9 · The Etherization of the Blood
Basel, October 1, 1911
As
human beings, whenever we work toward knowledge--whether as mystics, realists,
or in any other way--we have been commanded to know ourselves. Nevertheless, it
has been repeatedly emphasized on other occasions, that knowledge of the human
soul is certainly not as easy to acquire as people often believe, even
anthroposophists. Anthroposophists should always be mindful of the hindrances
we encounter in our efforts. Self-knowledge is absolutely essential, however,
if we wish to attain a worthwhile goal in world existence, and if our actions
are to be worthy of us as members of humankind. Let us ask why self-knowledge
is so difficult for us. Human beings are truly complicated, and when we speak
of the inner life of our souls, we should not assume that it is a simple
matter. We need patience and perseverance and the will to penetrate continually
more deeply into this wonderful organization of divine spirit forces that
manifest as a human being.
Before
we look into the nature of self-knowledge, two aspects of human soul life
present themselves to us. Just as a magnet has a north and a south pole, and
just as light and darkness present themselves as two poles of light, there are
also two poles in our soul life. Both poles may appear as we observe someone
involved in two contrasting life situations. Imagine we are watching a woman
standing on the street, and she is completely lost in contemplating the
striking beauty and wonder of some natural phenomenon. We see how still she
stands, moving neither her hands nor her feet, never looking away from the
spectacle presented to her. We are also aware that she is making an inner
picture of what she sees. We say that she is absorbed in contemplation of what
surrounds her. That is one situation; here is another. A man is walking along
the street and senses that someone has insulted him. Without really thinking
about it, he becomes angry and hits the one who insulted him. Here we see a
manifestation of the forces that spring from anger--impulses of will--and it's
easy to imagine that, if the action had been preceded by thought, there would
have been no need to strike.
We
have imagined two very different actions. In the first, there is only the
formation of a mental picture, a process free of conscious will; in the second,
there is no thought, no formation of mental pictures, and a will impulse is
given immediate expression. These two situations present us with the two poles
of the human soul. One is surrender to contemplation and to forming mental
pictures and thought, in which volition does not take part; the second is an
impelling force of will without thought. We arrived at these facts simply by
outer observation of ordinary life.
We
can go into these things more deeply, however, and enter areas where we find
our way only by calling on the results of esoteric research to help us. Here,
another polarity confronts us: sleeping and waking. We know the esoteric
significance of the relationship between sleeping and waking. Elementary
concepts of anthroposophy tell us that, when we are awake, the four members of
our being (physical body, ether body, astral body, and I-being) are organically
and actively interwoven; but while in sleep, the physical and ether bodies
remain together in bed as the astral body and I-being pour out into the great
cosmos that border on our physical existence. We could also approach these
facts from a different direction. What can be said about waking
life--contemplation of the world, imagination, thinking, and will impulses--on
the one hand, and sleep, on the other?
You
can see that, if we penetrate this question more deeply, it becomes obvious
that, in our present physical existence, people are essentially always asleep,
in a certain sense. At night people sleep in a different way than they do in
the daytime. This can be proved to you in a purely external way, since you know
that one can awaken in the esoteric sense during the day--that is, one can
attain clairvoyance and see into the spirit world. The ordinary physical body
is asleep to this observation, and one can rightly say that when a person
learns to use the spiritual senses, it is an awakening. At night, of course, we
are asleep in the ordinary way. We can say, therefore, that while asleep in the
ordinary sense, people "sleep in the physical world," and today's
daytime consciousness is "sleep in the spirit world."
If
people are unaware that volition is not asleep during the night, this is
because they understand only how to be awake in their thinking. But the will
does not sleep during the night; it works within a fiery element upon one's
body to restore what was used up during the day. These facts can be considered
in yet another light. On deeper scrutiny, we see that, in the ordinary waking
condition of physical life, as a rule, people have little control over the
will; volition detaches itself from daily life. Observe closely what we call
the human will, and you will see how little control people have over the will
in daily life. Just consider everything you do from morning until evening, and
how little of it is really the result of your own thinking, imagination, or
individual decisions. When someone knocks at the door and you say "Come
in," this really cannot be called a decision of your thinking and
volition. If you are hungry and sit down to a meal, this cannot be called a
decision of the will, because it is really the result of your organism's needs.
