Nerve-sense subsystem

Man's subsystem consisting of senses and nervous system is one of the three functional subsystems in Man as a threefold being.

It spreads across all Man's bodily principles, but has its center of gravity in

• a) the head of Man, where the senses and nervous system join with cerebral nerves and the human brain, and
• b) the human astral body which finds its expression in the nervous system

.

Renewal of mineral bodily substances occurs via formative processes originating from the head nerve-sense subsystem (and brain) that work throughout the whole organism of the physical body; so it is not so that mineral physical renewal takes place through metabolic pathways and direct digestion of food stuffs in the lower body

Aspects

• The nervous system is built onto the spinal column, thereby forming the whole upper body of Man, for what appears as muscle can maintain its form only because the nerves are its shapers. All muscles, cartilage, and other organs such as heart and lungs, maintains form only through the nerves. (1908-09-09-GA106)
• the head or nerve-sense subsystem is essentially human physical body only (no direct workings of etheric or astral body) (1921-04-11-GA313) - see Schema FMC00.603.
• evolutionary aspect
  • the oldest of the three subsystems
    • It is the most spiritualized of the three, so with the least spirit left (see Schema FMC00.666 and Schema FMC00.448)
    • and thus the 'dying' part, polarity with and opposite of the metabolic-limb subsystem which is the more spiritual coming into being part.
  • the forming of senses and nerves
    • the twenty-eight nerves proceeding from the spinal cord that bring about the present upper body, were worked into Man through the different aspects of the moon and the twenty-eight days of its cycle (through the influence which the Egyptians called Osiris) ... at first, through the tones that Osiris-Apollo played on the human lyre, the mid-part, the hip-region, comes into form. (1908-09-10-GA106 in context development of Man on Earth) and .... through the earlier sun-activity appeared what took form as brain and spinal column, and on this spinal column the twenty-eight moon-aspects (nerves) work from outside. In ancient Egypt it was said that Isis and Osiris are the shapers of all this (1908-09-09-GA106)

head aspect

• the head, which forms first in the maternal organism, is formed from the whole universe, the original causative forces for this formation work from the whole cosmos, and Man’s head is an image of it (1918-01-29-GA181)
• in the physical human being, the head has an aspect that is sunlike, is emptier than empty. his head can always empty itself and in certain of its parts become emptier than empty, through this the head has the possibility of allowing the spirit to enter into it. (1918-08-26-GA183)
• see also:
  • The human brain
  • Matter is destroyed in the brain
  • Schema FMC00.123 on topic page Metamorphosis

nervous system

• the human breathing process produces carbon dioxide, of which most is exhaled, but part of the carbon dioxide must continuously enter our nervous system, which needs carbon dioxide, because it must be continuously deadened (we constantly take in something that actually destroys life). The nervous system requires this deadening carbon dioxide ... otherwise Man would not be able to think.This is also the reason that we must sleep, that we require a time during which the head does not absorb this minute amount of carbon dioxide as vigorously and thereby is able to restore its organs. (1923-01-27-GA348, see The heart's two blood circuits#1923-01-27-GA348)

lyre of Apollo

• the human astral body is physically elaborated/reflected in the nervous system, which the ancient Greeks referred to as the 'lyre of Apollo', meaning this inner part of the human being as a living musical instrument that reproduces the harmonies and the melos in the cosmos.(1924-02-01-GA234, 1923-06-02-GA291, 1920-09-30-GA283 and more below Nerve-sense subsystem#lyre of Apollo)
• for the essence, see description on topic page Music based on 1918-06-01-GA271 and 1919-12-30-GA320
• In the ancient Greek Mysteries of Eleusis (based on ancient Egyptian mysteries) .... Osiris-Apollo <-> Moon (Osiris in ancient Egypt is Apollo in ancient Greece) formed the twenty-eight moon-aspects and laid the groundwork for Man’s twenty-eight nerves in Man.
  • the brain continues itself into the spine, where the twenty-eight arms of Osiris-Apollo enter in; there Osiris-Apollo with his twenty-eight hands plays upon the spine as upon a lyre. The lyre is the brain, the nerves are the strings on which the hands of Apollo play. Apollo plays on the cosmic-lyre, works upon the nerves so as to achieve a soul-life within Man. (1908-09-09-GA106)
• who is playing the lyre? the sun-principle or the sun-like in Man, represented by the God Apollo ... the blood playing on the nervous system (spinal cord and strings) (1923-05-18-GA276)
• "The Greeks spoke of the music of Apollo’s lyre, meaning Man himself as a work of art: a rhythmic being in the harmony of his breathing- and blood-rhythms ... what occurs in Man through the confluence of the blood- and breathing-rhythms is transmitted to the brain and transformed into thought-content." (1921-07-30-GA281)
• interaction between breathing (Man conjoined with the cosmos) and blood-circulation (the Human I and consciousness), image: "imagine engendered before us a spirit of light who, on the waves of the air, plays into Man through his breathing. The breath takes hold of the blood-circulation, as of the hidden workings of the human organism ... see Apollo, the god of light, carried on the billows of air in the breathing-process, and in his lyre the actual functioning of the blood-circulation." (1923-03-29-GA281)

spinal and cerebral nerves

• nerves are ordered according to the laws of the planetary world - cosmic laws are actually reflected in these spinal and cerebral nerves. Deviations or irregularity is because Man is destined to be a being who is independent of what is going on outside him. (1910-03-28-GA119,1908-09-09-GA106, 1924-01-12-GA233A)
  • twelve cerebral nerves proceeding from the spinal cord, so the days of the month are regulated in accordance with the circuit of the Moon, twenty-eight days. Illustration: the development of the spinal column in the embryo corresponds with the movements and forces of the Moon.
  • Man has three additional pairs of nerves, i.e. thirty-one in all, which makes us independent beings; otherwise here too we should be governed by the number twenty-eight; thence the correspondence of thirty-one days in the month with the human nervous system
  • twelve main cerebral nerves proceed from the head and go out to the various parts of the organism; they are material densifications of what arose in the human belong through the instreaming of the twelve macrocosmic powers from the twelve directions of the zodiac, working into the human head through twelve (archangelic) rays or influences. This corresponds to the twelve months of the year and the relationship between Moon and Sun.
    • note: the twelve pairs of cranial nerves are often grouped into two categories: (a) seven pairs related to the brainstem (midbrain, pons, and medulla) and (b) five pairs associated with the cerebrum (higher brain) and other structures. It could be said (sources to be added) that the seven are governing higher consciousness, perception, and expression and linking to intuition, sight, and emotion; whereas the five are more grounded and practical, connected to speech, movement, and physical interaction with the world.

