Back in the 1980s, Herbert Benson, a Harvard cardiologist, investigated the abilities of Tibetan monks to change their metabolism (see link below). The monks he saw were apparently working on their seventh member.* In the lecture excerpted below, Rudolf Steiner discusses this aspect as the most difficult to achieve for human beings, a capacity he attributes to the Adept, one who has developed his seventh member. As a result of our evolution in consciousness, we have already begun to develop our fifth member. (It should be noted that altering our breath is no longer a viable method to reach spiritual knowledge; we must do so through our intellect.)
We’ve talked before about the physical, etheric, astral bodies and ‘I’ of each human being, especially in connection with sleep and death, but today we will review them from a new angle: Steiner’s description of what the spiritual researcher sees when looking at a person. Many of you will recognize these descriptions from other sources. We will also look briefly at the three members that are “above” the ‘I’.
The description below is just a brief review. We must acknowledge that whole libraries could be written about each member that makes up every human being. Think about all that has been written about our physical bodies or just specific body parts; here the physical body gets one sentence.
Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:
Man has a physical body in common with the mineral kingdom and an etheric body in common with the plant and animal kingdoms. Ordinary observation can confirm that. But there is another way in which we can prove to ourselves the existence of an etheric body, although only those who have developed their higher senses have this faculty. A very definite form of higher perception is needed to understand this principle of life, growth, nutrition, and propagation.
Anyone who wants to know the nature of the etheric body by direct vision must be able to maintain his ordinary consciousness intact and ‘suggest away’ the physical body by the strength of his own will. He will not, however, be left with an empty space, but will see before him the etheric body glowing with a reddish-blue light like a phantom, whose radiance is a little darker than peach blossom…
Animals can feel pleasure and pain, and thus have a further principle in common with man: the astral body. The astral body is the seat of everything we know as desire, passion, and so forth. This is clear to straightforward observation as an inner experience, but for the initiate the astral body can become an outer reality… The initiate sees this third member of man as an egg-shaped cloud which not only surrounds the body but permeates it. Within this cloud or aura the initiate sees every desire, every impulse as color and form in the astral body. For example, he sees intense passion flashing like rays of lightning out of the astral body. In animals the basic color of the astral body varies with the species… but in human beings the color alters from person to person…
But man is distinguished from the animal in another, further way. This brings us to the fourth member of our being, which comes to expression in a name different from all other names. I can say ‘I’ only of myself… Hebrew initiates spoke of the ‘inexpressible name of God’, of the God who dwells in man, for the name can be uttered only by the soul for this same soul… This attribute makes man superior to the animals… This again presents itself to the seer in a peculiar form. When he studies the astral body, everything appears in perpetual movement except for one small space, shaped like a somewhat elongated bluish oval, situated at the base of the nose, behind the brow. Just as the empty center of a flame appears blue when seen through the light around it, so this empty space appears blue because of the auric light streaming around it. This is the outer form of expression of the ‘I’.
Every human being has these four members… A refinement of the moral nature produces finer colors in the aura; an increase in the power of discrimination between good and evil also shows itself in a refinement of the aura. In the process of becoming civilized the ‘I’ has worked upon the astral body and ennobled the desires. The higher a person’s moral and intellectual development, the more will his ‘I’ have worked upon the astral body. The seer can distinguish between a developed and an undeveloped human being.
Whatever part of the astral body has been thus transformed by the ‘I’ is called Manas. Manas is the fifth member of man’s nature. We have just so much of Manas as we have created by our own efforts; part of our astral body is therefore always Manas… In the same way that we can raise ourselves to a higher moral level we can also learn to work upon the etheric body and what we have transformed in this body by our own efforts is called Buddhi. This is the sixth member of man’s nature…
The highest achievement open to man on this earth is to work right down into the physical body. That is the most difficult task of all… [we] must learn to control the breath and the circulation, to follow consciously the activity of the nerves, and to regulate the processes of thought… A man who has reached this stage is called an Adept; he will then have developed in himself what we call Atma. Atma is the seventh member of man’s being.
Excerpt from: Founding a Science of the Spirit, Lecture 1: The Being of Man, Stuttgart, Germany, August 22, 1906, by Rudolf Steiner.
Usually, these monthly posts point to some action we may contemplate taking to become more responsible human beings. This time, we focused on descriptions of the seven members of the human being. From these descriptions, however, we may consider becoming the artist of our own astral body, consciously choosing the beautiful colors and forms that will manifest when we begin creating Manas for ourselves.
https://mindmatters.ai/2019/09/tibetan-monks-can-change-their-metabolism/
*Note: It is hard to avoid thinking of a “body” as anything other than physical substance; the word “member” avoids this assumption. Both words are used in this post.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/43408247_Buddhist_Brains_A_Case_Study_in_the_Reenchantment_of_the_Brain_Sciences