Spiritual scientific physiology

This topic page brings together various descriptions by Rudolf Steiner about the holistic physiological functioning of the human being, linking with the other topic pages and their aspects; see 'study process' note under Aspects.

Central in this are the human organs and their role, the seven life processes, and how they link into each other as described in the three functional subsystems of Man, see (the structural page) Man as a threefold being (and complementary page focusing on process Threefold working in Man);

• the nerve-sense subsystem - with the sense organs
• the rhythmic subsystem - with organs heart and lungs
• the metabolic-limb subsystem - with ao liver and gall, large and small intestines

For an introduction on study sources, see below: Spiritual scientific physiology#Overview

Aspects

study process

• the physiological processes in Man can be described in terms of
  • the process flow of the intake (sensory input through the senses, food-stuff), processing (metabolism, working of impressions through the threefold soul), and excretion .. and the role of the key organs in the process chain - not just as physical organs but also in their workings as etheric and astral organs and part of the I-organization
  • alchemy, and the main mineral elements (oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen) as related to silica (quartz), clay/lime, sulphur and albumen
    • see also more on: Working of substances and their forces
    • Schema FMC00.556 (tetractys) depicts the fact that alchemy adds the etheric formative processes to the minerals, so the scope is the full spectrum of elements and ethers (and not just mineral substances)
  • the organs as an inner planetary system (Schema FMC00.160) - the link with the metals and the etheric influences or formative forces from the planetary spheres (see eg FMC00.015A (in light yellow) or FMC00.419 below)
• the complementary integrative topic page Man: an integrated view brings together how the three subsystems connect to the four main bodily principles, as this has indeed to be considered in at least a twodimensional view (4 x 3 matrix)

organs

• the surface of the organs
  • are a mirroring apparatus for the life of the soul: what we perceive and process is reflected on the organs outer surfaces and makes up our memories. All organs are involved differently, eg lungs in remembering very abstract thoughts, liver for emotionally coloured thoughts (1921-07-02-GA205)
• organs represent resistances in the human organism that create consciousness of inner life ...unusable portions of the physical substance are thrust away (secretion) in contrast with the usable portions .. "if no resistance were offered through the organs,the human organism would not be conscious within itself of its own inner life but would experience itself only as belonging to the great world as a whole" (1911-03-24-GA128)
• the seven organs
  • reach as an actual fact down into the action of the ether-body and have taken into themselves, from above, the influence of the I (1911-03-28-GA128)
  • completely metamorphose the vital activities peculiar to the nutritive substances into inner vital activities; and with these metamorphosed substances they provide for the human organism (1911-03-28-GA128)
  • bring it about that what Man evolves as an excessively strong inner vital activity, (which would not harmonise with the vital activity that penetrates into him from without), is brought into balance with this outer vital activity by being thrown off through the excretional processes (of the lungs and the kidneys)
• organs and metals
  • certain metals have their respective kinship with the organs in the upper blood-organisation (1911-03-28-GA128)
    • that which in the lungs opens itself upward into the larynx acts as a Mars- or iron-system in the larynx (which contains upper part of lungs)
    • the upper part of our head containing the brain-formation corresponds in the upper course of the blood, to the position of Jupiter-liver (tin) in the lower course of the blood; so that we have here a correspondence between the fore-part of the head in the upper course of the blood, and tin or Jupiter
    • similarly between the back of the head and lead or Saturn
• organs and effects of Earth and meteorology: lungs, liver, bladder and heart: are organs that open our human organism from within and thus bring Man into relationship with what happens at a certain nearness to our Earth's surface (1920-03-29-GA312)
  • As a general rule the organs which open to the external meteorological sphere are those farthest from the surface and most deeply internal. The chief amongst them is the liver, and all the vesicular structures, especially represented by the bladder itself, the bladder being extremely important pathologically.
• inner and outer organs
  • organs which open themselves to the external world: heart (through the lungs), the alimentary canal (food stuffs), the organs in the head (serve as the organs of the senses) (1911-03-28-GA128)
• correspondence between lower bodily organs and head and brain
  • for each such nexus of functions (such as liver activity) in the lower body, there is a corresponding activity in the human head or brain. Whereas in the lower body the physical organs are relatively separated .. in the brain everything flows together, so the head is the great synthesizer of everything that is going on in the organism. And the effect of all this synthesized activity is a destructive process, a process of breaking down. Substance falls away. (1924-06-25-GA317) - see also Matter is destroyed in the brain
• organs and human character or temperament (various sources)
  • "with a correct instinct – the ancients pointed to something organic when it came to the temperaments. They derived the choleric temperament from white bile, the melancholic from black bile and all that black bile causes in the abdomen. They then derived the sanguine temperament from blood and the phlegmatic temperament from what they called mucus." (1920-04-07-GA073A)
  • In ancient Greece (Hippocrates, Galen), the concept of the four humors linked temperament to bodily fluids and their associated organs.
    • yellow bile (liver): thought to cause a choleric temperament: ambitious, aggressive, and sometimes irritable. The liver, associated with bile production, was tied to assertiveness and anger.
    • blood (heart): associated with a sanguine temperament, meaning someone who is sociable, optimistic, and lively. The heart, believed to be the source of blood, was linked to joy and vitality.
    • black Bile (spleen): associated with a melancholic temperament, leading to introspection, sensitivity, and sadness. The spleen, believed to be the source of black bile, was linked with reflective, often sorrowful moods.
    • phlegm (brain or lungs): linked to a phlegmatic temperament, where a person is calm, patient, and thoughtful. The brain or lungs, responsible for producing phlegm, was associated with peacefulness and introspection.
  • In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), specific organs are considered the seats of different emotions and traits, and an imbalance in these organs affects both physical health and emotional stability:
    • liver: associated with anger .. it was believed that an overactive liver could lead to irritability or frustration, while a balanced liver would support creativity and kindness.
    • heart: linked with joy, mental clarity and enthusiasm .. an imbalance in the heart was believed to affect both joy and consciousness, possibly leading to manic behaviors or excessive laughter.
    • spleen: connected to worry and overthinking .. excessive rumination was believed to weaken the spleen, impacting digestion and leading to fatigue.
    • lungs: associated with sadness and grief. Issues with lungs could lead to prolonged sadness or difficulty processing loss.
    • kidneys: linked to fear; a healthy kidney system supports courage, while imbalances could lead to anxiety and insecurity.

system of heart - lungs - kidneys

• relationship or correspondence between inner cosmic system or organs and outer planetary forces or influences: system of heart (inner Sun) – lungs (inner Mercury) and kidneys (inner Venus) (1911-03-28-GA128)
• the I-organization .. receives the products of digestion primarily as a result of the working of liver and gall. The development of liver and gall runs absolutely parallel with the degree to which the I-organization unfolds in a living being. All that enters into man through the absorption of foodstuff is carried into the astral organism by the kidney system. The products of digestion are received into the I-organization primarily as a result of the working of liver and gall .. the warmth and the warmth-organisation in the system of liver and gall radiate out in such a way that man is permeated with the I-organization, and this is bound up with the differentiations of warmth in the organism as a whole. (1922-10-27-GA314; from I-organization#1922-10-27A-GA314)

heart

• see:
  • The human heart and Mystery of the Heart and The heart's two blood circuits
  • Damming up between heart and brain and Between heart and brain

lungs

• see: Human breathing
• lung activity corresponds to an earth process (1920-03-31-GA312)

kidneys

• balancing regulator between upper and lower organs, has an intimate relationship to the astral body (Schema FMC00.160, GA 218)
• the kidney system makes that what is taken in as food stuffs (ingestion), is brought into the astral organism in Man (1922-10-27A-GA314; from I-organization#1922-10-27A-GA314)
• are like the thinking 'inner brain', radiating into the human astral body, deliver a kind of formative radiation into the human organism (Schema FMC00.513)
• through the kidneys Man excretes the metamorphosed substances which must be removed from the blood in order that he may have an inner perception of his own entity and rise to a really conscious I (1911-03-28-GA128)
• kidneys correspondence with inner Venus (1911-03-28-GA128, Schema FMC00.161)
• kidney activity corresponds to an air process
  • the aerial activities correspond to all that appertains to the kidney system in its widest sense, including all urinary functions. The innermost part of this functional system, the kidney itself, is connected with the air supply and thus shortness of breath can arise ... the deeper causes of respiratory disturbance and shortness of breath must be sought for in the kidney system. (1920-03-31-GA312)

system of liver - gallbladder - spleen

• liver, the gallbladder, the spleen represent an ‘ascending process’ and directly confront the nutritional stream and so metamorphose it that it is capable of advancing to the higher stages of the human organisation, and also caring for the organs which open themselves to the external world (1911-03-28-GA128)
• the relationship with which the heart (inner-Sun) sustains in the human organism to the inner cosmic system, i.e., to the spleen (inner Saturn), liver (inner Jupiter) and gall-bladder (inner Mars).. corresponds to the way in which the sun relates  to Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in the planetary system (1911-03-28-GA128)
• the kidney system makes that what is taken in as food stuffs (ingestion), is brought into the astral organism in Man ... afterwards it is taken into the I-organization by the liver and gall system (1922-10-27A-GA314; from I-organization#1922-10-27A-GA314)
• the I-organization receives the products of digestion primarily as a result of the working of liver and gall. The development of liver and gall runs absolutely parallel with the degree to which the I-organization unfolds in a living being. (1922-10-27-GA314)

spleen

• function of the spleen as regulator, example of physical lab confirmation of a prediction following from spiritual science (mentioned multiple times, oa 1923-01-05-GA348, 1924-02-09-GA352, 1924-03-29-GA239 see below)
• the astral body has ‘in a very special manner’ a strong share in the spleen (1912-04-10-GA136)
• the spleen is the first of the three organs, to present itself to the blood (first spleen, second liver, third gallbladder), the spleen can be called 'saturnine' or represent an inner Saturn in Man (1911-03-21-GA128, 1911-03-23-GA128)
• In the middle-ages the spleen, linked with melancholy (see above), was believed to be the source of darker emotions and morose character.

liver

• one ought to always speak of hepatic activity or activity of the liver, for what we see as liver is nothing but a liver process that has become fixed (1924-06-25-GA317)
• Man contains a chemist (that functions similar to the extra-telluric region working on elements and ethers), this function that contains the source of chemical action is highly localised in the liver (1920-03-31-GA312) .. it absorbs liquefied nutritions into blood, absorbs and retains CO2, and secrets bile continuously (like the eyes secret tears) (Schema FMC00.513) ... empties through the gall-bladder into the duodenum
  • on the one hand, it exercises a form of suction, determining the composition of the blood (1920-03-31-GA312)
    • discharge of blood veins into liver: "the human I, through its instrument the blood, reaches down even to the nutritive processes from the first beginnings. This occurs through the fact that the system of veins discharges into the liver, and that out of this modified blood the gall is prepared, which then comes into direct contact with the nutritional system" (1911-03-28-GA128)
  • on the other hand, by means of the secretion of the gall, it regulates the process leading to blood formation (1920-03-31-GA312)
    • the liver has an intimate relationship to the human 'I' .. the liver with gall secretion drives into the I-organization (Schema FMC00.160)
• just like the eyes look outside, the liver looks inwards (subconsciously)
  • its activity varies in the course of the year: culminating in activity in the winter (Christmas and New Year) and in a kind of soul sleep only carrying our physical activities in the summer with a slower digestive system (1922-09-13-GA347
  • like an inner eye, organ of perception that goes on in the process of digestion (Schema FMC00.513)
  • every person is actually two human beings in one: one who looks out through the eyes and one who looks inside through the liver. If you look at the distribution of the veins in the liver, you'll see that, in a sense, the liver looks towards our back. This is why we perceive so little of what goes on inside us. Just as we can't see what is behind us, so the liver isn't fully conscious of what it is looking at. (1922-09-13-GA347; from The three Logoi#1922-09-13-GA347)
• liver activity corresponds to a water process - countering the first part of the digestive process
  • all that is associated with the fluid (watery) element has its deeper causation in the liver system, eg thirst is associated with the liver (1920-03-31-GA312)
  • the liver's action operates as encapsulation, encirclement and re-transformation of what has been done in the first part of the digestive process. This in contrast to the dissolving effect in the first region of the digestive process.
    • So the dissolving effect of bodily fluids upon the foodstuffs has its counter-process in the special activities of the liver and the spleen .. the hepatic and splenetic activities have to be associated, in the main, with aqueous and fluid activities.
    • Image of the action which begins after the absorption of foodstuffs into the blood and lymph channels, and is controlled from the liver, with its close association with Man's astral body. (1920-04-09-GA312)
      • One may obtain a picture of what happens if one looks at the effect produced by throwing a handful of salt into warm water. The salt disperses and dissolves .. this is an image of the action in the digestive tract, until the foodstuffs are absorbed into the blood-vessels and lymph channels. Now place beside the salt and water, some little globules of quicksilver, with their imperative urge to roundness, to completion, to organising and shaping. Or, once again: think on the one hand of drops of quicksilver, and boiling liquid on the other, in constant evaporation and giving forth steam (which we might term phosphoric-sulphurous action), a process in which inorganic matter is kindled. Then one has the activity developed in the opposite group of organs, that is to say in the lower sphere, but also in all that is associated with the lungs in the upper Man.
• strongly influenced by etheric body
  • the etheric body takes an essential part in the organisation and structure of the liver .. the liver is also permeated by the astral body (as water does a sponge) but the astral body has no special share in the formation or inner configuration of the liver (1912-04-10-GA136)
  • the liver possesses etheric organs and it is these latter which have to do with music: "a great difference exists between the liver of a musician and that of a non-musician" for the liver is closely concerned with the act of listening .. os closely connected with all that may be summed up as the musical conceptions that live and resound in Man (1920-04-23-GA201)
  • the outer physical liver is, in a certain sense, an externalisation of the etheric liver, and its form is like the form of the latter (1920-04-23-GA201)
  • The liver has a specific esoteric connection with the etheric body and the Prometheus saga symbolises these occult connections. A vulture gnaws at Prometheus's liver: the vulture symbolises kama, which destroys the forces of the fifth race. The vulture gnaws at the human liver as the basis of life; so does this force of the fifth epoch's humanity gnaw at the essential life-forces of Man, as Man is chained to mineral nature (1904-10-07-GA092; from Greek mythology#1904-10-07-GA092)
• related to inner Jupiter (1911-03-21-GA128, 1911-03-23-GA128)
• illnesses
  • when the development of the liver has not been complete (or in accordance with the good development of the model) in the second seven-year period of development, one may find defects in the will (1924-06-25-GA317)
• various
  • In the 12-14th century the liver activity becomes most important, whereas before it was the kidney activity .. the transition from the kidney activity to the liver activity takes place in this period. a change from 'dullness' to 'illumination' (see Spiritual scientific physiology#1922-10-22-GA218)

gall

• the gall is the physical expression of the astral body. It is not bound up with the I, but the I works on the astral body, and from this the forces work on the gall (1908-09-12-GA106; from Greek mythology#1908-09-12-GA106)
• two extremes of the human organisation : nutritional stream and the human I/blood in opposition:
  • in the gall we have the I setting itself in direct opposition to the nutritional stream - the gall is prepared by the blood (as the instrument of the I) through the roundabout way of the liver; and in the gall the I opposes the nutritional stream (1911-03-28-GA128)
• the gall and the liver are the organs connected with this development that the I made its entry. When the I entered into the astral body and wholly permeated it, certain organs took form in Man and in the animals that branched off later. (1908-09-12-GA106; from Greek mythology#1908-09-12-GA106)
• the gallbladder is called an inner Mars (1911-03-21-GA128, 1911-03-23-GA128)
• gallstones are mineral stones produced in the gallbladder (hardened pieces of bile) that form in the gallbladder or bile ducts when there's an imbalance in the composition of bile. Main types of gallstones are cholesterol stones, bilirubin stones, and brown stones.

Inspirational quotes

1910-03-30-GA119

different organs [example described: heart and brain] must be differently viewed because they are at different stages of development. As long as we are without a science of anatomy which studies the various organs not merely in spatial juxtaposition but according to their value as older or younger formations, we shall not understand much about the true nature of Man.

short extract on: D00.003 - Systemic aspects of the study process#1910-03-30-GA119 1924-01-07-GA316

The reality is that only the bony system is physical; the muscles are etheric, the organs are astral.

see extract on: Human skeleton#1924-01-09-GA316

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.513 provides an overview on the main process through which the human being sustains his physical body during incarnate life.

The narrative to this mind map is given by the two main lectures provided in the lower corners: 1922-08-05-GA347 (left) and 1922-10-22-GA218 (right - see also Schema FMC00.160 for another view), with additional complementary lecture references provided.

Whereas the left downward destructive process is well-studied in contemporary medical science (see mineral science), a true understanding of the renewal of Man's bodies - see the right upward constructive process - requires a spiritual scientific perspective. The latter can also not be read twodimensionally, rather the process needs to be imagined, as Man's bodily principles are not physically located or corresponding to specific parts of Man's physical body. So for the etheric and astral bodies, and the I-organization, certain organs play a main role, but effect the whole bodily principle and even work from the higher to the lower bodily principles. For this last point, see Schema FMC00.415A on Man: an integrated view or also: Schema FMC00.245 (which is key) and FMC00.415 on I-organization (and in second instance see also Schema FMC00.477 and FMC00.283 on Group souls of humanity). Streams [A] and [B] at the output of the intestines need to be superimposed on all that imaginatively.

This main schema can be used to branch off to the study of various related topics:

• when contemplating the schema, overlay this with the seven life processes and the etheric formative forces (see also The Elementary Kingdoms) or higher ethers (eg Schema FMC00.015 below for a complementary view, or Schema FMC00.419)
• nutrition and the alchemy in the human body (eg 1924-08-02-GA354 and 1924-09-13-GA346)
• transmutation of substances in the human body (see table on the lower left in the schema)
• the formation of organs - see the two etheric streams (eg Schema FMC00.051 and the 1920-05-14-GA201 description for the human heart)
• the use of the brain as a vehicle for waking consciousness, see Damming up between heart and brain and Schema FMC00.033A; and related Matter is destroyed in the brain and 1922-08-09-GA347 which describes the process of continuous depositing and destruction of minerals ('brain-sand', more also in 1922-09-09/16-GA347)
• for the outstreamings of the human body due to its decay and/or excretion and radiation: the transitory fleeting destruction (senses, glands, digestion) on the left, and the slower outstreaming into the world (due to decay of nerves, muscles, bones) on the right, see also Schema FMC00.514 from the amazing 1911-12-31-GA134 lecture
• the creation of the blood (and the rest of the mineral physical body, from spiritual to mineral substance due to the Luciferic effect) - see Blood is a special fluid and the reverse (from mineral back to etherization) see etherization of blood
• the forming of the bony system and skeleton and the production of blood, see oa Spiritual scientific physiology#Skeleton (oa for the relation to the warm red blood and waking consciousness - see 1924-01-07-GA352)

Schema FMC00.542 illustrates the process of breathing air and the two streams of oxygen and nitrogen combining with liquid carbon in the human body and giving rise to processes generating carbonic acid and cyanic acid. Click twice and open in new tab to enlarge.

• from the intake of oxygen (remnant of the separation of the moon): the carbonic acid stream 'flows up' to combine with sodium and iron to carbonic iron (and links Man to the moon); this is why 'soda in the head-nerve subsystem' is linked to thinking.
• from the intake of nitrogen (remnant of the separation of the Sun: the cyanic acid stream 'flows down' to combine with calcium oxides (lime) to generate cyanide (and links Man to the sun); this links to the limb system and willing.

Note this schema focuses on the stream of coarse breathing of air as part of the middle rhythmic subsystem of Man. The silica and calcium processes (see above head and below the figure) are polar opposites related more typically to the head-nerve and metabolic-limb systems, though these processes work in the whole human body and affect all three subsystems (see 1921-04-11-GA313 and 1920-03-29-GA312 and other schemas).

Schema FMC00.160 gives an overview on the main organs and their interrelationships, with an analogy to the planets of the solar system not shown here (lungs mercury, heart sun, kidney venus, gall mars, liver jupiter, spleen saturn - see also Schema FMC00.161 on seven life processes.

For the sequence below heart+lungs -> kidney -> liver, see also right part of Schema FMC00.513.

For the role of oxygen (<-> etheric) and nitrogen (<-> astral), see also Schema FMC00.467 on Mineral kingdom.

FMC00.015A shows threefold Man and how the three main intake processes lie at the basis of Thinking, Feeling and Willing (TFW). It shows also how the subsystem processes are linked (green arrows), and how at each stage part of the etheric flows is stopped et the exhalation stage (red line).

Furthermore the schema allows to contemplate Man: an integrated view with the matrix linkeage between fourfold Man (above, re: the four elements) and the Man as a threefold being (below, with three subsystems).

Schema FMC00.514 illustrates another excerpt from the important lecture 1911-12-31-GA134 that positions physical blood and the impact of the luciferic infection. The simple schema makes the distinction between how Man functions on a daily basis with the short term process of sense perception and metabolism, and the continuous but slow outstreaming of intuition, inspiration and imagination into the world and cosmos due to our actions and activities and the longer term decay. See also Schema FMC00.513, and compare with Schema FMC00.492, as well as Schema FMC00.389A on Clairvoyant research of akashic records.

