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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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The Etherisation of the Blood
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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The Etherisation of the Blood
Schmidt Number: S-2446
On-line since: 17th December, 1998
A Lecture By
Rudolf Steiner
Basle, October 1, 1911
GA# 130
Translated from a shorthand report unrevised by the lecturer.
The volume of the Complete Edition of the works of Rudolf Steiner
containing the original text of the following lecture, among
twenty-two others, is entitled: Das esoterische Christentum
und die geistige Führung der Menschiheit.. (No. 130 in
the Bibliographical Survey, 1961).
This English edition of the following lecture is published by
permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach,
Switzerland.
Copyright © 1971
This e.Text edition is provided with the cooperation of:
The Rudolf Steiner Press
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[ Note | Lecture | Answers ]
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The following lecture was given by Rudolf Steiner to an audience
familiar with the general background of his anthroposophical
teachings. He constantly emphasised the distinction between his
written works and reports of lectures which were given as oral
communications and were not originally intended for print. It should
also be remembered that certain premises were taken for granted when
the words were spoken. “These premises,” Rudolf Steiner writes
in his autobiography, “include at the very least the anthroposophical
knowledge of Man and of the Cosmos in its spiritual essence; also of
what may be called ‘anthroposophical history’, told as an
outcome of research into the spiritual world.”
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The Etherisation of the Blood
WHEREVER
we, as human beings, have striven for knowledge, whether as mystics or
realists or in any way at all, the acquisition of
self-knowledge has been demanded of us. But as has been
repeatedly emphasised on other occasions, self-knowledge is by no
means as easy to achieve as many people believe —
anthroposophists sometimes among them. The anthroposophist should be
constantly aware of the hindrances he will encounter in his efforts.
But the acquisition of self-knowledge is absolutely essential if we
are to reach a worthy goal in world-existence and if our actions are
to be worthy of us as members of humanity.
Let us ask ourselves the question: Why is the achievement of
self-knowledge so difficult? Man is very a complicated being. If we
mean to speak truly of his inner life, his life of soul, we shall not
begin by regarding it as something simple and elementary. We shall
rather have the patience and perseverance, the will, to penetrate more
deeply into the marvellous creation of the Divine-Spiritual Powers
known to us as Man.
Before we investigate the nature of self-knowledge, two aspects of the
life of the human soul may present themselves to us. Just as the
magnet has North and South poles, just as light and darkness are
present in the world, so there are two poles in man's life of soul.
These two poles become evident when we observe a person placed in two
contrasting situations. Suppose we are watching someone who is
entirely absorbed in the contemplation of some strikingly beautiful
and impressive natural phenomenon. We see how still he is standing,
moving neither hand nor foot, never turning his eyes away from the
spectacle presented to him, and we are aware that inwardly he is
picturing his environment. That is one situation. Another is the
following: a man is walking along the street and feels that someone
has insulted him. Without thinking, he is roused to anger and gives
vent to it by striking the person who insulted him. We are there
witnessing a manifestation of forces springing from anger, a
manifestation of impulses of will, and it is easy to imagine that if
the action had been preceded by thought no blow need have been struck.
We have now pictured two contrasting situations: in the one there is
only ideation, a process in the life of thought from which all
conscious will is absent; in the other there is no thought, no
ideation, and immediate expression is given to an impulse of will.
Here we have examples of the two extremes of human behaviour. The
first pole is complete surrender to contemplation, to thought, in
which the will has no part; the second pole is the impelling force of
will without thought. These facts are revealed simply by observation
of external life.
We can go into these things more deeply and we come then into spheres
in which we can find our bearings only by summoning the findings of
occult investigation to our aid. Here another polarity confronts us
— that of sleeping and waking. From the elementary concepts of
Anthroposophy we know that in waking life the four members of a man's
being — physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego —
are organically and actively interwoven, but that in sleep the
physical and etheric bodies remain in bed, while the astral body and
ego are outpoured into the great world bordering on physical
existence. These facts could also be approached from a different point
of view. We might ask: what is there to be said about ideation,
contemplation, thinking — and about the will and its impulses on
the one hand during waking life and during sleep on the other?
