Fundamental to the study of Occult Physiology is the picture that we need to completely break down every food that we take into our selves in order to build it up again in the form we need it. In doing so, we strip away from the food the formative forces of the being who had made it--be it a plant or an animal.

In tonight's Study, we looked at the Spleen, the first organ that Rudolf Steiner presents in his lecture series "Occult Physiology," identifying the Spleen as the representative of Saturn in our internalized solar system. The spleen is the most active organ of the lymphatic system, and serves to enable the body to restore its own inner integrity by breaking down and discarding anything in the body that is foreign to it.

In tonight's Study, we looked at the Liver, the kingly organ of our digestion that is related to the planet Jupiter (Zeus). It is the ruler of the etheric forces in our body, with enormous vitality and abundant forces. 

In tonight's Study, we looked at the Lungs, which serve our breathing process, inhaling fresh oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide. We also learned how with each breath we take in cosmic formative forces from the zodiac and the planets, which then give rise to the sounds of speech.

In tonight's Study, we looked at the Kidneys, which serve the health of the astral body. Among other fascinating points, we considered that the kidneys weigh only 1/200th of the body's weight, yet at any one time 20-30% of the blood in circulation is traveling through the kidneys. The functioning unit of the kidneys are the nephrons, of which we have 1-2 million in our body. The body processes 35-40 gallons of blood each day. And the result of our purified blood is the clarity of our mental process, the light of our auras!

Through the work of Rudolf Steiner, we come to realize that the Heart is the most spiritual-physical organ of the body. With this study we beheld the embryological development o the heart, the structure of the heart and the flow of blood through the body, and the etheric heart and etherization of the blood.

In this final lesson of the series, we began with a consideration of the unified nature of matter and spirit, which led into a consideration of the complex but fascinating study of "Earthly and Cosmic Nutrition." We then turned to the glands, the nerve-sernse system, and concluded with another study of the Etherization of the Blood in conjunction with the Pineal and Pituitary glands.