Try to picture your daily life, and you will see how little it is directly
influenced by your will.
Why
is this? Esoteric teachings show us that, in terms of the will, people in fact
sleep during the day; in other words, people do not really live within their will
impulses. We can invent better concepts, and we can become increasingly moral
and refined as individuals, but we can do nothing about the will. If we
cultivate better thoughts, we can indirectly affect the will, but we cannot
directly influence the will in life. This is because, in our daily life, our
will can be influenced only indirectly--through sleep. While asleep, you do not
think; you do not form mental images, but the will awakes and permeates our
organism from outside and invigorates it. We feel strengthened in the morning,
because the will has penetrated our organism. The fact that we do not perceive
this will activity and know nothing about it becomes comprehensible when we
realize that all conceptual activity sleeps whenever we sleep.
To
begin with, then, we will offer this suggestion for further contemplation and
meditation. You will see that, as you progress in self-knowledge, you will find
confirmation of the truth that people sleep in their will while awake and sleep
in their conceptual life while asleep. The life of will sleeps by day; the life
of thought sleeps by night.
Thus
there are two poles in human beings: that of observing and forming mental
images and that of will impulses. Human beings are related in entirely opposite
ways to these two poles, but these are the extremes; soul life as a whole
exists in various nuances between these two poles, and we can begin to
understand this soul if we view it as a microcosm and compare it to what we
know as the higher worlds.
From
what has been said, we know that the process of mental imagery is one pole of
soul life. This process seems unreal to those whose thinking is materialistic.
We often hear the notion that mental pictures and thoughts are only mental
pictures and thoughts. This implies that, when we handle a piece of bread or
meat, this is a reality, but a thought is "only a thought." This
means that you cannot eat a thought, and thus a thought is not real but merely
a thought. But why is this? Essentially, it is because what people consider
thoughts may be compared to what thoughts really are, just as we can compare
the reflected image the thing in itself. The reflected image of a flower points
you to the flower in its reality. So it is with thoughts: human thinking is a
shadow of mental images and beings that belong to a higher world called the
astral plane.
A
correct representation of thinking would be to picture the human head as in
this drawing (it is not absolutely correct but simply a schematic sketch).
There are thoughts in this head, represented by dashes. These thoughts in the
head, however, must be imagined as beings that live on the astral plane. Beings
that vary widely are active as abounding mental images and activities that cast
their shadow images into human beings; these processes are reflected in the
human head as thinking. Continuous streams flow from your head into the astral
plane, and these shadows establish thought life in your head.
In
addition to what we call thinking, there is another process in the human soul.
Ordinarily, one distinguishes between thinking and feeling (this is not
strictly correct, but it is useful to take a concept from ordinary life).
Feelings fall into two categories: feelings of pleasure and sympathy and
feelings of displeasure and antipathy. The first are stimulated by good,
benevolent actions and the second by evil, malevolent actions. This is
different and involves more than the just forming of mental images. We mentally
form images of things regardless of other factors. The soul, on the other hand,
experiences sympathy or antipathy in relation to beauty and goodness or
ugliness and evil. Everything that takes place as human thinking indicates the
astral plane; everything connected with sympathy or antipathy points to the
realm we call the lower devachan. I drew lines to indicate the connection
between mental images and the astral world, and now I can show that feeling
point upward to devachan, or the heavenly world. Processes in the heavenly
world, or devachan, are projected mainly into our breast as feelings of
sympathy or antipathy toward beauty or ugliness and for good or evil. Within
our souls, there are shades of the heavenly world, or lower devachan, in what
we may call our experience of the moral and esthetic world.1
There
is also a third aspect of the human soul, which we must distinguish strictly from
a simple preference for beneficial actions. There is a difference between
standing by and taking pleasure in seeing a kind act and activating one's
volition to perform such an act oneself. The pleasure one takes in seeing good
and beautiful acts or the displeasure one feels toward evil and ugly deeds I
will call the esthetic element. The moral element, on the other hand, motivates
one to do good. The moral element is at a higher level than the purely
esthetic; mere pleasure or displeasure is at a lower level than the will to do
something good or evil. Insofar as one's soul feels the need to express moral
impulses, those impulses are the shadow images of higher devachan, of the
higher heavenly world.
