Lecture I

What I have shown you here for the act of seeing, continuously occurs in the human organism. Continuously in the human organism the etheric body—I would like to say—under the impulse of the physical body and on the waves of the living water, meets the astral body with all that which outer impressions are under the impulse of the ego. On the ways and means, how these two currents meet our whole human constitution, our-whole inner situation depends, because they have to meet in the right way. What does that mean: to meet in the right way? Well, we have to deal again with something extraordinarily complicated. The head-organization of man is, at first so (see diagram 1) that the head is a plastic image of the forces which man had as a soul-spiritual being in pre-earthly life. The head is formed by plastic forces, it is also developed very early during embryonic life, and it retains really only the power to give form. If the human head did not have this power to give form ( zu gestalten) it would be indeed only a dead body. This human head is a marvelous creation ( Gebilde). It is a faithful impression of the physical, etheric, even of the astral and even of the ego; it is an image of their descent from super earthly worlds into earthly existence. The head forms itself truly as an image of those cosmic experiences, which man went through in pre-earthly existence and retains only the plastic formative forces. If we look at the child we see that all plastic formative forces start from the head. Man receives from his head radiating into the remaining organism that which gives the plastic configuration to his organs during his growth correspondingly.