The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] What is commonly called “matter” is, in reality, accessible to human beings only through relatively complex mental images. And if one wishes to shed light, in an occult sense, on the nature of the material, the physical, then one must first and foremost ask oneself: What is the most striking characteristic of what we usually call matter? Now, if one approaches the matter without prejudice, one must surely find that the most striking feature of all material things is their filling of space, their extension in space. For it would never occur to anyone, in the case of anything that arises within the soul itself—say, a feeling, a thought, or even an impulse of the will—to speak of the will, the thought, or the feeling as occupying space. Everyone will immediately realize that it would be nonsense to claim that any thought—let’s say, for my sake, the thought of a hero—is five square meters larger than the thought of an ordinary person, wouldn’t you agree? If one tries to imagine this, one immediately realizes that one cannot at all apply the concepts of spatial occupancy or extension to what our mental states and mental processes actually are.

[ 2 ] Now, one might say, of course, that there is another characteristic of matter: namely, that matter must have weight. But this property of weight is not so straightforward, as we shall see in the course of these lectures. For when we simply observe the world, we cannot, in our immediate observation and perception, detect anything of its weight at all, but rather of its filling of space, of its extension, of its being extended.

[ 3 ] Now we also know that this extension is usually measured in the three dimensions we associate with space: height, width, and depth or length, whichever term one prefers. It is, after all, a general—one might say trivial—truth that things in space are extended in three dimensions. So we would have to recognize extension in three dimensions, so to speak, as the most striking characteristic of the material. Now, when one considers what has been said previously—namely, that we cannot speak of spatial extension in relation to what lies in the soul—one must conclude that there is something else besides spatial extension, something other than what fills space, other than matter or substance. For it is certainly also part of the observations that can already be made on the physical plane that there are precisely no extended processes, states—whatever one wishes to call them—as soul experiences.

[ 4 ] If you now examine mental experiences in the same unbiased way as you do physical experiences in space, you will very soon discover another characteristic of mental experiences without which they could not exist as such. This is—and we cannot help but admit it without prejudice—that mental experiences unfold in time. Even if we cannot say that a feeling or an impulse of the will is five meters long or five square meters in size, we must nevertheless always concede that what we feel and think—insofar as these things are mental experiences—unfolds in time, and that not only do we need a certain amount of time to experience these things, but also that one occurs earlier and the other later, in short, that what we experience in the soul is subject to time.

[ 5 ] The point is that, in our reality, spatial and temporal relationships are in fact intertwined in everything that surrounds us and in what we ourselves are. Especially in the external world, things unfold in such a way that they are extended in space, but they also unfold one after another in time, taking up a certain amount of time themselves. Even before delving into occult truths, this will give rise to the question: What is the relationship between space and time, after all? Here, I would say, within an anthroposophical lecture series, we are touching upon in a most innocent way a question that has indeed always been a great philosophical question throughout the world, one over which, if we may speak figuratively, countless people have racked their brains: the relationship of time to space. Now, it may not be entirely easy for you today to follow the thoughts intended here regarding this relationship between time and space, since, as I said, we are approaching this question in a most innocent way, and the majority of the audience lacks any special philosophical background. But if you take the trouble to follow these thoughts, you will see how infinitely fruitful they are and how you can develop them further, especially if you process them in meditation.

[ 6 ] It is best if you start by focusing on the time you experience within your own soul. But ask yourself how you actually experience time within yourself. I will now speak more clearly by asking you not to focus on the time you read on the clock; there, of course, you are merely comparing your inner life with external events. So set aside reading the time from the clock or other external events entirely. Try simply to ask yourself how the question can be posed to your own soul: In what way does the relationship to time manifest itself in your own soul? No matter how deeply you reflect or how thoroughly you consider the question, you will be able to think of nothing else as decisive for time other than the fact that you can now form a thought that is aroused by an external perception. You look at or listen to something, and then a thought or a mental image arises in your soul. And if you ask yourself more precisely what this relationship between yourself and this mental image, this thought, actually is, you must admit: While you have the thought, you are actually the thought itself. If you only try to think thoroughly about this matter, you will have to admit: While the thought engages you, you are, in your innermost being, the thought. It would be a misconception to think that you would then also have a mental image of “I am” or the like. The “I am” is not there while you yourself are absorbed in the thought. You yourself are the thought. You must apply a certain practice yourself if you wish to be something other than the thought you are having.

