LECTURE
FIVE
THE
INNER VITALIZATION OF THE SOUL THROUGH THE QUALITIES
OF THE METALLIC NATURE
Blackboard Drawing 6, August 15, 1924
I have
attempted to show how man can develop states of consciousness other
than those of his everyday life and how the history of evolution
provides abundant evidence that in the fields of human knowledge and
action, man did not possess the consciousness we have today.
Then I tried to call attention to the relationship between the
consciousness of the scholars who lived in the tenth, eleventh and
twelfth centuries and the manner in which knowledge was fostered in
those days, in the School of Chartres, for example. And in this
connection I pointed out how there arose forms of perception
totally unrelated to our present level of consciousness.
Brunetto Latini, Dante's teacher, is a case in point.
Yesterday I
tried to recall man's relationship to the universe at an even
earlier epoch, in the Mysteries of Ephesus, for example. We learned
how entirely different conditions of consciousness prevailed at that
time, though related to some extent to the normal scientific
consciousness of today.
After this
brief digression into history I should now like to continue our
investigations. I have already indicated how the metallity, the basic
substantiality of the mineral element, is related to man and
his conditions of consciousness. Having shown man's relationship to
the metal copper, I described the state of consciousness that enables
him to participate in the experiences of the so-called dead
after death.
We must
realize that it was a form of perception such as this which Brunetto
Latini experienced in that semi-pathological condition
following upon his heat-stroke.
Indeed all
that he describes, all that came to him through the inspiration of
the Goddess Natura can be attained in that condition of consciousness
— so closely related to our everyday consciousness —
which is able to share the experiences of the dead immediately
after their death. I said that it was a condition of greater reality.
We inhabit a world of more powerful impressions, more luminous, a
world that brings everything to fuller consummation than the
phenomenal world.
We owe it to
these factors alone that we can participate in the experiences of the
soul which has recently passed through the gates of death.
At the same
time, this world reveals a peculiar characteristic. When we
inhabit this world in the state of consciousness I have described, we
are no longer able to observe the normal experiences of our
daily life; we see only that part of our life immediately preceding
incarnation — our experiences when still in the spiritual
world before birth. We must therefore realize that in this condition
of consciousness we are detached from the world which man normally
inhabits.
Let me
illustrate my point. A man is born at a certain point in time. If, at
the age of forty, he develops the copper condition of consciousness
— I have already explained this in my lecture of the day before
yesterday — his perception is no longer related to the
immediate present, nor to his perception at the age of thirty
or thirty-five; he can only look back to his experiences immediately
before birth. He can do this for himself and others, but he cannot
apprehend the world of everyday existence. This is only feasible for
human beings.
In relation
to animals, we do not see them in their familiar physical form;
we look into the world immediately above and perceive what I have
called the group-soul. We see, as it were, the aura of the animal
species. And when we look out into the world, we find it transformed
and discover something which is of supreme importance for mankind,
but which is totally ignored in our present materialistic
age.
And if,
endowed with the highest academic learning in all faculties, we
contact that Being who is ever present as the Goddess Natura, that
Being so vividly described by the teachers of the School of
Chartres, Bernardus Silvestris, Alanus ab Insulis and others, we feel
abysmally ignorant despite all our modern knowledge. We feel that our
present knowledge is relevant only to the world between birth and
death and is no longer valid when we enter into the spiritual world
with a consciousness that can follow the dead beyond the gates of
death.
When we
study chemistry, the sum-total of our knowledge holds good only for
the life between birth and death. Chemistry, as such, is of no
importance in the world we share with the dead. All the knowledge we
acquire in the phenomenal world is valueless in this intermediate
state between death and rebirth, it survives only as a memory.
We have an immediate awareness of this intermediate sphere we now
inhabit and we feel that the everyday world in which we learned so
much has faded from our consciousness. This other world now lies open
before us.
Let us
imagine that a mountain looms up before us in our immediate
environment. It gives an impression of solidity. When seen from a
distance it reflects the light of the Sun and we note its contours
and rock formations. Then we gradually draw nearer. When we set foot
on it, we feel that it offers resistance, that we are standing on
solid ground; there is no doubt of its reality.
