that want something different. These cosmic forces constantly strive to turn us into hard stones, and we must dissolve again and again. If we could not dissolve, we would not be able to think, we would not come to self-awareness. It is in this dissolution that what we call our self-awareness exists.

You see, gentlemen, these questions must first be answered sensibly if we are to go further in a scientific way to a world view, if we want to know something about man in his relationship to the world. It is most important for the human being to grasp something that is connected with his dissolution. We see a person die, which means that he now completely dissolves as a physical human being. If we do not know that dissolution is taking place in us in every waking moment, we can never grasp what dissolution means, which takes place when a person dissolves in death.

So, first of all, you have to know, gentlemen, that we can actually dissolve ourselves continuously within ourselves through our ability to work against the forces of the world within us. The dissolution is only continually suspended because nutrition provides us with the substances through which we dissolve. But when man has become so that he can no longer dissolve the substances he has within him, then he dissolves himself. Then man becomes a corpse; then he dissolves himself.

When we meet again, we must ask: What is the case when a person dissolves himself? Today we have at least come so far as to know that there is a constant process of dissolution, and if we do not have the strength — because we have too little nitrogen in us — to dissolve the things that want to form in us from the cosmos, then our ego will first become unconscious or it will become drowsy. Being drowsy means that we cannot dissolve enough; we are overwhelmed by the power of deposition. And so, these forces increase,

But just as you are when you fall asleep, because you can wake up again, so you must not conclude the spiritual from what happens externally in the body. Just as nothing can happen to the machine without the human being being present, nothing can happen to the human being without the spirit being present. That is scientific, gentlemen; the other is unscientific. This is not something that I want to tell you; it is something that a person acquires who can really take the matter scientifically very seriously.

We will continue these reflections at the beginning of September. You will see that the matter goes far into the understanding of the human being, leading to it in all possible detours, so that you can understand the human being in everyday life. You will understand the human being quite differently when we talk further, on the basis of what we have already discussed for some time. The human being is repeatedly restored, he dissolves and so on. We will continue to look at this in the near future. Then you will already see what a human being actually looks like to a real scientist.