We
can easily imagine these three stages of soul activity: purely intellectual
(thoughts, mental pictures, observation); esthetic (pleasure or displeasure);
and moral (impulses to do good or evil). These are microcosmic reflections in
human experience of the three realms that exist in the macrocosm at ascending
levels. The astral world is reflected in the world of thought and intellect;
the lower devachan is reflected in the esthetic realm of pleasure and
displeasure; the higher devachan world is reflected as morality.
If
we connect this with what was said about the polarity of the human soul, we
experience the intellect as the pole that dominates the life in which we are
intellectually awake. During the day, people are awake to the intellect; while
asleep, we are awake to our will. Because we are asleep to our intellect at
night, we are unaware of what we do with the will. What we call moral
principles and impulses act indirectly in the will. Indeed, we need sleep so
that the moral impulses we absorb through thinking can become effective
activity. In ordinary life today, people are able to do what is right only at
the level of intellect; they are less capable of doing anything on the moral
plane, because, there, people depend on help from the macrocosm.
Inherent
human nature can bring about the further development of the intellect, but we
need the gods to help us acquire greater moral strength. We sink into sleep so
that we can plunge into divine will, where the intellect does not interfere and
divine forces are transformed into the volitional strength and moral principles
we receive, instilling in our will something we could otherwise receive only
into our thoughts.
Between
these two opposites--the will that awakes at night and the intellect that
awakes by day--exists the sphere of esthetic appreciation, which is always
present in human beings. During the day, people are not fully awake; only the
most unimaginative and pedantic individuals are always fully awake during the
day. Basically, human beings must in fact dream during the day; they must be
able to surrender to art or poetry or some other activity that is completely
unconcerned with crass reality. Those who can surrender in this way create a
bond that can enliven and invigorate the whole of existence. To give oneself up
to such thoughts is, in a sense, like a dream penetrating waking life. You know
that dreams enter sleep; these are real dreams that permeate the other
consciousness of sleep. People also need this by day, otherwise they will lead
a dry, empty, and unhealthy daily life. Dreams arise during sleep at night, in
any case; this does not require proof. Midway between the two opposites of
night dreaming and daydreaming there is a condition that can come alive in
fantasy.
So,
again, there is a threefold life of soul. The intellectual element in which we
are really awake brings shadow images of the astral plane. This happens when,
during the day, we give ourselves up to a thought, whereby fruitful ideas may
originate for daily life and great inventions. Then, during sleep, we dream and
our dreams play into our life of sleep, and images from lower devachan are
reflected in us. When we work during sleep to impress morality upon our will,
when we are able to imbue our thinking during the night with the influence of
divine spiritual powers, the impulses we perceive are reflections from higher
devachan. (We cannot perceive this directly, but certainly its effects.) These
are the moral impulses and feelings that live in us. It leads us to say that,
essentially, human life is justified only when we place our thoughts at the
service of goodness and beauty and allow the heart's blood of divine spirit to
flow through our intellectual activities, permeating them with moral impulses.
What
we present here as the life of the human soul--first from exoteric observation
and then from a more mystical kind of observation--is revealed by deeper
esoteric research. The processes described in their outer qualities can also be
perceived in human beings through clairvoyance. When a person stands before us
today in a waking state and we observe that individual with clairvoyant sight,
certain rays of light can be seen streaming continuously from the heart to the
head. To sketch this schematically, we draw the region of the heart here and
show continuous streams from there to the brain and flowing around the organ
known to anatomy as the pineal gland.