When we penetrate more deeply into this question it becomes evident
that in his present physical existence man is, in a certain sense,
always asleep, Only there is a difference between sleep during the
night and sleep during the day. Of this we can be convinced in a
purely external way, for we know that we can wake in the occult sense
during the day, that is to say, one can become clairvoyant and see
into the spiritual world. The physical body in its ordinary state is
asleep to what is then and there happening and we can rightly speak of
an awakening of our spiritual senses. In the night, of course, we are
asleep in the normal way. It can therefore be said: ordinary sleep is
sleep as regards the outer physical world; daytime consciousness at
the present time is sleep as regards the spiritual world.
These facts can be considered in yet another light. On deeper scrutiny
we realise that in the ordinary waking condition of physical life, man
has, as a rule, very little power or control over his will and its
impulses. The will is very detached from daily life. Only consider how
little of all you do from morning to evening is really the outcome of
your own thinking, of your personal resolutions. When someone knocks
at the door and you say “Come in!”, that cannot be called
a decision of your own thinking and will. If you are hungry and seat
yourself at a table, that cannot be called a decision made by the
will, because it is occasioned by your circumstances, by the needs of
your organism. Try to picture your daily life and you will find how
little the will is directly influenced from the centre of your being.
Why is this the case? Occultism shows us that in respect of his will
man actually sleeps by day, that is to say he is not in the real sense
present in his will-impulses at all. We may evolve better and better
concepts and ideas; or we may become more highly moral, more cultured
individuals, but we can do nothing as regards the will. By cultivating
better thoughts we can work indirectly upon the will but as far
as life is concerned we can do nothing directly to it, for in
the waking life of day, our will is influenced only in an indirect
way, namely through sleep. When we are asleep we do not think;
ideation passes over into a state of sleep. The will, however, awakes,
permeates our organism from outside, and invigorates it. We feel
strengthened in the morning because what has penetrated into our
organism is of the nature of will. That we are not aware of this
activity of the will becomes comprehensible when we remember that all
conceptual activity ceases when we ourselves are asleep. To begin
with, therefore, this stimulus shall be given for further
contemplation, further meditation. The more progress you make in
self-knowledge, the more you will find confirmation of the truth of
the words that man sleeps in respect of his will when he is awake and
sleeps in respect of his conceptual life when he is asleep. The life
of will sleeps by day; the life of thought sleeps by night.
Man is unaware that the will does not sleep during the night because
he only knows how to be awake in his life of thought. The will does
not sleep during the night but it then works as it were in a fiery
element, works upon his body in order to restore what has been used up
by day.
Thus there are two poles in man, the life of observation and ideation,
and the impulses of will; and man is related in entirely opposite ways
to these two poles. The whole life of soul moves in various nuances
between these two poles, and we shall come nearer to understanding it
by bringing this microcosmic life of soul into relation with the
higher worlds.
From what has been said we have learnt that the life of thought and
ideation is one of the poles of man's life of soul. This life of
thought is something which seems unreal to materialistically minded
people. Do we not often hear it said: “Oh, ideas and thoughts
are only ideas and thoughts!” This is intended to imply
that if someone has [a piece] of bread or meat in his hand it is a
reality because it can be eaten, but a thought is only a
thought, it is not a reality. Why is this said? It is because what man
calls his thoughts are related to what thoughts really are as a
shadow-image is to the actual thing. The shadow-image of a flower
points you to the flower itself, to the reality. So it is with
thoughts. Human thinking is the shadowing forth of ideas and beings
belonging to a higher world, the world we call the Astral plane. And
you represent thinking rightly to yourself when you picture the human
head thus — it is not absolutely correct but simply
diagrammatic. In the head are thoughts but these thoughts must be
pictured as living beings on the Astral plane. Beings of the most
varied kinds are at work there in the form of teeming concepts and
activities which cast their shadow-images into men, and these
processes are reflected in the human head as thinking.
As well as the life of thought in the human soul, there is also the
life of feeling. Feelings fall into two categories: those of pleasure
and sympathy and those of displeasure and antipathy. The former are
aroused by good deeds, benevolent deeds; antipathy is aroused by evil,
malevolent deeds. Here there is something more than and different
from, the mere forming of concepts. We form concepts of things
irrespectively of any other factor. But our soul experiences sympathy
or antipathy only in respect of what is beautiful and good, or what is
ugly and evil. Just as everything that takes place in man in the form
of thoughts points to the Astral plane, so everything connected with
sympathy or antipathy points to the realm we call Lower Devachan.
