The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. The Transition from the Soul-spiritual Existence in Human Development to the Sensual-physical

[ 1 ] It has been shown in the preceding observations how a view of the eternal spiritual-soul essence in man can be attained through inspired and intuitive cognition. Attention has been drawn to how the human inner life is filled with replicas of cosmic events. How the human being experiences such a cosmic inner life unconsciously during sleep has been described in the last observation. The human inner world becomes the outer world, and vice versa: the spiritual essence of the outer world becomes the inner world.

[ 2 ] During the state of sleep, the physical and the etheric organism of the human being are an outer world for the soul-spiritual entity. They remain present in such a way that they can become the tool of the soul-spiritual human being again and again while awake. The human being takes the desire for these two organisms with him into the sleeping state. This desire is connected - as was shown in the last observation - with those spiritual forces of the cosmos that have their sensory image in the phenomena of the moon. Man is only subject to these lunar forces through his connection with the earth being. The observation of the state in which man finds himself in the purely spiritual world a certain time before he turns to earthly life shows that he is not subject to the influences of these lunar forces.

[ 3 ] In this state he does not experience a physical and etheric human organism as belonging to him, as is the case in the state of sleep. But he experiences these organisms in a completely different way. He experiences their foundations in the cosmic worlds. He experiences the development of these organisms out of the spiritual cosmos. He looks at a spiritual cosmos. This spiritual cosmos is the spiritual part of the germ of the physical earth organism, which it will carry in the future. When we speak of "germ" in this context, we are referring to something that in a certain respect is the opposite of what is so called in the physical world context. There the "germ" is the small physical beginning of an enlarging entity. The spiritual structure of power, which man sees in his pre-earthly spiritual existence in connection with his being, is large and contracts more and more in order to finally grow together with the physical germ part.

[ 4 ] The terms "large" and "small" must be used to describe these relationships. But it must be taken into account that the experience in the spiritual world is a spiritual one, and that the space in which the physical event takes place does not exist for it. The expressions used are therefore actually only visualizations of what is experienced spiritually, purely qualitatively, non-spatially.

[ 5 ] In the experience of the cosmic entity, which is the spiritual germ of his future physical organism, man is during the pre-earthly existence. And this spiritual entity is experienced as a unity with the entire spiritual cosmos and at the same time reveals itself as the cosmic body of its own human being. The human being feels the spiritual cosmos as the forces of his own being. His whole existence consists in the fact that he experiences himself in this cosmos. But he does not experience only himself. For this cosmic existence does not separate him from the other life of the cosmos as his physical organism does later. He is in a kind of intuition towards this life. The life of other spiritual beings is at the same time his life.

[ 6 ] In the active experience of the spirit-germ of his future physical organism, man has his pre-earthly existence. He himself prepares this organism by working on the spirit-germ in the spiritual world with other spirit beings. Just as he has a physical environment before him through his senses during his earthly existence and is active in it, so he has his physical organism forming in the spirit before him in his pre-earthly existence; and his activity consists in participating in its formation, just as his activity in the physical world consists in participating in the formation of physical things in the outer world.

[ 7 ] In the spirit-germ of the physical human body, which the spiritual-soul man experiences contemplatively in his pre-earthly existence, a true universe is present, no less manifold and diverse in itself than the physical environment of the senses is. Indeed, intuitive knowledge may say that what the human being, gathered together in the physical human body, has as his unconscious world is such a universe with which the physical world cannot even remotely compare in magnificence.

[ 8 ] And this universe is experienced spiritually by man in his pre-earthly state, and he works on it. He experiences it in its becoming, its mobility, but filled with spiritual beings.

[ 9 ] He has a consciousness within this world. His own are connected with the active forces that are at work in the becoming of this universe. The cooperation of the spiritual cosmic forces with his own fills his consciousness. The state of sleep is in a certain sense a reproduction of this activity. But it proceeds in such a way that the physical organism exists as a self-contained entity apart from the soul-spiritual man. The active forces, which form the content of consciousness in the pre-earthly existence, are absent from perception. That is why the state is unconscious.