• in the Zarathustrian teachings in Persian cultural age (1910-12-31-GA126)
  • the Zodiac was seen as an external expression or image, of 'Zervana Akarana', the primal reality of Being living and weaving through eternity. Macrocosmic forces coming from twelve directions of the universe work into Man: six directed towards the light side of the Zodiac traversed by the sun by day; the other six towards the dark side turned towards Ahriman.
  • In Man the microcosmic counterparts are to be found in the twelve main cerebral nerves or Amshaspands ... [astral beings] through which the archangels worked into the human head. In the Indian cultural age, the angels or 'Izads' formed the 28, 30 to 31 spinal nerves. Also Germanic mythology mentions twelve streams flowing from Niflheim to Muspelheim. These are now astral streams, but in the Lemurian and Atlantean epochs these were etheric streams. Note: these streams also link to the canals observed on Mars in our age.
• interface between blood and nervous system - see Blood and nerves
• see also: human astral body and I-organization

sense system

• link to physiology of the 12 human senses (zodiac)
• the twelve nerves as the result of metamorphosis of the physical body in a previous incarnation, and their link to the senses (1916-08-28-GA170, see coverage on Metamorphosis#1916-08-28-GA170)

Inspirational quotes

1916-03-07-GA167

see also Schema FMC00.488 below (and even also Schema FMC00.321)

the human being .. consists of two portions:

• the skull and the spinal column attached to it with the brain inside the skull and the spinal fluid in the spinal column,
• and the rest of the human being is attached to it.

You have the head like a small cosmic sphere ... and the [rest of the] human being only .. attached to it.

1922-04-01-GA211 see nearly full lecture extract on: Human breathing#1922-04-01-GA211, and also on The human brain

You see [like a vault] ... I have drawn the inside of the human head, and [like a window], the eye through which one sees, through which the impressions of light come. What I have drawn as a vault are the convolutions of the brain, the spreading nerves. The light enters there and spreads out. Instead of the vapor that I have drawn there, imagine

the inhaled air that flows up and scans what can glimmer and glisten in the brain through the light, and what then forms into thoughts in the brain. The air flows back down through the spinal canal. Instead of there being an instrument, there is the human larynx and it can give expression to what has been experienced.

There you have a picture of what actually goes on in the human head.

Illustrations

Nervous system

Schema FMC00.135: shows (left) the nervous system as the physical instrument of the human astral body , interfacing with the blood and I-organization (right).

With the 'lyre of Apollo', see Nerve-sense subsystem#lyre of Apollo, the ancient Greeks referred to Man as a rhythmic being in the harmony of his breathing- and blood-rhythms ... a living musical instrument that reproduces the harmonies and the melos in the cosmos. The breath (through which Man is conjoined with the cosmos) takes hold of the blood circulation (Human 'I' and consciousness) and is playing on the nervous system (strings). See also: Blood and nerves. What occurs in Man through the confluence of the blood- and breathing-rhythms is transmitted to the human brain and transformed into thought-content. Thus Apollo plays on the cosmic-lyre, works upon the nerves, so as to achieve a soul-life within Man.

Human consciousness is able to live in different elements such as light (eyes) or air (ears); to relate the above principle to the soul experience of sound or tone in speech and music, see the main description on the Music topic page (based on 1918-06-01-GA271 and 1919-12-30-GA320).

Lyre of Apollo

Schema FMC00.681: illustrates,

on the left: the human nervous system and organism depicted as what the ancient Greeks called the lyre of Apollo, an instrument on which the gods played the music of the spheres or the etheric formative forces. The 28 (between 24 and 31) spinal nerves are like the strings of that lyre.

on the right: the same picture enclosed in the human body, to show how the process of human breathing causes a rhythmic undulation of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) as the backbone of the human consciousness experience with the human brain.

The contours of the human body shown to point to the fact that Man not only breathes air through the lungs, but there is also a fine breathing of the etheric life energy through the pores of the skin. See Franz Bardon's IIH step 2 and Initiation exercises#Pore breathing.

See further Schema FMC00.681A.

Schema FMC00.681A: shows the Lyre of Apollo and the human nerve-sense subsystem with balance of breathing and blood circulation underlying human consciousness.

"In every breath the cosmos enters into us, and this meets the blood, which is the expression of our inner forces" and "In breathing the outer world penetrates man; in circulation the inner world strives outward. Conscious life arises where the two streams meet.”

Lower left: Building on Schema FMC00.681, this Schema serves as an illustration to the references quotes in the lower right corner that are on the topic pages of the different inter-related elements to bring together various aspects: a) how the breathing causes or pushes against the blood circulation b) the 4:1 ratio between the two rhythms (see also The heart's two blood circuits) c) how the breathing process causes the rhythmic undulation of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) - shown here with the dark blue vertical arros d) the whole considered along the spectrum of elements and ethers, so air processes related to the astral, the etheric working on the watery, the human I mediating warmth.

• 1918-06-01-GA271 and 1919-12-30-GA320 are on Nerve-sense subsystem#lyre of Apollo
• 1921-06-26-GA205 and 1923-03-29-GA281 are on Rhythmic subsystem#Hexameter
• 1921-12-28-GA303 and 1922-05-15-GA212 are on Human breathing#Conscious thinking and rhythm of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)

The six references are given to initialize one's study of these subtopics (with other references on these pages) that have to be integrated in one's mind. Furthermore see also: The heart's two blood circuits (shown here in red) and Between heart and brain.

On the left: In breathing, the human being is entirely conjoined with the cosmos. The air which I have just breathed in was formerly an ingredient in the cosmos, and it will afterwards become an ingredient in the cosmos once more - and here not just coarse but also fine breathing is meant.

In our in-breathing the external world pulsates: we receive the moving waves of cosmic life into ourselves, and adjust them to our inner being. In our out-breathing our own blood pulsates: we impart to the rhythm of the breath something of the vibration of the pulse in the circulating blood (1922-09-22-GA216).

This interchange between Man and the world finds its inner formation in the rhythm of blood-circulation, closely bound up with the breathing-rhythm through a harmony expressed in the ratio one to four between respiration and pulse.

Upper right: The idea is that the Schema comes to life as an image and foundation to understand the process of human consciousness and what we call the human 'I' and threefold soul: the process of perception with the human senses, and thinking.

The image on the upper right (from 1919-12-30-GA320) points to the fact that with this lyre of Apollo, with the nerve-sense subsystem (nerves, senses) thus 'riding' on the rhythmic subsystem (breathing, blood circulation ..), Man is able to experience inner differentiations that relate to what enters the human senses as an air wavefront, or light .. and thus becomes a conscious soul experience of tone, music, speech, vision. See also the short description on the Music topic page.