Processes in the Heavenly World, or Devachan, are projected, mainly
into our breast, as feelings of sympathy or antipathy for what is
beautiful or ugly, for what is good or evil. So that in our feelings
for the moral-aesthetic element, we bear within our souls
shadow-reflections of the Heavenly World or Lower Devachan.
There is still a third province in the life of the human soul which
must be strictly distinguished from the mere preference for good
deeds. There is a difference between standing by and taking pleasure
in witnessing some kindly deed and setting the will in action and
actually performing some such deed. I will call pleasure in good deeds
or displeasure in evil deeds the aesthetic element as against
the moral element that impels a man to perform some good deed.
The moral element is at a higher level than the purely aesthetic; mere
pleasure or displeasure is at a lower level than the will to do
something good or bad. In so far as our soul feels constrained to give
expression to moral impulses, these impulses are the shadow-images of
Higher Devachan, of the Higher Heavenly World.
It is easy to picture these three stages of activity of the human soul
— the purely intellectual (thoughts, concepts), the aesthetic
(pleasure or displeasure), and the moral (revealed in impulses to good
or bad deeds) — as microcosmic images of the three realms
which in the Macrocosm, the great Universe, lie one above the other.
The Astral world is reflected in the world of thought; the Devachanic
world is reflected in the aesthetic sphere of pleasure and
displeasure; and the Higher Devachanic world is reflected as morality.
Thoughts: Shadow-images of Beings of the Astral Plane (Waking)
Sympathy and Antipathy: Shadow-images of Beings of Lower Devachan (Dreaming)
Moral Impulses: Shadow-images of Beings of Higher Devachan (Sleeping)
If we connect this with what was said previously concerning the two
poles of the soul-life, we shall take the pole of intellect to be that
which dominates the waking life, the life in which man is mentally
awake. During the day he is awake in respect of his intellect; during
sleep he is awake in respect of his will. It is because at night he is
asleep in respect of intellect that he is unaware of what he is
happening with his will. The truth is that what we call moral
principles, moral impulses, are working indirectly into the
will. And in point of fact man needs the life of sleep in order that
the moral impulses he takes into himself through the life of thought
can become active and effective. In his ordinary life today man is
capable of accomplishing what is right only on the plane of intellect;
he is less able to accomplish anything on the moral plane for there he
is dependent upon help coming from the Macrocosm.
What is already within us can bring about the further development of
intellectuality, but the Gods must come to our aid if we are to
acquire greater moral strength. We go to sleep in order that we may
plunge into the Divine Will where the intellect does not intervene and
where Divine Forces transform into the power of will the moral
principles we accept, where they instill into our will that which we
could otherwise receive only into our thoughts.
Between these two poles, that of the will which wakes by night and of
the intellect which is awake by day, lies the sphere of aesthetic
appreciation which is continuously present in man. During the day man
is not fully awake — at least only the most prosaic, pedantic
individuals are always fully awake in waking life. We must always be
able to dream a little even by day when we are awake; we must be able
to give ourselves up to the enjoyment art, of poetry, or of some other
activity that is not concerned wholly with crass reality. Those who
can give themselves up in this way form a connection with something
that can enliven and invigorate the whole of existence. To give
oneself up to such imaginings is like a dream making its way into
waking life. Into the life of sleep you know well that dreams enter;
these dreams in the usual sense, dreams which permeate
sleep-consciousness. Human beings need also to dream by day if they do
not wish to lead an arid, empty, unhealthy waking life. Dreaming takes
place during sleep at night in any case and no proof of this is
required. Midway between the two poles of night dreaming and day
dreaming is the condition that can come to expression in fantasy.
So here again there is a threefold life of soul. The intellectual
element in which we are really awake brings us shadow-images of the
Astral Plane when by day we give ourselves up to a thought —
wherein the most fruitful ideas for daily life and great inventions
originate. Then during sleep, when we dream, these dreams play into
our life of sleep and shadow-images from Lower Devachan are reflected
into us. And when we work actively during sleep, impressing morality
into our will — we cannot be aware of this actual process but
certainly we can of its effects — when we are able to imbue our
life of thoughts during the night with the influence of Divine
Spiritual Powers, then the impulses we receive are reflections from
Higher Devachan, the Higher Heavenly World. These reflections are the
moral impulses and feelings which are active within us and lead to the
recognition that human life is vindicated only when we place our
thoughts at the service of the good and the beautiful, when we allow
the very heart's blood of Divine Spiritual life to stream through our
intellectual activities, permeating them with moral impulses.
