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| The concept of terrestrial human existence as being physical. The concept of terrestrial mankind's spiritual experiences as being thoughts or thought pictures. Terrestrial man and his physical body, and this body's connection to the spiritual bodies |
223. We have now become acquainted with the fact that terrestrial mankind's so-called physical condition is actually not by any means purely physical but consists of a combined mental and physical function, and that a purely physical existence is in reality only to be found in the very first stages of the animal kingdom, where the creatures can still experience life only in a form of undefined pleasant and unpleasant sensations, and yet this is also based to a certain extent on spiritual energy, because the energies of instinct and feeling are spiritual energies.
Nevertheless, terrestrial mankind's existence being generally considered to be a physical one is due to the fact that its day-consciousness is still supported only by the physical body, in other words the body of gravity which in its connection with the embryonic body of feeling is only a basis for physical senses, to which the spiritual world is absolutely invisible.
But, as the spiritual function of consciousness in terrestrial mankind must still be considered as being in its first weak embryonic stage (in that its spiritual bodies cannot yet support the consciousness), while its physical function of consciousness, on the contrary, is at its highest - the consciousness being supported by its physical body - then this physical existence drowns, so to speak, the weak spiritual one, and it is in relation to this condition of contrast that terrestrial mankind's spiritual experiences are met with or apprehended only as "thoughts" or "thought pictures" while actually they are just as real as physical or material objects.
If these spiritual "objects" are not apprehended by the individual as being just as realistic as physical ones, it is due to the fact that the spiritual bodies have still not reached such a culmination on the spiritual planes of existence as the physical body has reached on the physical plane.
Therefore his consciousness will necessarily be dominated by physical experiences.
And as long as the spiritual bodies are still not able to support this consciousness he will feel one with his physical body, thinking that all his functioning belongs there, while in actual fact all his functions of consciousness consist of reactions between different basic cosmic energies released by different bodies.
So terrestrial man's most fundamental body is that which makes up his physical body. Through the brain and the nervous system that body is bound up with the spiritual bodies which, for terrestrial man, emerge only in an embryonic condition but through which mental functions are being released. |
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