In summary, from Schema FMC00.431, the human 'I' "plays on the instrument of the soul and the different strings of human soul life".

Schema FMC00.681B: shows depictions of the 'Lyre of Apollo' in the first and second Goetheanum as representing the human being in the fourth Greco-Latin cultural age

Other

Schema FMC00.670: illustrates Man as a threefold being in relation to the three worlds, with a picture and description used recurrently by Rudolf Steiner. The 'head' nerve-sense subsystem and 'limb' metabolic-limb subsystem are polar opposites, the first most and the latter least spiritualized, while the middle rhythmic subsystem modulates and balances the two. The influences of the different etheric formative forces are depicted with the open sphere at both ends,

On the left, focus is on the human head with the 'empty' part (see Schema FMC00.045) and connection with the spiritual. Connect this with the schemas and descriptions on etherization of blood, the human brain, and matter is destroyed in the brain to develop an imaginative insight of this point in the human brain between the pineal and pituitary glands. For another angle, see also Schema FMC00.463 and Man's new organ.

Schema FMC00.488 is an example of a schema that provides a synthesis to two major points from an important didactic lecture.

For lecture text, see Thinking Feeling Willing#1917-10-08-GA177

The first point (right, and left text boxes) is about the twofold nature of the human being as a result of the luciferic infection in the Lemurian epoch.

The second point (upper and lower text boxes in grey) is about the true nature of thinking: 'dead' thinking whereby our head takes in and processes living astral elementals, versus 'living' thinking whereby these thoughts are coming through the spiritual world and spiritual hierarchies, flowing through the lower part of the body and filled with feeling and willing.

For further study, this relates to:

• compare with a) Schema FMC00.428A on Human character - the I and threefold soul) about the same force field between the luciferic influence and the regular SoF, and b) the consciousness soul (see lower part of Schema FMC00.431 on Human character - the I and threefold soul).
• what Rudolf Steiner describes, with various terms used, as living/heart/organic/new/formative thinking, see D00.003 - theoretical aspects discussion regarding the study process#Heart thinking
• what is described in Enlivened images and Matter is destroyed in the brain

Lecture coverage and references

1908-09-09-GA106

.. what was produced in man through the influence of the various aspects of the moon. We have spoken of the twenty-eight nerves proceeding from the spinal cord, which stem from the positions of the moon during the twenty-eight days that the moon requires to return to its first form. We have probed the mystery of how, through the cosmic forces, these twenty-eight pairs of nerves were formed in man from outside.

1908-09-10-GA106

Then, we see taking hold, from the moon, that influence of the moonlight which the Egyptians called Osiris, which can work upon Man through the different aspects of the moon. We see how the most important formations of the upper body, i.e., the nerves that bring about the present upper body, are worked into man from the moon. The nerves, going out from the spine, formed the upper body. At first, through the tones that Osiris-Apollo played on the human lyre, the mid-part, the hip-region, comes into form.

1910-03-28-GA119

Our nerves are ordered according to the laws of the planetary world outside, for the planetary world is the outer expression of spiritual realities and spiritual worlds.

If it is the case that the world of spirit works at the forming of our nervous system, it follows that underlying our nervous system there must be a certain law and order corresponding to that of the solar system. Our nervous system must be an inner solar system, for it is organised from the heaven world. We will now ask ourselves whether this nervous system really functions as if it were a mirror-image of the solar system out yonder in the Macrocosm.

As you know, our measurement of time is governed by the relation of the planets to the Sun and again in the yearly cycle by the passage of the Sun through the twelve constellations of the Zodiac. That is an arrangement of time based upon the law contained in the number twelve as a number which expresses the movements taking place in the solar system. There are also twelve months in the year, and in the longest months there are thirty-one days. That again is based upon the mutual relations of the heavenly bodies and is connected with our time-system. There is a certain irregularity for which there is a good reason, but we cannot go into it now.

Let us try to picture this remarkable time-system in the universe and ask ourselves how these cosmic processes would be reflected in our nervous system. If the forces underlying the Macrocosm are also the forces which have formed our nervous system, we shall certainly find a reflection of them in ourselves; and in fact we have twelve cerebral nerves and thirty-one pairs of spinal nerves.

The cosmic laws are actually reflected in these spinal and cerebral nerves.

The existence of a certain irregularity is explained by the fact that Man is destined to be a being who is independent of what is going on outside him.

Just as the Sun's passage through the constellations of the Zodiac takes place in twelve months, and this is reflected in the twelve cerebral nerves, so the days of the month are regulated in accordance with the circuit of the Moon, twenty-eight days.

How is the connection of the thirty-one days in the month with the human nervous system to be explained?

We have three additional pairs of nerves, i.e. thirty-one in all, which makes us independent beings; otherwise here too we should be governed by the number twenty-eight. Here you can glimpse a deep mystery, a wonderful connection between our nervous system and what is expressed in the great symbols of space—symbols which in themselves are mirrorings of spiritual beings and activities.

1910-12-31-GA126

makes the link with the concept of the Zodiac man

It should not be beyond the scope of modern physiology to know where the microcosmic counterparts of the twelve Amshaspands are to be found. They are the twelve main nerves proceeding from the head; these are nothing else than material densifications of what arose in the human belong through the instreaming of the twelve macrocosmic powers.

The ancient Persians pictured the twelve archangel beings working from the twelve directions of the Zodiac, working into the human head in twelve rays, in order gradually to produce what is now our intelligence. Naturally they did not work into man for the first time in the ancient Persian epoch, but finally they worked in such a way that we can speak of twelve cosmic radiations, twelve archangel-radiations, which then densified in the human head into twelve main cerebral nerves.

And just as knowledge in a later age includes what was already known in an earlier one, so could the Persians also know that Spirits of a lower rank than the Archangels had been at work previously, in the Indian epoch. The Persians called the Beings of the rank below the Amshaspands, “Izads,” and of these they enumerated 28 to 31. The Izads, therefore, are Beings who give rise to a less lofty activity; to soul-activity in man. They send in their rays, which correspond to the 28, 30 to 31 spinal nerves. And so in Zarathustrianism you have our modern physiology translated into terms of the spiritual, the macrocosmic, in the twelve Amshaspands and in the 28 to 31 Izads of the next lower Hierarchy.

