Enlivened images

From Free Man Creator

Man's experiences in thinking, feeling, willing are inscribed in the Akasha, in the higher planes starting from the fourth subplane of the spirit world, see Schema FMC00.389A below and also Planes or worlds of consciousness.

With 'free thinking', not materialistic shadow thoughts about the 'dead' kingdoms of nature, but the activity of spiritual science that are quickened to live through feeling and willing, one creates so-called 'enlivened images' that Rudolf Steiner describes as Seeds for future worlds. This process can be regarded as a reverse ritual when Man as a Microcosm is not a receiver but a giver, a contributor to the future Macrocosm of the future - see also Meaning of Free Man Creator.

'Enlivened' means, permeated with life, and in this case this life refers to the etheric formative forces and especially those related to the chemical and life ethers.

Before the Mystery of Golgotha, Man did not have access - in his functioning as a human being - to the higher ethers, the chemical and life ethers. See also Christ Module 11 - A new physics.

In 1920-05-16-GA201 lecture is explained how the Mystery of Golgotha (MoG) transforms this process into enlivened embodied pictures with inner reality for the life to come.

See also the second row in table Schema FMC00.357 that maps to the same: Man's etheric body is now imbued with the budhi or chemical and life ethers.

To relate to how this works more technically, see also the aspects explained with Matter is destroyed in the brain and Etherization of blood.

Aspects

  • Consciousness arises when the forces of the physical and etheric bodies disintegrate these bodies, and thus make way for the spiritual to enter into Man .. a disintegration must be followed by a reconstruction. The experience of self-consciousness lies in the perception of this upbuilding process: the conscious is led over into the self-conscious by Man's creating out of himself an after-image of the merely conscious. The latter has its image in the emptiness, as it were, produced within the organism by the disintegration. It has passed into self-consciousness when the emptiness has been filled up again from within. The being, capable of this ‘fulfilment,’ is experienced as 'I'. (1925-GA026 - LT011)
  • note: this is a temporary placeholder for something to be written out on this page to explain what is meant with 'enlivened images'.
    • see specifically Formative forces#1905-10-28-GA093A (on Formative forces#Note 2 - On Cologne cathedral ) for an explanation how mineral physical matter is 'used' by the I-consciousness to be taken up as object into subject. Then this process of self-consciousness (as per 1925-GA026 - LT011) .. has 'used' the environment to grow, and take more object into subject. This can be linked to the process of Mahat, see Schema FMC00.568. It is the consciousness itself that grows in step changes (see Twelve Conditions of Consciousness) through Three dimensions of evolution .. and is in this process "vivified by budhi".
      • see also Robert Kegan's developmental theory: in cognitive development distinguishes:
        • subject: the things we are, or we are embedded in; we can't see or reflect on them because they define our current way of knowing. We are these things.
        • object: the things we can step back from, reflect on, analyze, and make decisions about. We have these things. We can take these into consciousness.
        • growth in Kegan’s model is all about making subject into object. The more things we can reflect on (instead of being unconsciously driven by), the more complex and adaptive our thinking becomes.
      • for more on this "vivified by budhi", also see Schema FMC00.077A which includes the 'state-transition process at budhi plane level' captured with Schema FMC00.186 and variants on Christ Module 7 - Cosmic dimension.
    • all this is going to written out first in a larger context here: Christ Module 12 - the cosmic 'I'#Note 2 - Draft notes outline for developing this module .. the 'enlived images' will then follow from that

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.488 is an example of a schema that provides a synthesis to two major points from an important didactic lecture.

For lecture see Thinking Feeling Willing#1917-10-08-GA177

The first point (right, and left text boxes) is about the twofold nature of the human being as a result of the luciferic infection in the Lemurian epoch.

The second point (upper and lower text boxes in grey) is about the true nature of thinking: 'dead' thinking whereby our head takes in and processes living astral elementals, versus 'living' thinking whereby these thoughts are coming through the spiritual world and spiritual hierarchies, flowing through the lower part of the body and filled with feeling and willing.

For further study, this relates to:

Schema FMC00.213 relate Thinking Feeling Willing (TFW) activities of the human soul to the three worlds and Truth Beauty Good (TBG).