The life of the human soul as presented here, first from external,
exoteric observation and then from observation of a more mystical
character is revealed by deeper (occult) investigation. The processes
that have been described in their more external aspect can also be
perceived in man through clairvoyance. When a man stands in front of
us today in his waking state and we observe him with the eye of
clairvoyance, certain rays of light are seen streaming continually
from the heart towards the head. Within the head these rays play
around the organ known in anatomy as the pineal gland. These
streamings arise because human blood, which is a physical substance,
is perpetually resolving itself into etheric substance. In the region
of the heart there is a continual transformation of the blood into
this delicate etheric substance which streams upwards towards the head
and glimmers around the pineal gland. This process — the
etherisation of the blood — can be perceived in the human being
all the time during his waking life.
The occult observer is able to see a continual streaming from outside
into the brain, and also in the reverse direction, from the brain to
the heart. Now these streams, which in sleeping man come from outside,
from cosmic space, from the Macrocosm, and flow into the inner
constitution of the physical body and etheric bodies lying in the bed,
reveal something remarkable when they are investigated. These rays
vary greatly in different individuals. Sleeping human beings differ
very drastically from one another, and if those who are a little vain
only knew how badly they betray themselves to occult observation when
they go to sleep during public gatherings, they would try their level
best not to let this happen!
Moral qualities are revealed distinctly in the particular colouring of
the streams which flow into human beings during sleep; in an
individual of lower moral principles, the streams are quite different
from what is observable in an individual of noble principles.
Endeavours to dissemble are useless. In the face of the higher Cosmic
Powers, no dissembling is possible. In the case of a man who has only
a slight inclination towards moral principles the rays streaming into
him are a brownish red in colour — various shades tending toward
brownish red. In a man of high moral ideals the rays are lilac-violet
in colour. At the moment of waking or of going off to sleep a kind of
struggle takes place in the region of the pineal gland between what
streams down from above and what streams upward from below. When a man
is awake the intellectual element streams upwards from below in the
form of currents of light, and what is of moral-aesthetic nature
streams downwards from above. At the moment of waking or of going off
to sleep, these two currents meet, and in the man of low morality a
violent struggle between the two streams takes place in the region of
the pineal gland. In the man of high morality there is around the
pineal gland as it were a little sea of light. Moral nobility is
revealed when a calm glow surrounds the pineal gland at these moments.
In this way a man's moral disposition is reflected in him, and this
calm glow of light often extends as far as the heart. Two streams can
therefore be perceived in man — the one Macrocosmic, the other,
Microcosmic.
To estimate the significance of how these two streams meet in man is
possible only by considering on the one hand what was said previously
in a more external way about the life of the soul and how this life
reveals the threefold polarity of the intellectual, the aesthetic and
the moral elements that stream downwards from above, from the brain
toward the heart; and if, on the other hand, we grasp the significance
of what was said about turning our attention to the corresponding
phenomenon in the Macrocosm. This corresponding phenomenon can be
described today as the result of the most scrupulously careful occult
investigation of recent years, undertaken by individuals among genuine
Rosicrucians. These investigations have shown that something similar
to what has been described in connection with the Microcosm also takes
place in the Macrocosm. You will understand this more fully as time
goes on.
Just as in the region of the human heart the blood is continually
being transformed into etheric substance, a similar process takes
place in the Macrocosm. We understand this when we turn our minds to
the Mystery of Golgotha — to the moment when the blood flowed
from the wounds of Jesus Christ.
This blood must not be regarded simply as chemical substance, but by
reason of all that has been said concerning the nature of Jesus of
Nazareth it must be recognised as something altogether unique. When it
flowed from His wounds, a substance was imparted to our Earth, which
in uniting with it, constituted an Event of the greatest possible
significance for all future ages of the Earth's evolution — and
it could take place only once. What came of this blood in the ages
that followed? Nothing different from what otherwise takes place in
the heart of man. In the course of Earth evolution this blood passes
through a process of “etherisation.” And just as our human
blood streams upwards from the heart as ether, so since the Mystery of
Golgotha the etherised blood of Christ Jesus has been present in the
ether of the earth. The etheric body of the Earth is permeated by the
blood — now transformed — which flowed on Golgotha. This
is supremely important. If what has thus come to pass through Christ
Jesus had not taken place, man's condition on the Earth could only
have been as previously described. But since the Mystery of Golgotha
it has always been possibe for the etheric blood of Christ to flow
together with the streamings from below upward, from heart to head.