Regarding the outstreaming of these spiritual influences: in this lecture, Rudolf Steiner describes that some sensitive persons can have a sense of feeling awareness of the energies by people or left in a room.

Schema FMC00.543: captures how 'the decaying spiritual wave that crashes into mineral matter' (1911-12-31-GA134, see Schema FMC00.582) gives rise to different types of matter depending on how Man's bodily principles are balanced (left), and how the spiritual structure was created by the different spiritual hierarchies and is now filled with physical matter as a result of the Luciferic infection (right).

For the description, see reference lecture extract The nature of atoms#1911-12-30-GA134.

Also compare with related schemas FMC00.514, FMC00.392, FMC00.492.

Schema FMC00.543A: is a simplified version of Schema FMC00.543 showing less detail, for ease of mapping and linking with other reference Schemas.

Schema FMC00.419 is an illustration from the lecture by Karl König where his description refers to the 1924-09-14-GA318 lecture (left), and also describes the flows in terms of chemical elements (right) and glands in the subsystems of Man.

Schema FMC00.157 illustrates the blood circulation through the upper four organs (Holtzapfel, see references below)

Schema FMC00.161 maps the planetary influences to the life functions of the human etheric body.

Schema FMC00.595: shows an experiment by Rudolf Hauschka to show the effect of cosmic nutrition and the etheric formative (life) forces, by comparing growth of seedlings immersed directly into solutions of substances vs indirectly in their spheres of radiation. Graphs show average length of shoots after 10 days of experiment in solutions with different potencies D4 to D8. Above the line is shown the avg. length of leaves, below the line the avg. length of roots.

Substances on the left are brain and eye as organs of the nerve-sense subsystems. They promote growth when raying in influences from the surrounding sphere, whereas they have no effect in direct application.

Substance on the right is spleen as organ for the metabolic-limb subsystem. Take up is largest for direct immersion versus radiation influence.

Taken from the book 'Nutrition' by Rudolf Hauschka as another excellent example of experiments confirming the spiritual scientific knowledge paradigm or hypothesis in the physical lab, without any need for higher cognition. Other examples are Schema FMC00.011, Schema FMC00.012 and Schema FMC00.527.

Lecture coverage and references

Overview

• A basis is 1911-03-GA128: An Occult Physiology (8 lectures) taken together with 1910-GA045
• a second foundational basis is given in the 8 lectures of 1922-10-GA314: Anthroposophical Approach to Medicine (though that GA volume includes more beyond this in a therapeutic context). However for especially the two lectures (AM and PM) of 1922-10-27-GA314 provide an overall general coverage, so they are provided below. This coverage can be taken together with another description of just five days before, see 1922-10-22-GA218.
• furthermore see also - to initialize one's understanding, the four key lectures proposed for initializing study on Threefold working in Man

Reference source extracts

1910-GA045

Contents of 'Anthroposophy: A Fragment' includes

• Ch 2 - Man as a Sensory Organism
• Ch 3 - The World Underlying the Senses
• Ch 4 - The Life Process
• Ch 5 - Processes in the Human Interior
• Ch 6 - The I-Experience
• Ch 7 - The World Underlying the Sense Organs
• Ch 8 - The World Underlying the Vital Organs
• Ch 9 - The Higher Spiritual World
• Ch 10 - The Shape of Man

plus appendices

1911-03-21-GA128

The systems of organs, or systems of instruments, of the human organism to be considered first in this connection, must be the apparatus of nutrition and all that lies between this apparatus and that wonderful structure the heart, which we readily experience as a sort of central point of the whole human organism. And here even a superficial glance shows us at once that these systems of instruments, especially the apparatus of nutrition as we may call it in everyday speech, are intended to take in the substances of our external, earthly world and prepare them for further digestive work in the physical organism of Man.

We know that this apparatus of digestion begins by extending downward from the mouth, in the form of a tube, to the organ which everyone knows as the stomach. And a superficial observation teaches us that, from those articles of food which are conveyed through this canal into the stomach, the portions which are to a certain extent unassimilated are simply excreted, whereas other portions are carried over by the remaining digestive organs into the organism of the human body.

It is also well known that, adjoining the actual digestive apparatus in the narrower sense of the term, and for the purpose of taking over from it in a transformed condition the nutritive substances with which it has been supplied, is what we may call the lymph-system. I shall at this point speak merely in outline. We may repeat accordingly that, adjoining the apparatus of nutrition in so far as this is attached chiefly to the stomach, there is this system of organs called the lymph-system, consisting of a number of canals, which in their turn spread over the whole body; and that this system takes over, in a certain way, what has been worked over by the rest of the digestive apparatus, and delivers it into the blood.

And then we have the third of these systems of organs, the blood-vessel system itself, with its larger and smaller tubes extending throughout the entire human organism and having the heart as the central point of all its work.We know also that, going out from the heart, those blood-vessels or blood-filled vessels which are called arteries, convey the blood to all parts of our organism; that the blood goes through a certain process in the separate parts of the human organism, and then is carried back to the heart by means of other similar vessels which bring it back, however, in a transformed condition as so called “blue blood” in contrast to its red state. We know that this transformed blood, no longer useful for our life, is conducted from the heart into the lungs; that it there comes into contact with the oxygen taken up from the outer air; and that, by means of this, it is renewed in the lungs and conducted back again to the heart, to go its way afresh throughout the whole human organism.

...

Is it not obvious that we should now ask ourselves this other question: Since this upper part of the human organism opens outward by means of the sense-organs, opens doors to the outside world in the form of sense- organs, is there not a certain sort of correspondence between the working-in of the external world through these sense-organs upon the upper part of the human organism and that which works out of the three interior organs, the spleen, the liver, and the gall-bladder?

Whereas, accordingly, the upper part of the organism opens outward in order to receive the influences of the outside world; and whereas the blood flows upwards, so to speak, in order to capture these impressions of the outside world, it flows downwards in order to take up what comes from these three organs. Thus we may say that, when we look out upon the world round about us, this world exercises its influence through our senses upon our upper organisation. And what thus flows in from outside, through the world of sense, we may think of as pressed together, contracted, as if into one centre; so that what flows into our organism from all sides is seen to be the same thing as that which flows out from the liver, the gall-bladder and the spleen, namely, transformed outside world.

If you go further into this matter you will see that it is not such a very strange reflection.

Imagine to yourselves the different sense-impressions that stream into us; imagine these contracted, thickened or condensed, formed into organs and placed inside us. Thus the blood presents itself inwardly to the liver, gallbladder and spleen, in the same way as the upper part of the human organism presents itself to the outside world. And so we have the outside world which surrounds our sense-organs above, condensed as it were into organs that are placed in the interior of man, so that we may say: At one moment the world is working from outside, streaming into us, coming into contact with our blood in the upper organs, acting upon our blood; and the next moment that which is in the macrocosm works mysteriously in those organs into which it has first contracted itself, and there, from the opposite direction, acts upon our blood, presenting itself again in the same way as it does in the upper organs.

If we were to draw a sketch of this, we could do it by imagining the world on the one hand, acting from all directions upon our senses, and the blood exposing itself like a tablet to the impressions of this world; that would be our upper organism. And now let us imagine that we could contract this whole outer world into single organs, thus forming an extract of this world; that we could then transfer this extract into our interior in such a way that what is working from all directions now acts upon the blood from the other side of the tablet. We should then have formed in a most extraordinary way a pictorial scheme of the exterior and the interior of the human organism. And we might already to a certain extent be able to say that the brain actually corresponds to our inner organism, in so far as this latter occupies the breast and the abdominal cavity. The world has, as it were been placed in our inner man.

Even in this organisation, which we distinguish as a subordinate one, and which serves primarily for the carrying forward of the process of nutrition, we have something so mysterious as the fusion of the whole outer cosmos into a number of inner organs, inner instruments. And, if we now observe these organs more closely for a moment, the liver, the gall-bladder, and the spleen, we shall be able to say that the spleen is the first of these to offer itself to the blood-stream. This spleen is a strange organisation, embedded in plethoric tissue, and in this tissue there is a great number of tiny little granules—something which, in contrast to the rest of the mass of tissue, has the appearance of little white granules.

When we observe the relation between the blood and the spleen, the latter appears to us like a sieve through which the blood passes in order that it may offer itself to an organ of the kind which, in a certain sense, is a shrivelled-up portion of the macrocosm. Again, the spleen stands in connection with the liver. At the next stage we see how the blood offers itself to the liver, and how the liver in its turn, as a third step, secretes the gall, which then goes over into the nutritive substances, and from there comes with the transformed nutritive substances into the blood.

This offering of itself on the part of the blood to these three organs we cannot think of in any but the following way: The organ which first meets the blood is the spleen, the second is the liver, and the third is the gallbladder, which has really a very complicated relation to the entire blood system, in that the gall is given over to the food and takes part in its digestion.

On such grounds, the occultists of all times have given certain names to these organs. Now, I beg of you most earnestly not to think of anything special for the time being in connection with these names, but rather to think of them only as names that were originally given to these organs and to disregard the fact that the names signify also something else in connection with these organs. Later on we shall see why just these names were chosen.

• Because the spleen is the first of the three organs to present itself to the blood—we can say this by way of a purely external comparison—it appeared to the occultists of old to be best designated by the name belonging to that star which, to these ancient occultists and their observations, was the first within our solar system to show itself in cosmic space. For this reason they called the spleen “saturnine,” or an inner Saturn in man;
• and, similarly, the liver they called an inner Jupiter;
• and the gallbladder, an inner Mars.

Let us begin by thinking of nothing in connection with these names, except that we have chosen them because we have arrived at the concept, at first hypothetical, that the external worlds, which otherwise are accessible rather to our senses, have been contracted into these organs and that in these organs inner worlds, so to speak, come to meet us, just as outer worlds meet us in the planets. We may now be able to say that, just as the external worlds show themselves to our senses in that they press in upon us from outside, so do these inner worlds show themselves as acting upon the blood-system in that they influence that for which the blood-system is there.

1911-03-23-GA128

quote on planets and organs, see Schema FMC00.160

Over against the entire inner organisation, the organs belonging to the digestive apparatus (in which we must include the organs we have learned to know as liver, gall-bladder, and spleen), we have placed that system for which these organs primarily develop their preparatory activity, namely, the blood-system. But also over against this blood-system we have placed those organs which work, on the one hand to counteract a one-sided isolation, but on the other hand to create a balance between the inner systems we have mentioned and what presses inward from without. If we think, therefore, of the blood-system with its central point, the heart, as placed in the middle of the organism — and we shall see how truly justifiable this is — we have adjoining this system of blood and heart, on the one side the spleen, liver, and gall-bladder systems, and connected with it on the other side the lung and kidney systems. We shall emphasise later on how extremely close this connection is between the lung-system and the kidney-system. If we sketch the systems side by side we have in them everything belonging to the inner organisation of man which is related in a special way, and which so presents itself to us in this relationship that we are obliged to look upon the heart, together with the blood-system belonging to it, as by far the most important part. Now, I have already pointed out, and we shall see even more definitely to what an extent such a giving of names as we have described is justified, that in occultism

• the activity of the spleen is characterised as a Saturn-activity,
• that of the liver as a Jupiter-activity, and
• that of the gall-bladder as a Mars-activity.

On the same basis on which these names were chosen for the activities here referred to, occult knowledge

• sees in the heart and the blood-system belonging to it something in the human organism which merits the name Sun, just as the sun outside merits this name in the planetary system. In
• the lung-system, there is contained what the occultists, according to the same principle, characterise as Mercury, and
• in the kidney-system that which merits the name Venus.

Thus, by means of these names, we have pointed out in these systems of the human organism, even if at the present moment we do not in the least undertake a justification of the names, something like an inner world system. We have, moreover, supplemented this inner world system in that we have placed ourselves in a position to observe the relationship which manifests itself in the very nature of man as holding good for the two other organ-systems having a certain special connection with the blood-system. Only when we observe these things in such a way do we present something complete in respect to what we may call the real inner human world. In the following lectures I shall have occasion to show you that the occultists have actual reasons for conceiving the relationship of the sun to Mercury and Venus as being similar to that which we must necessarily think of as existing between the heart and lungs and kidneys respectively, within the human organism.

1911-03-24-GA128

From this you can see that Man becomes aware of his inner being in the sensing of resistance. This is the concept we must have: becoming aware, consciousness of inner life, of being filled with real inner experiences through the sensing of a resistance. This is somewhat the concept which I have here developed in order to be able to make the transition to another concept, that of the excretions in the human organism.

Let us suppose that the human organism takes into itself in some way or other, into one of its organ-systems, a certain kind of physical substance, and that this organ-system is so regulated that through its own activity it eliminates something from the substance taken in, separates it from the substance as a whole, so that through the activity of this organ the original complete substance falls apart into a finer, filtered portion and a coarser portion, which is excreted.

Thus there begins a differentiating of the substance taken in, into a substance that is further useful, which can be received by other organs, and another that is first separated and then excreted. The unusable portions of the physical substance are thrust away in contrast with the usable portions, an expression here justified, and we have such a collision as I described roughly in the case of one's running against some outer object. The stream of physical matter as a whole, when it comes into an organ, runs against a resistance as it were; it cannot remain as it is, it must change itself. It is told by the organ, as we might say: “You cannot remain as you are; you must transform yourself.”

Let us suppose that such a substance goes into the liver. There it is told, “You must change yourself.” A resistance is set up against it. For further use it must become a different substance, and it must cast off certain portions. Thus it happens in our organism that the substance perceives that resistance is present. Such resistances are to be found within the entire organism in a great number of different organs. It is only because secretion takes place at all in our organism, because we have organs of secretion, that it is possible for our organism to be secluded within itself; to be a self-experiencing being. For only so can any being become conscious of its own inner life, through the fact that its own life meets with resistance. Thus we have in the processes of secretion processes important for human life—processes, in other words, by means of which the living organism secludes itself within itself. Man would not be a Being secluded within himself if such processes of secretion did not take place.

Let us suppose that the flow of nourishment or of oxygen that has been absorbed, were to pass through the human organism as if through a tube. The result, if no resistance were offered through the organs, would be that the human organism would not be conscious within itself of its own inner life but would experience itself; on the contrary, only as belonging to the great world as a whole. We might, to be sure, imagine also that the crudest form of this resistance were to appear in the human organism, that the substance in question might knock itself against a solid wall, and turn back again into itself. This would not, however, make any difference to the inner experience of the human organism; for whether a flow of food or of oxygen were to pass through the organism, entering at one end and passing out at the other, being reflected back on itself as through a hose, this would not make any real difference to an inner experience of the human organism. That this is so we can at once gather from the fact that, when we bring it about in our nervous system that a concept turns back into itself, we thereby lift our nervous system right out of the inner experience of the human organism. It makes no difference why the human organism is left unaffected, whether because the streams entering from without are completely reflected or merely pass through. What makes it possible to realise the inner life of the human organism is the processes of secretion.

1912-04-10-GA136

Now, before we continue to study the results of occult investigation as we have done before, it will be useful for our further consideration if, from the point of view of occultism, we further compare the moon and planets and the fixed star. In undertaking such a comparison, it is necessary, in the first place, to acquire the right ideas of what exists in Man himself and especially in his physical body, in a way not taken into account by the ordinary materialistic anatomy and physiology.

What does the ordinary anatomist of today do when he investigates a physical body?

Well, he takes a piece of the liver, let us say, then a piece of nerve or brain substance as contiguous substances; these he investigates side by side, comparing the one with the other in a purely external way. The ordinary materialistic anatomist or physiologist does not take into consideration the fact that when we have before us a piece of brain-substance and a piece of liver-substance, we have absolutely different things. In one part of the human body we have something upon which the higher bodies, the super-sensible principles, work in quite a different way from how they do on another part.

• Thus, for instance, a portion of brain substance is so constituted that the whole structure, the whole formation could not arise if this substance had not been worked upon, not only by the etheric body, but also by an astral body. The astral body permeates and works upon the brain-substance, and there is nothing in the brain-substance or the nerve-substance upon which the astral body, in cooperation with the etheric body, does not work.
• Take on the other hand a portion of the liver, you must imagine that the liver is also permeated by the astral body, but that it does nothing for the liver, takes no part in the inner organisation of the liver. On the other hand, the etheric body takes a very essential part in the organisation and structure of the liver.

The different organs in Man are in reality very different from each other.

• We can only study the liver when we know that in it the etheric body with its forces plays the chief part, and that the astral body, though it certainly permeates the liver as water does a sponge, has no special share in its formation or inner configuration.
• We can only picture the brain-substance as something in which the astral body has essentially the largest share, and the etheric body only a lesser one.

Again, in the whole structure of the blood-system, even to the framework of the heart, the I has its essential part, whilst in the organisation of nerve-substance as such, for instance, the I takes no part at all—not to mention the other organs.

Thus, when we consider the physical body of man in the occult sense, not in the sense of mere formulae, we have in its various organs, things, beings of quite different value, of quite different essence, altogether of quite different nature.

We may say that what in Man is his liver or his spleen depends upon higher principles at work within it. Liver and spleen are very different organs; the astral body has, in a very special manner, a strong share in the spleen, whilst it has hardly any share in the liver.

All these things will at some time have to he studied; and indeed at no very distant date, by the physiologists and anatomists, because gradually facts will come to light in the materialistic descriptions of the organs of men, animals and plants, which would have no sense at all if only compared as though they were peas and beans, as external anatomy and physical science does to-day. How something in the world and in Man stands to the spirit, represents its true nature.

1920-04-01-GA312

EXTRACT TO BE WORKED - focus on illustration

Well, what is the exact difference between what appears as albumen in the animal organism or especially in that of man, and what appears as the same substance in the organism of plants? It is in your recollection that I have had frequently to mention the important part played in relation to all extra-telluric meteorological processes by the four organic systems, bladder, kidneys, liver, lungs, and their complement, the heart. Those four organic groups are most important in determining how man is affected by the meteorological happenings in the external world. Now: What is the significance and office of these four systems.

These four organic systems are nothing less than the creators of the structure of human albumen. So we must study them, and not the atomistic and molecular forces in the albumen substance. In our inquiry “Why is albumen what it is?” we must conceive of its internal structure as the resultant of forces emanating from these four organic systems. Albumen can be called the product of this fourfold co-operation. With this we state a remarkable fact in respect of the interiorisation of external forces within man. What contemporary chemistry looks for in the actual structure of the substance in question, we look for and find in the organic systems of the human body. Therefore the characteristic structure of human albumen cannot conceivably exist in the external terrestrial sphere; it cannot remain unless it is under the influence of these four organic systems. In other conditions it is bound to change its structure.

...

But it is otherwise with vegetable albumen. Vegetable albumen is, so it seems, not controlled by any analogous group of organs, but it is under another influence; namely, of the four elements, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon, and also under that of the meteorologically omnipresent mediator between these four main elements, namely sulphur. In vegetable albumen, these four elements dispersing themselves throughout the atmosphere, perform the same office as the lungs, heart, liver and so forth, within man. External nature contains in these four substances the same formative forces as are individualised in the human organism through the four main groups. It is important to remember that in speaking of oxygen, hydrogen and so forth, we should not limit their meaning to the inherent forces and attributes recognised by modern chemistry, but that we should conceive these elements as possessing formative forces, with activities which affect one another mutually, and by which they contribute to the furnishing of the earth sphere. If we consider them separately and in detail,

• we must identify the external operation of oxygen with the internal operation of the kidney and urinary system.
• What is done in the outer world, by the formative forces of carbon, we must identify internally with the pulmonary system: not regarding the lungs however as organs of respiration, but as possessing particular formative forces.
• We must identify nitrogen with the liver system,
• hydrogen with the cardiac system (see Diagram 22). Hydrogen is indeed the heart of the outer world; and nitrogen the liver of the external world, etc.

It would be well, my friends, for humanity today, not only to let itself be persuaded to recognise these things, but to work them out for itself. For example, in recognising the association of the heart system with the formative forces of hydrogen, you will readily admit the essential importance of hydrogen circulation for the whole upper bodily sphere in man. For with the metamorphosis of hydrogen towards the upper bodily sphere, the lower and more animal region is changed into the specifically human, tending towards the developing of concepts, etc. And I have already indicated that there we shall have to deal with an extra-telluric influence to be identified with the metal lead. You will remember that lead, tin and iron have already been classified as forces possessing special affinities with the upper sphere in man. At the present time there is no great inclination to admit these interrelationships Nor will there be, as yet, much wish to go outwards from man into the external world, recognising the specific working of lead, as something associated with the fact that hydrogen is made ready by the heart, and then serves as carrier for the preparation of the apparatus of thought. Nevertheless the unconscious progress of human evolution is compelling mankind to recognise this fact. For today it is no longer possible to deny that lead plays some role in the external world, even if only from the functional standpoint; as lead has been actually found among the products of transmutation which Röntgenology has discovered; lead has been actually found as a final product formed by way of helium, not with the usual atomic weight, as a matter of fact; but still it has been identified as lead. Furthermore, as lead has been discovered, so shall we also find tin, and iron as well, iron that as the only constituent of external nature, impinges directly upon our human constitution. Surely today we need to give heed not only to the science of Röntgen rays, however wonderful as a guide and finger-post to the cosmos external to ourselves, because it speaks not only of the crude metallic ores within the earth, but of the metal forces playing upon us from the extra-telluric sphere. That must be said nowadays. For the emergence of new types of disease shows the necessity of taking these factors into account.