These
rays of light flow from the heart to the head and around the pineal gland.
These streams arise because human blood, a physical substance, continually
dissolves into an etheric substance. In the region of the heart there is a
continual transformation of the blood into this delicate etheric substance that
streams upward toward the head and flows in a glimmering way around the pineal
gland. This process is the etherization of the blood, and it can be shown in
human beings throughout their waking life. However, this is different for human
beings when asleep. When people sleep, the occult vision can see a continual
stream into the brain from outside, and in the reverse direction as well, from
the brain to the heart.
In
sleeping people, streams come from outside--from the macrocosm of cosmic
space--and flow into the inner constitution of the physical and ether bodies
lying in bed. These streams reveal something remarkable when investigated; they
vary greatly in different individuals. When asleep, people differ greatly from
one another, and those who are a little vain would avoid going to sleep at
public gatherings if they knew how much they betray themselves to esoteric
observation. The streams that flow into human beings during sleep reveal
distinct moral qualities through their particular colors; a person of lower
moral principles reveals streams very different from those in a person of
higher principles. Attempts to disguise one's nature during day are useless; in
the face of higher cosmic powers, disguise is impossible. In cases of those who
possess only a slight inclination toward moral principles, the rays flowing
into them are brownish red or various shades tending toward brownish red. In
those of high moral ideals, the rays are lilac to violet.
At
the moment of awaking or going to sleep, a struggle, so to speak, occurs in the
area of the pineal gland, between streams coming from above and streams rising
from below. When people are awake, the intellectual element streams upward from
below as currents of light, and the moral and esthetic nature flows downward
from above. At the moment of waking or going to sleep, these two currents meet,
and, in persons of low morality, a violent struggle takes place between the two
streams in the area of the pineal gland. In those who possess a high morality
and whose intellect flows outward, a glimmering light peacefully expands in the
area of the pineal gland. This gland is almost surrounded by a small sea of
light during the moments between awaking and sleeping. Moral nobility is
revealed when a calm glow surrounds the pineal gland in those moments. Thus a
person's moral character is reflected, and this calm glow of light often
extends as far as the area of the heart. Two streams can thus be perceived in
human beings: one from the macrocosm, the other from the microcosm.
To
assess the full significance of how these two streams meet in the human being,
we must first consider what has been said in a more external way about soul
life and how this life reveals a threefold polarity of intellectual, esthetic,
and moral elements that flow downward from above, from the brain toward the
heart. We must also understand the full meaning of what was said about turning
our attention to corresponding phenomenon in the macrocosm. As a result of the
scrupulous, careful esoteric research of recent years by genuine Rosicrucians,
these corresponding phenomenon can now be described.2
Their investigations have shown that something takes place in the macrocosm
that corresponds to what we've described in the microcosm. You will understand
this better with time.
Right
in the area of the human heart, blood is continually transformed into etheric
substance, and a similar process takes place also in the macrocosm. We can
understand this when we contemplate the Mystery of Golgotha and the moment when
blood flowed from the wounds of Jesus Christ. This blood must not be thought of
simply as a chemical substance, but because of all that has been said about the
nature of Jesus of Nazareth, it must be recognized as something completely
unique. When it flowed from his wounds into the earth, a substance was given to
our earth that, by uniting with it, became the most important event for every
age that followed on earth, and it could take place only one time. What
happened to this blood in the ages that followed? The same thing that takes
place in the human heart.
In
earthly evolution, this blood has passed through a process of etherization.
Just as our blood flows upward from the heart as ether, likewise, since the
Mystery of Golgotha, the etherized blood of Jesus Christ has lived in the ether
of the earth. The earth's ether body is imbued with what became of the blood
that flowed on Golgotha. This is important; if that event through Jesus Christ
had not taken place, the condition of humankind on the earth could not have
been other than previously described. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, however,
there has always been a possibility for the activity of the etheric blood of Christ
to flow together with what streams in human beings from heart to head.
