Lecture I

One of the basic phenomena of the future understanding of man will be precisely this, how man descends from a spiritual life through birth, how he lives in his physical existence between birth and death and lives a social life with society, and then returns to the spiritual world through death. There it is a question of understanding already once this man as such really in his threefoldness. The present anatomist, the present physiologist, has man before him; for him a muscle in the head is the same as a muscle in the arm. He does not divide man into his three parts, he knows nothing about it, this present natural scientist, how man's origin comes from three sources. He does not ask properly, therefore he does not come to a proper answer, for example, what man has from the mother and what from the father. We have often spoken about the matter, today we can again speak about the matter from a certain point of view. You know, when man lives in this ordinary life, he lives in two different states of life or consciousness. While awake, the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the ego interpenetrate each other. In sleep, the physical body and the astral body are in bed; in the spiritual world, the I and the astral body are in bed. In the morning the ego and the astral body again unite with the physical body and the atheric body. Consider the human being who, when he sleeps, lies in bed without the ego and without the astral body. Of course, this is not a human being; but it is something essential of the human being who lives on the physical earth. You can separate very precisely from the whole man that which is there of the man who lives on the physical earth when he sleeps, and which manifests itself in the physical body and etheric body. Let us now first look away from the whole man, let us look at that which lies in bed at night, when the ego and the astral body are gone, and let us ask about the origin of this man, which consists of the physical body and etheric body, which lies in bed at night, let us ask about its next origin: Where does it come from? It is only a piece of man, but where does it come from? - What lies there in bed comes according to its disposition, its powers, not as it is first formed in the full human being, in the adult human being, but according to its dispositions, its powers, it comes from the mother and is already with the mother before any fertilization. That which merely comes in through the woman is that which then lies fully grown in the bed of man when he sleeps. That is not a human being; but it cannot become a human being either, what comes only from the mother.