Thirteenth Lecture

One understands the activity of the senses only when one regards it in connection with what is no longer there at all: Saturn development, sun development, moon development. One understands human intelligence only when one regards it in connection with that which is no longer there at all: the development of the sun, the moon. One understands memory only when one regards it in connection with that which is no longer there at all: the old development of the moon. And from the earth, one only understands the appropriation of sensory activity, of intelligence, of memory by the I, because the I has only been incorporated into the human being during the time on earth. And the organs that have been formed in the human being during the time on earth are not there at all to convey his higher soul abilities, but to convey that these higher soul abilities reveal themselves in an I. We have eyes for an ego, ears for an ego, a nose for an ego, not a nose for smelling, which would be most correct, because it has been formed during the time on earth; but it is also no longer quite correct, because it will change during the time on earth. But we don't have eyes to see and ears to hear; we have ears so that a self can know something of what is going on in the ear, like a Morse telegraph is switched on here so that someone, not the Morse telegraph itself, can know something of what is being negotiated between A and C. By still saying today that we have eyes to see and ears to hear, and by clothing everything in this kind of language, we are talking about something that has no reality at all. We talk constantly in illusions, we talk in untruths. We do not know what we actually have our whole physical organization for. We do not have it to mediate the higher soul activities, but we have it so that the I can learn something from these higher soul activities. Our whole physical being is an image of the I. And we are constituted as we are because we are an I. In our outer form we are meant to become aware of the outer image of the I. For our body, as we now carry it, we have only received through the earth. And it is unthinkable that what the earth has not given us should be derived from the events of the earth, that the cause of it should be sought in the events of the earth.