Because the etherised blood of Jesus of Nazareth is present in the
etheric body of the Earth, it accompanies the etherised human blood
streaming upwards from the heart to the brain, so that not only those
streams of which I spoke earlier meet in man, but the human
blood-stream unites with the blood-stream of Christ Jesus. A union of
these two streams can, however, come about only if a person is able to
unfold true understanding of what is contained in the Christ Impulse.
Otherwise there can be no union; the two streams then mutually repel
each other, thrust each other away. In every epoch of Earth evolution
understanding must be acquired in the form suitable for that
epoch. At the time when Christ Jesus lived on Earth, preceding
events were rightly understood by those who came to His forerunner,
John, and were baptised by him according to the rite described in the
Gospels. They received baptism in order that their sin, that is to
say, the karma of their previous lives — karma which had come to
an end — might be changed; and in order that they might realise
that the most powerful Impulse in Earth evolution was about to descend
into a physical body. But the evolution of humanity progresses and in
our present age what matters is that people should recognise the need
for the knowledge contained in Spiritual Science and be able so to
fire the streams flowing from heart to brain that this knowledge can
be understood.
If this comes to pass, individuals will be able to receive and
comprehend the event that has its beginning in the Twentieth Century:
this event is the appearance of the Christ as an Etheric Being in
contradistinction to the Physical Christ of Palestine. For we have
now reached the point of time when the Etheric Christ enters into the
life of the Earth and will become visible — at first to a small
number of individuals through a form of natural clairvoyance. Then in
the course of the next three thousand years, He will become visible to
greater and greater numbers of people. This will inevitably come to
pass in the natural course of development. That it will come to pass
is as true as were the achievements of electricity in the nineteenth
century. A number of individuals will see the Etheric Christ and will
themselves experience the event that took place at Damascus. But this
will depend upon such men learning to be alert to the moment when
Christ draws near to them. In only a few decades from now it will
happen, particularly to those who are young — already
preparation is being made for this — that some individual here
or there has certain experiences. If he has sharpened his vision
through having assimilated Anthroposophy, he may become aware that
suddenly someone has come near to help him, to make him alert to this
or that. The truth is that Christ has come to him, although he
believes that what he saw is a physical man. He will come to realise
that what he saw was a super-sensible being, because it immediately
vanishes. Many a human being will have this experience when sitting
silent in his room, heavy-hearted and oppressed, not knowing which way
to turn. The door will open, and the etheric Christ will appear and
speak words of consolation to him. The Christ will become a living
Comforter to men. However strange it may as yet seem, it is true
nevertheless that many a time when people — even in considerable
numbers — are sitting together, not knowing what to do, and
waiting, they will see the Etheric Christ. He will Himself be there,
will confer with them, will make His voice heard in such gatherings.
These times are approaching, and the positive, constructive element
now described will take real effect in the evolution of mankind.
No word shall be said here against the great advances made by culture
in our day; these achievements are essential for the welfare and the
freedom of men. But whatever can be gained in the way of outer
progress in mastering the forces of nature, is something small and
insignificant compared with the blessing bestowed upon the individual
who experiences the awakening soul through Christ, the Christ who will
now be operative in human culture and its concerns. Men will thereby
acquire forces that make for unification. In very truth Christ brings
constructive forces into human culture and civilisation.
If we look into early post-Atlantean times, we would find that men
built their dwelling places by methods very different from those used
in modern life. In those days they made use of all kinds of growing
things. Even when building palaces they summoned nature to their aid
by utilizing plants interlaced with branches of trees and so on,
whereas today men must build with broken fragments. All the culture of
the external world is contrived with the aid of products of
fragmentation. And in the course of the coming years you will realise
even more clearly how much in our civilised life is the outcome of
destruction.
Light itself is being destroyed in this post-Atlantean age of the
Earth's existence, which until the time of Atlantis was a progressive
process. Since then it has been a process of decay.* What is light?
Light decays and the decaying light is electricity. What we
know as electricity is light that is being destroyed in matter. And
the chemical force that undergoes a transformation in the process of
Earth evolution is magnetism. Yet a third force will become
active and if electricity seems to work wonders today, this third
force will affect civilisation in a still more miraculous way. The
more of this force we employ, the faster the earth will tend to become
a corpse and its spiritual part prepare for the Jupiter embodiment.