What interests us here is the fact that the function performed in the external world by carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and their mediator sulphur, is being individualised in Man through the four organic systems. Correct estimation of this fact will lead you deep into the core of Man.

1921-07-02-GA205

If we study this thoroughly, we come at last to consider the human organization in its entirety. Take the lung organization, the liver organization, and so forth. You reach a point, looking inward, at which you survey, as it were, the surface of the individual organs, of course by means of a spiritual gaze directed inward.

What exactly is the surface of our organs?

This surface is nothing other than a reflecting apparatus for the soul life. What we perceive and also what we work through in thought reflects itself upon the surface of all our inner organs, and this reflection signifies our recollections, our memory during life. Thus, after we have perceived and worked through something, it mirrors itself upon the outer surface of our heart, lungs, spleen, and so forth, and what is thus thrown back constitutes our recollections. With a not-very-intensive training you already notice how certain thoughts ray back over the whole organism in recollection. The most varied organs take part in this. If it is a question of remembering very abstract thoughts, let us say, then the lungs participate very strongly, the surface of the lungs. If it is a question of thoughts colored by feeling, of thoughts that have a nuance of feeling, then the surface of the liver is strongly involved. Thus we really can describe in detail very well how the individual organs of the human being take part in this raying back that appears as memory, as the power of recollection. When we focus on the soul element we must not say that in the nervous system alone lies the parallel organism for the soul life—rather, in the entire human organism lies the parallel organization for the human soul life.

alternative translation

Take the organisation of the lungs, the organisation of the liver and so on, you come to look inwards, to survey the surface of the individual organs, so to speak, naturally by looking inwards mentally.

What is this surface of the organs?

This surface of the organs is nothing other than a mirroring apparatus for the life of the soul.

What we perceive and also what we process mentally is reflected on the surface of all our internal organs, and this reflection signifies our memories, our memory during life. So what is reflected on the outer surface of our heart, our lungs, our spleen and so on, after we have perceived and processed it, is what gives off the memories.

And with not very extensive training you can already notice how certain thoughts reflect back on the whole organism in the memory. The most diverse organs are involved.

• For example, when it comes to remembering, let's say, very abstract thoughts, the lungs, the surface of the lungs, are extremely strongly involved.
• If it is more a matter of emotionally coloured thoughts, that is, thoughts that have an emotional nuance, then the surface of the liver is very strongly involved.

So that we can really describe well in detail how the individual organs of the human being are involved in this re-radiation, which then appears as memory, as the ability to remember. When we consider the soul, we must not say that the parallel organism for soul life lies in the nervous system alone; this parallel organisation for human soul life lies in the whole human organism

1922-10-22-GA218

(SWCC), see Schema FMC00.160

[Nourishment - introduction]

Let us look at Man simply, as he stands in life from day to day and needs nourishment to sustain himself. He has to take up into his own organism what we call substances from nature, from the animal, plant, and also partly from the mineral kingdom. But what Man takes into himself from the outer environment undergoes a very powerful change inside his organism.

• The first one is that when we take up food we receive it ordinarily — at best prepared by cooking — as it is outside in nature, maybe just made ready in some way.
• Besides that we receive the air through breathing again'in that state as it exists in our environment.

Let us look at first other things, which basically are still more important, as for example light, which we also receive from our surroundings. But also the foodstuff and the air must undergo powerful changes inside our organism, so that they can satisfy and become human, so to say, inside our organism.

Described externally the process is well known: We take up the food, perhaps somewhat prepared already. Next we inwardly digest particularly through the excretion of the glands, through the other digestive apparatus. We take it into us, wash it, saturated with a substance called ptyalin, which is excreted by the salivary glands of the mouth. We then bring the food farther into our digestive apparatus.

I don't have to characterise here the way the whole process is taking place. By taking articles of food into ourselves and assimilating them, they will already be somewhat changed in regard to what they are in our surrounding outside. The foodstuffs never could become through outer proceedings what they become inside our organism.

When we bring food stuffs into our stomach and from there into our digestive apparatus, these change over into something entirely different from what they were outside.

[Killing the life in food we take in]

First every trace of life is extinguished, so to say. People eat meat. This is taken from the outer surrounding, from the animal kingdom. But by eating it man drives out right away just through the first stage of digestion (varverdauung) I would like to say — and through further digestion all that what these substances present in the body of the animal. Also, all what the vegetable foods — since they were part of a living being in the plant — have as life in themselves, has to be driven out. Only the real mineral particles we take up as outer material substances. Where we add to our meals salt, which is already of an outer mineral substance, if we add sugar, which through outer preparations — though originally it might come out of the organic has been driven so Far, that it has become dead, we have taken up something already dead. These underlie the least transformations in us; they really undergo only a transformation, which one could accomplish already also in an exterior way inside a laboratory. But everything that gets into our organism from the animal or plant kingdom, has to be thoroughly killed, if I want to express myself that way.

In our cooking we accomplish also a sort of advance killing by subjecting the food to heat and so on. This is done more thoroughly through our digestion, so that — where our foods have undergone a certain inner development until they get into the bowels, where they have approached these lower digestive organs — essentially all has been driven out what they are externally by being, for example subjected to the etheric body of the plants, by being subjected to the astral body of the animal etc. Consequently it must first be achieved on the way from the mouth to the bowels, that all foodstuffs are dead.

Because, when now the foodstuff gets to the glandular organs, which transmit the articles of food from the bowel into the lymphatic glands and then into the vessels of the blood, on this way back a reviving of the food must take place. The food at first must become dead in us and then must be revived again. We cannot tolerate in our human organism a continuation of that kind of life, which exists in the animal or the plant from which we take the food. We can at most take up the inorganic nature so that it presents us our own laws. We cannot, let us say, eat cabbage, cannot let it arrive during the digestive process at our villous intestines so that the same etheric forces would be present there, which the cabbage has, because it is a plant. The etheric, the astral, what the foods have, these must be first removed. Then, what we receive this way must be taken hold of by our own etheric body, so that it can be revived again. Life of the nourishment inside us, must come from us. And this happens on the way from the intestinal organisation through the vessels toward the heart. So that you can have the picture: where the foodstuffs coming from the mouth reach the intestines, the last traces of the outside world gradually have been lost (see drawing 1, red) but here they will be revived anew on the way to the heart. Being enlivened anew means, that they are taken up by our own etheric body.

[The earthly dimension .. enters oxygen]

But now they would have too little of a character of the earthly, if only would happen what I have described to you up to now. Namely we would have to be beings who have a mouth — and a digestive apparatus only up to the heart, and then we would have to begin to be angels, because our ether body would take up the foodstuffs and completely dissolve them. We would not be able to be earthly beings. We would be a kind of mouth flying about with an esophagus attached to it. We would still have a stomach, intestines and heart and then you see, all that would be taken up by our ether body. But then we would be just an ether body and in the ether body the food would then dissipate. We would be able to be earthly beings.

That we can be earthly beings is brought about by oxygen which is taken up now from the air. Thus, into what has been permeated by the ether body as foodstuffs, oxygen of the air is taken up. Therefore, the possibility stays with us to be earthlike (flesh-like) beings here on earth between birth and death (diagram 1, white). It is oxygen that makes us again into an earthly substance that otherwise would dissipate in our ether body. Oxygen is that kind of substance which brings into the earthly state, what other wise by itself would form only as something etheric. The heart would not yet make us into an earthly human being but would bring us only far enough that we would unite our heart with the ether body and fly around on earth as such angels. But since the heart is connected with the lung and takes up oxygen the food that is taken up is not only etherised but also made earthly.

Now the necessity arises that what is taken up by our ether body and is saturated by oxygen, so that we can be earthly human beings, has to be inserted into the astral body. So far, it was not taken up by the astral body, only by the ether body. Now an activity has to be developed that everything that had been formed up to the heart-lung activity, will be taken up by the whole organism; but in such a way that also the astral organism has something to do with it. This is mediated by the human kidney system, which excretes now, what cannot he used of the matter that had been taken up, but leads the remaining into the whole organism on paths which today's physiology does not really describe at all, but which do exist.

And now the whole pulp — if I may express myself that way which now already stays alive — it was only completely killed inside the intestinal canal and has now been revived, and saturated by oxygen — is forwarded into the astral body through the activity of the kidney system which extends over the whole organism and radiates everywhere, so that this' astral body can cooperate in the further configuration of all that, what is effected in us through the food. (see diagram 1, yellow)

[Kidney-system and head-system]

This astral organism in so far as it receives its impulses from the kidney system is in turn connected with the head-sense-system, which, so to say, is like a ceiling above. Kidney-system and head-system together work continuously, so that all which is liquid and dissolving through the activity of the heart, will be formed now into the special organs. We would not have firm organs if only mouth, stomach, intestines, heart and lung were there. But the stomach itself would have to be a dissolving organ movable in itself, the same with the heart, the lung. All that could not be firm. These organs get their configuration through the kidneys, and the kidneys are helped by what comes forth from the head.

These organs have not only to be formed during childhood, but continuously because our organs are continuously destroyed. Such an organ as the stomach is completely destroyed in the course of 7–8 years. Its substance is completely demolished, altogether removed, and is always renewed again. There have to be always form — giving forces existent, which renew these organs. Still much more has to be worked on this in childhood. But later on these form — giving forces are also there.

This happens as follows: (diagram 2). The kidney system, which radiates forth these forces on one side would bring these organs about only in a one-sided way. Or, for example, it would form one lobe of the lung in a way that it would be quite well defined backward, but in the front it would dissipate. Here the force of the head must come and meet, so that the frontal surface will be formed by the head; so that the single different forms of the human being are always formed in a way that the kidney radiates forth the forces and that from the head then the forces come and restrain, in order that the organs get contours, that they are rounded. By the head the surfaces are formed at the exterior. But the kidney delivers a kind of radiation into the organism. It is approximately somewhat as if I wanted to build something plastically. I take mortar, or any soft substance, into the hand and then I teach myself to throw the mortar upward (see diagram 2a, yellow — red)

and to smooth it out with the other hand. The one, the throwing upward, corresponds to the activity of the kidneys — above I smooth out and get this way these organs, which really radiate and are formed. It is in such a way that the organs are formed by the kidney-system in connection with the head system and in there the forces of,the astral body are working. This is then something that proceeds under the extraordinarily strong alteration of nitrogen. Here nitrogen is already not any more what it is outward, because the nitrogen that still retains a similarity with the outer nitrogen goes off through the uric acid and the urea. But what radiates forth from the kidneys and is worked through this really is a nitrogen changed in its inner nature right into the effective forces of the astral body, and that is something entirely different than the outer nitrogen.

[Upto now was astral .. now to the I .. ]

Here you have what man receives, as nourishment driven to the point where it is taken up into the astral body of the human organism. These processes, as I have described them to you, take place also in the animal, though somewhat differently. The animal also has these processes going even still farther in the higher animal. But only indications take place in the lower animal of what is coming now. The higher animals have it, because they were branched off from the human race, they still have it, but it is deformed and degenerated with them.

Now something else is radiating into all that which is being formed there.

• First we have the foodstuff driven to the point where they are killed.
• Then we get approximately so far that we have the pancreatic gland as one of the last glands which bring the foodstuffs far enough that, while being pushed towards the lymph and being revived, they can be taken up by the ether body;
• so that then through the communication from the heart towards the kidneys the whole can he driven into the astral body.
• But now the I also must be engaged. Everything we have in our organism must be occupied by the I.

I have shown you now how that which unites itself with us is claimed by the etheric and astral organism, how it is taken up by the kidney system, radiating into the astral, and how with the help of nitrogen it is made into an earthly thing. Otherwise we would have to become angels again, if nitrogen were not working in us, which maintains us through the astral body within the earthly realm through the kidney system. But all this would not give us a configuration in which the ego takes part in the whole, if the liver-system would not be there. (see diagram 1)

• The absorption through the lymphatic vessels is still something that belongs to the heart. As a rule, the heart is that organ, which together with the lung is driving the outer substances into our own etheric organization.
• From thereon it is the kidney system, which drives them into our astral organization.
• And then only the liver system with its gall excretion drives the whole into our very I.

The gall and liver-system is also found only in the higher animal kingdom, not with the lower animals, not even the gallic acid will be found with them in the bodily substances. Thus the liver-system then with its peculiar construction of the portal vein and so on — one can also verify this anatomically in every part — conducts the whole now so, that it is taken hold of by the ego. If only that what is radiated out by the kidney were there inside the body, it would be taken up only by the astral body. Because of the liver being there and the gall being excreted by the liver and mixed already with the chyme inside the intestines and the whole is permeated already by the liver products (diagram 1, blue), all this is driven into the ego organism. This way also our ego organism takes part through the liver, which has as its representative essentially hydrogen, in the whole building of the human organization. Man, in fact, has to take up nothing living, nothing astral from outside. All this he has to transform first inside his own organic system in such a way that it can be taken up into his astral and his own etheric being and into his ego-system.

...

[parenthesis 1 - Variances to normal functioning – illnesses]

...

[The spleen]

Ordinary physiology and medicine don't have much to say about the spleen. You will find in all corresponding textbooks the notation: about the spleen one does not yet have anything to say today. You will find that everywhere, if you look it up. That is not very surprising. You see, the speech genius is really wiser in this respect than science. In this case, — in other cases it is the German speech genius which is extraordinarily wise, — it is the English speech genius who designates the (Milz) as “spleen”. And that is an extraordinarily favorable designation, because the spleen is connected with all those activities of man which go beyond the ego, which approach the spirit-self. The spleen is even directly the organ of the spirit-self. It enters fully into the spiritual realm. Only one must be able to stand. it. Most people cannot take the real spiritual element. Therefore they are not in any way animated through the activity of the spleen to an activity that is spiritual, but become “spleeny”. In reverse, they are tuned down. The “spleen” is nothing other than a spirit which, instead of going into the head, twists itself into the bowels. Therefore “spleen” is an extraordinarily good designation, which points directly towards the spirit, for which the spleen is the corresponding organ.

The spleen is effective in bringing about a balance, as presented in the pamphlet, — which has been worked out in our institute of physiology particularly by Fr. Dr. K., — where the activity of the spleen is presented in relation to the formation of the development of membranes and the whole digestive process.

Indeed we can understand the human organism only if we understand its higher organization. You see how these things have to fit together. There is something out of order in the organism, if something which does not proceed in the right way works into the astral organism, because in that moment the kidney does not work in the right way, then all the phenomena that follow up a kidney which does not work rightly will appear.

[parenthesis 2 - Changes in importance organ activities over time]

But this is not so for man in general, instead, this changes from one era to another. The organization of man is an extremely fine one, but it is not always the same.

• If we go back a few centuries only — a couple of centuries are not much for the whole of evolution, it seems — then we come to a time where our present age, the real epoch of development of the consciousness soul, has begun. We go back from the 15th, 14th, and 13th centuries into the post-Christian time. It has been so, — as grotesque as this might appear to man today, especially in the civilized world, — that approximately during the whole time from the 4th until the 14th century the activity of the kidney was most important.
• Since then, the activity of the liver has become that which is most important for the entire nature of Man. The anatomy and physiology of Man really changes in the course of centuries, and especially of millenniums. One cannot study history if one does not enter into the fine structure of man, so that one knows how such transformations regarding outer phenomena in civilization, such as that from the middle ages into recent time, are also connected with a transformation of the whole human organization.

...

You see, around the turn of the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries an attitude comes about in Europe, which I have already characterized from very different sides. It is expressed in the legend of the Grail, in the Parsifal legend, in all that has been written by poets like Wolfram von Eschenbach, Hartman von der Aue, Gottfried von Strassburg, and so on. There the motifs emerge. In the Parsifal epic, in the true Parsifal epic one motif especially arises. It consists in the sudden desire, to now present how man has to develop himself towards something one called at that time “Sälde”. It is the feeling of a certain inner sensation of happiness — Sälde — related to what we would call “bliss” but it is not the same. Sälde means being penetrated by a certain feeling of happiness. This emerges and dominates the whole civilization of the 13th and 14th century. All poetic motifs, but in particular the Parsifal motif, are permeated by it and everything strives towards it. One strives towards this Sälde, towards this inner feeling of bliss, which should not be irreligious, or perhaps a state of blissful comfort, but a state of being ensouled with the divine forces of the Creator.

Why does this arise?

It arises because the transition from the kidney activity to the liver activity takes place.

You will be able to understand this if you are aided by physiology. The earlier physiologists, of course, were better physiologists in many respects than the materialistic physiologists of today. Those, I mean, were the writers of the Old Testament, where one, for example, said, if one had had bad dreams — I have already drawn attention to this — “the Lord has punished me this night through my kidneys.”

The knowledge of certain connections of an abnormal kidney-activity with bad dreams continued, and in the 8th, 9th and 10th centuries, for example, one was still deeply permeated by the conviction, that one becomes heavy through the activity of the kidney. The activity of the kidney had developed into something like heaviness for man. Of course, one spoke outwardly only about something that became heavy for man. One couldn't quite get out of it. One was stuck to the earthly.

And then one sensed that one became penetrated by the gall from the physical side — but in a way that was connected with being “inwardly permeated by Sälde” — as a deliverance, an inner redemption — but it was an inner God-filled feeling of bliss, — a striving away from the dullness of the kidney. It is so, that the kidney also develops an activity of thinking.

• The kidney develops the dull thought-activity in Man via the detour of the ganglious system.
• This is then connected through induction with the system of the spinal cord and the system of the brain.

It develops in particular that kind of thinking which has also played a direct role in the middle ages. One called it at that time “dullness”, (Tumpheit). And this development from Tumpheit to illumination, Sälde; this was what became the motif of Parsifal. Parsifal develops from dullness to Sälde.

One must not only look at this in an abstract manner, but one must also look at it with feeling and a sensitivity. In the beginning Parsifal is as one arising out of a culture that has become heavy. One cannot quite get him in movement. Only later, after he has passed through his doubting, does Saelde permeate him. This doubt in him arises through being jolted by the heart-lung system. After he has gone through that, he finds the entry into Sälde.

It is possible to follow up into the members of the human organism what has gone on in the larger history of the world. One can say: leading individualities, like those who have fashioned the Parsifal-motif, they were pioneers, the first precursors of the modern human corporeal organization, which has proceeded from the old kidney-activity to the newer liver activity.

One must not feel contempt for something like that. One must not say: that is only the lower sensual nature. Even God did not despise the creation of lower matter — in fact, He was its Creator! By the same token we are obliged through cognition, to pursue the divine activity of the creator into the outermost ramifications of what is material. One should not be a dignified historian who describes Parsifal and says: If one describes Parsifal, one must not look at the same time at something so low as the physiological activity of man.

The world is a unity, and to understand the great historical connections, one has to be able at the same time to illuminate the different human connections. Men of ancient times, and even up until the Middle Ages, still had traces of such knowledge. You can follow that up in descriptions as that of “Armen Heinrich”, where we see that healings of a moral nature are still occurring, and so on.

These matters discussed today should be a preliminary indication of the fact that all human cognition presents a great unity. One can descend from what has to be conceived as the highest religious ideas to something that people often regard as being so low, that they don't want to look at it. Present-day science is guilty of such an attitude, because it does not at all realize that one must follow the spirit into the outmost ramifications of matter. But only then does one learn to understand the world. Only then does one also learn to strive upwards towards a true religious comprehension of the world. Otherwise one generally has just an egotistic point of view, which speculates on the egotistic motives of man, but does not enter into cognition and will lead us into decadence, instead of a renewal of civilization.

A new arising of civilization is connected with people receiving Light into themselves and contemplating the world in this Light, and not in darkness. Today's physiology and anatomy, just places people on the dissecting table and looks but at those symptoms which can still be observed in sick people by materialistic science. But this never attains to a real understanding of man.

[Back with recap, and spleen]

One can say:

foodstuff taken up, killed, revived, astralized, transformed into the I — only then one understands ptyalin, pepsin, in the food that has been taken up and killed, and then transported into the lymphatic glands conveyed to the heart, fired by the heart.

The kidneys then radiate through it, and all is astralized, taken up by the liver functioning and conveyed to the I.

Then the whole can be caught up by the activity of the spleen and then, under certain circumstances

• the person will be made into an enthusiast, one who receives strength from the spiritual world through the activity of the spleen,
• or otherwise he will be made into a “spleeny”, depressive person — one without the will to hold his head upright — through the activity of the spleen — one who only wants to sit on his chair and prefers not to he permeated by the spirit, who does not want to do any thinking. There are many people like — that today. They sit on their chairs, really only a big lump, as if they did not have a head at all. The activity of the spleen, which could be something lofty in man, really has a crushing effect on these people. Instead of enthusiasm, they have “spleen” and the “spleen” appears today already in a variety of forms.