Because
the etherized blood of Jesus is in the ether body of the earth, it accompanies
the etherized human blood that flows upward from the heart to the brain; thus,
not only do these streams I described earlier meet in the human being, but the
human bloodstream also unites with the bloodstream of Jesus Christ. These two
streams can unite, however, only if people are able to develop real
understanding of the Christ impulse. Otherwise, there can be no union; the two
streams will repel each other. In every age of earthly evolution, we must
understand in a way that is appropriate for that time.
When
Jesus Christ lived on earth, earlier events could be correctly understood by
those who came to his forerunner John and were baptized by him according to the
rite described in the Gospels. They were baptized so that their sin--the karma
of previous lives that had come to an end--might be changed, and in order that
they might realize that the most powerful impulse in earthly evolution was
about to descend into a physical body. Human evolution progresses, however, and
in our age it is important for people to understand that the knowledge of
spiritual science must be received; that knowledge must be able to gradually
kindle what streams from heart to brain, so that anthroposophy can be
understood. If this happens, people will be able to comprehend the event that
begins in the twentieth century: the appearance of the etheric Christ, as
distinguished from the physical Christ of Palestine.
We
have now reached the time when the etheric Christ enters the life of earth and
will become visible--initially to a few people through natural clairvoyance,
and then over the course of the next three millennia to more and more. This
will inevitably happen as an event of nature. It will happen just as certainly
as did the inventions related to electricity in the nineteenth century. Some
will see the etheric Christ and will experience what took place near Damascus. This
will not happen, however, until those people learn to observe the moment Christ
approaches them. Only a few decades from now, a few people here and there will
have certain experiences, particularly young people (this is already being
prepared). And if they have truly sharpened their vision by working with
anthroposophy, such individuals may become aware that someone
has suddenly approached to help them become alert to something. The truth is,
Christ has come to them, although they believe that they see a physical man.
They will come to realize, however, that this is a suprasensory being, since he
will immediately vanish. Many will have this experience while sitting silently
in a room, oppressed with a heavy heart and not knowing which way to turn. The
door will open, and the etheric Christ will appear to console that person. The
Christ will become a living comforter. Though it may seem strange now, it is
nevertheless true that even large numbers of people will often be sitting
together and wondering what to do, and they will see the etheric Christ. He
will be there and confer with them; he will cast his word into such gatherings.
We are approaching those times, and this positive, constructive element will
take hold of human evolution.
We
will not say anything here against the tremendous progress in our culture
today; these achievements are essential for human welfare and freedom. Whatever
we gain in the way of external progress, however, by mastering the forces of
nature is small and insignificant compared to the blessing upon those who
experience a soul awakening through Christ, who will take hold of human culture
and its concerns; unifying, positive forces will awaken in human beings. The
Christ brings constructive forces into human civilization.
If
we were to look back to early post-Atlantean times, we would find that human
beings built their dwellings in a very different way that we do today. In those
days, they used all sorts of growing things. Even when building palaces, they
called on nature to help them by having plants and the branches of trees weave
together and so on. Today, we must build with fragments. We make all external
culture in our world with the products of fragmentation. During the coming
years, you will gain an even better understanding of how much our culture is
the product of destruction.
We
thus realize what a tremendous advance was indicated by the fact that Christ
needed to live for three years on earth in a specially prepared human body, so
that he would be visible to physical eyes. Because of what happened during
those three years, human beings have been prepared to see the Christ who will
move among them in an ether body; he will enter earthly life as surely and
effectively as did the physical Christ in Palestine. If human beings observe
these events with undimmed senses, they will know that there is an etheric body
that will move within the physical world, but they will know, too, that this is
the only ether body that can work in the physical world as a human physical
body does. It will differ from a physical body in this respect only: that it
can be in two, three, or even a hundred or a thousand places at the same time.
This is possible for an etheric but not a physical form.
