8. The Human Form and Its Co-ordination of Forces

Thus we find our assertion justified, that the organs which represent an ascending process, the liver, the gallbladder, the spleen, as well as those representing in a certain sense a descending process, the lungs and the kidneys (although the lungs, in that they open themselves to the outer world, are at the same time the means of an ascending process; the individual organs are constantly in living reciprocal relationship, and we must not establish any hard and fast classification) we see how all these seven members of the inner human cosmic system are bound up with man's realisation of inner life, and with his opening of himself to the outer world. These seven members completely metamorphose, on the one hand, the vital activities peculiar to the nutritive substances into inner vital activities; and with these metamorphosed substances they provide for the human organism. They make it possible for man to reopen himself to the outer world. But, in addition to this, they bring it about that what he evolves as an excessively strong inner vital activity, which would not harmonise with the vital activity that penetrates into him from without, is brought into balance with this outer vital activity by being thrown off through the excretional processes of the lungs and the kidneys. So that we have before us the complete and regular control of the inner vital activities in this inner cosmic system of man. And in fact this entire relationship manifests itself in such a way that the best picture occultism can give us is to conceive the heart standing as the sun, at the centre, and caring for the three bodies of the inner cosmic system which signify the upward rising and upward bearing process. In the same way in which the sun is related to Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in the planetary system, so is the inner sun, the heart, related to Saturn, spleen; Jupiter, liver; and gall-bladder, Mars, in the human organism. I should have to speak, not for weeks but for months, if I were to explain all the reasons why the relationship of the sun to the outer planets of our planetary system may really be declared to be parallel, for an exact and intimate occult observation, to the relationship which the heart sustains in the human organism to the inner cosmic system, i.e., to the liver, the gall-bladder, and the spleen. For it is an absolute fact that the relationship existing in the outer cosmos has been so adopted into the organism that what goes on in the great world or macrocosm, in our solar system, is mirrored in the reciprocal action among these organs. And those processes which go on between the sun and the inner planets, working inwards from the sun to our earth, are again reflected in the relationship of the heart-sun to the lungs as Mercury, and to the kidneys as Venus. Thus we have in this inner human cosmic system something which mirrors the external cosmic system.