A true fact of historical evolution is that what was originally seen spiritually is now presented to us through anatomical dissection; things that were formerly accessible to clairvoyant vision appear in later epochs in materialistic form. A wonderful bridge is disclosed here between Zarathustrianism, with its spirituality, and modern physiology, with its materialism. Of course, the destiny of the great majority of mankind makes it inevitable that such an idea as that of the connection between the Persian Amshaspands and Izads and our nerves is regarded as lunacy, especially by those who study the materialistic physiology of to-day. But after all, we have plenty of time, for the Persian epoch will be fully recapitulated only in the sixth cultural age which follows our own. Then, for the first time, the conditions prevailing will enable such things to be intelligible to a large part of humanity. Therefore we have to content ourselves with the fact that indications of them can be given today as part of the spiritual-scientific outlook. And such indications must be given if a spiritual-scientific conception of the world is to be spoken of in the true sense, and attention called, not merely in general phrases, to the fact that man is a microcosmic replica of the macrocosm.

1916-03-07-GA167

When you study the human being more accurately, you can see in every skeleton that it consists of two portions.

You have

• the skull and the spinal column attached to it with the brain inside the skull and the spinal fluid in the spinal column,
• and the rest of the human being is attached to it.

You can consider the human being only as being attached to it. You have the head like a small cosmic sphere attached to the whole thing.

...

This human head comes into existence between death and a new birth as in a large sphere which we could compare with our blue heavenly sphere, that in which our karma is woven and is an organization which as it goes towards incarnation, becomes smaller and smaller and then unites itself with the mother. That which then becomes our head is woven through by countless beings of the hierarchies out of the whole cosmic all. It is a wisdom of the most immense magnitude, a wisdom which has embodied in it all the experiences.

Our head is an inheritance of the Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon incarnations. The earth with all its forces could not have been able to produce this head. It is only possible to bring into existence that which is added to the head, not the head with all its forces.

The other part of the human being, not the head with the spinal column, but that which is attached to it actually is earth man.

1918-01-29-GA181

It would not occur to anyone who takes a compass, a magnetic needle in hand, to seek in the needle itself the cause of its pointing with one end to the North and with the other to the South; the physicist feels himself compelled to regard the magnetic force proceeding from the needle, and the directing magnetic force coming from the North Pole of the earth, as a whole. The cause of what takes place in the small space of the needle is sought in the great universe.

Yet this is not done in other cases where it should be done, and where it is of importance. If anyone — especially a scientist — observes that one living being is formed within another living being, as, for instance, the egg is formed in the body of the hen, he sees there how something forms in the smallest space; but what does not usually strike him is to apply what he knows of the magnetic needle and say, that the reason why the germ of the egg develops in the body of the hen lies in the entire cosmos, not in the hen. Exactly as the great universe has a part in the magnetic needle, so too the whole cosmos has a share in the hen’s body, — no matter what other processes also take part in it — the whole cosmos in its spherical form co-operate. […]

That of course is heresy in the eyes of official science, but it is a truth. The forces of the cosmos co-operate in the most varied ways. Just as it is true that in the case of Man (empirical embryology proves this) the head, in its germinal rudiments is formed from the whole universe, — the human head forms first in the maternal organism — so too is it true that, on the other hand, the original causative forces for this formation work from the whole cosmos, and Man’s head is an image of it.

1918-08-26-GA183

... because science - the general worldview of our time - does not recognize the meaning of what is 'emptier than empty', it is locked in materialism. There is in the human being, if I may express it so, a place which is emptier than empty - not in its whole, but included in its parts. The whole human being - and I mean the physical human being - is a being which fills out a material space, but a particular member of this human nature ... has actually an aspect that is sunlike, is emptier than empty. This is the human head. And just because the human being is so organized that his head can always empty itself and in certain of its parts become emptier than empty, through this the head has the possibility of allowing the spirit to enter into it.

1923-08-23-GA227

also on: Man and the spiritual hierarchies#1923-08-23-GA227

To begin with, I shall give you only a schematic account of all this, but from the way these three worlds are related to Man you will gather many things about them. To these three worlds as they appear in three ascending stages—the lowest, the middle one, and the highest—I will then relate Man's three members—the head; then the breast-organisation embracing all that is rhythmical, the breathing system and blood circulation; thirdly, the metabolic-limb system, which includes nutrition, digestion and the distribution throughout the body of the products of digestion, all of which engender movement. All this has to do with the metabolic-limb system.

If this scheme were drawn, there would have to be a closed circle for the breast; for the head a circle left open, and open also for the limb system.

When perceived physically, Man's head appears to be closed above and would have to be drawn so, but perceived spiritually, it is open. The part of a Man which does not belong at all to the realm of the spirit is the bony system, which is entirely of a physical nature; and when spiritually you study the human head, its thick skull is not seen. Only the skin is visible where the hair grows.

When this is looked at spiritually, however, something else appears. Ordinary hair is not there at all, but purely spiritual hair; in other words, rays which penetrate into the human organism and are held back, to some extent, only by the physical hair.

But it is just where there is bone in the organism that the spirit can enter most easily, and this it does in the form of rays.

So, on first looking at a Man with your physical eyes, you see his physical form with the head above, and on his head—if he is not already bald—there is hair. But then, where the dome of the skull comes, spiritually you see nothing of the physical man; you see rays, sun-like rays, pouring into him from the spiritual worlds.

Thus the reason for the circle not being closed for the head is that the surrounding bony vault of the skull enables the spirit to have continual access there.

Nothing in a Man is without purpose. By deliberate intent of the ruling powers—one might say—he has been given a head thus closed above, for here the spirit has the easiest access to his inner being because of the very thickness of the bone.

When we are in a position to observe man spiritually, we are astonished to discover how empty his head is of anything drawn from his own inner being. As regards the spiritual, he has almost nothing in him to fill the hollow globe sitting on his shoulders. Everything spiritual has to enter it from outside.

1924-01-12-GA233A

Thus, profound and solemn attention was given in this school to the passage of the Moon through First Quarter, Full Moon, Last Quarter, New Moon; they learned to watch how the Moon in this way goes through twenty-eight to thirty phases. They watched out in the Cosmos the passage of the Moon through her phases. They watched the Moon as she moves within her orbit.

They saw how she describes her twenty-eight to thirty curves or turns and they understood

• how Man has in his spinal column these twenty-eight to thirty vertebrae and
• how the development of the spinal column in the embryo corresponds with the movements and forces of the Moon.

They saw in the form and shape of the human spinal column the copy of the monthly movement of the Moon. And in the twenty-eight to thirty nerves that go out from the spinal column into the whole organism, they saw a copy of the streams that the Moon sends down continually upon the Earth, sending them down at the various stages of her path in the heavens.

Actually and literally, in these continuations of the vertebrae they saw a reflection of the inpouring of the Moon-streams. In short, in what the human being bears within him in the nerves of the spinal marrow together with the spinal marrow itself, they saw something that unites him with the Cosmos, that brings him into living connection with the Cosmos.

