IX. The Higher Spiritual World

If we now assume, as we have done above, that the formative forces for the organs of life and the predispositions for the sense organs lie in the lower spiritual world, then a distinction arises for the formative forces of the organs of life prevailing in this world between those that presuppose an internalized substance and those that shape their organs for the absorption of the substance from outside. It is easy to see that the latter are a prerequisite for the former. For if matter itself did not possess the potential to become internalized, it could not become active within itself. Thus, forces must prevail in matter that enable it to evoke counter-effects from what is external to it. The above description has shown that matter can produce such counter-effects in itself. The reversed senses of life, of self-movement and of equilibrium carry within them the hidden possibility of acting in such a way that, in order to produce internal formations, they are active as substance itself, without using the internal formative principles as such. They act, after all, not only within, but also outside their measure. If we now imagine these three inverted sensory activities as being so effective that they do not encounter any internally formed organ, but remain in the character of their effectiveness, then they reach a boundary where they must return into themselves. At this boundary, therefore, the material would throw itself back into itself; it would be inhibited in itself. At this boundary, what could be called materiality in materiality would be given. And this points to the possibility of how the organs that need inner substance arise out of a world in which the material-outer becomes material-inner. In this world, the first rudiments would have to lie both for those organs of the life process that are supplied by internalized substance and for those that need external substance. And the forces that bring the external substance to the interior should already have the potential for this internalization. Just as the forces in the organs of life themselves point to a world of other forces, from which the organs of life are first formed, so the internal flow of matter in the organs of life points to potentialities from an even higher world, from which they are formed. We are led to point to an outer world which, through the contrast between the sense of life, the sense of self-movement and the sense of equilibrium, can spark an inner world within itself. This world, however, can be called the “higher spiritual world”. What would be sought in it? Not forces that shape organs of life in the first place, but those that implant in their structures the potential to become organs of life. These forces, however, are to be thought of as the opposites of the sense of equilibrium, the sense of self-movement and the sense of life. If these forces are stopped before they reach the limit of their effectiveness, through inner formative processes in organs that are already being formed, then they shape the sense organs of hearing, of sound and of concept out of such organ predispositions. What happens when they reach the limit of that activity which lies in their own character? If the sense of life that is turned inwards did not encounter something in the organ of concepts that it only has to reshape, then it would obviously lead the conceptual experience back into itself. And in its reflection, it would immediately encounter itself. It would be the same as in a sensory experience, but it would have an independent existence without an underlying sensory organ. The same could be said for the sense of balance and equilibrium when reversed. In the higher spiritual world, we would thus find sense experiences that are at rest in themselves and which prove to be related to those sense experiences to which the human being in the physical world is closest with his ego, the experiences of the sense of concept, sound and hearing. But those experiences are as if there were not, as it were, a human ego standing before them and taking them in, but as if there were a being behind them that creates them in its own activity.