[ 7 ] At first, a person is absorbed in the thoughts or feelings that are immediately present to them. But suppose this piece of chalk evokes such a thought in you; then, if you disregard everything else, if you are devoted solely to the mental image of chalk evoked by perception, your own inner self is one with the mental image of chalk. But once you have grasped this mental image, and it occurs to you that you also saw chalk yesterday, you compare what is immediately given to you as the mental image of chalk with what you experienced yesterday as chalk. And if you take precisely the thought that you identify directly with today’s chalk, you will also become aware that, just as you identify with today’s chalk, you cannot identify with yesterday’s chalk. Yesterday’s chalk must have remained for you as a memory mental image. So if you have truly become one with the mental image of chalk from the present moment, then yesterday’s chalk has become something external within your own inner being—that is, today’s chalk is your actual inner reality of the present moment. Your memory mental image is something you look back upon, but which is external to you in relation to today’s mental image. And so it is with everything you have experienced in your soul, with the exception of the present moment. The present moment is your inner self at this very moment. Everything you have experienced, you have cast off; it is already outside your own inner self. And you can imagine—if you want a picture—that the present moment, with the mental images you have, is the snake, and what you have cast off is the snake’s shed skin. Just as if the snake had shed one skin, then another, and a third, leaving them behind, so you could regard all the shed mental images as an exterior in relation to your respective present inner self. That is to say, as far as you can remember, you have, so to speak, continually turned an inner state into an outer one, for you turn the mental image of the chalk you have now into an outer reality in the very next moment by moving on to another mental image. This means you are working on a continuous externalization. You create your inner self behind you, as this inner self immediately becomes an exterior, like a skin. This is the essence of the life of the soul: that the inner self continually becomes an exterior, so that within our own inner self, in this inner spiritual process, we can distinguish between the actual inner self and the exterior within the inner self. We have remained within, but within ourselves we must distinguish between two parts: the part of our own inner self and the part of our inner self that has become external.

[ 8 ] Now you see, this process we have just witnessed—in which the inner has become the outer—is actually what gives rise to the content of our inner life. For if you think about it again, you will find that you can call your soul everything you have lived through since the time you can remember in your early childhood. A person who were to forget everything they had lived through would, in fact, have lost their self. Thus, in this ability to leave memories behind us and yet retain them like continuously shed skins, lies the reality of our inner life.

[ 9 ] Now, you can imagine this reality of the inner life taking shape in the most diverse ways. I ask you to consider for a moment that, in every single moment, the inner life is actually shaped differently. Suppose you are walking outside on a starry, beautiful night, or listening to a Beethoven symphony; in that moment, you have identified with a vast realm of inner life. Suppose you step from that starry night into a dark, shabby room; it is as if this inner life had suddenly shrunk; there are only a few mental images left. Or when the symphony falls silent, your auditory perceptions have shrunk, and indeed, when you sleep, your inner life has shrunk entirely until it expands again upon waking. You thus have a continuous shaping of your inner life. And if we now—this is merely a symbol, for we must draw it spatially yet mean time, which is not spatial—if we wish to draw it, we could depict it in the most varied ways. Here in the drawing (a) it would be shrunk, here (b) it expands. We would have to conceive of it in the most varied ways, whereby this here (c) is always the content of the soul life. Now, you see, from the symbol you can already recognize—and this is meant to do nothing other than make visible and vivid what is not visible—the swelling and shrinking of the soul life. A soul life that listens to a symphony is richer than one that hears only a single beat. One can therefore say that this soul life swells and contracts, without needing to introduce spatial mental images. During this swelling and contracting, there is undoubtedly an inner spiritual movement. Movement! Soul life is movement.

[ 10 ] Now you must think of movement not as a movement in space, but as what we have described. And this swelling and contracting gives rise to forms; so that you have movement and the outward expression of movement in certain configurations, in certain forms. But all of this without spatial forms! The forms referred to here are not spatial forms, but the forms of the expanding and contracting life of the soul. And what lives there within this expanding and contracting—what actually lives there? Well, you will come close to what one might call reality if you think a little about what must live there: living there are your sensations, thoughts, and impulses of will, insofar as all of this is spiritual. This is, as it were, the water that floats there, moving in forms, but all of it spiritual. And now you need only one more mental image to penetrate the whole matter. We said: thoughts live in there, mental images, feelings, impulses of the will. But the impulses of the will are, in a certain sense, something that is more fundamentally necessary than the thoughts themselves; for if you consider that this inner life can sometimes be set in faster, sometimes in slower motion, you sense within yourself that it is actually the will itself that sets it in motion. When you spur on the will, you can set thoughts and feelings in a faster flow; when the will is sluggish, everything proceeds more slowly. You need the will to expand this inner life. So that within it we have, in order: will; then all that which lives in feelings, in mental images, and which within our soul life—our soul life, I say—is that which we can grasp as an expression of wisdom; then we have the movement, the expansion and contraction; and then we have the formation, the form, which appears as an expression of the movement. You can clearly distinguish within your soul life between will, wisdom, movement, and form. This weaves and lives within the soul life.

