Lecture I

You see, in going upwards in man and coming to the head, we find a pace of life ( lebenstempe) which is four times slower than the one we find when we go, for example, to the organs of digestion, or, let us say, to the kidney-system. The kidney system works very fast and brings its inner working to the etheric, which swims on the waves of the living water. If man closes his eyes and subdues his brain consciously and then looks through that which flows out from the kidney; these are the imaginations, which swim on the living water—in such a way that his own inner life presents itself to him in imaginations. This is an extraordinarily interesting formation ( Gebilde). If there is here (see diagram 4) the kidney system, then from the kidney system the living water flows towards the whole organism. What is excreted there, is only the superfluous, which goes to the outside through the relatively solid influx; but at the same time, this living water, which is permeated by the etheric organism goes also towards the whole organism. But, when the kidney is sick, and because of the sick kidney a radiation which is too strong takes place, then all kinds of images will form in there and the well-known subjective phenomena will come about, that people with sick kidneys will show. What is working there, what basically is a thrust pulsated through by inner body warmth, what then meets with that which comes from the outside wanting to become a form, this works four times faster than what comes from the outside towards the inner. This shows itself again in certain periods of our life in so far as these periods are regarded as coming about from the etheric organism, which I have drawn here this way. We must speak of seven year periods as you know; of the change of teeth, of puberty and so on. But against these periodical rhythmic processes, which go on from seven to seven years, something coming from the head is working, that wants to slow down these processes, because the head is going at a much slower pace. The head arrives at the end of the 28th year only where the main organism of man is at the end of the seventh year. This is a very important secret of human individual development.