Forces have to be applied for the purpose of destruction, in order
that man may become free of the Earth and that the Earth's body may
fall away. As long as the earth was involved in progressive evolution,
no such destruction took place, for the great achievements of
electricity can only serve a decaying Earth. Strange as this sounds,
it must gradually become known. By understanding the process of
evolution we shall learn to assess our culture at its true value. We
shall also learn that it is necessary for the Earth to be destroyed,
for otherwise the spiritual could not become free. We shall also learn
to value what is positive, namely the penetration of spiritual forces
into our existence on Earth.
* See also the section at the end of the text, containing answers given by Dr. Steiner to questions.
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Thus we realise what a tremendous advance was signified by the fact
that Christ lived for three years on the Earth in a human body
specially prepared in order that He might be visible to physical eyes.
Through what came to pass during those three years men have been made
ready to behold the Christ who will move among them in an etheric
body, who will participate in earthly life as truly and effectively as
did the Physical Christ in Palestine. If men observe such happenings
with undimmed senses they will know that there is an etheric body that
will move about in the physical world, but is the only etheric
body able to work in the physical world as a human physical body
works. It will differ from a physical body in this respect only, that
it can be in two, three, nay even in a hundred, a thousand places at
the same time. This is possible only for an etheric, not for a
physical form. What will be accomplished in humanity through this
further advance is that the two poles of which I have spoken, the
intellectual and the moral, will more and more become one; they will
merge into unity. This will come about because in the course of the
next millennia men will become aware of the presence of the Etheric
Christ in the world; more and more they will be influenced in waking
life too by the direct working of the Good from the spiritual world.
Whereas at the present time, the will is asleep by day, and man is
only able to influence it indirectly through thought, in the course of
the next millennia, through the power which from our time onwards is
working in us under the aegis of Christ, it will come about that the
deeds of men in waking consciousness too can be directly productive of
Good.
The dream of Socrates, that virtue can be taught, will come true; more
and more it will be possible on Earth not only for the intellect to be
stimulated and energized by this teaching but for moral impulses to be
spread abroad. Schopenhauer said, “To preach morality is easy;
to establish it is very difficult.” Why is this? Because no
morality has yet been spread by preaching. It is quite possible to
recognise moral principles and yet not abide by them. For most people
the Pauline saying holds good, that the spirit is willing but the
flesh is weak. This will change, because the moral fire streaming from
the figure of Christ will intensify recognition of the need for moral
impulses. Man will transform the earth by feeling with ever-increasing
strength that morality is an essential part of it. In the future, to
be immoral will be possible only for individuals who are goaded in
this direction, who are possessed by evil demons, by Ahrimanic, Asuric
Powers and more-over aspire to be so.
In time to come there will be on Earth a sufficient number of
individuals who teach morality and at the same time sustain its
principles; but there will also be those who by their own free
decision surrender themselves to the evil Powers and thus enable an
excess of evil to be pitted against a good humanity. Nobody will be
forced to do this; it will lie in the free will of each individual.
Then will come the epoch when the Earth passes into conditions of
which, as in so much else, Oriental Occultism and Mysticism alone give
some idea. The moral atmosphere will by then have gathered strength.
For many thousands of years Oriental Mysticism has spoken of this
epoch, and since the coming of Gautama Buddha it has spoken with
special emphasis about that future condition when the earth will be
bathed in a “moral-ether-atmosphere.” Ever since the time
of the ancient Rishis it was the great hope of Oriental Mysticism that
this moral impulse would come to the Earth from Vishva-Karman or, as
Zarathustra proclaimed, from Ahura Mazdao. Thus Oriental Mysticism
foresaw that this moral impulse, this moral atmosphere, would come to
the Earth from the Being we call the Christ. And it was upon Him, upon
Christ, that the hopes of Oriental Mysticism were set.
Oriental Mysticism was able to picture the consequences of that event
but not the actual form it would take. The mind could picture that
within a period of 5,000 years after the great Buddha achieved
Enlightenment, pure Akashic forms, bathed in fire, lit by the sun,
would appear in the wake of One beyond the ken of Oriental Mysticism.
