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How this shadow, this instrument, can serve the development of the soul, and how by cultivating
the instrument one can be of help to future lives, are questions which are not without interest.

Each time that the soul takes birth in a new body it comes with the intention of having a
new experience which will help it to develop and to perfect its personality. This is how the
psychic being is formed from life to life and becomes a completely conscious and independent
personality which, once it has arrived at the summit of its development, is free to choose not
only the time of its incarnation, but the place, the purpose and the work to be accomplished.

Its descent into the physical body is necessarily a descent into darkness, ignorance,
unconsciousness; and for a very long time it must labour simply to bring a little consciousness
into the material substance of the body, before it can make use of it for the experience it has
come for. So, if we cultivate the body by a clear-sighted and rational method, at the same time
we are helping the growth of the soul, its progress and enlightenment. Physical culture is the
process of infusing consciousness into the cells of the body. One may or may not know it, but
it is a fact. When we concentrate to make our muscles move according to our will, when we
endeavour to make our limbs more supple, to give them an agility, or a force, or a resistance,
or a plasticity which they do not naturally possess, we infuse into the cells of the body a
consciousness which was not there before, thus turning it into an increasingly homogeneous and
receptive instrument, which progresses in and by its activities. This is the primary importance
of physical culture. Of course, that is not the only thing that brings consciousness into the
body, but it is something which acts in an overall way, and this is rare. I have already told you
several times that the artist infuses a very great consciousness into his hands, as the intellectual
does into his brain. But these are, as it were, local phenomena, whereas the action of physical
culture is more general. And when one sees the absolutely marvellous results of this culture,
when one observes the extent to which the body is capable of perfecting itself, one understands
how useful this can be to the action of the psychic being which has entered into this material
substance. For naturally, when it is in possession of an organised and harmonised instrument
which is full of strength and suppleness and possibilities, its task is greatly facilitated. I do not
say that people who practise physical culture necessarily do it for this purpose, because very
few are aware of this result. But whether they are aware of it or not, this is the result. Moreover,
if you are at all sensitive, when you observe the moving body of a person who has practised
physical culture in a methodical and rational way, you see a light, a consciousness, a life, which
is not there in others.

There are always people with a wholly external view of things who say, “Workers, for example,
who have to do hard physical labour and who are compelled by their work to learn to carry
heavy weights — they too build up their muscles, and instead of spending their time like
aristocrats doing exercises with no useful outward results, they at least produce something.”
This is ignorance. Because there is an essential difference between the muscles developed
through specialised, local and limited use and muscles which have been cultivated deliberately

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