[ 11 ] It is a pity that we cannot extend the cycle to a month; then we could speak more precisely. Then you would see that this can be precisely substantiated, that what is taking place in your own inner life has its root, as it were, in the will, and that this contains within itself wisdom, movement, and form. Now you will see, in a remarkable way, that the sequence described here for the life of the soul corresponds in a strange way to the names we could give to the successive hierarchies, from the spirits of will, wisdom, and movement up to the spirits of form. And in a sense, by laying out our own soul life in this way, we have caught hold of the hierarchies by the hem; we have truly caught them there within. There they reveal themselves in a very peculiar way within the inner soul life. And they reveal themselves in such a way that their activity is entirely non-spatial. And even if we had gained nothing else, we have at least gained one important insight from what we have said: we have thereby, so to speak, gained the most immediate mental images of an important characteristic of these four hierarchies—the spirits of Will, Wisdom, Movement, and Form—namely, the characteristic that they are non-spatial. That “form” is thus initially meant as the non-spatial, soul-spiritually active formation is very important. So when we speak of the forms created by the spirits of form, these are not outwardly spatial forms, but rather these inner formations—which actually come to our consciousness only inwardly—that we can grasp in the course of our soul life. But there everything unfolds solely in time. You cannot imagine this at all without time; rather, if you disregard the illustration—which means nothing for the matter itself—you must, insofar as you remain within the life of the soul, create a mental image of it as non-spatial.

[ 12 ] If the spirits of will first worked on ancient Saturn, the spirits of wisdom on the ancient Sun, the spirits of movement on the ancient Moon, and the spirits of form on Earth, then—if we consider only the purely inner nature of the spirits of form—we would say: The spirits of form have created human beings on Earth in such a way that they still possess an invisible form. This harmonizes beautifully with what we also discovered yesterday. At the beginning of human existence on Earth, the spirits of form first gave human beings invisible, non-spatial forms. Now we must first consider that all external objects that meet our gaze, everything we perceive in the external world through our senses, is nothing other than an external expression of an inner spiritual reality. And behind every external, spatial, material reality, we must seek something quite similar to what lives within our own soul. Only, of course, this does not present itself to our external senses, but lies behind what the external senses present.

[ 13 ] How, then, might one create a mental image of an activity that extends beyond the spirits of form—beyond what they create as a form that is not yet spatial? So, mind you, our question now is: If this activity proceeds from will, wisdom, movement, and form, and goes even further beyond form, what happens then? That is how the question is posed. You see, when a process in the universe has advanced to a form that is still entirely in the spiritual-soul realm, that is not yet a spatial form—when the process has advanced to this supersensory form—then the next step is only possible through the form itself breaking apart. And that is precisely what presents itself to the occult gaze: When certain forms, created under the influence of the spirits of form, have developed to a certain state, then the forms break apart. And when you now contemplate broken forms—something that arises, in other words, from the breaking apart of forms that are still supersensible—then you have the transition from the supersensible to the sensible realm of space. And what is a broken form is matter. Matter, wherever it occurs in the universe, is for the occultist nothing other than a broken, shattered, cracked form. If you could create a mental image of this piece of chalk being invisible as such and having this peculiar parallelepiped shape, and as such being invisible, and now you take a hammer and strike the piece of chalk quickly so that it shatters, so that it bursts into countless small pieces, then you have broken the form. Suppose that at the very moment you break the form, the invisible were to become visible; then you would have an image of the origin of matter. Matter is such spirit that has developed into form and then shattered, broken, and collapsed in upon itself.

[ 14 ] Matter is a heap of debris from the spirit. It is of the utmost importance to keep this definition in mind: that matter is a heap of debris from the spirit. Matter is therefore, in reality, spirit—but broken spirit.