The
benefit to humanity provided by this advance is that the two poles I
mentioned--the intellectual and the moral--will gradually come together and
merge. This will occur because, over the next millennia, human beings will
gradually learn to see the etheric Christ in the world; people will become
imbued during waking life, too, through the effects of goodness directly from
the spirit world. Presently, the will sleeps by day, and people can influence
it only indirectly through thinking. However, from our time onward, something
is at work in us under the aegis of Christ that, over the course of the next
thousand years will make it possible for the activities of people while awake
to have direct, beneficial effects.
Light
is destroying itself in our post-Atlantean, earthly processes. Until the time
of Atlantis, earthly processes had been progressive, but since then they have
been processes of decay. What is light? Light decays, and decaying light is
electricity. What we know as electricity is really light that is destroying
itself within matter. The chemical force that is transformed in earthly
evolution is magnetism. Yet a third force will become active, and if it seems
electricity works wonders today, this third force will affect civilization in
an even more miraculous way. The more of this force we employ, the faster the
earth will tend toward becoming a corpse, while its spiritual part prepares for
the Jupiter embodiment. Forces must be applied to destroy the earth so that
human beings can be freed from it, and so that the earth's body can fall away.
As long as the earth's processes were progressive, this was not happening,
since only a decaying earth can use the great achievements of electricity. As
strange as this sounds, it must gradually become known. We must understand the
process of evolution before we can assess our culture in the right way. Thus we
will learn that the earth has to be destroyed; otherwise, spirit will not be
freed. We will also learn to value the positive penetration of spiritual forces
into our earthly existence.
It
was Socrates' dream that one day virtue could be taught; now, not only will it
will become increasingly possible on earth to energize the human intellect
through such teaching, but also for moral impulses to be spread abroad.
Schopenhauer (1788-1860) suggested that to preach morality is easy, but to
establish it is difficult. Why is this? Because morality has yet to be spread
through preaching; it is, after all, possible to recognize moral principles and
yet not live by them. For most people, the Pauline saying applies here: the
spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. This will change through the moral
fire that streams from the Christ. Because of this, it will become increasingly
clear to people that the world needs moral impulses. Human beings will
transform the earth as they increasingly feel that morality is essential to our
world. In the future, immorality will be possible only for those who receive
immoral help and are pushed in that direction--people who are possessed by evil
demons, by ahrimanic and asuric forces and who work for such possession. The
future of the earth will be such that, although there will be enough people who
teach morality and offer a moral foundation, there will be those who by their
own choice surrender to evil forces, thus enabling an excess of evil to
struggle against the benevolent portion of humankind. Nobody will be forced to
one choice or another; matters will proceed according to the free will of each
individual.
Then
a time will come when the earth enters conditions that, like much else, are
described only by Eastern mysticism. The atmosphere of morality will have
gathered considerable strength, which has been spoken of for many millennia by
Eastern mysticism. Since the coming of Gautama Buddha, it has spoken especially
about a future condition when earth will be bathed in a moral etheric
atmosphere. Ever since the time of the ancient Rishis, Eastern mystics had
hoped that this moral impulse would come to earth from Vishva Karman (or from
Ahura Mazda, as Zarathustra proclaimed). Eastern mysticism foresaw that this
moral atmosphere would come to earth from the being we call the Christ. Eastern
mystics had set their hopes on the being of Christ.
Eastern
mystics could imagine the consequences of that event but not its form. They imagined
that, within five millennia after the Buddha's enlightenment, pure akashic
forms bathed in fire and lit by the sun would appear in the wake of the one who
could not be seen by the Eastern mysteries. In fact, this is a wonderful image:
that something would come to prepare the way for the Sons of Fire and Light to
move through the moral atmosphere of the earth--not in physical form but in
pure akashic forms within the earth's moral atmosphere. It was said that five
thousand years after the Buddha's enlightenment, a teacher would be present to
show humankind the nature of those wonderful, pure forms of fire and light.
That teacher, Maitreya Buddha, will appear three millennia from now and teach
people about the Christ impulse.
