The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The first formation of the physical human body

[ 1 ] In a previous passage of this writing, we spoke of a lunar and solar existence preceding the earthly existence. Only within the lunar existence do impressions arise for the clairvoyant consciousness which are reminiscent of the impressions of earthly life. But such impressions cannot be gained when the clairvoyant gaze is turned back to the distant sun of the earth. This solar being already reveals itself entirely as a world of beings and of the deeds of such beings. In order to gain an impression of this solar being, one must keep away from everything that can be gained in the realm of the mineral and vegetable life of the earth. For such ideas can only be of significance for the knowledge of the earlier states of the earth itself and - those gained from the realm of plant life - for the long-past existence of the moon. Concepts that may be inspired by the animal and human kingdoms of nature lead to the ancient solar existence of the earth, but they do not merely represent anything that appears to the senses in the beings of these kingdoms.

[ 2 ] Now the supersensible consciousness of man finds effective forces within the etheric body which form themselves into images of such a kind that these images express how the aesthetic body received its first formation in world events through the deeds of spiritual beings within the old solar time. We can then follow the development of this system through the lunar and terrestrial periods. It is found to have undergone a transformation and, through this transformation, to have become that which is presently effectively manifested as the etheric body of man.

[ 3 ] The physical body of man requires yet another activity of human consciousness for its understanding. At first it appears like an external impression of the etheric body. However, a closer look reveals that man could never achieve a full development of his being in his senses if the physical body were nothing other than the sensual-physical manifestation of the etheric body. If this were the case, a certain willing, feeling and thinking of the human being would come about, but the thinking, feeling and willing could not be summarized in such a way that the consciousness arises in the soul of the human being, which expresses itself in the "I-experience". This becomes particularly clear when consciousness develops into the quality of seeing the spirit. For the human being, this 'I-experience' can initially only occur in the sensory world when he is enveloped by his physical-sensory body. From there he can then carry it into the elemental world and into the spiritual world and permeate his etheric and astral body with it. The human being has an etheric and astral body in which the ego-empathy does not initially form. He has a physical-sensual body in which this experience can occur. If the physical-sensual human body is now viewed from the spiritual world, it becomes apparent that something essential is present in it, which even from this spiritual world does not fully reveal itself in its truth. If the consciousness enters the spiritual world as clairvoyant, then the soul lives itself into the world of thought-essence; only the ego-experience, as it can be carried into this world through correspondingly strengthened soul-power, is not merely woven out of world-thoughts; it does not yet feel in the world of world-thoughts that which in the circumference shows a likeness to its own entity. In order to feel this, the soul must continue on its path into the supersensible. It must come to experiences in which it is also abandoned by thoughts, so that all sense experiences and also all experiences of thinking, feeling and willing lie behind it, so to speak, on its path into the supersensible. Only then does it feel at one with a beingness that underlies the world in such a way that it precedes everything that the human being can observe as a sensory, etheric or astral being. The human being then feels himself in an even higher realm than the spiritual world already known to him. This world, in which only the "I" can experience itself, should be called the super-spiritual world. From this world, the realm of thought-substantiality also appears as an external world. If the supersensible consciousness is placed in this world, it has an experience which can be characterized in the following way. One arrives at this characterization by following the path of the supersensible consciousness through the various stages. If the soul feels itself in its etheric body and if the elementary processes and entities are its environment, then it knows itself to be outside the physical body; but this physical body remains present as an entity, although, seen from the outside, it shows itself transformed. It dissolves before the spiritual gaze, as it were, into a part which presents itself as the expression of the deeds of spiritual entities which were active from the beginning of the earth's existence up to the present, and into another part which is the expression of something which was already present during the earth's old lunar state. So it remains as long as consciousness experiences itself only in the elementary world. In this world the consciousness can become aware of how the human being was formed as a physical being during the old lunar state. When the consciousness enters the spiritual world, a part of the physical body separates again. It is the part that was formed during the lunar state through the deeds of spiritual beings. But another part remains behind. It is that which was already present during the earth's solar state as the physical entity of man at that time. But something also remains of this physical entity, if everything can be taken into consideration from the point of view of the spiritual world, which happened during the time of the sun through the deeds of spiritual entities. What still remains is only revealed as the deeds of spiritual beings from the super-spiritual world. It reveals itself as already existing at the beginning of the solar time. One must go back to a state of the earth before its solar time. In my "Secret Science" I tried to justify why this state of the earth's being can be called the "Saturnian state" of the earth. In this sense, the earth was "Saturn" before it became the sun. And during this Saturnian state, the first constitution of the physical human body arose out of the general world process through the actions of spiritual beings. During the following solar, lunar and terrestrial periods, this constitution then transformed itself through the added actions of other spiritual beings in such a way that the present physical human body was formed.