[ 15 ] If you think about it further, you will say to yourself: Yes, but we do encounter three-dimensional forms, such as the beautiful crystal forms; in crystals we do encounter forms that are spatially very beautiful—and you say that everything that is material is a heap of spiritual debris, is shattered spirit! — First, to give you a certain mental image, imagine a falling stream of water (a). But suppose it were invisible; you would not see it. And here (b) you provide it with an obstacle. Because this stream of water strikes here (b), it will shatter into drops in this way (c). Now suppose the falling stream of water were invisible, but that which has shattered were visible. Then you would have a shattered stream of water here, and again an image of matter. But now you would have to imagine away the obstacle down there, for such a thing does not exist; that would already presuppose that matter were there. You must create a mental image: Without such a counterforce being present, matter—by structuring itself spiritually into form—is supersensible; matter is in motion, for motion precedes form. There is nothing anywhere other than that which is permeated by the deeds of the spirits of motion. At a certain point, the movement reaches the form, slackens within itself, and shatters within itself. The main thing is that we understand it this way: that which is initially spiritual-soul-like radiates outward but possesses only a certain momentum; it reaches the end of that momentum and now rebounds within itself, shattering in the process. So that when we see matter appearing somewhere, we can say: Underlying this matter is a supersensible force that has reached the limit of its action and shatters at this limit. But before it shatters, it still possesses the forms inwardly in a spiritual sense. Now, after it has shattered, what existed as a spiritual form continues to work within the individual fragments as they fall apart. Where this aftereffect is strong, the lines of the spiritual forms continue even after the shattering, and there, after the piece has shattered and scattered, an aftereffect of the spiritual lines is still expressed in the lines that they then describe. This is how crystals are formed. Crystals are reproductions of spiritual forms that, as it were, retain the original direction in the opposite sense through their own momentum.

[ 16 ] What I have described here is almost exactly what occult observation reveals about hydrogen. To occult observation, hydrogen appears as a ray rushing in from infinity, which slows down within itself and scatters—only in such a way that we must draw it roughly as if the lines here were to cross over one another and retain their shape. So that a hydrogen particle looks something like this: we have something like an invisible ray that comes as if from infinite expanses of space and that ultimately breaks apart like a ray that sprays out. In short, matter everywhere is what one might call: broken spirituality. Matter is indeed nothing other than spirit, but spirit in a broken state.

[ 17 ] And now I must present another difficult thought to your soul, one that ties in with what I said at the beginning. I said that within our inner spiritual-soul life we ourselves distinguish between the external and the internal. Now, in truth, all spatial dimensions are composed of these opposites, so that wherever you initially have a spatial dimension, you can conceive of this spatial dimension as originating from a point somewhere; that is the internal, and everything else is external. For a plane, the line is the interior, everything else is the exterior, and so on. Thus, space is nothing other than that which arises simultaneously when the spirit must shatter and thereby pass into material existence.

[ 18 ] Now it is extremely important to consider the following. Imagine that this shattering of the spirit into matter occurs in such a way that it first shatters and breaks apart without encountering any matter beforehand—it shatters and breaks apart of its own accord, encountering no external resistance whatsoever. So let us assume that this shattering occurs, so to speak, into a void. For when the spirit shatters into a void, mineral matter is produced. The spirit must therefore first truly shatter from within itself, and mineral matter is then produced. But suppose, for a moment, that this is not something that takes place, as it were, in a virgin state in the universe, but rather that what shatters and breaks out of the spirit finds a world that is already prepared; that is, it does not now unfold into a void, but, let us say, into already existing etheric physicality. When it unfolds into a void, mineral matter arises. But let us assume it unfolds into existing etheric physicality. Such shattering spirituality thus swells into an etheric body; this shattering matter and this etheric body are already present as such. So it is not into the virginity of the world, but into the etheric body that spirit shatters into matter. Then what arises is not mineral matter, but plant matter. So when spirit shatters into etheric substance, plant matter arises.

[ 19 ] But yesterday we encountered a peculiar etheric substance. Do you recall what was written on the board: we encountered an etheric body that had an excess, a preponderance, of astral substance. And we said yesterday that this stems from the Luciferic influences that have been exerted upon human beings. Well, we have not only encountered etheric substance that outweighs the astral, but we have also found physical corporeality that outweighs etheric substance, that outweighs the etheric body. That was, in fact, the first thing we found, wasn’t it? Now grasp this peculiarity, which has actually arisen solely through the Luciferic influence: this peculiar interplay within this poorly combined human organization! Where the physical body meets the etheric body, and the etheric body is distorted everywhere by the predominance of the physical body, it is not as if the spirit simply sprays into etheric substance and shatters; rather, it sprays into a physicality that is indeed etheric, but over which the physical has the upper hand. When the spirit now sprays into such a prepared substance and shatters, then nervous substance, nervous matter, arises. So we have the spirit spraying into etheric physicality that is dominated by physical physicality: then nervous matter arises.