All this that I have indicated to you was presented to the pupil. And he was then made to observe something else. It was said to him:

“Look at the optic nerve: watch how it goes from the brain across into the eye. You will see that in the course of its passage into the eye it is divided into very fine threads. How many threads? The threads that go from the optic nerve into the inside of the eye are exactly as many in number as the nerves that go out from the spinal marrow; there are twenty-eight to thirty of them. So that we may say, a spinal marrow system in miniature goes from the brain through the optic nerve into the eye.”

Thus has Man — so said the teacher to his pupils — thus has man received this thirty-membered system of nerves and spinal marrow from the Gods, who in primeval antiquity formed and shaped his existence; but Man himself has fashioned, in his eye, in his sense-world-beholding eye, a copy of the same; there, in the front of the head-organism he has fashioned for himself a copy of what the Gods have made of him.

After this, the pupil's attention was directed to the following. The organisation of the spinal marrow stands, as we have seen, in connection with the Moon. But on the other hand, through the special relationship that the Moon has to the Sun, we have a year of twelve months; and from the human brain twelve nerves go out to the various parts of the organism, the twelve chief nerves of the brain. In this respect, Man, in his head organisation, is a microcosm, in respect, namely, of the relationship between Sun and Moon. In the whole form and figure of Man is expressed an imitation of the processes out yonder in the Cosmos.

lyre of Apollo

the human astral body is physically elaborated/reflected in the nervous system, which the ancient Greeks referred to as the 'lyre of Apollo'

1908-09-09-GA106

In his study of earth-evolution, the Egyptian initiate saw that the god Osiris had separated himself from the sun and had gone to the moon, whence he reflected the light of the sun. What this god did was also sacred to the Greeks.

They too knew that it was this god, Osiris, who formed the twenty-eight moon-aspects, and thereby laid the groundwork for the twenty-eight nerves in Man. Through Osiris, the nervous system is built onto the spinal column, thereby forming the whole upper body of Man.

For what appears as muscle can maintain its form only because the nerves are its shapers. All we have as muscles, cartilage, and other organs such as heart and lungs, maintains its form only through the nerves. Thus through the earlier sun-activity appeared what took form as brain and spinal column, and on this spinal column the twenty-eight aspects of Isis and Osiris work from outside.

Isis and Osiris are the shapers of all this, and in the tentacles that the brain sends down into the spinal column, Osiris works upon the spine.

The Greeks experienced this also, and as they became acquainted with the Egyptian mysteries they recognized that Osiris was the same as the god whom they called Apollo. They said that the Egyptian Osiris was Apollo, and that, like Osiris, Apollo worked upon the nerves so as to achieve a soul-life within man.

Now in a simple way, let us try to view this formation. Let us think of the brain as it might be sketched. This continues itself into the spine, and there the twenty-eight arms of Osiris enter in; there Osiris with his twenty-eight hands plays upon the spine as upon a lyre. The Greeks had a significant image for this: the lyre of Apollo. We need only think of it as transposed. The lyre is the brain, the nerves are the strings on which the hands of Apollo play. Apollo plays on the cosmic-lyre, on the mighty work of art that the cosmos has formed, and that causes to resound in man the tones that compose his soul life. For the Eleusinian initiate, this was what the Egyptians had given in their pictures.

From such a picture we can see that these things should not be expounded too rigidly, or we shall merely be forcing fantasies into them. For as a rule, our experience should be that these pictures are actually much deeper than anything we can dream into them by means of the intellect.

If the Greek clairvoyant spoke of Apollo, he had before his mind the mystery of Osiris-Apollo and the human musical instrument. Osiris stood before the Egyptian pupil when he was initiated into the mysteries of earth-existence. Thus we must say that these symbols, these pictures, which have been preserved for us and which characterize what has been taken from the primeval mysteries, mean much more than can be expounded by the intellect. This lyre was seen, the hands of Apollo were seen. The important thing is that we should relate every symbol to some actual vision, to something really seen. There are no symbols, no legends, that have not first been seen.

1918-06-01-GA271

In all unconscious phenomena that occur in the life of the soul, the miracle structure of our organism plays a role in a completely different way. It is becoming more and more apparent that our organism should not be regarded in the way that it is by the ordinary biologist and physiologist, but that it must be regarded as an image of a spiritual model. What the human being carries within him is the image of a spiritual model.

The human being enters into existence through birth or through conception, and he applies the laws of heredity that are his, as well as that which descends from a spiritual world and behaves in relation to the physical in such a way that the physical is truly an image of the spiritual. How this comes about, I cannot explain today. The fact exists that in our organism such a working takes place, which proceeds according to spiritual-pictorial laws.

With music, this is particularly remarkable. We believe that when we enjoy music, the ear is involved and perhaps the nervous system of our brain, but only in a very external way. Physiology is only just beginning in this field and will only reach a certain level when artistic ideas are incorporated into this physiological and biological area. There is something completely different at the root of it than the mere hearing process or what takes place in the nervous system of our brain.

What underlies the sense of music can be described as follows:

• every time we breathe out, the brain, the head space, the inner space of the head, is caused by breathing to let its brain water descend through the spinal cord sac into the diaphragm region; a descent is caused.
• The inhalation corresponds to the reverse process: the brain water is driven against the brain.
• There is a continuous rhythmic up and down movement of the cerebral fluid. If this were not the case, the brain would not lose as much of its weight as is necessary to prevent it from crushing the underlying blood vessels; if it did not lose so much of its weight, it would crush our blood vessels. This cerebral fluid moves up and down in the arachnoid space, in expansions that are elastic and less elastic, so that when it rises and falls, the cerebral fluid flows over the less elastic expansions, over some that expand more or less.
• This gives a very wondrous way of working within a rhythm. The whole human organism, apart from the head and limbs, expresses itself in this inner rhythm. What flows in through the ear as sound, what lives in us as a sound image, becomes music when it encounters the inner music that is played by the fact that the whole organism is a 'strange' musical instrument, as I have just described.

If I were to describe everything to you, I would have to describe a wonderful inner human music, which is not heard but is experienced inwardly. What is experienced musically is basically nothing more than the response of an inner singing of the human organism.

This human organism is, precisely in relation to what I have just described, the image of the macrocosm: that we carry within us, in the most concrete laws, more strictly than natural laws, this lyre of Apollo, on which the cosmos plays within us. Our organism is not what biology alone recognizes, but it is the most wonderful musical instrument.

1919-12-30-GA320

from the 'light course'

short extract

The ear is in a way the bridge, by which your own inner 'lyre of Apollo' finds its relation, in ever-balancing and compensating interplay, with the differentiated airy movement that comes to you from without.

