Lecture I

Let us consider the human soul. In the sense of spiritual science we have a short word which, although it does not embrace all that the expression “human soul” signifies for us, points to something which for us men of Earth fills and permeates the soul element to its farthest limits—we have the short word “I”. In so far as we are men of Earth, our ego-being reaches as far as does our soul-nature. You know that by the name “I”, or ego, we denote one of the four most immediate principles of man. We speak, in the first instance, of four members or principles of the human being—the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the ego. And in order to have the starting-point for what we shall be considering in these lectures, we need recall only one thing: we do not regard the laws and the living essence of the physical body of man as explicable in terms of our present earthly environment.