[ 20 ] Here you have three levels of materiality: first, the ordinary materiality you encounter out there in the sensory world; then the materiality found in plant bodies; and finally, the materiality found in human and animal bodies, which has come about through irregularities. Just think of all we would have to do if we wanted to list the various conditions for the manifold substances in the world! We saw so many things arise yesterday through the Luciferic influence as irregularities, and then saw how, in turn, the etheric body can outweigh the astral body. When spirit, in a certain sense, sprays into such astral physicality that is dominated by etheric physicality, muscle matter arises. That is why, you see, nerve matter and muscle matter have such a peculiar appearance that cannot be compared to anything else out there, because they arise in such a complicated way. You can have this mental image: you must consider the differences as if you were spraying some liquid metal—first into the open air, then into water, and then perhaps into solid matter: in such a complex way do the various kinds of matter in the world come into being. The main point I wanted to make today was to show you how deep into the depths of being one must descend if one truly wishes to fathom these things. For when you allow spirit to spray into what follows further on in the material realm—into that where the ego works with excess into the astral body—when, in other words, spirit sprays in and disperses into what confronts it there in that irregularity of physicality that has come about because the ego, in its ego-ness, outweighs the astral body—then — but only after many detours — bone matter. It depends, as you see, essentially on how matter sprays forth, coalesces, that is, when it arises from the spirit. Now hold fast to what I have told you, even if you cannot follow it in detail with your thoughts. You will have grasped the meaning of the whole, which lies in the fact that matter must be regarded everywhere as spirit that is spraying out and shattering, but that something can already meet the shattering spirit. And depending on whether this or that meets it, it is, as it were, sprayed into something else, and the variously configured materials arise: nerve, muscle, plant matter, and so on.

[ 21 ] But now a question must be weighing on your mind; the question is: Yes, what would have become of humanity if the Luciferic influence had not come into play in this regard? We already listed in detail yesterday what would have become of humanity. But what would have become of him in this regard? Well, you see, he would not have been able to develop the kind of nerves that humans have today. For these nerves, in their material form, arise only because of the existence of this disorderly connection. Likewise, he would not have been able to have bones or muscles if the Luciferic influence had not come. In short, we have seen the various materials arise through forms pouring spiritually into something that exists only through the Luciferic influence. None of these materials—muscle, nerve, and so on—could have come into being without the Luciferic influence. In an even more intense sense than yesterday, we must ask: What, then, is the whole human being as a material being? As he appears to us outwardly, he is merely a result of the Luciferic influence. For he would have no nerves, no muscles, no bones in the modern sense if the Luciferic influence had not been present. Materialism describes nothing other than what Lucifer has made of the human being, so that materialism is, in the most eminent sense, the discipleship of Lucifer and rejects everything else.

[ 22 ] So what would this human being have been like if he had remained in a paradisiacal state? Well, to begin with, I would like to give you today a brief sketch of what the human being would have become had the Luciferic influence not come, so that tomorrow we can build upon these mental images with a clearer understanding. For if this influence had not come, then what would have existed in human evolution on Earth would have been what arose from the influence of the spirits of form. For the spirits of form were the last spirits of the higher hierarchies to have worked within human beings. These spirits of form created only a purely supersensible form, nothing spatial at first. What would have come into being there—let me mention it only briefly today—could not be seen by the outer eye, nor perceived by the outer senses, for purely soul forms cannot be perceived by the outer senses. What would have come into being there would correspond to what is described to you in How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? and to what is given through imaginative knowledge. Imagination would be what the spirits of form would have created initially. So nothing sensory, but supersensory imagination. If we take what would have emerged there, very schematically (see Figure 1, page 80), we would have an imaginative image of what the spirits of form have created as human imagination, and this would be interwoven with what has remained to humanity from the creations of the earlier hierarchies. So that this would be interwoven with what would have remained for human beings through the spirits of movement, of inner movement (Figure 2, drawn schematically), and it would present itself to us as that which we described in “How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?” as given through inspired knowledge, for these movements would be recognizable only as inspiration. That is to say: the whole human being would consist of imagination, and then the other aspect—which is movement—would follow: inspiration. And what the spirits of wisdom give would be intuition. These would thus be essential inner contents with which all of this would still be filled in some way. Here we would have to place (Figure 3) intuition, that is, immediate essences. And we would then find the whole emerging from the cosmos as if enveloped in an aura-egg, which would now be the result of the spirits of will (Figure 4). That would be the supersensible human nature, which would consist of contents accessible only to a purely supersensible perception. As fantastic as that may seem, it is the real human being, if we may say so symbolically: the paradisiacal human being, who does not consist of the material contents of which he consists today, but who certainly possesses a supersensible being.