[ 10 ] In the further course of the pre-earthly existence the conscious co-experience of the becoming of the future earth organism becomes duller and duller. It does not disappear completely from view, but it dims. It is as if man felt his own cosmic inner world becoming more and more alienated. He lives himself out of this world. What was first a complete co-experience with the spiritual beings of the cosmos now presents itself only as a revelation of these beings. One can say that man previously had an experienced intuition of the spiritual world; now this is transformed into an experienced inspiration in which the being from outside acts on man, revealing itself.

[ 11 ] With this, however, an experience arises within the spiritual-soul man that can be described as the "lack of desire" and the emergence of the "desire for what is lost". If such expressions are used, it is in order to visualize the supersensible through similar relationships of physical experience.

[ 12 ] The human soul lives in such "deprivation" and "desire" in a later time of its pre-earthly existence. It no longer has a spiritual world in the full reality of co-experience, but as a revealed reflection, so to speak with a lesser intensity of existence in consciousness.

[ 13 ] The human soul now becomes ripe to co-experience the spiritual powers of the moon, which were previously outside its realm of existence. It thereby receives a being through which it separates itself as independent from the other spirit beings with which it previously lived. One can say: before, its experience was spirit-permeated, God-permeated; afterwards, a separate, spiritual being is felt; and the cosmos is perceived as an external world, even if the co-experience with this revelation of the cosmos is still a very intense one in the initial stages and only gradually develops into a duller one.

[ 14 ] In this experience, therefore, the human being emerges from the spirit-saturated existence perceived as reality into one in which a revealed spirit-cosmos confronts him. The first stage of experience is the reality of that which later appears in earthly existence as a religious soul disposition for imagination and sensation. The second is the reality of that which, when described, results in a true cosmology. This is because the physical human organization is also seen in its cosmic nucleus, without which it cannot be understood.

[ 15 ] In the following period, man loses the view of the spirit cosmos. This darkens before the "mind's eye". The experience of the inner soul, which is connected with the spiritual moon forces, becomes more and more intense. And the human soul becomes ripe to receive from outside that which it has previously experienced within. The spiritual activity in the development of the physical organism, which the human being previously experienced consciously, is no longer part of his soul organs; it passes over to the physical activity that takes place in the reproductive development within the earthly existence. That which the human soul has previously experienced passes over to this reproductive development in order to work in it as directing forces. The human soul now has an existence for some time in the spiritual world in which it no longer has a part in the formation of the physical human organism.

[ 16 ] In this stage, it becomes ripe to satisfy that which is in it "deprivation" and "desire" with the etheric of the cosmos. It draws the cosmic ether to itself. And it forms its etheric organism in the sense of the dispositions that have remained from its cooperation with the human universe. Thus the human being lives into his etheric organism before his physical organism receives him in earthly existence.

[ 17 ] The processes occurring in the realm of earthly existence as a result of the completed conception have, separately from the course of the last stages of the pre-earthly life of the human soul, brought the formation of the physical organism up to the physical germinal unit. The human soul, which in the meantime has incorporated its etheric organism, can unite with it. It unites with it through the power of the continuing "desire"; and the human being begins his physical earthly existence.

[ 18] The experience of the human soul during its incorporation of the etheric organism into itself, so to speak the growth of this organism from the world ether, is a non-earthly experience; for it is experienced without the physical organism. But it has this as its "desired" object. That which occurs in the experience of the very small child is an unconscious memory of this experience. But it is an active memory, an unconscious working on the physical organism, which was previously the soul's inner world and which is now given to the human soul as an outer one. The formative activity which man unconsciously carries out on his own organism in its growth is the manifestation of this active memory. What philosophy seeks and what it can only have as an inner reality through a fully conscious imagining of the first childhood experience lies in this active, unconscious memory. The unworldly nature of philosophizing, which is nevertheless again inclined towards the world, is related to this.