4. The Spirit, Soul, and Body of Man

I have thus indicated to you how the true observer, who has risen to true self-observation, can perceive the working of the human soul forces and spirit forces in the spiritual realm. By advancing with his methods, he can get to know the self that he experiences within himself in this self-observation, with which he carries out the self-observation, just as one gets to know the ordinary, everyday self. This self cannot be recognized through philosophical speculation; it can only be experienced. When it is experienced, one learns through direct observation what I have now sketched out in outline. The person with ordinary consciousness cannot help but believe, when he or she considers only the growing, sprouting, budding forces of development, that as the child grows out of the dull state of consciousness and gradually begins to say “I,” to become self-conscious at all, what is expressed in the soul as the “I” gradually develops out of the developmental processes of the body. saying “I,” gradually coming to self-consciousness, what is expressed in the soul as the “I” gradually develops from the developmental processes of the body. For those who come to know the I through true self-observation, it becomes clear that this is erroneous — but it is a necessary error for ordinary consciousness — just as it would be erroneous to believe that because a person has air in their lungs, the air they exhale rises out of their lungs. Here, one can already learn through external, actual observation that it would be nonsense to regard the air connected with the human lungs as something that springs from the human lungs. If one wants to recognize the air, one must go out of the lungs; if one wants to recognize the air in its own essence, one must move to the external airspace. One does the same thing when one has ascended to self-observation in the manner characterized here. There one learns to recognize that what takes place in the body in the continuous sprouting, budding processes of development relates to the human ego, to the true self, in the same way as the lungs relate to the air. Just as the lungs are not creators of air, so the human body is not in any way a creator of the I. Only as long as one does not know the real spiritual-soul nature does one come to the necessary error of thinking that this I has something to do with the body. But through his methods of researching the I, the spiritual researcher goes out of the body, just as someone who wants to observe the air for himself goes out of the lungs. In this way, the spiritual researcher comes to recognize through real observation how this self, this spiritual-soul aspect of the human being — if I may use a figurative expression — enters the physical body at birth or conception, which it receives through the stream of heredity, just as this I, which descends from the spiritual world, maintains the body, just as the lungs maintain the air. or conception, which it receives through the stream of heredity, how this I, which descends from the spiritual world, receives the body, just as the lungs are added to the air, so that the body inhales this I, and when the human being passes through the gate of death, exhales it again. This is a pictorial expression for the connection between the spiritual-soul, which descends from the spiritual world, and the physical-bodily. Just as, when one gets to know the essence of air, one does not seek this essence in the external airspace, but in the lungs, so too, once one has truly gotten to know the I, one does not seek the essence of the spiritual-soul I in the external physical body.