Eastern
mysticism thus joins Western Christian knowledge to form a beautiful unity. It
will also be revealed that the one who will appear in three thousand years as
Maitreya Buddha will have incarnated repeatedly on the earth as a bodhisattva
to succeed Gautama Buddha. One of his incarnations was that of Jeshu ben
Pandira, who lived a hundred years before the beginning of our Christian era.
The being who incarnated in Jeshu ben Pandira is the one who will one day
become Maitreya Buddha, one who returns repeatedly, century after century, in a
body of flesh, not yet as a buddha but as a bodhisattva. Even in our time, the
one who will be Maitreya Buddha gives the most significant teachings concerning
the Christ and the Sons of Fire (Agnishvattas) of Indian mysticism.
True
Eastern and Christian wisdom both provide the indications by which people can
recognize the being who will be Maitreya Buddha. In contrast to the Sons of
Fire, Maitreya Buddha will appear in a physical body as a bodhisattva, and he
can be recognized by the fact that his development during youth shows no
indication of the individual within him. Only those who understand will
recognize the presence of a bodhisattva, who will not manifest before the ages
of thirty to thirty-three. Something like an exchange of personality takes
place at that time. Maitreya Buddha will reveal his identity to humanity in the
thirty-third year of his life. Just as Jesus Christ began his lifework in his
thirtieth year, so do bodhisattvas, who will continue to proclaim the Christ
impulses, reveal themselves in their thirty-third year.
The
transformed bodhisattva, Maitreya Buddha, will speak in powerful words that
cannot be adequately described at the present time; he will proclaim the great
mysteries of existence. Maitreya Buddha will speak in a language that must
first be created, because no human being today can find the words that Maitreya
Buddha will use to address humankind. Human beings cannot yet be addressed in
this way, because the physical instrument for this form of speech does not exist
yet. The teaching of the Enlightened One will not flow into human beings as
mere teachings; they will pour as moral impulses into human souls. Such words
cannot be spoken today by the physical human larynx; in our time those words
can be present only in spirit worlds.
Anthroposophy
is a preparation for all that will come in the future. Those who are serious
about the human evolutionary process will resolve not to let soul development
come to a halt; they will ensure that soul development eventually enables the
spirit of the earth to become free, leaving the grosser part to fall away like
a corpse. Humankind could frustrate the whole process, but those who want
evolution to succeed must begin to understand spirit through what we now call
anthroposophy. The cultivation of anthroposophy is thus a duty; knowledge is
something that we can actually experience and toward which we are responsible.
We should experience an inner awareness of this responsibility and resolve,
experiencing the mysteries of the world so that we are aroused to enter
anthroposophy. Spiritual science must not merely satisfy our curiosity,
however; it must become a necessary part of our lives. Only when this happens
will we experience our lives as building stones in the great construction of human
souls and that will embrace all humanity.
Anthroposophy
thus reveals the truth of world phenomena as it will confront future human
souls, whether in a physical body or in the life between death and rebirth. The
coming upheaval will concern even those who have laid aside the physical body.
People must come to understand the earth while in the physical body, otherwise
such events will have no meaning for them between death and a new birth. It
will make no difference for those who acquire some understanding of Christ now,
while in the physical body, whether they have already passed through the portal
of death when the moment comes to see Christ. But for those who refuse to
understand the Christ, if they have passed through the portal of death before
that moment arrives, another opportunity will not present itself until another
incarnation, because such knowledge cannot be learned between death and a new
birth. Once the foundation has been laid, however, it endures, and Christ
becomes visible also during the period between death and rebirth. Anthroposophy
is not merely something we learn for earthly life; it also has value after we
have laid aside the physical body at the time of death.
This
is what I wanted to give you today as an understanding of humanity and to give
you a handle for answering a great number of questions. Self-knowledge is
difficult, because the human being is so complex. The reason for such
complexity is that we are connected with all the higher worlds and beings. We
have within us mirror images of the great cosmos, and the members of our
constitution--material, ether, astral, and I-being--are really realms of divine
beings. Our fourfold being forms one world; the other is a higher world: the
world of heaven. For divine spirits, the higher worlds are bodily members in
higher divine spirit worlds.
