LECTURE IV
Berlin, 29th September 1905
We have spoken about the consciousness of the different kingdoms of
nature. Man's organs have an organ-consciousness; this consciousness
develops an abnormal condition in idiots. It is the consciousness
possessed by nocturnal insects, ants, spiders and so on. We find a
totally different consciousness in the case of bees. We will use the
example of bees in order to show how one arrives at such truths and
then can make use of them to find one's bearings in the world.
An occult schooling is something completely different from our usual
schooling. It does not start by cramming into the pupils a great deal
of educational matter. In a strict occult schooling the pupil receives
no educational matter whatever, but is given a pregnant sentence
filled with inner power. So it was also in earlier times. The pupil
had to meditate on the sentence in a state of complete inner calm,
through which eventually he became inwardly suffused with light,
completely illuminated. When a person has advanced to the stage of
seeing into his inner self, he can sink his consciousness into other
beings. For this he must have gained control of the point midway
between the eyes and from there direct his consciousness downward into
the heart. Then he can transfer his consciousness into other things;
for example, he can then investigate what lives in an ant heap. Then
he can also perceive the life in a beehive. Here however a phenomenon
presents itself which is otherwise not to be experienced on earth. In
the way a beehive functions one experiences something which is outside
our earthly existence, something which is not found anywhere else on
earth. What takes place on the other planets cannot be discovered
merely by thinking. One cannot for example experience what is taking
place on the Sun or Venus if one is unable to transfer one's
consciousness into the life and functioning of a colony of bees. The
bee has not gone through the whole course of evolution as we have.
From the outset it has not been connected with the same evolutionary
sequence as the other animals and man. The consciousness of the
beehive, not of the single bee, is immensely lofty. The wisdom of this
consciousness will only be attained by man in the Venus existence.
Then he will have the consciousness which is necessary in order to
build with a substance which he creates out of his own being. The ants
build the ant heap out of all sorts of things, but as yet build no
cells. The building of cells is on higher planes something absolutely
different. Through transferring one's consciousness into the beehive,
through taking on the Venus consciousness, one learns something
entirely different from anything else on earth, the complete recession
of the element of sex. With the bees what is sexual is vested only in
the one queen. The kama-sexuality is almost entirely eliminated; the
drones are killed. Here we have the prototype of something which will
actually be accomplished in a future humanity, when work is the
highest principle. It is only through the impulse of the spirit that
one gains the faculty of transferring oneself into the community of
the bees.
In order to progress further, let us now come to a true concept of
alchemy. As late as the 18th century one could read in the German
paper Reichsanzeiger articles on alchemy. Kortum, the poet who wrote
Jobsiade
(19)
was one of the most significant alchemists of the 18th
century. At that time a number of articles dealt with the so-called
Urmaterie (primal matter), bringing this into connection with the
Philosopher's stone. Kortum, who was deeply immersed in these things,
said at that time: To search for the Philosopher's stone is very
difficult, but it is everywhere, you meet it every day, are well
acquainted with it, you make use of it constantly, but do not know
that it is the Philosopher's Stone. This is an apt description.
In Nature everything is ordered with infinite wisdom, with an
infinitely wise economy. All living beings possessing Kama (astrality)
animals and men, and all etheric living beings plants
are inter-related. We breathe in oxygen and breathe out
carbonic acid. The animals do this also. Now if this were simply to
continue, the air would soon be quite full of carbonic acid. But the
plants assimilate carbonic acid and breathe out oxygen. Animals and
men cannot live without plants. Now carbonic acid consists of carbon
and oxygen. The plants retain the carbon and breathe out the oxygen.
Man on the other hand takes in the oxygen and through his life
processes transforms it into carbonic acid by uniting it with carbon.
The plants build up their bodily form out of the carbon which they
have retained.
In earlier times the appearance of the Earth was quite different from
what it is now. Then, even in our districts there grew forests of
gigantic ferns and horsetails, (equisetums). These disappeared. At
first the Earth became covered with a layer of peat, the remains of
the dead plants; then the former forests of fern and equisetums were
transformed into the immense coal fields of the Earth. The rock
formations developed gradually, either from the plant kingdom or the
animal kingdom. When one looks at a lump of coal one can say to
oneself: This was once plant. If one were to go still further back one
would also be able to find the plants out of which rock-crystals,
malachite and so on developed. The central zone of the Alps arose out
of the primeval plants before coal. A diamond is exactly the same as a
piece of coal. Nature has created the diamond from a coal still older
than that which we have today. This rock crystal also has arisen out
of plants.
Limestone is derived from animals. The Juras, for example, consist of
such an accumulation of calcium. They were previously covered by the
sea and are formed from the cast-off shells of sea-creatures. Thus the
younger limestone mountains have arisen out of animals and the
primeval rocks out of plants. The plant kingdom gradually passes over
into the mineral kingdom. Everything solid on the earth has arisen out
of a plant-earth. This mineralising process can be studied
through the development of coal out of plants.