But what one needs today is the kind of work that transforms spleen into enthusiasm, into fire so that men do not have a sleepy, but rather a wakeful civilization.

[link spiritual science]

This is what should come forth from anthroposophy: to be awake, to have enthusiasm, to transform cognition into true activity, into deeds, so man does not only know more but will become something through anthroposophy. Only then has anthroposophy a goal and can such a goal be truly attained. But to become sleepy through anthroposophy means that one gives much too much respect to the physical quality of the spleen and that one does not fructify the high spiritual nature of the spleen.

This points towards something that present-day mankind sorely needs. Men need fire, they need enthusiasm, they need to be inspired about something.

As long as we cannot do that, as long as we think only about ourselves, we are placing too much value also on that which is excreted by us as urea, uric acid, which is not meant to be contained in the sphere of a cell, of protein — but should be brought into the state of fluctuating protein, which we are in our whole being. Basically we are something like a living, but large cell-like being, that stays in continuous, vivacious movement.

• Because we have carbon in us, we receive oxygen through the etherisation of the food,
• we get nitrogen, because the food substances are radiated through by the activity of the kidneys.
• We receive hydrogen, because the activity of the liver plays into it,
• and in connection with the activity of the senses, we do also receive sulphur — either the unsuitable one, which is the one mostly discussed today — or the proper sulphur.

We really get what is necessary, so we are a living being who consists of protein — carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and also sulphur — but it must be the proper sulphur.

But man must be alive through and through, through and through ensouled, through and through permeated by spirit. This is something one also can learn, especially if one observes this in the outermost ramifications of matter. Only then will we get a physiology, then also will we get something which can really approach therapeutically the nature of man

1922-10-27A-GA314

(SWCC)

If I were asked to map out a course of medical study to cover a certain period of time, I should begin — after the necessary scientific knowledge had been acquired — by distinguishing the various functions in the organism of Man.

• I should feel bound to advise a study, both in the anatomical and physiological sense, of the transformation of the foodstuffs from the stage where they are worked upon by the ptyalin and pepsin to the point where they are taken up into the blood.
• Then, after considering the whole alimentary canal concerned with digestion in the narrower sense, I should pass on to the system of heart and lungs and all that is connected with it.
• This would be followed by a study of the kidneys and, later on, their relation to the system of nerves and senses — a relation not properly recognised by orthodox science today.
• Then I should lead on to the system of liver, gall and spleen, and this cycle of study would gradually open up a vista of the human organism, leading to the knowledge which it is the task of spiritual science to develop.

Then, with the illumination which would have been shed upon the results of empirical research, one would be able to pass on to therapy.

...

When we speak of the physical organisation of man, this includes everything in the organism that can be dealt with by the same methods that we adopt when we are making experiments and investigations in the laboratory. All this is included when we think or speak of the physical organisation of man. In regard to the etheric organisation that is woven into the physical, however, our mode of thought can no longer confine itself to the ideas and laws obtaining when we are making experiments and observations in the laboratory. Whatever we may think of the etheric organisation of man as revealed by super-sensible knowledge, and without having to enter into mechanistic or vitalistic theory in any way, it is apparent to direct perception (and this is a question which would be the subject of lengthy study in my suggested curriculum) that the etheric organisation as a whole is involved — functionally — in everything of a fluid, watery nature in the human organism. The purely physical mode of thought, therefore, must confine itself to what is solid in the organism, to the solid structures and aggregations of matter. We understand the organism of man aright only when we conceive of its fluids as being permeated through and through with life, as living fluids — not merely as the fluids of outer Nature. This is the sense in which we say that man has an etheric body. It is not necessary to enter into hypotheses about the nature of life, but merely to understand what is implied by saying that the cell is permeated with life. Whatever views we may hold — mechanistic, idealistic, animistic or the like — when we say, as the crass empiricist also says, that the cell has life, this direct perception to which I am referring shows that the fluid nature of man is likewise permeated with life. But this is the same as saying: Man has an etheric body. We must think of everything solid as being embedded in the fluid nature. And here already we have a contrast, in that we apply the ideas and laws obtaining in the inorganic world to the solid parts of man's being, whereas we think not only of the cells — the smallest organisms present in man — as living, but of the fluid nature in its totality as permeated with life.

Further, when we come to the airy nature of man, it appears that the gases in his being are in a state of perpetual permutation. In the course of these lectures we shall have to show that this is neither an inorganic permutation nor merely a process of permutation negotiated by the solid organs, but that an individual complex of law controls the inner permutation of the gases in man. Just as there is an inner law in the solid substances, expressing itself, among other things, in the relationship between the kidneys and the heart, so we must postulate the existence of a law within the airy or gaseous organism — a law that is not confined to the physical, solid organs. Anthroposophy describes this complex of law, which underlies the gaseous organism, as astral law, as the astral organisation. These astral laws would not be there in man if his airy organisation had not permeated the solid and the fluid organisations. The astral organisation does not penetrate directly into the solids and the fluids. It does, however, directly penetrate the airy organisation. This airy organisation penetrates the solids and the fluids, but only because the presence of an organised astral nature gives it definite, though fluctuating, inner form. A study of the aggregate conditions thus brings us to the following conclusions: In the case of the solid substances in man we need assume nothing more than a physical organisation; in the case of the living fluidity which permeates the solid, physical organisation, we must assume the existence of something that is not exhausted in the forces of physical law, and here we come to the etheric organism — a system that is self-contained and complete in itself. In the same sense I give the name of astral organisation to that which does not directly penetrate into the solids and fluids but first of all into the airy organisation. I prefer to call this the astral organism because it again is a self-contained system.

And now we come to the Ego-organisation, which penetrates directly only into the differentiations of warmth in the human organism. We can therefore speak of a warmth organism, a warmth ‘being.’ The Ego-organisation penetrates directly into this warmth being. The Ego-organisation is a super-sensible principle and brings about the various differentiations of the warmth. In these differentiations of warmth the Ego-organisation has its immediate life. It also has an indirect life in so far as the warmth works upon the airy fluid and solid organisations.

In this way we gradually gain insight into the human organism. Now all that I have been describing expresses itself in physical man as he lives on the earth. The most intangible organisation of all — the Ego-warmth-organisation — works down indirectly upon the gaseous, fluid and solid organisations; and the same is true of the others. So that the way in which this whole configuration penetrates the constitution of man, as known to empirical observation, will find expression in any solid system of organs, verifiable by anatomy. Hence, taking the various organ-systems, we find that only the physical

— I mean the physically solid system — is directly related to its corresponding (physical) system of laws; the fluid is less directly related, the gaseous still less directly, and the element of warmth least directly of all, although even here there is still a certain relation.

Now all these things — and I can indicate them here only in the form of ultimate conclusions — can be confirmed by an extended empiricism merely from the phenomena themselves. As I say, on account of the short time at our disposal I can only give you certain ultimate conclusions.

In the anatomy and physiology of the human organism we can observe, to begin with, the course taken by the foodstuff. It reaches the intestines and the other intricate organs in that region, and is absorbed into the lymph and blood. We can follow the process of digestion or nourishment in the widest sense, up to that point. If we limit ourselves to this, we can get on quite well with the mode of observation (and it is not entirely mechanistic) that is adopted by natural science to-day. An entirely mechanistic mode of observation will not lead to the final goal in this domain, because the complex of laws observed externally in the laboratory, and characterised by natural science as inorganic law, is here functioning in the digestive tract: that is to say, already within the living organism. From the outset, the whole process is involved in life, even at the stage of the ptyalin-process.

If we merely pay heed to the fact that the complex of outer, inorganic law is involved in the life of the digestive tract, we can get on well quite, so far as this limited sphere is concerned, by confining ourselves merely to what can be observed within the physical organisation of man. But then we must realise that something of the digestive activity still remains, that the process of nourishment is still not quite complete when the intestinal tract has been passed, and that the subsequent processes must be studied from a different point of view. So far as the limited sphere is concerned, we can get on quite well if, to begin with, we study all the transformations of substance by means of analogies, just as we study things in the outer world. But then we find something that modern science cannot readily acknowledge but which is none the less a truth, following indeed from science itself. It will be the task of our doctors to investigate these matters scientifically and then to show from the empirical facts themselves that as a result of the action of the ptyalin and pepsin on the food-stuff, the latter is divested of every trace of its former condition in the outer world.

We take in foodstuff — you may demur at the expression ‘foodstuff’ but I think we understand each other — we take in foodstuff from the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. It belongs originally to these three realms. The substance most nearly akin to the human realm is, of course, the mother's milk; the babe receives the milk immediately it has left the womb. The process enacted within the human organism during the process of nourishment is this: When the foodstuff is received into the realm of the various glandular secretions, every trace of its origin is eliminated. It is really true to say that the human organisation itself conduces to the purely scientific, inorganic mode of observation. In effect, the product of the assimilation of foodstuffs in man comes nearest of all to the outer physical processes in the moment when it is passing as chyle from the intestines into the lymph and blood-streams. The human being finally obliterates the external properties which the foodstuff, until this moment, still possessed. He wants to have it as like as possible to the inorganic state. He needs it thus, and this again distinguishes him from the animal kingdom.

The anatomy and physiology of the animal kingdom reveal that the animal does not eliminate the nature of the substances introduced to its body to the same extent, although we cannot say quite the same of the products of excretion. The substances that pass into the body of the animal retain a greater resemblance to their constitution in the outer world than is the case with man. They retain more of the vegetable and animal nature and proceed on into the blood-stream still in their external form and with their own inner laws. The human organisation has advanced so far that when the chyle passes through the intestinal wall, it has become practically inorganic. The purely physical nature comes to expression in the region where the chyle passes from the intestines into the sphere of the activity of heart and lungs.

It is really only at this point that our way of looking at things becomes heretical as regards orthodox science. The system connected with the heart and the lungs — the vascular system — is the means whereby the foodstuffs (which have now entered the inorganic realm) are led over into the realm of life. The human organisation could not exist if it did not provide its own life. In a wider sense, what happens here resembles the process occurring when the inorganic particles of albumen, let us say, are transformed into organic, living albumen, when dead albumen becomes living albumen. Here again we need not enter into the question of the inner being of man, but only into what is continually being said in physiology. On account of the shortness of time we cannot speak of the scientific theories as to how the plant produces living albumen, but in the human being it is the system of heart and lungs, with all that belongs to it, which is responsible for the transformation of the albumen into living substance after the chyle has become almost inorganic.

We can therefore say: The system of heart and lungs is there in order that the physical system may be drawn up into the etheric organisation. The system of heart and lungs brings about a vitalising process whereby inorganic substance is raised to the organic stage, is drawn into the sphere of life. (In the animal it is not quite the same, the process being less definite.) Now it would be absolutely impossible for this process to take place in the physical world if certain conditions were not fulfilled in the human organism. The raising and transformation of the chyle into an etheric organisation could not take place within the sphere of earthly law unless other factors were present. The process is possible in the physical world only because the whole etheric system pours down, as it were, into the physical, is membered into the physical. This comes to pass as a result of the absorption of oxygen in the breath. And so man is a being who can walk physically upon the Earth because his etheric nature is made physical by the absorption of oxygen. The etheric organisation is projected into the physical world as a physical system; in effect, that which otherwise could only be super-sensible expresses itself as a physical system, as the system of heart and lungs. And so we begin to realise that just as carbon is the basis of the organisms of animal, plant and man (only in the latter case in a less solid form) and ‘fixes’ the physical organisation as such, so is oxygen related to the etheric organisation when this expresses itself in the physical domain.

Here we have the two substances of which living albumen is essentially composed. But this mode of observation can be applied equally well to the albuminous cell, the cell itself. Only we widen out the kind of observation that is usually applied to the cell by substituting a macroscopic perception for the microscopic perception of the cell in the human being. We observe the processes which constitute the connection between the digestive tract and the system of heart and lungs. We observe them in an inner sense, seeing the relation between them, perceiving how an etheric organisation comes into play and is ‘fixed’ into the physical as the result of the absorption of oxygen.

But you see, if this were all, we should have a being in the physical world possessed merely of a digestive system and a system of heart and lungs. Such a being would not be possessed of an inner life of soul; the element of soul could have its life in only the super-sensible; and it is still our task to show how that which makes man a sentient being inserts itself into his solid and fluid constitution, permeating the solids and fluids and making him a sentient being, a being of soul. The etheric organisation in the physical world, remember, is bound up with the oxygen.

Now the organisation of soul cannot come into action unless there is a point d'appui, as it were, for the airy being, with a possibility of access to the physical organisation. Here we have something that lies very far indeed from modern habits of thought. I have told you that oxygen passes into the etheric organisation through the system of heart and lungs; the astral nature makes its way into the organisation of man through another system of organs. This astral nature, too, needs a physical system of organs. I am referring here to something that does not take its start from the physical organs but from the airy nature (not only the fluid nature) that is connected with these particular organs — that is to say from the airy organisation that is bound up with the solid substance. The astral-organic forces radiate out from this gaseous organisation into the human organism. Indeed, the corresponding physical organ itself is first formed by this very radiation, on its backward course. To begin with, the gaseous organisation radiates out, makes man into an organism permeated with soul, permeates all his organs with soul and then streams back again by an indirect path, so that a physical organ comes into being and plays its part in the physical organisation. This is the kidney system, which is regarded in the main as an organ of excretion. The excretory functions, however, are secondary. I will return to this later on, for I have yet to speak of the relation between the excretions and the higher function of the kidneys. As physical organs the kidneys are excretory organs (they too, of course, have entered the sphere of vitality), but besides this, in their underlying airy nature, they radiate the astral forces which now permeate the airy nature and from thence work directly into the fluids and the solids.

The kidney system, therefore, is that which from an organic basis imbues man with sentient faculties, with qualities of soul and the like — in short with an astral organism. Empirical science has a great deal to say about the functions of the kidneys, but if you will apply a certain instinctive inner perception to these functions, you will be able to discover the relations between inner sentient experience and the functions of the kidneys — remembering always that the excretions are only secondary indications of that from which they have been excreted. In so far as the functions of the kidneys underlie the sentient faculties, this is expressed even in the nature of the excretions.

If you want to extend scientific knowledge in this field, I recommend you to make investigations with a man of the more sensitive type and try to find out the essential change that takes place in the renal excretions when he is thinking in a cold or in a hot room. Even purely empirical tests like this, suitably varied in the usual scientific way, will show you what happens. If you make absolutely systematic investigations, you will discover what difference there is in the renal excretions when a man is thinking either in a cold or a warm room. You can also make the experiment by asking someone to think concentratedly and putting a warm cloth round his head. (The conditions for the experiment must of course be carefully prepared.) Then examine the renal excretions, and examine them again when he is thinking about the same thing and cold compresses have been put on his feet.

The reason why there is so little concern with such inquiries to-day is because people are averse from entering into these matters. In embryological research into cell-fission, science does not study the allantois and the amnion. True, the discarded organs have been investigated, but to understand the whole process of embryonic development the accessory organs must be studied much more exactly even than the processes which arise from the division of the germ-cell. Our task here, therefore, is to establish starting-points for true investigation. This is of the greatest significance, for only so shall we find the way, as we must do, towards seeing man, not as a visible but as an invisible “giant” cell.

To-day, science does not speak of the cell as it speaks of the human being, because microscopy does not lead so far. The curious thing is that if one studies the realm of the microscopic with the methods I am here describing, wonderful things come to light — as for instance the results achieved by the Hertwig school. The cell can be investigated up to a certain point in the microscope, but then there is no possibility of, further research into the more complicated life-processes. Ordinary empiricism comes to a standstill here, but with Spiritual Science we can follow the facts further. We now look at man in his totality, and the tiny point represented by the cell grows out, as it were, into the whole being of man.

From this we can proceed to learn how the purely physical organisation is connected with the structure of carbon, just as the transition to the etheric organisation is connected with the structure of oxygen. If, next, we make exact investigations into the kidney system, we find a similar connection with nitrogen. Thus we have carbon, oxygen, nitrogen; and in order to trace the part played by nitrogen in the astral permeation of the organism, you need only follow, through a series of accurate experiments, the metamorphoses of uric acid and urea. Careful study of the secondary excretions of uric acid and urea will give definite evidence that the astral permeation of man proceeds from the kidney system. This will also be shown by other things connected with the activity of the kidneys, even to the point where pathological conditions are present — when, let us say, we find blood corpuscles in the urine. In short, the kidney system radiates the astral organisation into the human organism. Here we must not think of the physical organisation, but of the airy organisation that is bound up with it. If nitrogen were not present, the whole process would remain in the domain of the super-sensible, just as man would be merely an etheric being if oxygen were not to play its part. The outcome of the nitrogen process is that man can live on earth as an earthly being. Nitrogen is the third element that comes into play.

There is thus a continual need to widen the methods adopted in anatomy and physiology by applying the principles of Spiritual Science. It is not in any sense a matter of fantasy. We ask you to study the kidney system, to make your investigations as accurately as you possibly can, to examine the urea and the excretions of uric acid under different astral conditions, and step by step you will find confirmation of what I have said. Only in this way will the mysteries of the human organism reveal themselves to you.

All that enters into man through the absorption of foodstuff is carried into the astral organism by the kidney system. There still remains the Ego-organisation. The products of digestion are received into the Ego-organisation primarily as a result of the working of liver and gall. The warmth and the warmth-organisation in the system of liver and gall radiate out in such a way that man is permeated with the Ego-organisation, and this is bound up with the differentiations of warmth in the organism as a whole.

Now it is quite possible to make absolutely exact investigations into this. Take certain lower animals where there is no trace at all of an Ego-organisation in the psychological sense, and you will find no developed liver, and still less any bile. These develop in the phylogeny of the animal kingdom only when the animal begins to show traces of an Ego-organisation. The development of liver and gall runs absolutely parallel with the degree to which the Ego-organisation unfolds in a living being. Here, too, you have an indication for a series of physiological investigations in connection with the human being, only of course they must cover the different periods of his life. You will gradually discover the relation of the Ego-organisation to the functions of the liver.

In certain diseases of children you will find, for instance, that a number of psychical phenomena, tending not towards the life of feeling but towards the Ego-activities, are connected with the secretion of gall. This might form the basis for an exceedingly fruitful series of investigations. The Ego-organisation is connected with hydrogen, just as the physical organisation is connected with carbon, the etheric organisation with oxygen and the astral organisation with nitrogen. It is, moreover, possible to relate all the differentiations of warmth — I can only hint at this — to the specific function carried out in the human organism by hydrogen in combination with other substances. And so, as we ascend from the material to the super-sensible and make the super-sensible a concrete experience by recognising its physical expressions, we come to the point of being able to conceive the whole being of man as a highly complicated cell, a cell that is permeated with soul and Spirit.

It is really only a matter of taking the trouble to examine and develop the marvelous results achieved by natural science and not simply leaving them where they are. My understanding and practical experience of life convince me that if you will set yourselves to an exhaustive study of the results of the most orthodox empirical science, if you will relate the most obvious with the most remote, and really study the connections between them, you will constantly be led to what I am telling you here. I am also convinced that the so-called ‘occultists’ whom you may consult — especially ‘occultists’ of the modern type — will not help you in the least. What will be of far more help is a genuine examination of the empirical data offered by orthodox science. Science itself leads you to recognise truths which can be actually perceived only in the super-sensible world, but which indicate, nevertheless, that the empirical data must be followed up in this or that direction. You can certainly discover the methods on your own account; they will be imposed by the facts before you. There is no need to complain that such guiding principles create prejudice or that they influence by suggestion. The conclusions arise out of the things themselves, but the facts and conditions prove to be highly complicated, and if further progress is to be made, all that has been learned in this way about the human being must now be investigated in connection with the outer world.

I want you now to follow me in a brief line of thought. I give it merely by way of example, but it will show you the path that must be followed. Take the annual plant which grows out of the earth in spring and passes through its yearly cycle. And now relate the phenomena which you observe in the annual plant with other things — above all with the custom of peasants who, when they want to keep their potatoes through the winter, dig pits of a certain depth and put the potatoes into them so that they may keep for the following year. If the potatoes were kept in an ordinary open cellar, they would not be fit to eat. Investigations have proved that the forces originating from the interplay between the sunshine and the earth are contained within the earth during the subsequent winter months. The dynamic forces of warmth and the forces of the light are at work under the surface of the earth during the winter, so that in winter the after-effects of summer are contained within the earth. The summer itself is around us, above the surface of the Earth. In winter, the after-effects of summer work under the earth's surface. And the consequence is that the plant, growing out of the earth in its yearly cycle, is impelled to grow, first and foremost, by the forces that have been poured into the earth by the sun of the previous year. The plant derives its dynamic force from the soil. This dynamic force that is drawn out of the soil can be traced up into the ovary and on into the developing seed. So you see, we arrive at a botany which really corresponds to the whole physiological process, only if we do not confine ourselves to a study of the dynamic forces of warmth and light during the year when the plant grows. We must take our start from the root, and so from the dynamic forces of light and warmth of at least the year before. These forces can be traced right up into the ovary, so that in the ovary we have something that really is brought into being by the forces of the previous year.