Schema FMC00.389A is a simplified version of reference table Schema FMC00.389. It shows the akashic record used by clairvoyant investigation in the middle, in amber.

Notice the 'mirroring' across the fourth layer of the spirit world (explained in 1904-11-03-GA089).

More in Note [2] on the pageClairvoyant research of akashic records#Note .5B2.5D - Notes about working principle and Schema FMC00.389A

Schema FMC00.357 shows how Future Jupiter's kingdoms will arise through Man's soul activities, carried over by the spiritual hierarchies. The three lower kingdoms will arise from Man's thinking, feeling, and will based soul activities that nurture the third hierarchy H3. The upper right cell explains how the rise of the hierarchy of the archai through and after the pralaya transforms their impulses.


Schema FMC00.141 shows how, on the one hand (blue arrow down), the flow from the nirvana and budhi planes down to the three worlds below, sustains the emanation of thoughts created by the spiritual hierarchies in earlier stages of evolution. This is all we see around us, nature's kingdoms including ourselves. The spiritual hierarchies live in and evolve through this whole creation. On the other hand (blue arrow up), Man also creates through his thoughts, just as previous hierarchies did on previous planetary stages. Hence the human being becomes creator and contributor to future worlds. See Meaning of Free Man Creator and Seeds for future worlds.

The pencil drawing on the left - see Schema FMC00.141A below for the original - shows how living spiritual germs ripple down from the higher planes into the formless spirit world, get clothed into archetypes in lower spirit land, and embodied with astral clothing and physical substance as they ripple down. In the middle is shown how Man's actions are inscribed into the akashic records, see more on this in Clairvoyant research of akashic records. On the left is a paragraph with RSL quotes by Maximilian Rebholz (in his essay 'Durchgang'). Double click to enlarge.

For more on this schema, see Overview Golden Chain

Lecture coverage and references

Overview coverage

  • To 'set the scene' for the study of this topic, it is recommended to start with 1920-04-16-GA201 which uses the term 'enlivened images'. This is an example of the many topics that Rudolf Steiner covers in GA201 just sketching them as cryptic keys that are not fully explained but captions for further study, as they were elaborated in other places in the GA. Put differently one could say he lectures at a higher level and pre-empts a deep understanding of many things he covers at a level of higher understanding, without explaining all in detail. This is an interesting quality of the GA201 cycle.
  • Secondly, study 1921-10-29-GA208 which explains how to think of the terms 'images'. They are non-material ideas from the spirit world, before becoming mineral (or threedimensonal and material).
  • Thirdly, a key aspect is develop an understanding of what happened through the Mystery of Golgotha, and Christ becoming the spirit of the Earth. This brought the higher etheric formative forces (of the chemical and life ethers) back to Earth and mankind, allowing Man to further develop it's higher bodily principles (see Man's higher triad), see also Man's transformation and spiritualization. This is what is meant in oa 1905-10-28-GA093A and 1909-07-06-GA112 as "the radiating of the Christ force into the human etheric body", it is the fructification of Man's etheric body by these higher etheric formative forces.

Reference extracts

2 Corinthians 5:17

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away; behold, the new has come into being.

1905-10-24-GA093A

Human life is a continual process of being enveloped in what surrounds us: Involution — Evolution. We take up image forms and according to these, shape our own body. What the Monad has brought about is again taken up by man as his Karma. Man will always be the result of his Karma. The Vedanta teaches that the different parts of the human being are dissolved and cast to the winds; what still remains of him, that is his Karma. This is the eternal which man has created out of himself, something which he himself had first to take up as image out of his environment. Man is immortal; he only needs to exert his will, he only needs to form his actions in such a way that they have a lasting existence. That part of us is immortal which we gain for ourselves from the outside world.

We have come into being through the world and are beginning, through fructification with the Monad, to build up in ourselves the mirror of a new world.

The Monad has quickened the mirrored images in us. Now these images can work outwards, and the effects of these images reflect themselves anew. A new inner life arises.

With our actions we are continually changing our environment. Through this, new reflected images come about; these now become karma. This is a new life which springs up from within.