The mineral kingdom in its present state of separation only came into
existence during the Fourth Round. After this, the entire mineral
kingdom will be spiritualised by man. He transforms it with the
plough of his spirit. Everything that man does today, the entire
world of industry, is the transformation of the mineral kingdom. When
someone quarries a rock in order to use the stones for the building of
a house, when he builds a cathedral, all this changes the nature of
the mineral kingdom by artificial means. In the Fourth Round man can
work upon the mineral kingdom in this way. With the plant, on the
contrary, he can as yet do nothing of this kind. The whole mineral
kingdom will be transformed by man. To a great extent this will be
brought about by oscillating electricity no longer requiring wires.
Here man will be working right into the molecules and atoms. At the
end of the Fourth Round he will have transformed the entire mineral
kingdom.
From the Fifth Round onwards man will do the same with the plant
kingdom. He will be able consciously to carry out the process which is
now carried out by the plant. As the plant takes in carbonic acid and
builds up its body from the carbon, so the human being of the Fifth
Round will himself create his body out of the materials of his
environment. Sex will cease to exist. Man will then himself have to
work on his body, will have to produce it for himself. The same
process of transforming carbon, which the plant now carries out
unconsciously, will then be carried out consciously by man.
(20)
He will then transform matter just as today the plant transforms the air
into carbon. That is the true alchemy. Carbon is the Philosopher's
Stone. The man of the 18th century who pointed this out was indicating
the transformation which is now carried out by the plants and which
later will be carried out by man.
When from the higher planes one studies consciousness as it functions
in the beehive, one learns how later on man will produce matter out of
himself. In the future the human body will also be built up out of
carbon; it will then be like a soft diamond. Then one will no longer
inhabit the body from within, but will have it before one as an
external body. Today the planets are built up in this way by the
planetary spirits. From a being requiring a body produced by others,
man will transform himself into a being who manifests himself through
emanation. At that time he will consist of three members: Man in the
evening who goes on three, as the Sphinx says. The original four
organs have undergone metamorphosis. At first the hands were also
organs of movement. Then they became organs for the spiritual. In the
future only three organs will remain; the heart as Buddhi-organ, the
two-petalled lotus-flower between the eyes, and the left hand as the
organ of movement. This future state is also related to Blavatsky's
indication (of a second spinal column). The pineal gland and the
pituitary gland organise a second spinal column which later unites
itself with the first. The second spinal column will descend in front
from the head.
To arrive at such guiding threads as these, one must bring one's
consciousness into a state of being which is at a higher level than we
normally have at the present stage of earthly evolution.
All this was taught in the Mystery Schools and in a certain way, put
to practical use. One must accustom oneself to developing one's way of
thinking, and then one will develop in oneself a feeling that nothing
is valueless, but that everything has its own inherent value. There is
nothing in all Nature that we can obliterate through thinking without
thereby disturbing Nature as a whole.
The ant heap also has a much higher consciousness than present-day
man. The consciousness of the ant heap is to be found in the higher
regions of the Mental Plane. On the other hand the consciousness of
the bees is to be found in the higher regions of the Buddhi plane. How
then did the ant-consciousness enter into our Earth? This took place
through beings who stand higher than we do who had already gone
through the process of creating their body for themselves. Males,
females and workers, the three members of the ant heap, comprise the
body of a higher spiritual being. The human spirit also comes
gradually to the point of dividing itself into three parts. Willing,
feeling and thinking become separated in the case of the esoteric
pupil. The molecules of the brain divide into three groups. The
esoteric pupil must then out of himself connect a definite feeling
with a mental picture. When he sees suffering, in order to experience
pity, he must consciously add this feeling to it. To the front of the
head lies the thinking part, above, the part of feeling, to the back
of the head that of willing. The esoteric pupil learns to bring these
consciously into connection with one another. Later these three parts
become completely separated.
(21)
He must then control the three parts
in the same way as an ant heap controls the males, females and
workers.
Now we can ask why higher beings manifest themselves in an ant heap.
But if formic acid had not been introduced, the whole earth would have
been different. The foreseeing wisdom of Higher Intelligences was
aware of the moment when formic acid had to be brought into the earth.
Thus we can gain a comprehensive understanding of the whole earth, so
that we know and recognise what lives and has its being within it.
This was the case with Paracelsus, who built up his concepts in such a
way that he perceived how things could be used as remedies because he
knew in what relationship they stood to man and his organs. For
instance, Digitalis purpurea (foxglove) is connected with the heart
and can therefore still be rightly used as a heart remedy. Nowadays
new remedies are sought by means of experiment, in which one tests
their effects on a number of people. In those days remedies were
sought through intuition, because their inner connections were
observed. Remedies discovered in this way always retain their effect,
whereas with the others, in the course of time after-effects usually
show themselves, which eluded observation when the experiments were
first carried out.
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