Human
beings are complex, because we are truly a mirror image of the spirit world.
Realization of this should make us aware of our inherent worth. However, we
know that, although we are images of the spirit world, we nevertheless fall far
short of what we should be. From this, aside from realizing our worth as human
beings, we gain the right attitude of modesty and humility toward the macrocosm
and the gods.
Rudolf
Steiner's answers to questions at the end of the lecture
Question:
How should we understand St. Paul's words about speaking in tongues (I Cor.
12:28-30 and 14:5-6)?
Answer:
In exceptional persons, it may happen that, in addition to the phenomenon of
speech while awake, something usually present only in sleep consciousness flows
into speech. St. Paul spoke of this, and Goethe also spoke of it in the same
sense; he wrote two interesting treatises about this phenomenon.
Question:
How will one understand the consoling words of Christ?
Answer:
People will experience these words as though they arise in their own hearts.
They can also be received by physically hearing them.
Question:
How do chemical forces and substances relate to the spirit world?
Answer:
In the world, there are a number of substances that can combine with or
separate from one another. What we call chemical action is projected into the
physical world from the world of devachan--the realm of the harmony of the
spheres. When two substances unite according to their atomic weights, they
reflect two tones of that harmony of the spheres. The chemical affinity between
two substances in the physical world is like a reflection from the world of the
harmony of the spheres. Numerical ratios in chemistry are really an expression
of the numerical ratios of the harmony of the spheres, which has itself become
silent through the densification of matter. If we were able to dilute material
substance into an etheric substance and perceive the atomic numbers as its
inner formative principle, one could hear the harmony of the spheres.
There
is a physical world, an astral world, lower devachan, and higher devachan. If
you push the body even lower than the physical realm, you arrive in the
subphysical world, the lower astral world, the evil lower devachan, and the
evil higher devachan. The evil astral world is the province of Ahriman, and the
evil higher devachan is the province of the Asuras.
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If you drive chemical
action below the physical plane, into the evil devachan, magnetism arises. If you
force light down into the subphysical (that is, a stage lower than the material
world), electricity arises. If the harmony of the spheres is pushed farther,
down into the province of the Asuras, an even more terrible force is generated,
which it will not be possible to hide much longer. One must imagine this force
as far more powerful than the most violent electrical discharge, and we can
only hope that, before someone discovers this force and delivers it into the
hands of humankind, people will have rid themselves of everything immoral
within them.
Question:
What is electricity?
Answer:
Electricity is light in the subphysical state, where it is compressed to the
greatest degree. An inner quality must also be ascribed to light: light is
itself at every point. Warmth can extend into the three dimensions of space,
but with light we must speak of a fourth dimension. Light can extend itself in
a fourfold way; it has the quality of inwardness as a fourth dimension.
Question:
What will happen to the earth's corpse?
Answer:
Our present moon circling the earth is the residue of the ancient Moon
evolution. Similarly, there will be a residue of the Earth evolution that will
circle Jupiter. These residues will gradually dissolve into the universal
ether. In the case of the Venus stage of evolution, there will be no residue.
Initially, Venus will manifest as pure warmth, then it will become light, and
then it will pass into the spirit world. The residue from the Earth stage will
be like a corpse. Human beings must not accompany earth along this path,
however, because they would thereby be exposed to terrible torment. There are
many beings, however, who will accompany this corpse, since they will develop
to a higher stage by that means.
1. Devachan
(Tibetan), literally "the happy place." Steiner also uses other terms
to describe areas of the soul: the region of soul life = upper devachan; the
region of active soul power = lower devachan; the region of soul light =
astral. See Rudolf Steiner, Theosophy, pp. 103-108.
2. Rosicrucian,
as used here, is not connected directly with the Theosophical Society. Steiner
refers to a modern path of spiritual investigation, not to be confused with
various groups that claim to be Rosicrucians..