...

Here once again the 'conversation' becomes localized, localized namely in this 'lyre of Apollo', in this rhythmic play of our whole organism, of which the rhythmic play of our spinal fluid is but the image and the outcome.

long extract

[living in element of warmth]

Now let us go still farther down. We experience our own state-of-warmth by swimming with it in our environment-of-warmth. When we are warmer than our environment we feel the latter as if it were drawing, sucking at us; when we are colder we feel as though it were imparting something to us.

But this grows different again when we consider how we are living in yet another element. Once more then: we have the faculty of living in what really underlies the light; we swim in the element of light. Then, in the way we have been explaining, we swim in the element of warmth.

[living in element of air]

But we are also able to swim in the element of air, which of course we always have within us. We human beings, after all, are to a very small extent solid bodies. More than 90% of us is just a column of water, and—what matters most in this connection—the water in us is a kind of intermediary between the airy and the solid state. Now we can also experience ourselves quite consciously in the airy element, just as we can in the element of warmth. Our consciousness descends effectively into the airy element. Even as it enters into the element of light and into the element of warmth, so too it enters into the element of air. Here again, it can “converse”, it can communicate and come to terms with what is taking place in our environment of air. It is precisely this “conversation” which finds expression in the phenomena of sound or tone.

[see also Schema FMC00.245 for link with astral body and light ether]

You see from this: we must distinguish between different levels in our consciousness.

• One level of our consciousness is the one we live with in the element of light, inasmuch as we ourselves partake in this element.
• Quite another level of our consciousness is the one we live with in the element of warmth, inasmuch as we ourselves, once more, are partaking in it.
• And yet another level of our consciousness is the one we live with in the element of air, inasmuch as we ourselves partake also in this. Our consciousness is indeed able to dive down into the gaseous or airy element. Then are we living in the airy element of our environment and are thus able to perceive the phenomena of sound and of musical tone.

Even as we ourselves with our own consciousness have to partake in the phenomena of light so that we swim in the light-phenomena of our environment; and as we have to partake in the element of warmth so that we swim also in this; so too must we partake in the element of air.

We must ourselves have something of the airy element within us in a differentiated form so that we may be able to perceive—when, say, a pipe, a drum or a violin is resounding—the differentiated airy element outside us. In this respect, my dear friends, our bodily nature is indeed of the greatest interest even to outward appearance.

[breathing process]

There is our breathing process: we breathe-in the air and breathe it out again.

• When we breathe-out the air we push our diaphragm upward. This involves a relief of tension, a relaxation, for the whole of our organic system beneath the diaphragm. In that we raise the diaphragm as we breathe-out and thus relieve the organic system beneath the diaphragm, the cerebrospinal fluid in which the brain is swimming is driven downward. Here now the cerebrospinal fluid is none other than a somewhat condensed modification, so to speak, of the air, for it is really the out-breathed air which brings about the process.
• When I breathe-in again, the cerebrospinal fluid is driven upward.

I, through my breathing, am forever living in this rhythmic, downward-and-upward, upward-and-downward undulation of the cerebrospinal fluid, which is quite clearly an image of my whole breathing process. In that my bodily organism partakes in these oscillations of the breathing process, there is an inner differentiation, enabling me to perceive and experience the airy element in consciousness. Indeed by virtue of this process, of which admittedly I have been giving only a rather crude description, I am forever living in a rhythm-of-life which both in origin and in its further course consists in an inner differentiation of the air.

In that you breathe and bring about—not of course so crudely but in a manifold and differentiated way—this upward and downward oscillation of the rhythmic forces, there is produced within you what may itself be described as an organism of vibrations, highly complicated, forever coming into being and passing away again. It is this inner organism of vibrations - which in our ear we bring to bear upon what sounds towards us from without - when, for example, the string of a musical instrument gives out a note.

We make the one impinge upon the other. And just as when you plunge your hand into the lukewarm water you perceive the state-of-warmth of your own hand by the difference between the warmth of your hand and the warmth of the water, so too do you perceive the tone or sound by the impact and interaction of your own inner, wondrously constructed musical instrument with the sound or tone that comes to manifestation in the air outside you.

The ear is in a way the bridge, by which your own inner “lyre of Apollo” finds its relation, in ever-balancing and compensating interplay, with the differentiated airy movement that comes to you from without. Such, in reality is hearing.

• The real process of hearing—hearing of the differentiated sound or tone—is, as you see, very far removed from the abstraction commonly presented. Something, they say, is going on in the space outside, this then affects my ear, and the effect upon my ear is perceived in some way as an effect on my subjective being. For the “subjective being” is at long last referred to—described in some kind of demonology—or rather, not described at all. We shall not get any further if we do not try to think out clearly, what is the underlying notion in this customary presentation. You simply cannot think these notions through to their conclusion, for what this school of physics never does is to go simply into the given facts.

Thus in effect we have three stages in Man's relation to the outer world. I will describe them as the stage of Light, the stage of Warmth, and that of Tone or Sound. There is however a remarkable fact in this connection.

• Look open-mindedly at your relation to the element of light—your swimming in the element of light—and you will have to admit: It is only with your etheric body that you can live in what is there going on in the outer world.
• Not so when you are living in the element of warmth. You really live in the warmth-element of your environment with your whole bodily nature.
• Having thus contemplated how you live in light and warmth, look farther down—think how you live in the element of tone and sound, and you will recognize: Here you yourself are functioning as an airy body. You, as a living organism of air, live in the manifoldly formed and differentiated outer air. It is no longer the ether; it is external physical matter, namely air.

Our living in the warmth-element is then a very significant border-line. Our life in the element of warmth is for our consciousness a kind of midway level—a niveau. You recognize it very clearly in the simple fact that for pure feeling and sensation you are scarcely able to distinguish outer warmth from inner warmth. Your life in the light-element however lies above this level:

[drawing]

• For light, you ascend as it were into a higher, into an etheric sphere, therein to live with your consciousness.
• On the other hand you go beneath this level, beneath this niveau, when in perceiving tone or sound you as a man-of-air converse and come to terms with the surrounding air.
• While upon this niveau itself (in the perceiving of warmth) you come to terms with the outer world in a comparatively simple way.

.

Now bring together what I have just been shewing with what I told you before out of anatomy and physiology. Then you will have to conceive the eye as the physical apparatus, to begin with. Indeed the farther outward you go, the more physical do you find the eye to be; the farther in you go, the more is it permeated with vitality. We therefore have in us a localized organ—the eye—with which to lift ourselves above a certain level or niveau. Upon this actual niveau we live as it were on equal terms with our environment; with our own warmth we meet the warmth of our environment and perceive the difference, whatever it may be. Here we have no such specialized organ as the eye; the whole of us, we ourselves in some way, become the sense-organ.