A wonderful picture in very truth: that something would happen to make
it possible for the Sons of Fire and of Light to move about the Earth,
not in physically embodiment but as pure Akashic forms within the
Earth's moral atmosphere. But then, so it was said, in 5,000 years
after Gautama Buddha's Enlightenment, the Teacher will also be there
to make known to men what the nature of these wonderful forms of pure
Fire and Light are. This teacher — the Maitreya Buddha — will
appear 3,000 years after our present era and will speak of the Christ
Impulse.
Thus Oriental Mysticism unites with the Christian knowledge of the
West to form a wonderfully beautiful unity. It is also disclosed that
he who will appear three thousand years after our era as the Maitreya
Buddha will have incarnated again and again on the Earth as a
Bodhisattva, as the successor of Gautama Buddha. One of his
incarnations was that of Jeshu ben Pandira, who lived a hundred years
before the Christian era. The being who incarnated in Jeshu ben
Pandira is he who will one day become the Maitreya Buddha, and who
from century to century returns ever and again in a body of flesh, not
yet as Buddha, but as Bodhisattva. Even now there proceeds from him
who later on will be the Maitreya Buddha, the most significant
teachings concerning the Christ Being and the Sons of Fire — the
Agnishvattas — of Indian Mysticism.
The indications by which the Being who is to become the Maitreya
Buddha can be recognised are common to all genuine Eastern mysticism
and to Christian gnosis. The Maitreya Buddha who, in contrast to the
Sons of Fire, will appear in a physical body as Bodhisattva, can be
recognised by the fact that in the first instance his early
development gives no intimation of the nature of the individuality
within him. Only those possessed of understanding will recognise the
presence of a Bodhisattva in such a human being between the ages of
thirty and thirty-three, and not before. Something akin to a change of
personality then takes place. The Maitreya Buddha will reveal his
identity to humanity in the thirty-third year of his life. As Christ
Jesus began His mission in His thirtieth year, so do the Bodhisattvas,
who will continue to proclaim the Christ Impulse, reveal themselves
— in the thirty-third year of their lives. And the Maitreya
Buddha himself, as transformed Bodhisattva, speaking in powerful words
of which no adequate idea can be given at the present time, will
proclaim the great secrets of existence. He will speak in a language
that has first to be created, for no human being to-day could formulate
words such as those in which the Maitreya Buddha will address
humanity. The reason why men cannot be addressed in this way at the
present time is that the physical instrument for this form of speech
does not yet exist. The teachings of the Enlightened One will not
stream into men as teachings only, but will pour moral impulses into
their souls. Words such as will then be spoken cannot yet be uttered
by a physical larynx; in our time they can be present only in the
spiritual worlds.
Anthroposophy is the preparation for everything that the future holds
in store. Those who take the process of man's evolution seriously
resolve not to allow the soul's development to come to a standstill
but to ensure that this development will eventually enable the
spiritual part of the Earth to become free, leaving the grosser part
to fall away like a corpse — for men could frustrate the whole
process. Those who desire evolution to succeed must acquire
understanding of the life of the spirit through what we to-day call
Anthroposophy. The cultivation of Anthroposophy thus becomes a duty;
knowledge becomes something that we actually feel, something towards
which we have responsibility. When we are inwardly aware of this
responsibility and have this resolve, when the mysteries of the world
arouse in us the wish to become Anthroposophists, then our feeling is
true and right. But Anthroposophy must not be something that merely
satisfies our curiosity; it must rather be something without which we
cannot live. Only then are our feelings what they ought to be, only
then do we live as building stones in that great work of construction
which must be carried out in human souls and can embrace all mankind.
Anthroposophy is a revelation of world-happenings which will confront
the men of the future, will confront our own souls whether still in
the physical body or in the life between death and a new birth. The
coming changes will affect us, no matter whether we are still living
in the physical body or whether it has been laid aside. Understanding
of these events must however be acquired during life in the physical
body if they are to take effect after death. To those who acquire some
understanding of the Christ while they are still living in the
physical body, it will make no difference, when the moment comes for
vision of the Christ, whether or not they have already passed through
the gate of death. But if those who now reject any understanding of
the Christ have already passed through the gate of death when this
moment arrives, they must wait until their next incarnation, for such
understanding cannot be acquired between death and rebirth. Once the
foundation has been acquired, however, it endures, and then Christ
becomes visible also during the period between death and the new
birth.
And so Anthroposophy is not only something we learn for our physical
life but is of essential value when we have laid aside the physical
body at death.
