5. The Physical World as an Expression of Spiritual Forces and Beings.

If we now bear in mind the spiritual reality underlying conception, we must say that conception in itself is nothing else than a kind of deadening of the living forces of the etheric body. Death, at conception, is already woven into the human body. It is a happening that hardens, as it were, and deadens the etheric body, which otherwise would multiply ad infinitum. The etheric body, which originates from the female principle and would otherwise produce copies only, is densified as a result of the male influence and thereby becomes the producer of the new human individuality. Propagation consists in the production of a copy of the etheric body of the woman; through being hardened, in a certain respect killed, it is at the same time individualized. In the deadened etheric body there lies hidden the formative force that brings forth the new human being. Thus do conception and propagation amalgamate. Thus we see that two conceptions take place: below, the physical, human conception, and above, the conception of the archetype as the result of its own karma. We said that from the eighteenth to the twenty-first day after conception onwards the ego is already working on the embryo; but not until much later, after six months, do other forces also work on the embryo, forces that determine the karma of the human being. This can be expressed by saying that the web woven out of karma there takes hold; gradually these forces come into play. Now exceptions occur here, too, so that later on an exchange of the ego may take place. We will speak of that later. The ego is the first factor to intervene for the purpose of development.