And we dive down beneath this level or niveau when functioning as airy man,—when we converse and come to terms with the differentiated outer air. Here once again the “conversation” becomes localized—localized namely in this “lyre of Apollo”, in this rhythmic play of our whole organism, of which the rhythmic play of our spinal fluid is but the image and the outcome. Here then again we have something localized—only beneath the niveau this time, whilst in the eye it is above this midway level.

1920-09-30-GA283

And in this sense, I think that it does lead to a kind of understanding when one shows what is happening externally as a musical fact in its other pole in inner experience; and when one then empathizes with what is going on in the person, then I believe that this is indeed a more artistic conception than that of some musicology! And I would like to add that today, for easily understandable reasons, we cannot go far enough. If we had already progressed so far that we could take it all the way to the imaginations and the description of the imaginations, then we might also be able to create something similar to what the Greeks created when they spoke of Apollo's lyre, actually meaning this inner part of the human being as a living musical instrument that reproduces the harmonies and the melos in the cosmos. We are not even yet so far advanced that we can feel what the Greeks felt when they heard the word Cosmos. This word is not connected with some abstraction of a modern scientist, with a certain description of the universe, but with the beauty of the universe, with the harmony of that in the cosmos which is actually connected with the beauty of the universe.

1922-09-22-GA216

see full extract on: Rhythmic subsystem#1922-09-22-GA216

We can have no real knowledge of the Apollonian art, or of Orphic wisdom, unless we realise that their inspiration came from dæmonic beings moving within this condition of balance between inbreathing and out-breathing. The strings of Apollo's lyre were tuned in accordance with what could be observed of those beings who lived between the moon-sphere and the earth-sphere, who liked best to hover, to dance, as it were, on the strings of the cosmos which had been woven into the balance between inbreathing and out-breathing. The dance of the daemons of the air—this was mirrored in the tuning of the strings of Apollo's lyre.

1923-05-18-GA276

see longer extract in context of hexameter on: Rhythmic subsystem#1923-05-18-GA276

They saw the sun-like in man, the playing of the blood system upon the nervous system, as the God Apollo; and the spinal cord with its wonderful ramification of strings, upon which the sun principle plays, as Apollo's lyre.

...

Compared to external music, that performed between blood and nerve system in the human organism is of far greater sublimity.

1923-06-02-GA291

appears in GA276 and GA291

With music it is different. Now we do not merge inner with outer, but enter directly into that which the soul experiences as the spiritual or psycho-spiritual; leave space entirely. Music is line-like, one-dimensional; is experienced one-dimensionally in the line of time. In music man experiences the world as his own.

Now the soul does not assert something it needs upon descending into or leaving the physical; rather it experiences something which lives and vibrates here and now, on Earth, in its own soul-spirit nature.

Studying the secrets of music, we can discover what the Greeks, who knew a great deal about these matters, meant by the lyre of Apollo.

What is experienced musically is really man's hidden adaptation to the inner harmonic-melodic relationships of cosmic existence out of which he was shaped. His nerve fibers, ramifications of the spinal cord, are marvelous musical strings with a metamorphosed activity.

The spinal cord culminating in the brain, and distributing its nerve fibers throughout the body, is the lyre of Apollo.

Upon these nerve fibers the soul-spirit man is “played” within the earthly sphere. Thus Man himself is the world's most perfect instrument; and he can experience artistically the tones of an external musical instrument to the degree that he feels this connection between the sounding of strings of a new instrument, for example, and his own coursing blood and nerve fibers. In other words, Man, as nerve Man, is inwardly built up of music, and feels it artistically to the degree that he feels its harmonization with the mystery of his own musical structure.

Thus, in devoting himself to the musical, man appeals to his earth-dwelling soul-spirit nature. The discovery by anthroposophical vision of the mysteries of this nature will have a fructifying effect, not just on theory, but upon actual musical creation.

1924-02-01-GA234

There is a deep reason why breathing was once called inspiration. In general, the words of our language say much more than we, in our abstract consciousness, feel them to contain.

These are the considerations that can lead us to the three members of man—the physical, the etheric and the astral bodies—which find expression in the solid, fluid and airy ‘men’ and have their physical counterparts in the forms of the solid man, in the changing shapes of the fluid man and in that which permeates man as an inner music, experienced through feeling.

The nervous system is the most beautiful representation of this inner music. It is built from out of the astral body—from out of this inner music; and for this reason it has, at a definite part, the wonderful configuration of the spinal cord with its attached nerve-strands. All this together is a wonderful, musical structure that is continually working upwards into Man's head.

A primeval wisdom that was still alive in Ancient Greece, felt the presence of this wonderful instrument in Man.

For the air assimilated through breathing ascends through the whole spinal cord. The air we breathe in ‘enters’ the cerebrospinal canal and pulsates upwards towards the brain. This music is actually performed, but it remains unconscious; only the upper rebound is in consciousness. This is the lyre of Apollo, the inner musical instrument that the instinctive, primeval wisdom still recognised in Man.

I have referred to these things before, but it is my present intention to give a resume of what has been developed within our society in the course of twenty-one years.

Discussion

Note 1 - Head nerve-sense system at the basis for mineral renewal of physical body

Introduction and key statement

This is a work area to gather and integrate reference quotes to support and explain the statement below but approaching it from different angles:

Renewal of mineral bodily substances occurs via etheric formative processes originating from the head nerve-sense subsystem (and brain) that work throughout the whole organism of the physical body.

It is not so that mineral physical renewal takes place through metabolic pathways and direct digestion of food stuffs in the lower body

Commentary

Schemas illustrating this:

• Schema FMC00.513 shows the intake of foodstuff and the process upto to the head
  • see right and upper right part of this Schema (oa phosphor)
• Schema FMC00.015A shows the finer cosmic breathing process of formative forces; below is the process of transmutation via warmth
  • the mineral renewal is part of what is called, below, the 'exhalation' process of what has been inhaled

• Schema FMC00.542 is the picture to follow the process in terms of working of substances of breathing,
  • middle to below: carbonic acid to limestone bone
  • above head: silica quartz forces
  • note: to 'read' this Schema , it is be supplemented with the other pictures on: Working of substances and their forces#Illustrations)

.

The challenge for our mind is, through soul work, to let go of the flow of physical substance and visualization of the mineral physical body ('earth'), and see this in all its dimensions of the spectrum of elements and ethers (so including the astral/air process, the etheric formative forces ..).