Now in the
intermediate world everything that I have described as solid and
luminous ceases to have any significance; something seems to be
issuing from the mountain, growing ever larger, and gives an
impression of another kind of reality.
Under the
conditions of normal life we see the mountain capped by a cloud. We
are in no doubt that it is caused by condensation of water vapour.
This phenomenon also loses all reality. Something different emerges
from the cloud. What we see emerging merges with the cloud and
mountain which are gradually lost to view. Out of this union is born
a new reality that is not merely nebulous, but is at the same time
endowed with form. And this applies to everything in this
intermediate world.
Suppose we
are standing in front of a large audience. The moment we enter the
spiritual world all sharply defined contours are effaced. We perceive
instead the soul and spirit of the audience projected in the form of
clairvoyant images. And the mysterious spiritual aura of the
environment gradually encompasses us. A new world arises, the world
the dead inhabit after death.
We now
become aware of something else. If this intermediate world
which we have now entered did not exist, if it were not omnipresent,
we should be without eyes and ears, without sense organs. The world
described by the chemist and physicist cannot provide us with sense
organs; we should be blind and deaf. Our sense organs could not be
built up within us.
And this was
the surprising discovery of Brunetto Latini when he returned from
Spain to the neighbourhood of his native Florence and suffered that
slight attack of heat-stroke which opened up to him this intermediate
world. He realized that his sense organs were a gift from this
other world, that his senses would be wholly undeveloped if this
intermediate world did not permeate the world of sense
experience. Our human status is determined by the fact that we owe
our sense organs to our connection with this second world, this
intermediate world.
At all times
this second world has been called the world of the Elements. Here the
terms oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, etc., are meaningless, they are
applicable only to the world between birth and death. In the second
world it is only meaningful to speak of the elements earth, water,
air, fire and light, and so on. For the specific characteristics of
hydrogen, oxygen, etc., are wholly unrelated to the senses. What the
chemist discovers about the scent of violets or of asafoetida,
namely, that the one is pleasant and the other highly unpleasant,
everything named after its chemical composition — none of
this is of any significance. In the second world all manifestations
of scent or smell are spiritualized. From the standpoint of the
second world it would be described as aeriform; but it is a
rarefied air, an air wholly permeated by spirit. Our senses therefore
are rooted in the world of elements where it is still meaningful to
speak of earth, water, fire and air.
We can now
correct our previous misapprehensions and develop the right
understanding. What is the reaction of the modern philosopher who
claims to be both logical and objective and to have abandoned the
naive outlook of earlier epochs? He maintains that these
earlier conceptions were primitive: in those days men only spoke of
the crude elements, earth, water, fire and air, whereas today seventy
to eighty elements are known, not a mere four or five.
Now if a
Greek with the typical outlook of his time were to be born today and
were told of this attitude, his answer would be: Of course, you still
speak of the elements such as oxygen and hydrogen, but in your own
way. You have forgotten what we understood by the four elements. You
are unaware of their composition, you no longer know anything about
them. Despite the existence of all your seventy-two or seventy-five
elements, the sense organs would never come into being, for they are
born out of the four elements. We had a better knowledge of man; we
knew how man's external vehicle with its sense organs was built
up. —
We can only
form a true estimate of the impressions received by men of olden time
who had undertaken the first steps in Initiation, such as Brunetto
Latini, when we recognize the significance of these impressions
for the life of the soul and spirit, when we bear in mind their
unexpected and striking effects and how the soul was actively
stimulated by them.
If someone
who has believed hitherto in the reality of his sense-impressions
discovers that this reality could not even have created his sense
organs and that behind this reality there must exist all that I have
described here, then the effect in the first instance must be
shattering.
It is
important to realize that we cannot develop such knowledge and
understanding if we perpetuate the old sterile conceptions of nature
that we normally hold. When we enter into this second world,
everything begins to vibrate with life. We say to ourselves: the
mountain we knew through sensory experience appeared to be inanimate
matter; we were wholly unaware that it was permeated with
living forces. Now they are revealed to us. And the cloud that
formerly appeared static and inert now manifests that indwelling
vital life that we had not perceived before. Everything is quickened
and in this weaving, pulsating life there is revealed a fundamental
reality.