Now examine the leaves of a plant, and, still more, the petals. You will find that in the leaves there is a compromise between the dynamic forces of the previous year and those of the present year. The leaves contain the elements that are thrust out from the earth and those which work in from the environment. It is in the petals that the forces of the present year are represented in their purest form. The colouring and so forth of the petals represents nothing that is old — it all comes from the present year.

You cannot follow the processes in an annual plant if you take only the immediate conditions into consideration. Examine the structural formations which follow one another in two consecutive years — all that the sun imparts to the earth, however, has a much longer life. Make a series of experiments into the way in which the plants continue to be relished by creatures such as the grub of the cockchafer, and you will realise that what you first thought to be an element belonging to the present year must be related to the sun-forces of the previous year. — You know what a prolonged larval stage the cockchafer passes through, devouring the plant with relish all the time.

These matters must be the subject of exact research; only the guiding principles can be given from the spiritual world. Research will show that the nature of the substances in the petals and leaves, for instance, is essentially different from that of the substances in the root or even the seed. There is a great difference between a decoct ion prepared from the petals or leaves of plants and an extract of substances found in roots or seeds. The effect of a decoction prepared from petals or leaves upon the digestive system is quite different from that of an extract prepared from roots or seeds. In this way you relate the organisation of man to the surrounding world, and all that you discover can be verified in a purely material sense. You will find, for instance, that disturbances in the process of the transition of the chyle into the etheric organisation, which is brought about by the system of heart and lungs, will be influenced by a preparation decocted from the petals of plants. An extract of roots or seeds influences the wider activity that works on into the vascular system and even into the nervous system. Along these lines we shall discover the rational connection between what is going on within the human organism and the substances from which our store of remedies may be derived.

In the next lecture I shall show that there is an inner connection between the different structures of the plants and the systems of nerves and senses and digestion in man.

1922-10-27B-GA314

As we begin more and more to view the human organism in the way which I have unfortunately been able to indicate only very briefly, many things not otherwise appreciated in their full significance assume great importance. Very little heed is paid nowadays to what I have called in the appendix to my book, Riddles of the Soul, the threefold organisation of the physical being of man. Yet a right understanding of this threefold organisation is of the greatest significance for pathology and therapy. According to this threefold organisation of physical man, the system of nerves and senses is to be conceived of as being localised mainly in the head, only of course in this sense the head-organisation really extends over the whole being. The nervous and sensory functions of the skin, and also those within the organism, must be included. We cannot, however, arrive at a well-founded conception of the modes of activity in the organism unless — theoretically in the first place — we differentiate the system of nerves and senses from the rest of the organism as a whole.

The second, or rhythmic, system includes, in the functional sense, all that is subject to rhythm — primarily, therefore, the breathing system and its connection with the blood circulation. In the wider sense, too, there is the rhythm that is essentially present in the life of man, although he can break through it in many ways — I mean the rhythm of day and night, of sleeping and waking. Then there are other rhythms, the rhythmic assimilation of foodstuffs and the like. These latter rhythms are constantly broken by man, but the consequences have to be brought into equilibrium by certain regulative factors which are present in the organism. As a second member of the human organisation, then, we have the rhythmic system; and, as a third member, the metabolic organism, in which I include the limb-formations because the functional processes that arise as a result of the movements of the limbs are inwardly connected with the metabolism in general.

When we consider this threefold nature of man, we find that the organisation described in the last lecture as being mainly connected with the Ego has a definite relation to the metabolism in so far as the metabolic system extends over the whole being. Again, the rhythmic system has a definite connection with the system of heart and lungs. The functions of the kidneys, the forces that go out from the kidney system, are related to the astral organisation of the human being. In short, in his threefold physical nature man is related to the different members of his super-sensible being and also to the several organic systems — as I showed yesterday. But these relationships must be studied in more precise detail if they are to prove of practical value for an understanding of man in health and disease. And here we shall do best to start from a consideration of the rhythmic being of man.

This rhythmic organisation is very frequently misunderstood in respect of a very definite characteristic, namely the relation that is set up between the rhythm of the blood circulation and the rhythm of the breath. In the grown-up person, this relationship is approximately in the ratio of four to one. This, of course, is only the average, approximate ratio, and its variations in individuals are an expression of the measure of health and disease in the organism. Now, that which reveals itself in the rhythmic man as a ratio of four to one, continues in the organism as a whole. We have again a ratio of four to one in the relationship of the processes of the metabolic system (including the limbs) to the system of nerves and senses. This again can be verified by empirical data as in the case of other things mentioned in these lectures. Indeed, so far-reaching is this relationship that we may say: All the processes connected with metabolism in man take their course four times more quickly than the work done by the nervous and sensory activities for the growth of the human being.

The second teeth which appear in the child are an expression of what is proceeding in the metabolic system as a result of its coming continually into contact with the system of nerves and senses. All that flows from the metabolic system towards the middle, rhythmic system, set against that which flows from the nerves and senses system into the rhythmic system, is in the ratio of four to one. To speak precisely, we may take the breathing system to be the rhythmic continuation of the system of nerves and senses, and the circulatory system to be the rhythmic continuation of the metabolic system. The metabolic system sends its workings, as it were, up into the rhythmic man. In other words, the third member works into the second, and this expresses itself through the rhythm of blood circulation in daily life. The system of nerves and senses, again, sends its workings into the breathing system and this is expressed through the rhythm of the breath. In the rhythmic being of man we can perceive the ratio of four to one — for there are some seventy pulse-beats or so to eighteen breaths. In the relationships of the rhythms, the rhythmic being of man represents the contact between the system of nerves and senses and the metabolic system; and this can again be observed in any given life-period of man by studying the relation of all that proceeds from the metabolism in the general organic processes to all that goes out from the head system — the system of nerves and senses. This is a relationship of great significance.

In the child's second teeth there is an upward thrust of the metabolic system into the head, but the point about this meeting between the metabolic system and the system of nerves and senses is that the latter, to begin with, gets the upper hand. The following will make this clear to you. The second dentition at about the age of seven represents a contact between the metabolic system and the system of nerves and senses, but the nervous and sensory action dominates. The outcome of this contact of forces — which proceed from the nerves and senses on the one hand and the metabolic system on the other — is the development of the second teeth.

Again, in the period when the human being reaches puberty, a new contact occurs between the metabolic system and the system of nerves and senses, but this time the metabolic system dominates. This is expressed in the male sex by the change in the voice itself, which up to this period of life has been, essentially, a form of expression of the system of nerves and senses. The metabolic system pulses upwards and makes the voice deeper.

We can understand these workings by observing the extent to which they embrace the radiations in the human organism which originate in the kidney system and the liver-gall system on the one hand, and in the head and skin organisations on the other. This is an exceedingly interesting connection, and one which leads us into the deepest depths of the organisation of man. We can envisage the building and moulding of the organism thus: Radiations go out from the system of kidneys and liver, and they are met by the plastic, formative forces proceeding from the head. The forces from the system of kidneys and liver (naturally they do not only stream upwards but to all sides) have the tendency to work in a semi-radial direction, but they are everywhere thwarted by the plastic, formative forces which proceed from the head. We can thus understand the form of the lungs by thinking of it as being organised by the forces of the liver and kidneys, which are then met by the rounding-off forces proceeding from the head. The whole structure of man comes into being in this way: radiation from the systems of kidneys and liver, and then the rounding off of what has been radiated out by the forces proceeding from the head.

In this way we arrive at a fact of the greatest importance and one which can be confirmed empirically in every detail. In the process of man's development, in his growth, two sets of forces are at work: (1) forces that proceed from the systems of liver and kidneys, and (2) forces that proceed from the system of nerves and senses, which round off the forms and give them their surfaces. Both components play into each other, but not with the same rhythm. All that takes its start from the systems of liver and gall has the rhythm of metabolic man. All that proceeds from the head system has the rhythm of the man of nerves and senses. So that when the organism is ready for the coming of the second teeth, at about the seventh year of life, the metabolic system, with all that proceeds from the liver and kidneys (which is met by the rhythm of the heart), is subject to a rhythm that is related to the other rhythm, proceeding from the head, in the ratio of four to one. Thus not until the twenty-eighth year of life is the head organisation of man developed to the point reached by the metabolic organisation at the age of seven. The plastic principle in man, therefore, develops more slowly than the radiating, principle — in effect, four times as slowly. Connected with this is the fact that at the end of the seventh year of life, in respect of what proceeds from the metabolic activities, we have developed to the point reached by growth in general (in so far as this is subject to the system of nerves and senses) only at the twenty-eighth year.

Man is thus a complicated being. Two streams of movement subject to a different rhythm are at work in him. And so we can say: The coming of the second teeth is due in the first place to the fact that everything connected with the metabolism comes into contact with the slower, but more intense plastic principle, and in the teeth the plastic element dominates. At the time of puberty, the metabolic element preponderates the plastic influences withdraw more into the background, and the whole process is expressed in the male sex by the familiar phenomenon of the deepened voice.

Many other things in the being of man are connected with this: for instance the fact that the greatest possibility of illness occurs, fundamentally speaking, during the period of life before the coming of the second teeth — the first seven years of life. When the second teeth appear, the inner tendency of the human being to disease ceases to a very great extent. The system of education which it was our task to build up compelled me to make a detailed study of this matter, for it is impossible to found a rational system of education without these principles which concern the human being in health and disease. In his inner being, man is in the healthiest state during the second period of life, from the change of teeth to puberty. After puberty, an epoch begins again when it is easy for him to fall a prey to illness. Now the tendency to illness in the first period of life is of quite a different nature from the tendency to illness after puberty. These two possibilities of illness are as different, shall I say, as the phenomena of the second dentition and the change in the male voice.

During the first period of life, up to the change of teeth, everything goes out from the child's organisation of nerves and senses to the outermost periphery of the organism. The system of nerves and senses still has the upper hand at the change of teeth. You will be able to form a general conception of pathological phenomena during the first seven years of life if you say to yourselves: It is quite evident here that the radiations from the system of liver and kidneys are rounded off, stultified in a sense, by the plastic principle working from the system of nerves and senses. This plastic element is the main field of action of everything which I have described in these lectures as being connected with the Ego-organisation and astral organisation of man.

Now it may seem strange that I previously spoke of the Ego-organisation as going out from the system of liver and gall and the astral organisation from the kidney system, and that I now say: everything connected with the Ego and astral organisations emanates from the head. But we shall never understand the human organism with all its complexities if we say baldly that the Ego-organisation proceeds from the system of liver and gall and the astral organisation from the system of kidneys. We must realise that in the first life-period, up to the change of teeth, these radiations from the system of liver and kidneys are worn down by the action of nerves and senses. This rounding-off process is the essential thing. Strange to say, the forces supplied to the Ego and astral organisations by the systems of liver, gall and kidneys reveal themselves as a counter-radiation, not in their direct course from below upwards, but from above downwards. Thus we have to conceive of the child's organisation as follows: The astral nature radiates from the kidney system, and the Ego-organisation from the liver system, but these radiations have no direct significance. Both the liver system and the kidney system are, as it were, reflected back from the head system and the reflection in the organism is alone the active principle.

How, then, are we to think of the astral organisation of the child? We must think of the workings of the kidneys as being radiated back from the head system. What of the Ego-organisation in the child? The workings of the system of liver and gall also are radiated back from the head system. The physical system proper and the etheric system work from below upwards, the physical organisation having its point of departure in the digestive system and the etheric organisation in the system of heart and lungs. These organisations work from below upwards and the others from above downwards during the first epoch of life. And in the radiation from below upwards works the rhythm which is related as four to one to the radiation working from above downwards.

It is a pity that the indications here have to be so brief, but they really are the key to the processes of childhood. If you want to study the most typical diseases of children, you may divide them into two classes. On the one side you will find that the forces streaming from below upwards meet the forces streaming from above downwards with a rhythm of four to one, but that there is no co-ordination. If it is the upward-streaming forces with their rhythm of four that refuse to incorporate themselves into the individuality, while the inherited rhythm of the head system (representing the one) is in order, then we find all those organic diseases of childhood which are diseases of the metabolism, arising from a kind of congestion between the system of nerves and senses and the metabolic system. I mean that the metabolism is not quite able to adapt itself to that which radiates out from the system of nerves and senses. Then we get, for example, that strange disease in children which leads to the formation of a kind of purulent blood. All other children's diseases which may be described as diseases of the metabolism arise in this way.

On the other hand, suppose the metabolic organism is able to adapt itself to the individuality of the child, and the hygienic conditions are such that the child lives healthily in its environment — if, for example, we give the proper kind of food. But if, as a result of some inherited tendency, the system of nerves and senses working from above downwards does not rightly harmonise with the radiations from liver, gall and kidneys, diseases accompanied by fits or cramp-like conditions arise, the cause of them being that the Ego and astral organisations are not coming down properly into the physical and etheric organisation.

Diseases of children, therefore, arise from two opposite sides. But it is always true that we can understand these diseases of the child's organism only by directing our attention to the head and the system of nerves and senses. The metabolic processes in the child must not only be brought into harmony with outer conditions but also with the system of nerves and senses. In the first period of life, up to the change of teeth, a practical and fundamental knowledge of the system of nerves and senses is necessary, and we must observe that while in the child everything radiates from the head organisation, it is none the less possible for the metabolism to press too far forward, if it so be that the metabolism is normal, while the head organisation through hereditary circumstances is too feeble.

Now when the second life-period, from the change of teeth to puberty, sets in, it is the rhythmic organism which is the centre of activity. The astral and etheric organisations are essentially active here. Into the astral and etheric organisations between the change of teeth and puberty, streams everything that arises from the functions of the breathing and circulatory systems. The reason why the organism itself can afford the human being the greatest possibility of health during this period of life is that these systems of breathing and circulation can be regulated from outside. The health of school-children of this age is very dependent on hygienic and sanitary conditions, whereas during the first period of life external conditions cannot affect it to the same extent.

The tremendous responsibility resting upon us in regard to the medical aspect of education is that a true knowledge of man tells us that we may have dealt wrongly with the tendencies to disease which make their appearance between the seventh and fourteenth years of life. During this period the human being is not really dependent on himself; he is adjusting himself to his environment by breathing in the air and by means of all that arises in his blood circulation as a result of the metabolic processes. Metabolism is bound up with the limb-organisation. If children are given the wrong kind of drilling or are allowed to move wrongly, outer causes of disease are set up. Education during the Elementary School age should be based upon these principles. They should be taken into strictest account through all the teaching.

This is never done in our days. Experimental psychology — as it is called — has a certain significance which I well appreciate, but among other errors it makes the mistake of speaking like this: Such and such a lesson causes certain symptoms of fatigue in the child; such and such a lesson gives rise to different symptoms of fatigue, and so forth. And according to the conditions of fatigue thus ascertained, conclusions are drawn as to the right kind of curriculum. Yes — but, you see, the question is wrongly put. From the seventh to the fourteenth years, all that really concerns us is the rhythmic system, which does not tire. If it were to tire, the heart, for instance, could not continue to act during sleep through the whole of earthly life. Neither does the action of breathing cause fatigue. So when it is said: heed must be paid to the degree of fatigue arising from an experiment — the conclusion should be that if there is fatigue at all, something is amiss. Between the seventh and fourteenth years our ideal must be to work upon the rhythmic system of the child and not, primarily, upon the head system. In effect, education must be imbued with the quality of art. Then we shall be working upon the rhythmic system, and it will be quite possible to correct all the conditions of fatigue arising from false methods of teaching. Excessive strain on the memory, for example, will always affect the breathing action, even though it be in a mild way, and the results will appear only in later life.

At puberty and afterwards, the opposite holds good. Causes of disease may then again arise in the organism itself, in the metabolic-limb-system. This is because the food substances assert their own inherent laws, and then we are faced with an excessively strong working of the physical and etheric organisms.

In the organism of the very young child, therefore, we are essentially concerned with the Ego-organisation and the astral organisation working by way of the system of nerves and senses; in the period between the change of teeth and puberty we are concerned mainly with the activity of the astral and etheric organisations arising from the rhythmic system; after puberty we have to do with the predominance of the physical and etheric organisations arising from the metabolic system. Pathology confirms this, and I need only call your attention to certain typical diseases of women; metabolic diseases proper arise from out of the inner being after puberty — metabolism has the upper hand. The products of metabolism get the better of the system of nerves and senses instead of duly harmonising with its activities. In diseases of children before the change of teeth there is a wrongful predominance on the part of the system of nerves and senses. The healthy period lies between the change of teeth and puberty; and after puberty the metabolic organism, with its quicker rhythm, begins to dominate. This quicker rhythm then expresses itself in all that is connected with metabolic deposits which form because the plastic forces from the head do not make a right contact with them. The result of this is that the metabolism invariably gets the upper hand.

I am very sorry that I can speak of these things only in a cursory, aphoristic way, but my aim is to indicate at least the final conclusion, which is that the functional activities in the human being are the primary factors, and that formations and deformations must be regarded as proceeding from these functional activities. In the outer sense this means that up to the seventh year of the child's life the plastic, rounding-off forces work with particular strength. The plastic structure of the organs is brought to such a point by the forces arising from the system of nerves and senses that the plastic moulding of the teeth, for example, up to the time of the second dentition, is an activity that never occurs again. As against this, the permeation of the organism with forces coming from the metabolism enters upon an entirely new phase when — as happens at puberty — some of the metabolic activities are given over to the sex organs. This leads to an essential change in the metabolic processes.

It is all-important to make a methodical and detailed study of the matters I have indicated to you. The results thus obtained can then be co-ordinated in the truly scientific sense if they are brought into line with what I told you at the end of the last lecture, and related to the working of the Cosmos outside man.

How then can we approach therapeutically all that radiates out so complicatedly from the kidney system, from the liver system? We have simply to call forth changes by working on it from outside. We can approach it if we hold fast to what is observable in the plant — I mean, the contrast between the principle of growth which is derived rather from the preceding year or years, and, on the other hand, those principles of growth which come from the immediate present. Let us return once more to the plant. In the root and up to the ovary and seed-forming process we have that which is old in the plant, belonging essentially to the previous year. In all that develops around the corona we have that which belongs to the present. And in the formation of the green leaves there is a working together of the present and the past. Past and present, as two component factors, have united to produce the leaves.

Now everything in Nature is interrelated, just as everything is interrelated in the human organism, in the intricate way I have described. The point is to understand the relationships. Everything in Nature is interrelated, and by a simpler classification of what is revealed in the plant we come to the following.

In the terminology of an older, more instinctive conception of medicine we find constant mention of the sulphurous or the phosphoric. These sulphurous or phosphoric elements exist in those parts of the plant which represent in the blossom — not in the ovary and stigma — the forces of the present year. When, therefore, you make a decoction from these particular organs of the plant (thereby extracting also what is minerally active in them) you obtain the phosphoric or sulphurous principle. It is quite incorrect to imagine that the doctors of olden times thought of phosphorus and sulphur in the sense of modern chemistry. They conceived of them in the way I have indicated. According to older medicine, a decoction prepared from the petals of the red poppy, for instance, would have been “phosphoric” or “sulphurous.”

On the other hand, in a preparation derived from a treatment of the leaves of a plant, we get the mercurial principle, as it was called in ancient terminology. This, of course, means the mercurial nature, not the substance of quicksilver in our sense. (To use pine-needles, for example, is quite a different thing from using, say, the leaves of cabbages).

Everything connected with root, stem or seed was called the salt-like in older medical terminology. I am saying these things only for the sake of clarity, for with our modern scientific knowledge we cannot go back to older conceptions. A series of investigations should be made to show, let us say, the effects of an extract prepared from the roots of some plant on the head organisation, and hence on certain diseases common to childhood.

A highly significant principle will come to light if we investigate the effects of substances drawn from the roots and seeds of plants on the organisation of the child before the change of teeth. Again, for illnesses of the kind that come from outside — and, fundamentally speaking, all illnesses between the change of teeth and puberty are of this kind — we obtain remedies, or at least preparations which have an effect upon such illnesses, from leaves and everything akin to the nature of leaves in the plant. I am speaking in the old sense here of the mercurial principle, which we meet in a stronger form in quicksilver itself. The fact that mercury is a specific remedy for certain sexual diseases, externally acquired, is connected with this. Sexual diseases are really nothing but the intensification of illnesses that may arise in an extremely mild form in the second period of life, from the seventh to the fourteenth years. They do not then develop into sexual diseases proper because the human being is not yet sexually mature. If it were otherwise, a great many diseases would attack the sexual organs. Those who can really perceive this transition from the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth years, on into the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth years, will realise that at this age symptoms that arise in earlier life in quite another form express themselves as abnormalities of the sexual life.

Further, there are diseases which have their origin in the metabolism. In so far as the metabolism is bound up with the physical and etheric systems of man, we find diseases which must be considered in connection with the workings of the petal nature of plants.