For this it may help to first read Force substance representation, and contemplate Man: an integrated view#Illustrations (a.o. schemas 245 and 644)

Reference extracts

Disclaimer: the RSL references and quotes below come through an AI system that sometimes gives completely wrong lecture references, so still to be checked and validated.

1920-10-09-GA314

see quote on: Man: an integrated view#1920-10-09-GA314 and Schema FMC00.669

1921-04-11-GA313

see also: Working of substances and their forces#1921-04-11-GA313

and Schema FMC00.603 captures this as: the head nerve-sense subsystem, regarded as a process, is essentially physical body

discusses how the crystalline, mineral-forming processes in the organism originate in the head. Particularly, how silica and limestone formation depend not directly on metabolism but stem from the nerve-sense system and its higher processes

1921-04-12-GA313

elaborates how I activity in the head (via warmth differentiation) governs mineral substances such as phosphorus and sulphur

1921-07-30-GA281

longer extract on in context hexameter on: Rhythmic subsystem#1921-07-30-GA281

... Here then lies the mystery: the Greeks strove for vocal expression of the most intimate, even organic life of man’s rhythmic system. Goethe felt this. The Greeks by their very nature (and let us not misunderstand this) were striving after thought. Not for mere abstract thought, but something that led them away, through thought, into concrete speech-formation – the pictorial that is active in Man. For what occurs in Man through the confluence of the blood- and breathing-rhythms is transmitted to the brain and transformed into thought-content. The process is even vaguely recognisable in prose. This is really thought that has been stripped of everything that lay hidden in Greek recitative metre. The Greeks spoke of the music of Apollo’s lyre, meaning man himself as a work of art: a rhythmic being in the harmony of his breathing- and blood-rhythms. Here are uttered unfathomable cosmic mysteries which tell us more than any prose language can.

1923-03-29-GA281

see also, in context of hexameter, continuation on Rhythmic subsystem#1923-03-29-GA281

Two elements must collaborate in a man, working through the powers of his spirit and soul, in order for poetry (in the general way of things) to be engendered and given form. It is not thought – even in the most intellectual poetry it is not thought as such – that is shaped by the artist. It is the collaboration, the wonderful interaction between breathing and blood-circulation.

• In breathing, the human being is entirely conjoined with the cosmos. The air which I have just breathed in was formerly an ingredient in the cosmos, and it will afterwards become an ingredient in the cosmos once more. In breathing I absorb into myself the substantiality of the cosmos, and then release to the cosmos once more what was briefly within me. Anyone who experiences this – anyone with a real feeling for this breathing-process – will find in it one of the most marvellous mysteries of the whole formation of the world.
• And this interchange between man and the world finds its inner formation in something closely bound up with the breathing-rhythm: the rhythm of blood-circulation. In a mature man the ratio expressed in the relation between respiration and pulse beat is an average one to four: eighteen breaths (or thereabouts) and seventy-two pulse-beats per minute. Between the two is generated that inner harmony which constitutes man’s entire inner life of plastic and musical creativity.

[image]

The following remarks are not advanced as exact knowledge, but by way of a picture.

We see engendered before us a spirit of light who, on the waves of the air, plays into Man through his breathing. The breath takes hold of the blood-circulation, as of the occult workings of the human organism.

We see Apollo, the god of light, carried on the billows of air in the breathing-process, and in his lyre the actual functioning of the blood-circulation.

1923-11-09-GA230

see: Working of substances and their forces#1923-11-09-GA230

synopsis

Origin of the different systems of man. Limb system from the Earth, Metabolic system from the Moon, Rhythmic system from the Sun, Nerve-senses system from Saturn. All substances taken into the body must be transformed: Mineral into Warmth ether, Plant into Air processes, Animal into Water processes. Only the pure human may be saved. Carbon created in man disperses ether, which penetrates sense organs and opens man to spiritual influences. Metabolic processes would cause illness, if they were not kept in check by healing processes born on Sun. Breathing has a cosmic rhythm and restrains the circulation rhythm. Comparison with Saturn. Joy of the first two hierarchies in this healing process. Man's spiritual activity in relation to healing. Inflammation caused by blood processes entering nerves: swellings and growths, by nerve processes entering the blood. Relation of education to health. World healing processes in the function of metals. Human therapy a microcosm of world therapy.

    “All substances taken into the body must be transformed: Mineral into Warmth‑ether…”

1923-11-10-GA230

synopsis

All food must be transformed in the human organism. Mineral substance must be turned to warmth ether to receive cosmic forces for the building of the body. Children can only transform milk. Untransformed substances cause disease, e.g. diabetes. External warmth also must not enter the body. What root and flower in the plant say to man. Roots laid down when moon was united with the earth. The plant was liberated when the moon left the earth. Earthbound root and heaven-striving flower reverse their position when the plant becomes an air-being in man. In digestion pod-bearing plants (e.g. beans) do not reach the head. The reversal of the plant cannot properly take place in animal digestion. Elemental spirits of fear counter the animal's satisfaction in digestion. Kamaloka of carnivorous animals. Anthroposophy never fanatical (e.g. in diet) but only shows the truth. Milk working in the head for young children has its counterpart for old people in honey, the beestock being a head without a skull in outer nature. “A land flowing with milk and honey.”

    “Mineral substance must be turned to warmth ether to receive cosmic forces for the building of the body.”

1925-GA027 Chapter 6

see also: Human skeleton#1925-GA027 Ch. 6

for carbonic acid, juxtapose Schema FMC00.589 and Schema FMC00.542

distinguishes three regions of nerve organization and substances.

notes that respiratory carbonic acid, when brought to the head, combines with calcium and is directed by the head nerves and I activity toward bone formation.

Related pages

• the I-organization
• Human astral body
• Blood and nerves
• Man as a threefold being
• Man - the human being
• the human brain
• Human senses

References and further reading

Nervous system

• Karl Ballmer: Briefwechsel über die motorischen Nerve (1953)
• Wolfgang Schad (editor/publisher)
  • Die menschliche Nervenorganisation und die Soziale Frage: Teil 1: Ein anthropologisch-anthroposophisches Gespräch (1991)
  • Die menschliche Nervenorganisation und die Soziale Frage: Teil 2: Dokumentarischer Anhang, Verlag Freies Geistesleben (1992)
  • Die Doppelnatur des Ich: Der übersinnliche Mensch und seine Nervenorganisation (2014)
• Peter Wyssling: Rudolf Steiners Kampf gegen die motorischen Nerven. Das Schicksal einer Weltanschauungsentscheidung in Karl Ballmer und Gerhard Kienle
• L.F.C. Mees: 'Hoe beweegt de mens zich ? : het probleem van de motorische zenuwen' (1988)