In this
second world the laws of nature are not intellectual
constructs; we are in touch with a spiritual Being. The Goddess
Natura, who speaks to us, beckons and communicates insights
from the world of reality. And in this way we learn about the reality
of our environment through beings of a super-sensible world. We are
translated from our purely abstract world that is determined by
natural law into the real world of being, where we no longer arrive
at natural laws by means of experiment and analysis, but feel
ourselves in the presence of beings of a different world, beings who
mediate knowledge and understanding because they know what we, as
human beings, have yet to learn.
We thus
enter the spiritual world in the right way. We realize that if we had
been endowed only with sense organs, with the eye and its optic
nerves, the nose and its olfactory nerves and the ear with its
acoustic nerves, and that if all these nerves were connected at their
point of origin, we should be unaware of the existence of oxygen,
hydrogen, nitrogen and so on, and of all we perceive between birth
and death. We would be looking into the world of Elements
— everywhere around us we would perceive earth, water, air and
fire. We would not have the slightest interest in differentiating
further between the solid and the gross material, the fluid and the
aqueous element. As beings of physical sensibility we are familiar
with the world of Elements. But the moment we become aware of
what I have already described, we realize also that in man the
sensory nerves which run back to the cranial cavity are more
differentiated, more specialized and form in that area the
first indications of the brain. In consequence we do not enter more
deeply into ourselves; we become more extroverted and add to the
nature of the four elements, earth, fire, air and water, our
experiences between birth and death.
The cerebrum
evolves from a progressive metamorphosis of the sensory nerve fibres
that run back to the cranial cavity. This cerebrum that is rolled
back upon itself in man is of importance only for the life between
birth and death. For our understanding of the spiritual world the
intellect is of minimal importance. If we wish to enter even the
first of the spiritual spheres that border on our world the intellect
must be silenced. It is an organ that interferes with higher
perception. Even when the intellect has been silenced, we cannot
escape from sensory experiences; we must now spiritualize the
senses and so attain to Imagination. In the normal course of
events our senses perceive sense-derived images in the external
physical world and the intellect transforms them into dead,
abstract thoughts. If we silence the intellect and experience the
world again through our senses, we then perceive everything in the
form of imaginations. We become aware of this and then we realize
that our deeper insights into life are ultimately linked with the
development of states of consciousness that are higher and more
spiritual than those of ordinary life.
Our
peripheral organs, such as the eye and the ear, are continuously in
touch with the world of the Elements and still perceive the dead
years after their death. The perception of this world is lost,
because our intellect intervenes. The peripheral senses of man
mediate the spiritual world, the world of the dead. But the
perception of this world, the world of the Elements earth, water,
fire and air, is obliterated by the intellectual consciousness. Man
sees only the physical world with its sharply defined contours, the
world we inhabit between birth and death. But there is no doubt
that a second world of a very different order does in fact exist.
This world, however, is obliterated by the intellect and man looks
only upon the familiar world of everyday consciousness.
Therefore
modern man must practise the meditation which I mentioned yesterday.
In the past it was still the practice after such meditation to
administer metallic substances. I spoke of these in my last
lecture. The attainment of the next higher level of consciousness
depends therefore, in the first instance, upon the obliteration of
the intellect and the spiritualization of the perceptions mediated by
the sense organs. Since their brain is not developed, the animals
also share these perceptions. But they have no
ego-consciousness; their perceptions cannot be imbued with
spirit, but only with primitive psychic forces. They do not perceive
in the world around what man perceives when his senses are
illuminated by the spirit. Animal perception is of a similar kind,
but inferior and non-individualized.