The cursory way of dealing with these matters which is necessary here may make a great deal appear fantastic. Everything can, nevertheless, be verified in detail. The obstacles that make it so difficult to approach orthodox medicine are really due to the fact that, to begin with, it all seems beyond the range of verification. We have to reckon with such intricate phenomena in the human organism as the particularly striking example of which I spoke at the beginning of this lecture, describing it in such a way that it was apparently irreconcilable with what I said yesterday. It clears up, however, when we realise that what goes out from the system of liver and kidneys emerges first in the reactions it calls forth, and in this sense it represents something quite essential for the Ego-organisation and astral organisation of man. In this case it is especially evident. But there is a similar principle of immediate co-operation and counter-action between the rhythms of the blood and of the breathing. Here, too, many an influence that proceeds from the rhythm of the blood must first be looked for in the counter-beat of the breathing rhythm, and vice versa.

And now connect this with the fact that the Ego-organisation really lives in the inner warmth of man, and that this warmth permeates the airy, gaseous being. In the forces proceeding from the Ego and astral organisms, we have, from a physical point of view, something that is working primarily from the warmth organisation and the airy, gaseous organisation. This is what we have to observe in the organism of the very young child. We must seek the cause of children's diseases by studying the warmth and airy organisations in the human being. The effects that appear when we work upon the warmth and airy organisations with preparations derived from roots or seeds, are caused by the fact that two polaric forces come into contact, the one stimulating the other. Substances taken from seeds or roots and introduced into the organism stimulate all that goes out from the warmth organisation and the airy organisation of the human being.

Now in the influences working, so to speak, from above downwards, we can discern in the human being, from the very outset, a warmth and air vibration which is strongest of all in childhood, although in reality it is not a vibration but a time-structure of a living kind — an organic structure in the flow of time. And on the other hand we have that in the physical-etheric organism which goes from below upwards — that is to say, the solid and fluid organisation of man. Moreover these two are in mutual interaction, inasmuch as the fluid and gaseous organisations permeate one another in the middle, bringing forth an intermediate phase by their mutual penetration, just as there exists in the human organism the well-known intermediate stage between the solid and the fluid. So likewise in the living and sentient organism we must look for an intermediate phase between the fluid and the gaseous, and again a phase between the gaseous and the element of warmth.

Please note that everything I am saying here in a physiological sense is of importance for pathology and therapy. When we observe this intricate organism of man we find, of course, that one system of organs is perpetually pouring out its influences into another system of organs. If we now observe the whole organic action expressed in one of the sense-organs, in the ear, for example, we find the following: Ego-organisation astral organisation, etheric and physical organisations are all working together in a definite way. The metabolism permeates the nerves and senses; rhythm is brought into this by the processes of breathing in so far as they work into the ear, and by the blood circulation. All that I have thus tried to make plain to you in diverse ways, threefold and fourfold (in the three members of the human being and in the fourfold organisations which I explained) — all this finds expression in definite relationships in every single organ. And in the long run, all things in man are in constant metamorphosis.

For instance — that which occurs normally in the region of the ear, why do we call it normal? Because it appears precisely as it does in order that the human being as a whole, even as he lives and moves on earth, may come into existence. We have no other reason to call it normal. But consider now the special circumstances, the special formative forces that work here in the ear by virtue of the ear's position, notably by virtue of the fact that the ear is at the periphery of the organism. Suppose that these circumstances are working in such a way that a similar relationship arises by metamorphosis at some other place in the interior of the body. Instead of the relationship which is proper to that place in the body, there arises a relationship among the various members similar to what is normal in the region of the ear. Then there will grow at this place in the body something that really tends to become an ear — forgive this very sketchy way of hinting at the facts. I cannot express what I want to say in any other way, as I am obliged to say it in the briefest outline. For instance, this something may grow in the region of the pylorus, in place of what should arise there. In a pathological metamorphosis of this kind we have to see the origin of tumours and similar formations. All tumour formations, up to carcinoma, are really misplaced attempts at the formation of sense-organs.

If, then, you bear in mind that the origin of a morbid growth is a misplaced attempt at the formation of a sense-organ, you will find what part is played in the child's constitution — even in embryonic existence — by the organisms of warmth and air in order that these sense-organs may come into being. These organs can indeed be brought into being only through the organisms of warmth and air by virtue of the resistance of the solid and fluid organisms, which results in a formation composed of both factors. This means that we must observe the relationship existing between the physical organism (in so far as this expresses itself in the metabolism, for example) and the formative, plastic organism (in so far as this expresses itself in the system of nerves and senses). We must, so to speak, perceive how the metabolic system radiates out the forces which bear the substance along with them, and how the substance is plastically moulded in the organs by the forces brought to meet it by the system of nerves and senses.

Bearing this in mind, we shall learn to understand what a tumour-formation really is. On the one side there is a false relationship between the physical-etheric organism in so far as it expresses itself in the radiating metabolic processes on the one side, and between the Ego-organisation and astral organism on the other (in so far as the Ego and astral organisations express themselves in the warmth and airy organisations respectively). Ultimately, therefore, we have above all to deal with the relation between the metabolism and the warmth organisation in man, and in the case of an internal tumour — although it is also possible with an external tumour — the best treatment is to envelop it in warmth. (I shall speak of these things to-morrow when we come to consider therapy). The point is to succeed in enveloping the tumour with warmth. This brings about a radical change in the whole organisation. If we succeed in surrounding the tumour with warmth, then — speaking crudely — we shall also succeed in dissolving it. This can actually be achieved by the proper use of certain remedies which are injected into the organism. We may be sure that in every case a preparation of viscum, applied in the way we advise around the abnormal organ — for instance around the carcinomatous growth — will generate a mantle of warmth, only we must first have ascertained its specific effect upon this or that system of organs. We cannot, of course, apply exactly the same preparation to carcinoma of the breast as to carcinoma of the uterus or of the pylorus. Further, we can be sure that no result will be achieved if we do not succeed in producing the right reaction — namely, a state of feverishness. The injection must be followed by a certain rise in the patient's temperature. You can at once expect failure if no condition of feverishness is produced.

I wanted to tell you this as a principle in order to make you understand that these things depend upon a ratio; but the ratio is merely a regulating principle. You will find that the statements based on this principle can be verified, as all such facts are verified by the methods of modern medicine. There is no question of asking you to accept these things before they have been tested, but it is really true that anyone who enters into them can make remarkable discoveries.

1922-12-20-GA348

title: Spiritual-Scientific Foundations for a True Physiology

extract below on the sense of taste

By virtue of his skin, man is an entire sense organ. The skin of the human being is something extraordinarily complicated and truly marvellous. When we trace it from the outside inward, we find first a transparent and horny layer called the epidermis. It is transparent only in us white Europeans; in Africans, Indonesians and Malayans, it is saturated with coloured granules and thus tinged with colour.

It is called “horny” because it consists of the same substance, arranged a little differently, from which the horns of animals and our nails and hair are fashioned. Our nails actually grow out of the uppermost layer of the skin. Under this layer lies the dermis, which consists of an upper and a lower layer. So we are in fact covered and enclothed with a three-layered skin:

• the outer epidermis,
• the middle layer of the dermis
• and the lower part of the dermis.

The lowest layer of the dermis nourishes the whole skin; it stores the nourishing substances for the skin.

The middle layer is filled with all kinds of things, but in particular it is filled with muscle fibres. Everywhere in this layer are myriad tiny onion-like things, one next to the other; we have thousands upon thousands in our skin. We can call them “onions” because the distinguishing feature of an onion is its many peels, and these little corpuscles have such “onion peels”; the onion skin is on the surface, and the other, thinner part is on the inside. They were discovered by the Italian Pacini and are therefore called “Pacinian corpuscles.”

Around these microscopic corpuscles are from twenty to sixty such peels, so you can imagine how small they are.

Man is constituted in such a way that he has these microscopic little bulbs over the whole surface of his body. The largest number is found — in snakes as well as in men — on the tip of the tongue. Yes, it is almost comical, but most are found on the tip of the tongue! There are many on the tips of the fingers, on the palms of the hands and on other parts of the body, but most are on the tip of the tongue. For example, there are seven times more such little nerve bulbs on the tip of the tongue than there are on the finger tips.

A nerve fibre originates from each of these corpuscles and finds its way into the brain via the spinal marrow. All these nerve fibres radiate from the brain, and everywhere in the body they form such nerve bulbs on its surface. So these nerve fibres in the brain go everywhere and eventually form the onions within the skin or dermis. It is interesting to realize that just as real onions grow in the ground and form onion blossoms above, so do these onions grow in the human body. There (pointing to his sketch) are the onions and the stem within. In those nerves of the tongue the stem is rather short, but in other nerves it is sometimes quite long.

The nerve fibres going from the feet into the brain through the spinal marrow are extremely long. Everything that we have as onions in our skin actually has blossoms within our skull. You may imagine, then, that in regard to his skin man is a kind of soil; it is strangely formed, but it still is a kind of soil. On the surface is the epidermis, in which various crystal substances are deposited. Below are the solid masses of the body, and above is the layer of “humus.” Going from outside inward, beneath the hard, horny layer of the epidermis lies the dermis, which is the soil. From it grow all these onions that have blossoms in the brain. Their stems pass up into the brain and have blossoms there.

[growth]

Well, gentlemen, in us older fellows things are such that only during sleep can we properly trace this network, but in a child it is still much in evidence. The child has a lively nerve bulb activity in the nerves as long as its intellect is unawakened; that is, throughout its first year, and just as the sun shines over the blossoms of the onions, so shines the light into the child that as yet does not translate with the intellect what it receives with its eyesight. This is indeed like the sun shedding its rays inside the head and opening up all the onion blossoms.

In the nerves of the skin we carry a whole plant kingdom around within us. Later, however, when we enter grammar school this lively growing comes to an end, and then we use the forces from the nerves for thinking. We draw these forces out and use them for thinking. This is extremely interesting. Ordinarily, it is assumed that the nerves do the thinking, but the nerves do not think. We can employ the nerves for thinking only by stealing their light, so to speak. The human soul steals the light from the nerves, and it uses what it has taken away for thinking. It is really so. When we truly ponder the matter, we finally recognize at every point the independently active soul.

We have such inwardly growing onions in common with all animals. Even the lowest forms, which have slimy, primitive shapes, possess sensory nerves that end in a kind of onion on the surface. The higher we ascend toward man, the more are certain of these nerve onions transformed in a specific manner. The nerves of the taste buds, for example, are such transformed skin nerves.

Now, we possess these sensory bulbs at the tip of the tongue and that is why it is so sensitive. We taste on the back of the tongue and on the soft palate where such little onions are dispersed. Actually, they sit there in a little groove and within these grooves an onion penetrates into the nerves and pushes into the dermis as a nerve corpuscle. First, a tiny groove forms behind the tongue, and then an onion pushes itself into this groove. The root of the onion penetrates all the way to the surface of the tongue. On the base of the tongue are a tremendous number of tiny grooves, and in each little groove a “bulb” grows up from below. This accounts for our experience of taste.

We can be aware of everything with the sense of touch, or these onions located on our body's surface. Now, you know that what one feels one does not remember so well. I know with my feeling that a chair is hard because I feel its hardness with a certain number of nerve bulbs that constantly change, but my memory is not strained by this sensation. With the sense of taste it makes a little, though unconscious effort. Gourmets, however, always know beforehand what is good, not afterward when they have already tasted it, and that is why they order it.

So the nerve corpuscles pass through the spinal marrow directly into the brain and form blossoms there. Everything that we want to taste, however, must first be dissolved by the saliva in the mouth; we can taste nothing that hasn't first been transformed into fluid. But what is it that tastes? We would not be able to taste anything if we did not have fluid within us. Our solid human constitution, everything that is solid in the body, does not taste. Our inner fluid mixes with what is dissolved of the food. Thus, we can say that our own fluid mixes with the fluid from without. The solid part of the human organization does not taste anything. Our constitution is ninety percent water, and here, around the papillae of the tongue, it is in an especially fluid state. Just as water shoots out of a geyser, so do we have such a spurting forth of fluid on the tip of the tongue.

Saliva that has been spit out of the mouth is no longer part of me, but as long as that fluid is within the little gland of the tongue, it belongs to me as a human being, just as my muscles belong to me. I consist not only of solid muscles but also of water, and it is this fluid that actually does the tasting because it mixes with what comes as fluid from without. What does one do when one licks sugar? One drives saliva from within toward the taste buds. The dissolved sugar penetrates the fluid, and the “fluid man,” as it were, permeates himself with the sugar. The sugar is secreted delicately in the taste buds of the tongue and spreads out in one's own fluidity, giving him a feeling of well-being.

As human beings we can only taste, but why is this so? If we had fins and were fishes — which would be an interesting existence — every time we ate, the taste would penetrate right through our fins. But then we would have to swim in water, where we would find everything even the delicate substances well-dissolved. The fish tastes all the traces of substances that are in the water and follows the direction of its taste, which is constantly penetrating into the fins. If something pleasant flows in its direction, the fish will taste it, and its fins will immediately move toward it. We men cannot do what the fish can because we have no fins; in us they are completely lacking. But since we cannot use the sensation of taste to move around, we intensify it within. Fishes have a highly developed sense of taste, but they have no inward sense of it. We human beings have the taste within, we experience it; fishes exist in the totality of the water and experience taste together with the surrounding water. People have wondered why a fish swims far out into the ocean when it wants to lay its eggs. They swim far out, not only into the Atlantic Ocean, but also into other parts of the earth's oceans, and then the young slowly return to European waters. Why is this? Well, European fishes that swim around in our rivers are fresh-water fishes, but the eggs cannot mature in fresh water. Fishes sense by taste that a trace of salt flows toward the outlet of a river; they then swim out into the sea. If the sun shines differently on the other side of the earth, they taste that and by this sense swim halfway around the globe. Then the young taste their way back again to where the parent fishes have dwelt. So we see that fishes follow their taste in every way.

It is extremely interesting that the water that flows in the rivers and is contained in the seas is full of taste, and the fact that fishes swim around in them is really due to the water's taste. It is actually the taste of the water that makes them swim around; the taste of the water gives them their directions. Naturally, if the sun shines on a certain portion of water, everything that is in the water at that spot is thoroughly dissolved by the heat of the sun. It is changed into another taste, and that is why you see a lot of fishes swimming around there; it is the taste.

It is really a strange matter, gentlemen, because we would actually be swimming, too, if we went only by our taste. When I taste sugar the fluid man within me wants to swim toward it. The urge to swim is indeed there; we want to swim constantly according to our taste, but the solid body prevents us from doing so. From that element that continually would like to swim but cannot — we really have something like a fish within us that constantly wants to swim but is held back — we retain what our inner soul being makes out concerning taste. With taste we live completely within the etheric body, but the etheric body is held fast by the water in us, and that water in turn is held by our physical body. It is the most natural thing to say that man has an etheric body that is really not disposed to walking on the earth. It is suited only for swimming; it is in fact fish-like, but because man makes it stand erect it becomes something different. Man has within him this etheric body that is actually only in his fluid organization, and it is indeed so that he would constantly like to swim, swim in the elements of water that are contained even in the air. We would like to be always swimming there, but we transform this urge into the inner experience of taste

Liver

1911-03-28-GA128

the liver empties through the gall-bladder into the duodenum

...

[spleen - liver - gallbladder]

.. the blood is actually driven down into the organs of nutrition, just as it is into all other organs. In this nutritional organisation, as elsewhere, it goes through the entire process whereby it is capable of being the instrument of Man's I in the physical world. We know that the blood, as the instrument of the I passes through the transition from red blood to blue, so that here, too, it meets with resistance. Thus the I, by means of its instrument, reaches down even to the nutritive processes, since this transformed blood, in order to be the expression of the I, works upon almost the first beginnings of the nutritive process. This occurs through the fact that the system of veins discharges into the liver, and that out of this modified blood the gall is prepared, which then comes into direct contact with the nutritional system.

We thus have a wonderful union of the two extremes of the human organisation.

• The nutritional stream, on the one hand, is taken into the digestive tract and this represents the external matter which enters our physical organisation.
• The I, on the other hand, together with its instrument the blood, constitutes the noblest endowment which Man possesses in the terrestrial world. It establishes a direct connection with the nutritional stream in that it comes to the very end of the blood-process, and there, at the end of the blood-process, in turn brings about the preparation of something which, we may say, directly confronts the nutritional stream. In other words, the gall is prepared by the instrument of the I, the blood, through the roundabout way of the liver; and in the gall the I opposes the nutritional stream. For at this point the activity of the blood has come to an end and, before acting upon the nutritional stream, it is able to prepare the gall.

Here we see the one working downward, as it were, into the other. And whoever has the will to do so can see in this very fact something that leads in a wonderful way into many, many mysteries of the human organisation.

He can follow these processes still further, including abnormal processes, which take their course, for example, in a reverse discharge, a congesting and reverse discharging of the gall into the blood. He might thus quite easily form an opinion about “jaundice,” for example, its cause and effect; but it would take us too far afield if we were also to discuss such things as this today.

Thus we see how the seven organs reach as an actual fact down into the action of the ether-body and have taken into themselves, from above, the influence of the I.

In the gall we have the I setting itself in direct opposition to the nutritional stream. If, now, the gall is to meet this nutritional stream, which has already become a living stream in the alimentary canal, it must itself likewise meet it as a living substance; otherwise a truly continuous process could not come about. The gall must be enabled, as a living substance, to meet the nutritional stream. This occurs through the fact that the very organ in which this gall is formed is one of the seven organs of the inner cosmic system, which vitalise the inner life of Man in order that it may as inner life meet the outer life. We pass from the gall-bladder back into the liver itself, and the liver in turn we find connected with the spleen.

When we more closely observe the liver, the gallbladder, the spleen (this follows quite naturally out of our previous reflections, for the spleen has been fairly accurately considered in this connection and used as an example) we must affirm that it is these organs that directly confront the nutritional stream and so metamorphose it that it is capable of advancing to the higher stages of the human organisation, and also of caring for those organs which open themselves to the external world.

Those which open outward are the heart (through the lungs) and, of course, the alimentary canal itself; but, most of all, the organs in the head which serve as the organs of the senses.

We must now understand clearly that all inner perception, all inner experience, must have something to do with processes of excretion. It is for this reason that we have given special consideration also to these excretory processes.

Liver, gall-bladder, and spleen have nothing to do directly with processes of excretion; the fact that they secrete their own nutritive substances is a different matter; but they do not excrete anything with respect to the organisation as a whole. They signify the ascending life, which turns away from a mere being alive and directs itself to the organisation of consciousness.

[heart]

Since, however, the heart is added as a fourth member to this organisation, and since the heart opens itself to the outer world, Man attains through this opening outward his I-consciousness. Yet he would not be in a position to experience this I otherwise than merely as something which faces the outer world. He would not be able to bring this outward-looking I into relationship with what he experiences by means of his inner organs as a dim corporeal life within him.

He must add to the secretional processes of the inner organisation still another process which makes possible for him an experiencing of his inner being by that which has its instrument in the blood.

At first Man realises his inner life only in a dim consciousness and we have seen how this manifests itself in the organisation through the fact that the processes of excretion are taken up by the lymph-ducts from the liver, the gall-bladder, and the spleen.

In the same way something must be excreted from the blood, if Man is to rise to a really conscious I. And it is in this excretion that he becomes aware that, as an inner entity, he confronts the outer world. If Man did not have these inner excretional processes he would, in his realisation of inner life, so face the outer world that he would inwardly lose himself; or he would at most realise dim inner processes but would not know what is outside him, he would not know that what is inhaling the air and taking in nutritive substances is the same as the being which is working in him. It is possible for him to know this through the fact that

• he excretes the modified blood through the lungs, in the form of carbonic acid gas; and that,
• through the kidneys, he excretes the metamorphosed substances which must be removed from the blood in order that he may have an inner perception of his own entity.

[ascending and descending processes]

Thus we find our assertion justified, that the organs which represent an ascending process, the liver, the gallbladder, the spleen, as well as those representing in a certain sense a descending process, the lungs and the kidneys (although the lungs, in that they open themselves to the outer world, are at the same time the means of an ascending process; the individual organs are constantly in living reciprocal relationship, and we must not establish any hard and fast classification) we see how all these seven members of the inner human cosmic system are bound up with Man's realisation of inner life, and with his opening of himself to the outer world.

These seven members completely metamorphose, on the one hand, the vital activities peculiar to the nutritive substances into inner vital activities; and with these metamorphosed substances they provide for the human organism. They make it possible for Man to reopen himself to the outer world.

But, in addition to this, they bring it about that what he evolves as an excessively strong inner vital activity, which would not harmonise with the vital activity that penetrates into him from without, is brought into balance with this outer vital activity by being thrown off through the excretional processes of the lungs and the kidneys.

[inner cosmic system of Man]

So that we have before us the complete and regular control of the inner vital activities in this inner cosmic system of Man. And in fact this entire relationship manifests itself in such a way that the best picture occultism can give us is to conceive

• the heart standing as the sun, at the centre,
• and caring for the three bodies of the inner cosmic system which signify the upward rising and upward bearing process. In the same way in which the sun is related to Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in the planetary system, so is the inner sun, the heart, related to Saturn, spleen; Jupiter, liver; and gall-bladder, Mars, in the human organism.

