Blessed Evening, Lovelies 😊

I Pray All Is Well With Everyone…And Your Hearts And Minds Are Full Of Love, Joy, And Compassion…For Everyone Everywhere…All Over The World! And With Our Increasing Knowledge And Awareness Of…And Personal Relationship And Attention To…Our Own “Mighty I AM Presence” – The Spirit Of God Within Us; Loving Others Becomes Easier; For, Then, Those Qualities Of Love, Joy, Compassion…Along With Lots Of Harmony….Emanates Effortlessly From Within That Loving Environment We Have Created – On The Inside! Then We Radiate That Love And Light Naturally From Within Our Beings…Reaching Everyone, Everywhere…All Over The World; And Slowly But Surely Creating A Loving Atmosphere…All Over The Earth! Amen…

Let Us All Create A Loving Environment…On The Inside!

And Give Thanks And Praises For Love And Life…

And Y’all Be Love…

A Lotta Reading (Or Listening), Y’all…But No Posts Tomorrow…

(THE SPIRITUAL BEING OF MAN)

“The soul being of man is not determined by the body alone. Man does not wander aimlessly and without a goal from one sensation to another; neither does he act under the influence of every casual incitement directed on him either from without or through the processes of his body.
He thinks about his perceptions and his acts. By thinking about his perceptions he gains knowledge of things; by thinking about his acts he introduces a reasonable coherence into his life. He knows also that he will fulfill his duty as a human being only when he lets himself be guided by correct thinking in knowledge as well as in acts. The soul of man, therefore, faces a twofold necessity.

The laws of the body govern it in accordance with the necessities of nature, but it allows itself to be governed by the laws which guide it to exact thinking because it voluntarily acknowledges their necessity.

Nature subjects man to the laws of the change of matter, but he subjects himself to the laws of thought. By this means he makes himself a member of a higher order than that to which he belongs through his body. And this order is the spiritual.

The soul is as different from the body as the body is different from the soul. So long as one speaks only of the particles of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen which stir in the body, one has not the soul in view.

The soul life begins only when within the motion of these particles sensation arises, and one can say: “I taste sweetness” or “I feel pleasure.”

Just as little has one the spiritual in view when one considers merely the soul experiences which course through a man who gives himself over entirely to the outer world and his bodily life. Rather is this soul life merely the basis for the spiritual, just as the body is the basis of the soul life.

The naturalist, or investigator of nature, has to do with the body, the investigator of the soul (the psychologist) with the soul, and the investigator of the spirit with the spirit.

To realize what one is in oneself, and thus become clear as to the difference between body, soul, and spirit, is a requirement which must be demanded from those who wish by thinking to enlighten themselves regarding the constitution of man.

(BODY, SOUL, AND SPIRIT)

Man can enlighten himself in a correct way concerning himself only when he grasps the significance of thinking within his being. The brain is the bodily instrument for thinking. Just as man can only see colors with a properly constructed eye, so the suitably constructed brain serves him for thought.

The whole body of man is so formed that it receives its crown in the organ of the spirit, the brain. One can understand the construction of the human brain only by observing it in relation to its task, which consists in being the instrument or tool for the thinking spirit.

Many persons are inclined to undervalue thinking, and to place higher the “warm life of feeling” or “emotion.” Some, indeed, say it is not by “dry thinking” but by warmth of feeling, by the immediate power of “the emotions,” that one raises oneself to higher knowledge.

Persons who speak thus fear to blunt the feelings by clear thinking. This certainly results from the ordinary thinking that refers only to matters of utility.

But in the case of thoughts that lead to higher regions of existence, the opposite is the result. There is no feeling and no enthusiasm to be compared with the sentiments of warmth, beauty, and exaltation which are enkindled through the pure, crystal-clear thoughts which refer to the higher worlds. For the highest feelings are, as a matter of fact, not those which come “of themselves,” but those which are gained by energetic and persevering thinking.

Man does not perceive the manifestations of the life-force through the ordinary senses. He sees the colors of the plants; he smells their perfume; the life-force remains hidden from this form of observation. But the ordinary senses have just as little right to deny the existence of the life-force as has the man born blind to deny that colors exist.

Colors are there for the person born blind just as soon as he has been operated upon; in the same way, the life-force, as creating the various species of plants and animals created by it, is present to man as an object of perception as soon as the necessary organ unfolds within him. An entirely new world opens out to man through the unfolding of this organ. He now perceives, not merely the colors, the odors, etc., of the beings, but these beings themselves.

In each plant, in each animal, he perceives, besides the physical form, the life-filled spirit-form. In order to have a name for this spirit-form let it be called the ether-body, or life-body.

To the investigator of spiritual life this matter presents itself in the following manner: The ether-body is for him not merely a product of the materials and forces of the physical body, but a real independent entity which first calls forth these physical materials and forces into life.

One speaks in harmony with spiritual science when one says: a mere physical body, a crystal for example, has its form by means of the physical formative forces dwelling within it. A living body does not have its form by means of these forces, for in the moment in which life is extinct in it, and it is given over to the physical forces only, it falls to pieces. The ether-body is an organism which preserves the physical body every moment during life from dissolution.

In order to see this body, to perceive it in another being, one requires the awakened “spiritual eye.” Without this, one can accept its existence as a fact on logical grounds; but one can see it with the spiritual eye as one sees a color with the physical eye.

One should not take offense at the expression “ether-body.” “Ether” here designates something different from the hypothetical ether of the physicist. One should regard the thing simply as a name for what is described here. And just as the physical body of man is constructed in conformity with its set task, so is it also in conformity with the ether-body of man.

One can understand it also only when one observes it in relation to the thinking spirit. The ether-body of man differs from that of plants and animals through being organized so as to serve the requirements of the thinking spirit.

Just as man belongs to the mineral world through his physical body, he belongs through his ether-body to the life-world. After death the physical body dissolves into the mineral world, the ether-body into the life-world.” (Theosophy, by Rudolf Steiner)