What I now
propose to say about the metallity, the real substantiality of the
mineral world, should be accepted with the due reserve to which I
drew attention yesterday when I said that the inner vitalization of
the soul through the qualities of the metallity — in
other words, the development of an inner communion with the metallity
in a moral sense — is a necessary part of man's spiritual
development today. The administration of metallic potentization to
the human organism is the function of the medical practitioner. And
so I ask you to accept with due reserve what I shall say about the
unknown factors of metals, other than those already discussed. The
mystery of mercury in particular has a special significance for
those who approach the world from a spiritual angle, that is to say,
for those who are able to perceive the spiritual operating in
physical substances. The metal mercury is only one part of what
spiritual science calls in general terms the mercurial. The mercurial
includes everything that has the characteristics of liquid metals; in
nature as we know it today, there is only one metal that shares these
characteristics and can be regarded as mercurial, namely,
quicksilver. But this is only one member of the mercurial species. In
spiritual science the mercurial includes everything of a mercurial
nature; quicksilver is looked upon simply as a typical example of the
mercurial.
This
quicksilver or mercury holds a profound secret. Its effect upon man
is such that he is isolated from all impressions of the
physical world and also from the world of the Elements.
As human
beings, we recognize that organs such as the brain have been built up
out of the physical world. We have also built up many other organs
out of this sense world, in particular, a whole series of glandular
organs that are essential to physical life.
Furthermore,
many organs — I have already spoken of the sense organs —
have been built up out of the world which I described as the world of
the second level of consciousness. Copper and iron raise man to this
second level of consciousness. Mercury has a different effect.
It must of necessity be present in the universe; and, in effect, it
exists universally in a subtle state of diffusion. We are surrounded,
if I may so express it, by an atmosphere of mercury. The moment man
absorbs more than the normal quantity of mercury, his organism
endeavours to neutralize all those organs which have been built up
from the physical and elemental worlds. The astral body of man is
stimulated, as it were, to call upon only those organs that have been
built up out of the world of stars.
Therefore,
directly the consciousness is concentrated on the metallity of
mercury, on its metallic and fluid qualities, on the fundamentally
impalpable element that is characteristic of mercury and which,
none the less, is related to the human being, man becomes inwardly
permeated by a “third man.” I said that through his
relationship to copper man is permeated by a second man who creates
inner tensions and is able to relinquish the physical body and
accompany the dead in the years immediately following their
death. Quicksilver attracts to itself everything that can
contribute to a far more closely-knit psychic organism. Through
the effects of quicksilver man seems to apprehend the entire
metabolism of his organs. When he experiences the strong metallic
influence of quicksilver, the manner in which the fluids circulate
through the various vessels suddenly claims his attention. The effect
cannot be described as pleasant, for he feels as if he were bereft of
mind and senses, as if everything were active, alive and
stirring within him, as if he were in a state of inner ferment,
turmoil and flux, pulsating with life and movement. And he feels this
inner activity united with an activity without.
This
situation, as I have described it, follows upon the conscious
training of the inner life. Through the active influence of
quicksilver man ceases to feel the presence of his brain; it has
become a hollow cavity. That is an advantage for the perception of
the spiritual world since the brain is quite useless for this
purpose. What he does in fact feel is movement and activity
permeating his entire organism. But at first all this ferment is as
painful as if one suffered from inner exhaustion.
Everywhere
this inner activity is united with an outer activity. We feel we have
left the Earth and the world of Elements below us; everything exhales
steaming vapour. But spiritual beings dwell in these vaporous,
steaming exhalations. The divine Natura whom Brunetto Latini so
vividly describes has now “turned about.”
As I said
yesterday, she is identical with the Greek Persephone. Formerly
she turned her countenance more towards the Earth; she disclosed
those things that were still connected with the Earth sphere,
such as man's experience of the life immediately after death. Now she
“turns about” and man has the Earth and the elemental
world beneath him and the world of stars above. Just as on Earth he
was surrounded by plants and animals, his environment is now the
world of stars. He no longer feels his insignificance in face of the
mighty world of stars, but, in his new stature, he feels in relation
to the world of stars exactly as he felt in relation to his immediate
environment on Earth. With his increase of stature he has grown into
the world of stars. But the stars are not as the stars we saw when on
Earth; they reveal themselves as colonies of spiritual beings. We are
once again in the world I have already described to you, a world that
is awakened in man through his relationship with the metallity of
tin. There is an inner relationship between mercury and tin as
I have already indicated. Mercury lays claim to a certain part of our
being, isolates it and bears it into that spiritual world whose
external physical manifestation is the world of
stars.