I should have to speak, not for weeks but for months, if I were to explain all the reasons why the relationship of the sun to the outer planets of our planetary system may really be declared to be parallel, for an exact and intimate occult observation, to the relationship which the heart sustains in the human organism to the inner cosmic system, i.e., to the liver, the gall-bladder, and the spleen. For it is an absolute fact that the relationship existing in the outer cosmos has been so adopted into the organism that what goes on in the great world or macrocosm, in our solar system, is mirrored in the reciprocal action among these organs.

And those processes which go on between the sun and the inner planets, working inwards from the sun to our earth, are again reflected in the relationship of the heart-sun to the lungs as Mercury, and to the kidneys as Venus. Thus we have in this inner human cosmic system something which mirrors the external cosmic system.

...

[metals]

From this we now see that certain of these metals to be found on the Earth have their respective kinship with the organs or members which we find embedded in the upper blood-organisation.

That which, in the lungs for example, opens itself upward into the larynx, thus becoming an organ of the higher human organisation, and which otherwise presses down into the gall-bladder as dim life, acts correspondingly as a Mars- or iron-system in the larynx which contains the upper part of the lungs.

These things are, of course, hard to differentiate; but I should like, nevertheless, to point out some of them.

In the same way the upper part of our head containing the brain-formation corresponds, as regards its position in the upper course of the blood, to the position of Jupiter-liver (tin) in the lower course of the blood; so that we have here a correspondence between the fore part of the head, in the upper course of the blood, and tin, or Jupiter; and, in the same way, between the back of the head and lead, or Saturn.

And so it is with the organs which may be looked upon as embedded in the upper cosmic system.

1920-03-29-GA312

But we have also organs that open in a way our human organism from within; and thus bring Man into relationship with what happens at a certain nearness to our Earth's surface; that is to say, into relationship with the meteorological world, in its widest meaning. And if we do not limit our healing efforts to mere substances with curative properties, but extend them to tracing the curative processes, we must include within our purview the relationships of man to the meteorological processes—again in the widest sense of the term.

We are already able to distinguish what is associated mainly with the astronomical world from what is associated mainly with the meteorological world, in our organism. This distinction, to be sure, needs a more delicate method of observation. At first, no doubt, these statements may shock your preconceptions, but I hope to convince you in time that the classification above mentioned is the best of foundations for curative treatment.

As a general rule we find that the organs which open to the meteorological sphere are those farthest from the surface and most deeply internal.

• The chief amongst them is the liver, and all the vesicular structures, especially represented by the bladder itself, the bladder being extremely important pathologically, even one of the most important of our attributes for pathological purposes.
• Another member of this group is the lung: which opens externally in order to mediate breathing.
• Then again, we must include the heart in this group, and if you have correctly interpreted much that has been said in our previous lectures, you will easily understand this fact.

And indeed all these organs are associated with by going thoroughly into the problems of the human relationship to the world without, and especially into the connection of the human activities with the world environment.

...

[liver]

Most important is the third organ, the liver, which is linked up with the external “meteorological” conditions in the widest sense. Although apparently secluded within the organism, the liver is in a high degree correlated to the world outside.

• A proof of this is the dependence of the liver's health and activity on the special quality of the water in a given locality. In order to comprehend the exact state of liver health of any local group of persons, the composition of the local water ought to be studied.
  • Of course there will be considerable difficulties in the thorough study of the relationship between the functional life of the human liver and the composition of the water in any particular locality; for the dependence is extremely subtle, and it must be borne in mind that in districts with a water supply full of lime, e.g., the whole life of the liver will differ from that of districts with water poorer in lime. It would be well to pay heed to these factors, noting that the functions of the liver are promoted by water from which the lime has been withheld. Of course, the ways and means to carry this out must be found.

• The activity of taste is beneficial to the healthy development of the liver, but if indulged to excess, degeneracy follows. Degeneracy of the liver is synonymous with too gross and too constant feeding. The internal enjoyment of taste, the prolongation within of sensations which should be limited to tongue and palate, whether the sensations be pleasant and attractive, or repelling, leads to degeneration of the liver. Therefore one should try, in the case of liver disturbances (which are often difficult to find out), to induce patients to cultivate the sense of taste, and try to distinguish flavours as such, and appreciate them.

[lung]

And again, the lung and its life are closely connected with the conditions set up by the geology and geography of the given locality. There is a great difference according to whether the soil is mainly limestone, as here in Dornach, or siliceous, as in the mountains of “old rock”; that is to say, the lungs are essentially dependent on the earthy and solid structure of the region in question. One of the first tasks of any medical man beginning practice, is to study the geology of his district thoroughly; for such study is identical with the study of its inhabitants' lungs. And it should be fully realised that almost the most unfavourable case is when the lung is totally unable to adapt itself to the environment.

Do not misunderstand the view just stated. I refer to the actual internal structure of the lung; I do not mean the function of breathing, although this function is, of course, in its turn affected by the adequate or defective structure of the lung. We are dealing with the dependence of the inner lung structure on environment; whether the lungs tend to encrustation (hardening) or to becoming mucoid (slimy), is mainly due to the nature of the environment. Moreover the lungs are peculiarly dependent on corporeal exertion, and are certainly injured in persons who are obliged to do physical work to exhaustion.

These are the relationships which lead us to the dependences of such organs which, as lungs, liver, bladder and heart, open themselves to the influences of the “meteorological sphere.” Curative treatments of illness in any of this organic group should therefore be sought by “physical” methods. [e.Ed: i.e., open air, light, warmth, etc.] For the results in such cases are—I would say—in certain respects permanent.

It is the greatest of services to a patient with weak lungs, and resident in an unsuitable district, to induce him to change his abode and move to a district which suits him more. Indeed those organs situated above the lungs are often helped in an extraordinary manner, by complete change of locality and manner of life. Change of district and daily habit can do comparatively little to relieve morbid conditions in the sphere from the heart downwards but they are extraordinarily beneficial to the lungs and all that is situated above them. It must only be kept in mind that all functions in the organism are interdependent, and that one must find out whether or not a hidden interplay may be at work. For instance, we may find degeneration of the cardiac vessels: then we have to inquire whether there may not be a tendency to degeneration of lung in the same subject, and whether the cardiac symptoms should not be treated from the aspect of the pulmonary condition.

These are at least hints as to the meteorological dependencies of man. Behind the meteorological sphere, as it were behind a screen, there is hidden the astronomical domain in the external world as well as in the interior of Man. The distinctions here are as follows: the meteorological sphere within us comprises that which appertains to lungs, liver, bladder and heart; in the external world, it comprises the solid earth and the realms of air, water and warmth.

Behind and beyond this region, lie the formative processes in the plant and mineral realms; and to these formative processes, which are so closely akin to the extra-telluric, i.e. the astronomical domain, there is a polar opposite in man, viz., the organs situated more deeply within our bodies than the four systems of organs mentioned above. As the relation of the processes in plant and mineral to what lies behind lung, liver, etc., is not so obvious, the study of the healing processes in this realm becomes far more difficult. The rational path of investigation is the clear comprehension of man's organic tendency to perform and produce, somewhere, the exact opposite to the happenings of external nature.

1920-03-31-GA312

Now let us ask ourselves; suppose we approach the earth more closely than the atmospheric envelope—do we then penetrate again into Man, by that way? Yes: for as we approach the Earth out of the atmosphere, we come to all that is fluid, to the watery element, and we may correctly envisage a fluid zone beneath the zone of air. The fluid zone has also its counterpart, which lies beyond the light-generating stratum. There again, all conditions are the polar opposites of those obtaining in the watery belt round the Earth; and there, too, forces spring to life and operate on the Earth, as light is born in and operates from the zone immediately below. There are the chemical forces working down into the earth, and it is an absurdity to seek for the chemical effects observed on earth, in the various substances themselves. (See Diagram 21). You will seek them there in vain. They come down to meet the Earth from these regions outside.

But again Man bears within him something analogous to this extra-telluric region. If I may so express it .. Man contains a chemist.

He has within him something of the celestial sphere that contains the source of chemical action. And this function is highly localised in us, in the liver.

I ask you to study the remarkable scope of the functional activity of the liver.

• On the one hand, it exercises what I might call a form of suction, determining the composition of the blood; and
• on the other hand, by means of the secretion of the gall, it regulates the process leading to blood formation.

Consider these manifold activities; and you will have to recognise something which, if carefully studied, leads to a proper chemical science. For the external chemistry of outer science is not to be found on Earth; it is a reflection only of the extra human “chemical sphere” above. But there is a means of studying this extra-telluric sphere in all the wonderful workings of the human liver.

Now let us return to vegetable carbon and its “internal” attributes, by combining vegetable carbon with the alkalis, for instance with potassium itself (Kali Carbonicum), and studying the resultant effects on the human organism.

• All alkaline substances (of the nature of lye) operate towards the interior of the organism, affecting the processes of the liver; whilst
• all substances akin to vegetable carbon tend to affect the kidneys and urinary tract.

We shall be able to trace a distinct interaction between all that is of the nature of lye and all the processes associated with the liver. Careful study of such substances would prove that, just as all carbonic substance is linked with “animalisation,” so all that is akin to lye, is associated with the “vegetable tendency” in Man and with the casting off of the vegetable kingdom from mankind.

....

Today we have approached yesterday's theme from the other side, as it were. The circle we completed yesterday was more perfect, but we shall continue and hope to complete today's line of reasoning in the succeeding lectures.

We have learnt to see the activities of kidneys, liver and lungs respectively as the counterparts to the external activities in the air, in water and in solid earth.

• The aerial activities correspond to all that appertains to the kidney system in its widest sense, including all the urinary functions. The innermost part of this functional system, the kidney itself, is connected with the air supply and thus shortness of breath can arise and this symptom you will note among the after effects of dosage with vegetable carbon. So we may say that the deeper causes of respiratory disturbance and shortness of breath, must be sought for in the kidney system.
• All that is associated with the fluid (watery) element has its deeper causation in the liver system. Just as the shortness of breath and its regulation are associated with the kidneys, thirst is associated with the liver. It would be an interesting investigation, to study the interactions of the various qualities and peculiarities of thirst in man, with the operations of the liver.

1920-04-09-GA312

But this whole nervous system which is supposed to be motoric is an absurdity. As I have sufficiently emphasised, there is no difference between the sensory and the motor nerves. The whole conception of such a distinction is absurd. The matter in question is entirely different.

So long as the ammoniac salts retain their efficacy—let us say within the area of the body between the processes of taste and of blood formation—there is also a continuous process of taste in the interior of the organism. This continued process of taste is at the same time a process in the astral body and releases a reflex action in that body, which is manifested in perspiration.

[working of liver and spleen]

If you can accept the whole of the earlier stages of our digestive activities as a continued process of taste, you will see right into the very core of the sebaceous process, and to some extent of the urinary excretion as well.

For let me ask you to consider this: if we observe the main activity of this area, we find that essentially it has to do with an absorption of foodstuffs taken into the body secretion of the organism. That is the essence of what happens. All the processes in question reduce themselves - more or less - to this dissolving effect of the bodily fluids upon the foodstuffs.

And this dissolving process has its counter-process, which consists in the special activities of the liver and the spleen.

Thus in our earlier discussions the hepatic and splenetic activities had to be associated, in the main, with aqueous and fluid activities.

But, in contrast to the dissolving effect in the first region of the digestive process, the liver's action operates as encapsulation, encirclement and re-transformation of what has been done in the first part of the digestive process.

One may obtain a picture of what happens if one looks at the effect produced by throwing a handful of salt into warm water. The salt disperses and dissolves—this is an image of the action in the digestive tract, until the foodstuffs are absorbed into the blood-vessels and lymph channels. Now let me place beside the salt and water, some little globules of quicksilver, with their imperative urge to roundness, to completion, to organising and shaping. This is an image of the action which begins after the absorption of foodstuffs into the blood and lymph channels, and is controlled from the liver, with its close association with Man's astral body.

We must look into the processes of life from this standpoint. For then we pass naturally to the study of the external world as revealed, for instance, in the structure of salt and of mercury formation respectively. We can read from the facts of the external world the gist of what must happen within the organism. But Man must always be observed in connection with this external world.

[further]

Now follow further these ammoniacal salts; and note that if they pass into the formation of the blood, they have an alkalising effect.

They have gone far enough on their appointed path to extend their operation into the upper human sphere from the lower, and to provoke reactions in that upper sphere. The significant fact here is, however, the complete reversal of processes that takes place. What happens may be stated as follows.

• The upper sphere in Man is normally urged to act through sense perception in the lower digestive tracts, that is, to perceive through the sense of taste;
• but now the whole process is reversed:
  • the lower sphere inclines more towards conscious perception,
  • and the upper inclines towards that which works upon perception.

The result is that whereas formerly there was a reflex action, which I have characterised as proceeding from the astral body, there is now a reflex action from below, that is to say, of an action which originates in the upper sphere.

So that—to use a technical term—the ciliary epithelia, for instance, vibrate more rapidly and the pulmonary secretion increases. There is a reversed action.

At first, the dissolving process stimulates the liver's activity, and then, through this encapsulating hepatic activity, the dissolving operation of the region above the liver—namely of the lungs—is called into action, with the secretion of the upper organs instead of the dissolution in the lower.

[recap with image]

That is the path in the human organism; from the intake of the substance, through dissolution or liquefaction, through saline processes to formative processes and concurrently, the processes of dispersal which are comparable to combustion and evaporation.

Now let us think on the one hand of drops of quicksilver, and boiling liquid on the other, in constant evaporation, giving forth steam—which we might term phosphoric-sulphurous action, a process in which, as it were, inorganic matter is kindled. Then one has the activity developed in the opposite group of organs, that is to say in the lower sphere, but also in all that is associated with the lungs in the upper Man.

1920-04-23-GA201

To repeat—you, as entire Man, observe the surrounding world, and this world reacts upon your organs, which adapt themselves to these experiences according to their nature.

In a medical school, when anatomy is being studied, the liver is just called liver, be it the liver of a man of 50 or of 25, of a musician or of one who understands as much of music as a cow does of Sunday after regaling itself upon grass for a week! It is simply liver. The fact is that a great difference exists between the liver of a musician and that of a non-musician, for the liver is very closely connected with all that may be summed up as the musical conceptions that live and resound in Man.

It is of no use to look at the liver with the eye of an ascetic and see it as an inferior organ; for that apparently humble organ is the seat of all that lives in and expresses itself through the beautiful sequence of melody; it is closely concerned e.g. with the act of listening to a symphony. We must clearly understand that the liver also possesses etheric organs; it is these latter which, in the first place, have to do with music.

But the outer physical liver is, in a certain sense, an externalisation of the etheric liver, and its form is like the form of the latter.

In this way you see, you prepare your organs; and if it depended entirely upon yourself, the instruments of your senses, would, in the next incarnation, be a replica of the experiences you had made in the world in the present incarnation. But this is true only in measure, for in the interval between death and a new birth beings of the higher hierarchies come to our aid, and they do not always decide that injuries produced upon our organs by lack of knowledge or of self-control should be carried by us as our fate. We receive help between death and re-birth, and are therefore, in respect of this portion of our constitution, not dependent upon ourselves alone.

1922-09-13-GA347

see also The three Logoi#1922-09-13-GA347

As I said earlier, the Jews in antiquity understood their Old Testament, and they knew what it meant to say, 'God has tormented me at night through my kidneys.' This is how they expressed the reality of what their souls perceived in dreams. They said, 'God has tormented me at night through my kidneys,' because they knew very well that human beings not only look at the world outside through their eyes, but they also look inwards with their liver and think there with their kidneys.

The people of ancient Rome still had this knowledge, too.

They knew that every person is actually two human beings in one: one who looks out through the eyes and one who looks inside through the liver. If you look at the distribution of the veins in the liver, you'll see that, in a sense, the liver looks towards our back. This is why we perceive so little of what goes on inside us. Just as we can't see what is behind us, so the liver isn't fully conscious of what it is looking at.

...

Now that we have come to the point of understanding that the soul works not only in the head, but also in the liver and the kidneys, we can also see how this activity varies in the course of the year.

• In the warmth of summer, for instance, the liver does little work. At that time, liver and kidneys enter a kind of soul sleep and carry out only their physical functions, because we surrender ourselves to the warmth of the world around us. In terms of soul activity, the entire digestive system is slower.
• But in winter soul-spiritual activities resume with renewed force. Around Christmas and New Year, at the beginning of January, the soul activity in liver and kidneys reaches its culmination.

1923-10-13-GA351

So the thing is this: the liver in humans is a very important organ.

If a person had no liver, they would have no bile, because the liver secretes bile continuously. The bile comes from the liver, passes into the gallbladder, from there into the digestive juices, from there into the blood and then passes into the whole body. So we can say: Man has the liver in his right side; from the liver, bile flows out into the gallbladder, from there into the blood, and goes into the whole body. So Man actually has his liver to secrete bile.

You may ask why this bile is constantly coming from the liver?

Gentlemen, if you had no gall, you would be strange people. It is distributed throughout the body in very small quantities, but it must be in the whole body. If you had no gall, you would be terribly phlegmatic; you would let your hands, arms, and head hang, and it would be unpleasant for you to answer someone's questions and so on. So you would be completely lethargic, phlegmatic people if you had no bile. Man must have bile; the bile must come from the liver.

And if the liver is relatively small, then the person is phlegmatic; if the liver is relatively large, then the person has a lot of fire in him, because the bile produces fire.

[too much bile]

And you see, there can also be too much bile in a person; they can produce too much bile; then they actually feel like hitting out when someone says just a little something to them. In particular, people with a violent temper have a lot of bile flowing out of their liver; a lot of bile flows into the digestive juices and into the blood.

So that if you observe inwardly the person to whom you say something or who does not like something that makes a particular impression on him – a lot of bile quickly flows out of the liver and spreads very quickly throughout the body, and he hits you a few times or rants like a trooper. That is what you observe inwardly when a person has too much tendency to secrete bile.

But as I said, if he did not secrete any bile at all, he would have no fire at all, but would just flop around as I told you.

So you see, the secretion of bile is something that is absolutely essential to a person.

[illness: blood poisoning due to anger, abdominal colds .. ]

I don't know if any of you has tasted bile: it tastes terribly bitter, really poisonous, and a larger amount of bile properly absorbed by the mouth is also a poison. This is related to what I told you last Wednesday. I told you: when a person comes to life, moves, walks, even when he curses and slaps you around a bit, yes, there is so much poison that he has the tendency to produce a lot of the potassium cyanide I told you about. He has to mix that with his blood. I have seen many cases where people have simply developed internal blood poisoning from their anger. One can become so angry, especially when one becomes angry quickly, that one secretes an excessive amount of bile as a result of this anger - actually first a lot of cyan, then bile. Then one gets a terrible toxic mixture in the blood, and that ruins the blood. Wrath can cause terrible blood poisoning. From this you can see how necessary and how harmful something can be for a person, depending on what kind of organ it is in his body. Because everything that happens is connected with the soul again. Anger is something of the soul, the secretion of bile is something physical; but there is nothing in the human being that is not also of the soul and everything of the soul somehow has a physical form.

Let us move on. Now suppose a person is very often exposed to what are often called colds, especially abdominal colds. So a person gets abdominal colds very often; then his stomach says: Yes, I am like an Eskimo, I am like in the coldest region of the earth. - And then it happens that the stomach constantly contracts the liver, so that it is small like an Eskimo's. So if a person has a lot of abdominal colds, then his liver contracts, and then it squeezes out the bile. Bile constantly trickles into the gallbladder and from there into the body.

Now, gentlemen, you have all experienced what is called, for example, overstraining yourself. You lift something that is too heavy for you; then you tear your muscles apart, then you destroy your muscles. If you use too much strength for any organ, you destroy the organ. But that is the case with the liver. If it continues to secrete too much bile, the liver gradually shrinks and becomes ineffective.

So most liver diseases that people get arise from the fact that the person has developed a tendency to secrete too much bile due to cold in the abdomen, causing their liver to atrophy. Liver diseases come from cold in the abdomen due to the liver shrinking.

Of course, all kinds of other conditions can occur as well. When a person suffers from abdominal colds, the heart does not work properly. Doctors then say that liver diseases come from the heart. But in reality they come from the fact that the abdomen is cold.

But all this – as you can already see from what I have told you – has to do with the sun. Therefore, it is always very good for someone suffering from abdominal colds to expose their lower body to light. The sun cure, for example, is extremely good for this. So we have to say: everything that is connected with the liver is also connected with the sun. Solar activity promotes liver activity. A lack of solar activity disrupts liver activity. It is a very interesting connection between the sun and the liver.

[language - in German]

I have always admired the fact that the German language has a word for liver. All other languages don't have such a nice word for this organ in the right side of the abdomen. Because, according to what I have explained to you now, we have to say that the fire, even that which comes to Man from the sun, this invigorating firepower, must first be cooked properly in the liver for the human being; the bile must be prepared there for him, which then passes into his body. The sun prepares the bile in the human being. What the human being does there, we call living, and the one who fuels this life can be called a liver. Just as one says: wagon, wainwright, drawing, draftsman, so life is the verb, and liver, the liver - one has only forgotten that this is the case, one says “the liver” instead of “the liver”; actually it is called the liver - that is what gives life! Sometimes language is wonderfully instructive, because in the old folk instincts there was always a knowledge of this, and things were named correctly. The liver is what fires, what invigorates the human being. This is to be said with regard to the liver. Now, if one has a liver in its bile secretion, then one must say: the secretion of the liver is that which is connected with the sun.

