II. The Mystery of the Head and That of the Lower Man

GA 225/1923-05-06/p019 ·1923-05-06 · English HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
Record: unknown. How this text was taken down (shorthand transcript, listeners' notes or manuscript) is not on record here. Unknown is not an assurance of a stenogram: check the edition's own notes before resting an argument on one word.

The matter that fills your head you have, of course, only taken up in this life. But the form, the supersensible forces that today round the eyes and turn up the nose, are the same forces that in the previous life formed arms and legs and the rest of the organism. That you can be seen by other people with physical senses is due to the fact that completely formless matter fills your form. It is not matter that gives you form. If you eat salt, the salt wants to be cubic, it does not want to be nose-shaped, nor eye-shaped, it wants to be cubic and so on. You do not owe the form in which you appear as a human being to the matter that is the basis of your physical visibility; but the form of your present head has really gone through metamorphoses, through the form of your organism, except for the head of the previous earth life. But that is why your head was really in an extraordinarily favorable situation. Because it has been so well treated in the universe, it is also the first to appear as a properly formed head in embryonic life. Just think, the head is very beautifully formed at first, while the other organs in the first embryonic life are really only attached to it as secondary organs. It must first be formed from the outside, and actually looks terrible in relation to the human form when you look at it, while the head is actually very beautifully formed from the very beginning. Of course, for someone who only recognizes the fully grown human being, the embryo's head will also have something unappealing about it, but actually it is already beautifully formed. This is because it brings its formative forces with it from the previous life.

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Cite: GA 225/1923-05-06/p019 · edition English