But we are
now in a different world because the condition of our consciousness
has been changed; it is no longer determined by the senses or
the brain, but by that which the metallity of mercury has now drawn
out of our organism. We find ourselves in a totally different world
— the world of stars. I could, however, express this
differently. The term “world of stars” has spatial
implications; but through the attainment of this new level of
consciousness we actually leave behind the world in which we exist
spatially between birth and death and now enter the intermediate
world, the world we inhabit between death and rebirth.
The hidden
secret of mercury lies in this: mercury detaches man from the
phenomenal world and opens up the intermediate world because
quicksilver or mercury has an inner relationship to that part of
man's being which is not derived from this Earth, but has been
implanted in him by the beings of the intermediate world. The
circulation of the fluids that he now experiences is determined by
the world through which he passes between death and a new
birth.
We now
become aware of something else, again something that Brunetto
Latini perceived under the influence of the Goddess Natura, namely,
that we live in the circulation of the fluids which is associated
with the circulation of the cosmic fluids. We have relinquished the
physical vehicle with its sense-derived consciousness and find
ourselves in the realm we inhabit between death and rebirth. We
become familiar with the nature of the circulation of fluids and
begin to understand how this inner activity, this realm we inhabit
between death and rebirth, has determined the nature of our
temperament, whether sanguinic, choleric, melancholic or phlegmatic.
We have a deeper insight into our make-up than we have when dependent
on our senses. If we are born a phlegmatic we now realize that our
impassivity, our phlegm, is determined by our experiences
between the last death and the present birth. But in relation to this
temperament that manifests itself physically in the circulation
of the fluids, we must reckon with an additional factor. Consider for
a moment what is involved in this circulation of fluids. In the field
of anatomy or physiology we are concerned primarily with the
physical. The physical is only an expression of the spiritual. But
the spiritual element that is related to this circulation of fluids
is not of the physical world, it is of the world that penetrates into
man between death and rebirth.
When we
review the different temperaments — and it was an overwhelming
experience for Brunetto Latini when the Goddess Natura opened his
eyes to the existence and nature of the temperaments — we
conclude that the life between death and rebirth has determined the
nature of these various temperaments that we associated with
the circulation of the fluids. If we now probe deeper, we find that
karma, the arbiter of destiny, plays its part in this.
If we
contemplate the physical aspect of this remarkable metallic fluid
mercury, we only begin to understand it when we are fully aware of
its hidden secret: that a minute drop of liquid mercury reveals to
the Initiate a profound relationship. This drop is able to infuse the
spiritual into those organs that derive their structure and origin
from the world between death and rebirth.
Thus all
things in the world are interwoven and interrelated after this
fashion. The physical is an illusion. And from the standpoint of the
physical, the spiritual too is only an illusion, an abstraction. In
actual fact the physical is interwoven with the spiritual and
the spiritual with the physical.
If a human
organism has been damaged because those organs are involved which are
derived, in effect, from the intermediate realm, we must activate
those forces which will repair the damage.
Let us
assume that a doctor is consulted by a patient with a defective
circulatory system that has its origin in the life between death and
rebirth. He is confronted with a patient whose circulatory system has
severed its link with the spiritual world. That is the case
history. A spiritual diagnosis is made. The relation between the
spiritual element and the physical diagnosis must be understood in
the sense which I suggested yesterday. I repeat this again so that
there shall be no misunderstanding. The diagnosis is as follows: the
circulatory system of this patient has made a radical break
with the spiritual world. What is to be done?
The correct
treatment is to introduce the metallity into the body that will
restore the connection between the circulatory system and the
spiritual world. This is how mercury works upon man. Mercury
works upon the human organism in such a way that those organs which
can only be built up out of the spiritual world can again be brought
into contact with that same world when they have severed their
connection with it. Thus we see the somewhat dangerous, yet at the
same time necessary relationship that exists between the
knowledge of the states of consciousness in man and the knowledge of
diseases. The one passes over into the other.
