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tonsils, which also have the shape of a kidney. When there is a release of 'fire' by the kidney, it may result in an inflammation of the pharynx (pharyngitis) or of the tonsils (tonsillitis).
But let us return to Steiner and look at his views on the future of the voice organ. Steiner considered that in the trend of human evolution, the importance of certain body parts is slowly waning while some other organs will play a more and more essential role in the future. The sexual organs belong to the first category, while the larynx definitely belongs to the second.
Steiner has often mentioned that around the middle of Lemuria (the epoch that preceded Atlantis), a critical event took place in the occult history of humankind. Until then the libido of human beings was still directed entirely towards procreation, so that each human being was able to generate offspring of its own. In other words we were all hermaphrodites. One single being could give birth to another being without having to be fecundated by anyone. Note that the concept of primordial human beings as hermaphrodites is found not only in Steiner but also in several myths of various traditions.
Then Steiner describes how, in the middle of cataclysmic alterations of planet Earth, human beings lost half their procreative energy. They stopped being hermaphrodites: the sexes were separated. Each human being retained only half of the procreative energy and from then on had to find someone of the other sex in order to have a child. What happened to the other half of the procreative energy, the one that was no longer available for procreation? According to Steiner, it was redirected towards a different function: catching the Ego, or Higher Self. Until then human beings had been living like blobs, completely disconnected from their Ego. And it was by the redirection of half of their sexual force that they established the beginning of a connection with the Ego. They became spiritual beings.
Such a vision suggests quite an interesting way of looking at the relation between sexual energy and spirituality, and at sexuality in general. For example it presents the sexual instinct as a quest for the 'lost half'. And at the same time it suggests that the lost half is not ultimately to be found outside, in a union with another being, but in a full communion with one's own Spirit. It also suggests that the sexual energy and the energy that allows us to connect with the Spirit are of fundamentally the same nature, and



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