[ 23 ] And what has now come about as a result of the Luciferic influence? Well, you see, through the Luciferic influence, the imaginations have, as it were, been spurted out with a shattering spirit—that is, with matter—and what has come of this stands today as the human skeletal system. The skeletal system is the imagined human being, filled with matter. But matter does not belong to the actual higher human being; rather, it has been shot into what would otherwise be merely imaginative, through the coming of the Luciferic influence. Whereas one could otherwise easily pass right through a human being—if that weren’t nonsense—these imaginations have first been condensed and then additionally filled with bone matter. Now one would bump into the bones if one were to walk through a human being. He has first become impenetrable. — That which has come from the spirits of movement is filled with muscle matter, and that which could be perceived as intuition is filled with nerve matter. — And that which goes beyond this is the supersensible, where the human etheric body now comes into consideration, which is thus already supersensible, which today is merely the finest material, appearing just like the finest emanations of the etheric, which still underlies the matter that is finer than nervous matter and is actually not taken into account at all.

[ 24 ] So, you see, man is actually a highly crude being. For if he had become what he was meant to be according to the original intentions and views of the gods, he would have no bones, but his form would consist of supersensible, imagined bones; he would have no muscles as locomotive organs, but he would have a supersensible substance moving within him, whereas now what moves there has been interspersed everywhere with muscular substance. What the spirits of movement gave as supersensible movement has become physical movement in the muscles, and what the spirits of wisdom gave as intuition has become, in the sensory human being, that which is interwoven into intuition as nervous matter. So when you find the skeletal system depicted in anatomy books, you can think: This was originally meant to be pure imagination and has been so coarsened by the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences that it confronts us today in the dense, thick, brittle, hard bones; so solidified are the imaginations there. And now tell me that human beings cannot already find a reflection of the imaginative world in the physical world! Whoever knows that this bony human is a reflection of an imaginative being will, when looking at a bony human, indeed find a reflection of the imaginative world. And when you see the muscular human depicted, you should actually say to yourself: This is a completely unnatural formation; it is actually quite insincere inwardly, for first of all I see it formed, but I should hear it spiritually. In truth, the matter is that supersensory rhythmic movement is interspersed with muscular matter that belongs to the ear; what remains should not be seen, but heard like the vibrating movements of music. You should actually hear inspirations. And what you see depicted as the muscular human being are the inspirations of the human being fixed by matter. And then there is the nerve-man: you should neither see nor hear him, but only perceive him entirely spiritually. And it is utterly out of place in a cosmic view of the world that what should be grasped in the purest spirituality is, in reality, a spiritual shell interspersed with physical matter; that one sees before one’s eyes what should actually be perceived only as intuition.

[ 25 ] This expulsion from Paradise consists precisely in the fact that human beings were originally in the spiritual world—that is, in Paradise—and existed there through imagination, inspiration, and intuition; in other words, they lived a completely supernatural existence. And then, as a result of what he instigated within himself through the Luciferic influence, he was, as it were, spewed out with what came through the shattering of the spirit—through matter. This matter is thus something with which we are essentially filled, something that does not belong to us. We carry this matter within us, and because we carry it within us, we must die physically. This is indeed the reason for physical death, and for many other things as well. For in so leaving his spiritual state, so to speak, man lives here in physical existence only until matter overcomes that which holds it together. For it is actually such that it constantly seeks to shatter, and the matter in the bones is held together only by the power of imagination. When it gains the upper hand over the strength of the bones, then the bones become incapable of sustaining life. The same is true of the muscles and nerves. As soon as the matter in the bones, muscles, and nerves gains the upper hand over imagination, inspiration, and intuition and can shatter, the human being must shed his physical body. Therein lies the connection between physical death and the Luciferic influence, and tomorrow we will have to trace how evil and other things—diseases and so on—came into the world.