These things
played a vital part in the ancient Mysteries and they also shed light
upon such matters as I mentioned yesterday. Consider the following:
in an age that had lost the old spiritual vision that recognized the
Goddess Natura through her teachings about the secrets of nature,
Brunetto Latini, the teacher of Dante, returns in a state of
agitation from his ambassadorial post in Spain. As he approaches his
native city his agitation increases because he hears of the fate of
his own party, the Guelph party. He experiences all this in such a
state of mind that a slight heat-stroke overcame him. The metallity
of mercury has simply worked upon him from the
environment.
What do we
understand by a slight heat-stroke? It means that we feel the effect
of the mercury in our environment, the mercury that is finely
distributed throughout the Cosmos. Brunetto Latini experienced this
effect and in consequence he was able to approach the spiritual
world in an epoch when it was normally impossible for man to share
this experience. Thus we see that in man there exists something that
is related not only to the findings of natural science, not only to
the disclosures of the person who is in contact with the dead in the
first years after their death, but that our fundamental being is in
touch with something far more sublime, a purely spiritual realm that
we live through between death and rebirth. If we follow the
ordinary scientific procedure we can understand the form of the liver
or the lung, for example. With the aid of the next higher level of
knowledge (that is known to modern physics only in its cruder
aspects) we can understand the structure of the sense organs. But we
shall never comprehend the peculiar characteristics of the
circulatory system of man with his erect posture nor the mysteries of
the metallic nature if we do not approach them through
Initiation-knowledge.
This implies
that we shall never understand the nature of disease in the sense I
have described without Initiation-knowledge, for the physical
properties of metals cannot cure disease. With an understanding of
the physical attributes of metals it may well be possible to heal
cerebral damage, but not disturbances of the circulatory fluids. What
I have been saying is, in fact, not strictly accurate, for it is only
the coarsest substance of the brain that can be healed. Fluids also
circulate in the brain; therefore, in reality, one cannot heal
cerebral damage with metals alone, but only with the aid of spiritual
knowledge.
That may
well be true, you will reply, but how do you account for the positive
achievements of medicine today in the art of healing? The answer is
that medicine is able to heal because it still preserves a memory of
the old traditional knowledge about the spiritual elements in
metals. It uses a combination of traditional knowledge and purely
physical discoveries, though these are of not much avail. And if
materialism were to triumph at the expense of tradition,
chemical remedies alone could not effect any healing. We are now at
the point in human evolution when we must make a new approach to the
spiritual, because the old traditions of primordial
clairvoyance have gradually been lost.
The mystery
behind the metallity of silver is of a very special kind. If the
cosmic impulse behind copper awakens the first higher level of
consciousness in the being of man, if a different cosmic force behind
mercury awakens a second higher level of consciousness that is
related to the world of stars and therefore to the spiritual world
which we inhabit between death and rebirth, then the metallity of
silver must awaken a consciousness of an entirely different
order.
When man
intensifies and enhances his relationship to silver by the same
process he adopted towards the metallic natures of copper and
mercury, he comes into touch with a still deeper organization within
him. Mercury relates him to the vascular system which, in turn,
relates him to a cosmic circulation, to the spirituality of the
Cosmos. The intensification of his relationship to silver
brings him into direct contact with all the forces and impulses that
survive from earlier incarnations.
If a man
concentrates on the peculiar properties of silver — and
it is some time before the effects are registered — he
concentrates within himself those forces which are responsible
not only for the circulation of fluids through the vessels, but also
for the circulation of warmth in the bloodstream. He then realizes
that he owes his human status to the warmth circulating in his blood,
in that he feels a certain inner warmth, a material, yet at the same
time a spiritual element within his blood; and that in this warmth
forces from former incarnations are actively working. In man's
relationship to silver is expressed that which can influence the
warmth-activity of the blood and also that which provides a spiritual
link with earlier incarnations.
Silver
therefore preserves that metallic virtue which reminds man of what
survives in his present life from earlier incarnations. For the
circulation of the blood with its remarkable warmth-differentiations
is not derived from this physical world, nor from the world of
Elements which I have described to you, nor even from the world of
stars. The world of stars determines the course and direction of the
blood circulation. But in the warmth of the blood that
circulates within us there works the vitalizing force from
previous lives on Earth. It is to this we appeal directly when we
refer to forces of silver in their relationship to man. Thus the
mystery of silver is related to his previous incarnations.