This is what I wished to impart to you today as a help in answering
many questions. Self-knowledge is difficult because man is such a
complex being. The reason for this complexity is that he is connected
with all the higher Worlds and Beings. We have within us shadow-images
of the great Universe and all the members of our constitution —
the physical, etheric, astral bodies and the ego — are worlds
for Divine Beings. Our physical body, etheric body, astral body and
ego form one world; the other is the higher World, the Heaven world.
Divine-spiritual Worlds are the bodily members of the Beings of the
higher spheres of cosmic existence.
Man is the complex being he is because he is a mirror-image of the
spiritual world. Realisation of this should make him conscious of his
intrinsic worth. But from the knowledge that although we are reflected
images of the spiritual world we nevertheless fall far short of what
we ought to be — from this knowledge we also acquire, as well as
consciousness of our worth as human beings, the right attitude of
modesty and humility towards the Macrocosm and its Gods.
Rudolf Steiner's Answers to Questions at the End of the
Lecture
Translated by George Adams
Question: How are the words used by St. Paul, “to speak
in tongues” (Cor. I: 12), to be understood?
Answer: In exceptional human beings it can happen that not only
is the phenomenon of speaking present in the waking state, but that
something otherwise present in sleep-consciousness only, flows into
this speaking. This is the phenomenon to which St. Paul refers. Goethe
refers to it in the same sense; he has written two very interesting
treatises on the subject.
Question: How are Christ's words of consolation received and
experienced?
Answer: Men will feel these words of consolation as though
arising in their own hearts. The experience may also seem like
physical hearing.
Question: What is the relation of chemical forces and
substances to the spiritual world?
Answer: There are in the world a number of substances which can
combine with or separate from each other. What we call chemical action
is projected into the physical world from the world of Devachan
— the realm of the Harmony of the Spheres. In the combination of
two substances according to their atomic weights, we have a reflection
of two tones of the Harmony of the Spheres. The chemical affinity
between two substances in the physical world is like a reflection from
the realm of the Harmony of the Spheres. The numerical ratios in
chemistry are an expression of the numerical ratios of the Harmony of
the Spheres, which has become dumb and silent owing to the
densification of matter. If one were able to etherealise material
substance and to perceive the atomic numbers the inner formative
principle thereof, he would be hearing the Harmony of the Spheres.
We have the physical world, the astral world, the Lower Devachan and
the Higher Devachan. If the body is thrust down lower even than the
physical world, it comes into the sub-physical world, the lower astral
world, the lower or evil Lower Devachan, and the lower or evil Higher
Devachan. The evil astral world is the province of Lucifer, the evil
Lower Devachan the province of Ahriman, and the evil Higher Devachan
the province of the Asuras. When chemical action is driven down
beneath the physical plane — into the evil Devachanic world
— magnetism arises. When light is thrust down into the
sub-material — that is to say, a stage deeper than the material
world — electricity arises. If what lives in the Harmony
of the Spheres is thrust down farther still, into the province of the
Asuras, an even more terrible force — which it will not be
possible to keep hidden very much longer — is generated. It can
only be hoped that when this force comes to be known — a force
we must conceive as being far, far stronger than the most violent
electrical discharge — it can only be hoped that before some
discoverer gives this force into the hands of humankind, men will no
longer have anything un-moral left in them.
Question: What is electricity?
Answer: Electricity is light in the sub-material state. Light
is there compressed to the utmost degree. An inward quality too must
be ascribed to light; light is itself at every point in space.
Warmth will expand in the three dimensions of space. In light there is
a fourth; it is of fourfold extension — it has the quality of
inwardness as a fourth dimension.
Question: What happens to the Earth's corpse?
Answer: As the residue of the Moon-evolution we have our
present moon which circles around the Earth. Similarly there will be a
residue of the Earth which will circle around Jupiter. Then these
residues will gradually dissolve into the universal ether. On Venus
there will no longer be any residue. Venus will manifest, to begin
with, as pure Warmth, then it will become Light and then pass over
into the spiritual world. The residue left behind by the Earth will be
like a corpse. This is a path along which man must not accompany the
Earth, for he would thereby be exposed to dreadful torments. But there
are Beings who accompany this corpse, since they themselves will by
that means develop to a higher stage.
Reflected as sub-physical world:
Astral World the province of Lucifer
Lower Devachan the province of Ahriman
Higher Devachan the province of the Asuras
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Last Modified: 07-Oct-2024
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