[lungs]

Now we turn to the lungs. We have often discussed this and you know it: the lungs breathe. But the lungs drawing in oxygen, breathing, is only part of their activity. The lungs have something else to do. Just as the liver secretes bile, so the lungs secrete what is called mucus. So the lungs secrete mucus. The lungs, like the liver, cannot keep what they have inside. The liver could not fill up with bile; the liver has to release bile into the body. But the lungs have to constantly secrete mucus, constantly secrete mucus. And now it is so that when the lungs secrete mucus, the mucus then goes to all other parts of the body. It goes out with sweat, it even goes into the exhaled air, it goes out with the urine, it goes everywhere, the mucus. But the organ that secretes the mucus is the lung.

1924-06-25-GA317

[effects of inheritance]

Let us look right away from this life of soul, which emerges only by degrees and in which a part is often played by teachers—concerning whom perhaps the less said the better!—let us look away from this life of soul, and then we find, behind the bodily nature, another life of soul, a spirit soul, which makes its descent, between the time of conception and birth, from the spiritual worlds. For the first-mentioned life of soul is not that in Man which descends from spiritual worlds. The life of soul which descends from the spiritual worlds is something quite different, and is not, in the ordinary way, perceptible to earthly consciousness. This whole life of soul that comes down from the spiritual worlds takes possession of the body which is being built up from the sequence of generations in accordance with heredity.

And if this soul-life is of such a kind that it tends, when it lays hold of the liver-substance, to form a diseased liver, or if it finds in the physical and the etheric body some inherited tendency to disease, which gives rise to a feeling of illness, then disease will make its appearance.

Similarly, any other organ or nexus of organs may be faultily inserted into what comes down from the world of soul-and-spirit. When the connection has been made, when the union has come about between what comes down and what is inherited, when this entity of soul-and-body has been formed, then there arises—but even then no more than as a reflection in a mirror—that which we know ordinarily as our life of soul, as it manifests in thinking, feeling and willing. This soul life that manifests in thinking, feeling and willing is, however, as we said, no more than a reflection, it is really just like a reflection in a mirror. It is all obliterated when we fall asleep. The really permanent soul-life is behind; it makes its descent and passes through repeated earth-lives.

And if we ask where it is in Man, the answer is: It has its seat in the organisation of the body. How is this to be understood?

Let us think first of the human being in his three systems: nervous system, rhythmical system and metabolism-limb system.

You will understand me when I say that the nerves-and-senses system is localised principally in the head; we can therefore speak—although, of course, diagrammatically only—of the head system when we are referring to the nerves-and-senses system. This is more literally correct in the case of the very young child, where the upbuilding function of the nerves-and-senses system proceeds from the head and works thence into the whole organism. The nerves-and-senses system, then, is localised in the head. It is a synthetic system. What do I mean by that? It brings together all the activities of the organism. In the head is contained, in a sense, the whole human being.

When we speak of hepatic activity—and we ought really to speak always of the activity of the liver, for what we see as liver is nothing but a liver process that has become fixed—this liver activity is, naturally, entirely in the lower body; but for each such nexus of functions there is a corresponding activity in the head.

Here, shall we say, is the liver activity. And there is a correspondence to this liver activity in a particular activity in the human head or brain. Here in the lower body, the liver is relatively separated from the other organs, from kidneys, stomach and so on. But in the brain everything flows together, the hepatic activity flows together with the other activities; so that the head is the great synthesizer of everything that is going on in the organism. And the effect of all this synthesized activity is to set up a destructive process, a process of breaking down. Substance falls away.

...

[illnesses]

What descended from the spiritual world reached a kind of end at the time of the change of teeth; but it has continued to work, right until the twentieth year. It has already taken form in the organs which are now there, and has given the human being individual maturity, and earthly maturity.

Suppose that now some abnormality shows itself in the life of soul, which reflects—and is in conformity with—the structure of the organs, and is conditioned by the whole development of the human being. We shall then manifestly have an abnormality of soul, that has come about in this way. But if, after the human being has passed his twenty-first year, an abnormality appears in the liver or in some other organ, this organ is by then so much “on its own” and so detached, that the will—in its inner “soul” aspect—can keep itself independent of it. This is less and less possible the further one goes back into the years of childhood. But in a grown person the soul-life has become relatively independent; the organs already have a definite direction, and the oncoming of illness in an organ will not work so strongly upon the soul-life, and can therefore be treated simply as a disease in that organ. In the very young child, however, everything is still working together; a diseased organ still works into the life of soul—and very actively.

The diseases usually diagnosed by our modern pathology are the cruder illnesses; the subtler illnesses are not really accessible to histology. These lie in the fluids that permeate an organ, such as the liver, for instance; in the movement of the fluids—or even of the air—through that organ. The warmth permeating the organ is also of quite special significance for the life of soul. If therefore we are dealing with a child who shows evidence of a defect in the will, the first thing we must do is to ask ourselves: with what organ is the defect in the will connected? Is there some organ showing signs of degeneration or of illness, with which we can connect the defect in the will? That is the really important question.

...

When we look at a young child, we must see what it is in this child that has come from the previous earthly life. We must understand why he chooses organs that are diseased in consequence of the forces of heredity; and again, why he works himself into this body with an incompletely developed individuality.

Think of the many possibilities that exist for a child, in this first period up to the change of teeth, owing to the fact that what has come down is not always quite able to cope with what it finds before it. There is the possibility, let us say, of the child having a good model that has been well developed in the liver; but because the individuality is incapable of understanding what is contained in the liver, the development of the same (upon the model provided) during the second life-period is incomplete, and we have, in consequence, a very significant defect of will. Precisely in a case where the development of the liver has not been complete in this second period, has not been in accordance with the good development of the model, we find a defect in the will. The child has will, but does not get to the point of carrying it out; the will remains in the thinking. As soon as ever the child has begun to do something, he immediately begins to will something else. The will gets “stuck”, it is transfixed. For you must know that the liver is not merely the organ modern physiology describes; it is pre-eminently the organ that gives the human being the courage to transform a deed which has been thought of into an accomplished deed.

Imagine a man who sees a tram about to start, and knows that he has to go to Basle, but at the last minute cannot get into the tram. There are people like this! Something holds him back, he does not reach the point of getting in. This kind of stoppage of the will may sometimes reveal itself in most curious ways. But wherever it occurs, there is invariably a subtle defect of the liver. The liver is the mediator which enables an idea that has been resolved upon, to be transformed into an action carried out by the limbs. In point of fact, every organ is there in the body for the purpose of acting as mediator for something to come about.

I was once told about a certain young man who had an illness of this kind. He would be waiting for a tram; but when the tram came, he would suddenly stop short and not get in. Nobody knew why, he did not know himself. He simply stood there, rooted to the spot. What was the cause of this condition? It was a very complicated affair. The young man's father was a philosopher. He had divided the faculties of the soul, in a rather singular manner, into ideas, judgments (or conclusions) and the forces of “sympathy” and “antipathy”. He did not reckon the will among the powers of the soul. The will was omitted in his enumeration—from sheer desire on his part, to be honest and not to put forward more than revealed itself clearly to his consciousness. He carried this to such a point that it became perfectly natural to him to have no mental concept of the will at all. Then, at a comparatively advanced age in life, he had a son. By perpetually ignoring the will he, the father, had implanted into the liver an inclination not to transform subjective intentions into deed. This came out in the son as an illness! And now you can see why the individuality of the son chose this man for his father. The individuality of the son had no understanding of how to cope with the inner organisation of the liver; so he chose a constitution in which he need not trouble himself about the liver, a constitution in which the liver was lacking in the very function he had himself failed to bring down. You have here a very striking instance of the need to look also into karma, if we want to understand the child.

Spleen

1923-01-05-GA348

extract below as example of confirmation of predictions by spiritual science

The day before yesterday, one could see the kind of logic people employ. As you know, a natural scientific course was recently held here. I have already told you of experiments conducted in Stuttgart concerning the task of the spleen. We confirmed that the spleen has the task of serving as a sort of regulator of the digestive rhythm.

The blood circulation has a definite rhythm, as found in the pulse with its seventy two beats per minute. These are related to the intake of food. People also pay a little heed to a rhythmic intake of food; they are not too good at it, however, and frequently have no set mealtime. Worse yet, people indiscriminately partake of foods that are useful for them and those that are not. There is no regularity here as there is in the blood. If, for example, I eat at one o'clock instead of two o'clock, this is an irregularity. The blood circulation, after all, doesn't work that way and doesn't produce a different pulse when it requires nourishment. This is where the spleen takes over. We have tried to demonstrate this with experiments and have been successful to a degree. More experiments are needed and must be done soon, but we have been able to show to some extent that the spleen is a regulator. Though we might have irregular eating habits, the spleen keeps food in the intestines as long as the blood needs it. If we don't starve ourselves too much—if we starve ourselves too much even the spleen would be unable to function properly—the spleen supplies the blood with fat taken from our own body.

You see, because we were completely honest, Dr. Kolisko quite honestly stated in her book that in my medical course I indicated that the spleen has this task, and she then proceeded with experiments to confirm this. Then a professor in Munich said that this was easy; she had already received the indications from anthroposophy and so had them in her pocket. It is not supposed to be hypothetical-deductive science if one starts with indications and then conducts experiments. He therefore said that this isn't hypothetical-deductive science.

Why does the professor say that? Because people do not wish to work with a thought as their guideline. Instead, they want a lot of material delivered to their laboratories, and they blindly begin to experiment until they happen on some result. They call this hypothetical-deductive science, but there is no hypothesis in it at all. Occasionally, the most significant discoveries are made by chance. Then, well—even a blind dog sometimes finds a morsel! How could we progress, however, if in our laboratories our work did not follow our ideas?

The professor in Munich says that it is not hypothetical-deductive science for one to work with indications. Now, imagine that somewhere experiments had been conducted that proved the spleen's function but that a fire had destroyed the reports of the work. Only the final result would be known. Couldn't somebody come along and say that he would repeat these experiments? It would not be any different from our starting out with these indications. The same professor would also have to object to that as being unscientific. Now, wouldn't that be absurd?

The only difference here is that I have made my indications by tracing the spiritual course of the matter, but I have done it in such a way that it can readily be followed according to anatomical science. Then, through experiments, another person seeks affirmation of what had been precisely indicated. Our task here was simply to show correct physical proof for what I had said. There is no logical difference between my knowledge acquired by spiritual scientific means and what another person has already found earlier by means of experiments.

What does it indicate when someone considers it to be hypothetical-deductive science when something has been discovered by physical means, though the descriptions of the tests may have been burned, while anything done by anthroposophy is not considered hypothetical-deductive science? It indicates that one is not honest and that from the first one denounces anything coming from anthroposophy. People aren't really concerned about hypothetical-deductive science; they are so foolish that they don't notice that this is logical nonsense. They say that ours is not hypothetical-deductive science not because it would be logical to say so but only because it derives from anthroposophy. People are too foolish to comprehend what comes from anthroposophy. Naturally, their lack of comprehension makes them angry, and therefore they denounce it. The real reason anthroposophy is considered heresy is that those who are engaged in so-called science do not think and cannot understand anthroposophy. This is an aspect of our entire civilization. It is possible today to be a great scientist or scholar without being able really to think. In the future, one must truly cultivate honesty, an honesty that takes into account all the facts, not only those that conveniently fit one's pet theory, thus throwing sand in the eyes of the public.

1924-02-09-GA352

extract below as example of confirmation of predictions by spiritual science

Looking at the matter like this, gentlemen, we go to our mountain springs in a very different mood. We delight in the trickling, flowing springs with their wonderfully clear water, and so on. But that is not all. The springs are the earth's eyes. The earth does not look out into cosmic space with the ocean, for the sea is salty and that means that inwardly it is only the way our stomach is inwardly. The springs that flow with fresh water are open to the cosmos and are like our eyes, which also open to the outside world. We may thus say that on land, where you have springs, the earth looks out far into cosmic space, there you have the earth's sense organs, whereas the body of the earth, or rather the innards of the earth, are the salty oceans. It is of course different from the way it is in the human body; these are not organs complete in themselves, organs you can draw in their entirety. You could draw them but they are not entirely visible. But the earth has its innards in the ocean and its sense organs in the lands. And everything that connects the earth with cosmic space comes from fresh water. Everything that gives the earth its innards comes from salt water.

I am going to prove to you that this is so. You see, I once told you that human and animal reproduction are connected with the heavens. I told you that this is not only because the egg, the embryo in the mother's body develops only in this maternal body but also because influences are coming from the universe, and it is exactly because of these influences from the cosmos that the egg develops its roundness. As we look out and around and see the movement in the universe, so this small egg is an image of the universe, for these influences come from all sides. It means that heaven is active on earth wherever reproduction is active. In the same way you see that the eye is a sphere. I described it the other day. It has also been created under the influence of the universe. If you look at the spleen, it is not spherical but more created by the earth, by earthly influences. And that is the difference. Such things give us proof if we take note of them. I said I would give you proof of the true nature of sea and land.

Here I'd like to bring in something else. As I have told you, we did experiments to establish the role of the spleen in our biology laboratory.

The role of the spleen is that when we are unable to eat at regular intervals it serves to balance this out again; it is the regulator.

We have provided proof of this in our biological laboratory. It is all described in a small book by Mrs Kolisko [editor: see Further reading section below].

It also became necessary with those experiments - because modern science demands this - to give proof, tangible evidence. This will no longer be necessary when scientists believe in supersensible evidence, but today it is still necessary.

We took a rabbit—not causing the rabbit pain in any other way, one can do this with great care—removed the spleen and let the creature live on. This went very well. The rabbit would not have died of the spleen operation but it accidentally caught a cold and perished from that. We then dissected it and were of course most interested to see what had happened where the spleen had been removed.

What do we have to say in the light of spiritual science? What remains when the physical spleen is cut out?

Well, you see, if this is the spleen (Fig. 8) and you cut it out and put it away, the ether body of the spleen still remains in the site and so does the astral body and so on. The spleen develops under the influence of the Earth, and this gives it its shape.

If we now remove the physical spleen and only the etheric spleen is in there, as in our rabbit, what has to happen?

Well, gentlemen, the following has to happen. While the physical spleen depends on the Earth, inclines to the Earth, the etheric spleen, which has become completely free, being no longer weighed down by the physical spleen, must again come under the influence of the heavens. And one has to assume that something like an image of heaven would have to develop. And lo and behold, when we dissected the rabbit, we found a small round body inside, made up of fine white tissue! So it all fitted. What has to happen according to the postulates of spiritual science did happen. A small nut-sized tissue body had developed in a relatively short time.

So you see, we only have to find the right approach and we will everywhere find proof of what spiritual science has to tell us. You can see from this that things we are able to establish on the basis of the science of the spirit, finding the right way of following the issue, do indeed happen in the physical world.

1924-03-29-GA239

extract below as example of confirmation of predictions by spiritual science

I will start with something that has a certain scientific importance; it is an example that may perhaps not be to the liking of some people, but it is easy to follow. I have often emphasised in Anthroposophical lectures that the formation of the human embryo in earthly life, even when investigated from the purely scientific point of view, provides the proof in itself that something extra-earthly is at work in the process. Natural science believes the ovum to be the most complex structure that can possibly exist on Earth. Much thought is given to this complex structure of the ovum and recently we have been hearing about the wonders of the atom and the molecule! The structure of a cell is said to be indescribably complex. But this is a fallacy, for the ovum is, in reality, chaos; it is not a complex structure. The chemical physical structure goes to pieces, and before a living being can arise the ovum must have been in a state of chaos.

[editor: see also topic page for Albumen]

The very purpose of fertilisation is to produce this state of chaos in the ovum, so that within the mother's organism there is matter which has been completely broken down. The processes in the mother's body produce this state of chaos. And now think of a crystal. The Cosmos cannot work in a crystal with its hard, firm edges; neither can the Cosmos work in the substance of a plant, which also has solid form; nor in that of an animal. Fertilisation means that the ovum becomes a chaos. Only then does the whole surrounding Cosmos work in upon this germinating entity and build up the living human form in such a way that the being of soul and spirit coming from earlier earthly lives can enter into it.

According to modern views this is so much nonsense—but it happens to be the truth! What is so deplorable in our time is that when one speaks the truth it is almost inevitably pooh-poohed by contemporary scholarship.

Some people may say: “This statement of yours may be based upon clairvoyant vision; but is it also capable of proof?”

It is indeed, and in more ways than one might imagine. At our Institute for Biological Research in Stuttgart remarkable confirmation of this fact has come to light. Investigations have been made into the function of the spleen. You know, perhaps, that the spleen has always been considered a very enigmatical organ. The story goes that in a viva voce examination the candidate was asked by the professor: “Can you tell me anything about the spleen?” The candidate puzzled his brains and at last blurted out in desperation: “I have forgotten it.” “What a pity!” said the professor. “Nobody has ever known anything about the spleen; you apparently were the only one, and you have forgotten it!”

I indicated a certain method, based on the principles of spiritual science, according to which Frau Dr. Kolisko has investigated the function of the spleen. The validity of her results is still being questioned but they will eventually win through, because the investigations were genuinely exact. During the investigations something else came to light. Because of the methods in general use today, one is sometimes obliged to adopt procedures that go much against the grain, but we finally decided to excise the spleens of rabbits. It was nothing in the least like vivisection but a quite simple operation; and we did everything that could possibly be done to avoid causing suffering. Unfortunately one of the rabbits died from a chill after the operation because by an oversight it was not taken immediately into the heated room.

What result was to be expected from this operation?

After the removal of the spleen something developed in the rabbit's body at the same place, something to which the Cosmos could have access. As long as the spleen itself was there the cosmos could do nothing; but if the spleen is removed, the etheric spleen alone remains, and the etheric spleen adapts itself to the working forces of the cosmos. It was to be expected, then, that at the place where the spleen had been, something would develop in the form that is a copy of the cosmos, namely, the spherical form. And this is what we actually found! When we opened the rabbit we found a tiny organic body, spherical in shape; it had been produced by the in-working cosmic forces—when the condition in which the Earth alone works had been removed. This is entirely in line with the contention that the fertilised ovum is a body in which a state of chaos has been induced.

And so karma led us to an external proof of something that holds good in another sphere altogether.

Sense organs

1905-08-27-GA091

eye and ear

see also:

• Human senses
• Human eye

Evolution of sense organs

1905-08-08-GA091

sense organs on Old Moon

1905-08-28-GA091

future senses eye, ear, touch

Discussion

Various notes

1/ Removing the spleen (milt) is called splenectomy <-> premature death

http://sante.lefigaro.fr/actualite/2009/08/05/9696-rate-organe-plus-precieux-quon-ne-pense

Related pages

• Man - the human being
• Man: an integrated view
• Man past and future
• I-organization
• Threefold working in Man
• Working of substances and their forces
• The human brain
• The human heart

References and further reading

• Karl Ernst Schaefer, Gunther Hildebrandt: 'A new image of man in medicine : volume II: Basis of an individual physiology' (1979)
• Peter Selg: Vom Logos Menschlicher Physis: Die Entfaltung einer anthroposophischen Humanphysiologie im Werk Rudolf Steiners (2000)
• Dennis Klocek: 'Esoteric physiology' (2016, based on lectures 2010)

Organs

• Lily Kolisko: 'Milzfunktion und Plättchenfrage' (1921)
• Walter Holtzapfel: 'The human organs' (1993 in EN)
• Heinz Hartmut Vogel:
  • 'Die vier Hauptorgane Herz - Niere - Leber - Lunge: Anthroposophisch-menschenkundliche Gesichtspunkte zur Entwicklungsgeschichte, Pathologie, Psychosomatik und Therapie' (1995)
  • 'Organe der Ich-Organisation: Ihre Wirksamkeit in Haut, Blut und Lymphe, Pankreas und Wirbelsäule ; Das Problem der Allergie' (1996)
• Olaf Koob: 'If the Organs Could Speak: The Foundations of Physical and Mental Health - Understanding the Character of our Inner Anatomy' (2018, original in DE 2005 as 'Wenn die Organe sprechen könnten : Grundlagen der leiblich-seelischen Gesundheit'; also available in FR, NL)

Various unqualified

• Johannes W. Rohen, Elke Lütjen-Drecoll: Funktionelle Anatomie des Menschen: Lehrbuch der makroskopischen Anatomie nach funktionellen Gesichtspunkten, Schattauer; Auflage: 11., überarb. u. erw. Aufl. (September 2005), ISBN 978-3794524402
• Johannes W. Rohen (1921-2022)
  • Color Atlas of Anatomy - A Photographic Study of the Human Body' (original in DE as 'Anatomie des Menschen - Fotografischer Atlas der systematischen und topografischen Anatomie')
  • Morphologie des menschlichen Organismus – Versuch einer goetheanistischen Gestaltlehre des Menschen (2000)
  • Eine funktionelle und spirituelle Anthropologie: unter Einbeziehung der Menschenkunde Rudolf Steiners (2009)