Silver is one of the most astounding examples .of the
all-pervasiveness of the spiritual, even in the physical world.
He who has a right understanding of silver knows that it is the
symbol of the cycles of man's lives on Earth. Hence the mystery of
silver is bound up with reproduction and its secrets, because through
the process of reproduction the being of man is perpetuated from
generation to generation. The spiritual being who existed in former
lives on Earth incarnates again through the process of reproduction.
This is the same mystery as the mystery of blood. The mystery of the
blood, of the warmth of the blood, is the mystery of
silver.
We are now
familiar with the normal condition of man. Let us proceed to a study
of his pathological states. Now the blood should not take its warmth
from man's present environment, but from the spheres through
which he has passed in previous incarnations. Let us suppose that the
warmth of his blood is affected by his present environment and is not
activated by that which links us spiritually to previous
incarnations. Pathological conditions then ensue. They occur because
all that is connected with the warmth of the blood is severed from
its natural associations, from earlier lives on Earth. What is fever?
From the stand point of spiritual science fever occurs because
the human organization has severed its relation with the cycle of
incarnations. If, in some cases of illness, the doctor ascertains
that the external world has worked upon the patient in such a way
that his organization is in danger of being cut off from earlier
incarnations, then the doctor administers silver as a remedy. A
very interesting case of this nature occurred recently in Dr.
Wegman's Clinic in Arlesheim. A condition such as I have described
may suddenly occur in the spiritual life. Through external
circumstances the human organization, owing to the peculiar
characteristics of the blood, threatens to break away from previous
incarnations. And this is precisely what happened recently in a
particular case in Dr. Wegman's Clinic. A patient who was
convalescent suddenly developed an unexpectedly high temperature, a
fever of unknown origin as it is described by orthodox medicine. With
her intuitive understanding Dr. Wegman immediately administered
a silver cure. When she told me about it the case revealed a complete
picture of cosmic relationships. We learn from this of the interplay
between what is connected with the spiritual evolution of man on the
one hand, and on the other hand, with what leads to pathological
conditions; and we learn how to treat them.
How is it
that the Initiate is able to survey former lives on Earth? So long as
we are bound up with earlier incarnations, as is the case in
ordinary life, and are still involved in their karma, we cannot look
back upon our earthly incarnations with our ordinary
consciousness. The effects of these incarnations are felt in our
present life. We fulfil our karma under their influence and our life
is determined by karma. We cannot look back without ordinary
consciousness, but, if we wish to do so, we must throw off its
limitations for a time. And when we can see the earlier lives
objectively, we are in a position to look back.
We must, of
course, be able to restore the status quo in a perfectly normal way,
otherwise we become psychopaths, not initiates.
Here we have
a phenomenon that arises in the course of spiritual development. We
cast off our spiritual moorings that attach us to previous
incarnations. In abnormal cases and under pathological conditions
disease has this effect. Disease is an abnormal expression of that
which we must develop normally in a higher sphere in order to attain
spiritual vision and other levels of consciousness. If the
blood, isolated from the rest of man's organism, surrenders to the
dictates of its consciousness — for blood possesses a
consciousness of its own, even as other organs have their own
particular states of consciousness — if, then, the blood
is freed from the bondage of the rest of the organism, it can look
back in this abnormal state into earlier incarnations, but not
consciously. In order to look back consciously we must first dispense
with normal consciousness; when we look back in a pathological
condition the link with normal consciousness will be
preserved.
The study,
for example, of the metallity of silver which is an excellent remedy
for all diseases associated with karma, leads on from the mystery of
silver to other profound mysteries. We have thus spoken of virtually
all those metallic natures that are related to the various
conditions of consciousness in man. We will now extend our
investigations into these conditions of consciousness, into the
relationship to other worlds which man can establish through these
conditions. In other words we propose in the next lectures to
study in further detail the right path to spiritual
knowledge.
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