Man, Nature and the Cosmos

GA 91 — 28 August 1905, Berlin

21. The Future of the Seeing and Hearing

The ossicles initially consist of the hammer, which can strike another ossicle, the anvil. Another bone goes off, horseshoe-shaped, it's called the stirrup, and it finishes off with the oval window. This was the vestibule. From here go three arched canals, into which the auditory nerve opens. With these three arches we must remember that they go to the three directions of the space. Then come the cochlea, equipped with a fluid, and the labyrinth.

In contrast to the eye, we are dealing with the immediate object itself. This is a higher degree of going into the object.

We have not merely one sense in the ear, but basically two senses. When the canals are damaged and the arches become disordered, man gets vertigo; he cannot orient himself in the three dimensions of space. It is the sense of orientation, [gravitational sense]; this is even the older sense of the ear. Even in lower animals there are organs similar to half-hump-shaped canals, in which there are small stones, called otoliths, which move when the animal changes its position. In very lower animals, where there is no question of hearing, we find these small stones - the sense of orientation. Also already in plants we find cells, preferably in the root tip, which contain loosely lying small starch grains. These have a special task. Plants grow vertically out of the earth, in the upward direction of gravity. How do they find their way? They have a sense of direction through the starch grains. The root is the head of the plant, during the rotation the otoliths have formed. In the moon plants - like mistletoe, for example - we don't find them.

You see that the plant has one pole toward the earth, the other pole goes toward the sun. The leaves strive toward the sun; as far as they can, they stand perpendicular to the sun. The plant leaf is made up of cells; on the surface of green foliage leaves are cells which are somewhat convex toward the outside and flat toward the bottom. Each such cell is like a lens with the bright focal point in the center. Only when the lot is vertical, the focal point falls in the center, otherwise it falls back; it is like the eyes of insects.

So the plant seeks sun pole and earth pole. This is the peculiarity of the light beings or plant beings. Every prana being has these two poles, one to the ground on which it grows, the other to the source that gives it the life forces. As long as man was a solar being, he was like that. Man has turned around, thereby he has transformed his old sense, the gravitational sense, and now, on his entry into the mental, he has added the auditory sense and developed the corresponding organ through which he becomes a creator. To the hearing is added the larynx, a sense organ which becomes the organ of will. Both correspond to each other.

The earth brings forth gravitation, the ear perceives gravitation. Now the force is in the human being after he has torn himself away from the earth. The turned gravitational force in the spirit, the word, he must now bring forth.

With the organ of hearing we have already united two senses, and in addition an organ of expression, in order to express what we have heard. We cannot yet see this in the sense that is spread over the whole body, in the sense of touch. In it there are also two different senses: the sense for hard and for soft resistance as well as the sense for cold and warmth, temperature sense. The actual sense of touch is an ancient sense, like the sense of gravity. Even the simplest cell of the [skin] has a sense of touch. Sense of temperature occurs later, like the sense of sound to the sense of gravity. Here we see how the human being is in development. The ear has already got its larynx, the skin has not yet got what corresponds to it. In the human head an organ is preparing itself which will spread warmth around it, just as the larynx brings forth sound, a very small body, the so-called mucous body, which in the future will stretch out over the whole body.

A third sense is the eye, it does not yet have the organ corresponding to it, even the second sense, it is still far behind. The second sense [of the eye] is clairvoyance, and an organ will come to its side, which today is already predisposed in the brain, it will turn the images of the eye into realities. This organ is called the pineal gland.

Man will make the word a real object by permeating it with warmth. Man's present thoughts create his organs.