The Bridge Between Universal Spirituality and the Physical Constitution of Man: 3 Lectures, Dornach, December 17-19, 1920 (CW 202)

Rudolf Steiner addresses the following topics in these lectures: 1. Soul-and-Spirit in Man's Physical Constitution: The physical organism of man is considered today to consist of more or less solid-fluid substances; but as well as his solid, physical body, man has within him as definite organisms, a fluid body, an air-body and a warmth-body. - The connections of these organisms with the members of man's whole being and with the different Ethers. - Thought and Tone; Ego and circulating Blood. - Man in the sleeping state. - Man's relation to the universal Spirituality. - Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition. - The circumscribed view of the human organism prevailing today is unable to build any bridge between the physical body and the soul-and-spirit. 2. The Moral as the Source of World-Creative Power: Recapitulation of previous lecture. - Connection of the moral world-order with the physical world-order. - The moral world-order has no place in the natural scientific thinking of today. - The positive effect of moral ideals and ideas and the negative effect of theoretical ideas on the four organisms in man. - The materialistic conception of the imperishability of matter and energy. - Matter and energy die away to nullity; but man's moral thinking imbues life into substance and will. - The natural world dies away in man; in the realm of the moral a new natural world comes into being; thus are the moral order and the natural order connected. - Absence of spirituality in the modern picture of the world which is based on the Copernican system. - Kepler and Newton. - We need a spiritual view of the universe. - The sun is not a globe of burning gas but the reflection of a spiritual reality revealed in the physical. - The moral power developed by man rays out and is reflected as the spiritual Sun. - Julian the Apostate. - The connection of the spiritual Sun with the physical sun is the Christ-Secret. 3. The Path to Freedom and Love and Their Significance in World-Events: Man as a being of Thinking, Action and Feeling. - The connection of the life of thought with the will. - Pure thinking: irradiation of the life of thought by will. - This leads to Freedom. - Irradiation of the life of will by thoughts leads to Love. - The meaning of the ancient expressions: Semblance, Power, Wisdom. - To speak of the imperishability of matter and energy annuls Love. - The significance of Freedom and Love in world-happenings.