10. The Supernatural Human Being III

What I have just described as the devolution of the human head and sensory organization has a polar opposite in the human organization. Just as everything I have now characterized is based on a devolution that reverses evolution, so everything in humans that is connected with the development of their extremities — hands and feet and everything connected with them, that is, everything that is a continuation of the extremities inward, which is a great deal — represents another extreme in humans and their organism. For those who have eyes to see what is around them, human feet and especially hands are truly wonderfully formed things, even if the crude view that sees only the four monkey hands and, slightly transformed, the human extremities, does not notice the wonder of human hands and feet at all. For what underlies the human extremities does not undergo a regression, a devolution; rather, it shows the peculiarity that it goes beyond the measure of the organism's other evolution — with the exception of the head. The extremities undergo over-development, they go beyond the point to which the head and the rest of the organism go; as the rest of the organism degenerates, the extremities develop a kind of perseverance, shooting beyond the usual measure. What is physiologically connected with the evolution of the human extremities represents an over-development that goes beyond the ordinary, viewed through a faculty of knowledge that is built up in three stages. This knowledge reveals, in relation to the human organization connected with the miraculous structure of the extremities, that one can only approach it by advancing to imaginative knowledge. Only when one no longer views the human being in relation to his extremities as external physiology alone can view him, but when one comes to the spiritual foundation of the extremities, does one discover how a spiritual element is also present there. But just as what is contained in thinking already announces itself as inspiration – it is there in a very rudimentary form – so it is with the extremities. But here, what actually wants to come out, what over-development brings about, can only be grasped in images; it can only be perceived in this way. Of course, with this insight, one does not need to stop at the image, but one takes the image and tries to get behind it. And there lies the true reality! One advances from the image to the corresponding inspiration and to the corresponding intuition. What does one discover there? One discovers what is present in every human soul in an indefinite way, like a dark feeling — precisely as unconscious imagination — but which, when grasped through inspiration and intuition, represents the essential nature that goes out into the spiritual world when a person passes through the gate of death. That is where the spiritual part of our future lies. This seed is the breeding ground for what we need after death. And that is why over-development exists, because otherwise development would cease with death. This is the reason for the transition, which is necessary in order to have a spiritual-soul organization after death.