The result of this is that in order to develop further from a definite point of time we must go out of ourselves and work selflessly in our surroundings. We must make possible this going out from ourselves in order selflessly to bring about harmonious relationships in our surroundings.

This necessitates a harmonising of the reflected images in ourselves. It is our task to make the world around us a harmonious one:

  • If we are a destructive element in the world, what is reflected into us is devastation:
  • if we bring about harmony in the world, harmonies are reflected into us.
1905-10-28-GA093A

This content of his I will be vivified by Buddhi

1909-07-06-GA112

Through the suffusion of the earth with the rays of a new force (being the first impulse for the transformation of the earth into a Sun), the possibility was afforded for mankind to be irradiated by the same force. What I described to you yesterday received then its first impetus — namely, the radiating of the Christ-force into the human etheric body.Thanks to this astral force streaming into it, the etheric body could begin to absorb new vitality such as it will need in the distant future. If you compare a future condition of humanity with the point of time at which the Deed of Golgotha was accomplished, you may conclude that at the time of Christ's coming the condition of the earth was such that it could not of itself radiate light into the etheric bodies of men. A short time after this event the etheric bodies of those who had found access to the Christ-impulse became radiant; having understood Christ, they absorbed into themselves that radiant force, that new illuminative force which has been in the earth ever since. They received into their etheric bodies the Christ-light. The Christ-light streams into the etheric bodies of men.
And now the Christ-light being always present, to some extent, in the etheric bodies of men ever since that time,

what is the consequence of this? What takes place after death in that part of the etheric body which has absorbed into itself the Christ-light? What is it that has gradually made its way into the human etheric body in consequence of the Christ-impulse?

Since that time it has become possible for something new to show itself in the etheric bodies of men, as an effect of the Christ-light; something which exhales life and is immortal, and can never fall a prey to death. But if it does not fall a prey to death (while man still continues being a victim of the illusion of death), it will be saved from death and will not participate therein. Since that time, therefore, there has been something in the etheric body of man which does not share in his death and is not subject to the earthly forces of dissolution. And that something, which does not die with the rest and which man gradually wins for himself through the influence of the Christ-impulse, now radiates back and streams into the world of space. In proportion to its strength or weakness in man, it gathers a force which streams out into space.

and here we continue into the scope of two other study Modules: Module 7 - Cosmic Impact, and Module 8 - Resurrection

In proportion to its strength or weakness in man, it gathers a force which streams out into space. This force will form a sphere surrounding the earth, a sphere in process of becoming a Sun. A kind of spiritual sphere is developing round the earth, composed of those etheric bodies endowed with light. As the Christ-light streams from the earth, there is in like manner a kind of reflection of the Christ-light in the circumference of the earth. The Christ-light which is here reflected and which appeared in consequence of Christ's life on earth; this, it is, which Christ called the ‘Holy Ghost’. True as it is that the change of the earth into a sun began with the event of Golgotha, it is equally true that the earth thenceforward began to be creative and to form a spiritual ring round itself which, in time to come, will become a kind of planet surrounding it.

Thus, since the event of Golgotha, a momentous process has been taking place in the universe. At the moment when the Cross was raised on Golgotha and the blood ran from the wounds of Christ Jesus, a new cosmic centre was created. We were there as human beings, whether in a physical body or out of it, between birth and death. Thus do new worlds arise. But one thing we must understand, that while we behold the dying Christ, we stand in the presence of the birth of a new Sun.

Christ united Himself with death which has become, on earth, the characteristic expression of the Father-Spirit. Christ goes to the Father and unites Himself with the expression of the Father — with death; thereby the image of death (as it has become) is shown in its falseness; for death now becomes the seed of a new Sun in the universe. Let us feel this event, this growing delusion of death; let us feel that the Death on the Cross is the seed from which a new Sun bursts forth, then we shall also truly feel how mankind on earth must have felt that Event to be the supremely important transition in human evolution.

1913-03-05-GA152

(not on rsarchive, extract freely translated; see:

Christ in the future cultural ages and next epochs#1914-03-05-GA152

1914-07-16-GA155

Let us suppose that the Christ had not come. What would have happened in the evolution of the Earth?

From the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha would otherwise have taken place, men would have spiritually created dense forms to which they had imparted death. And these dense forms would have become the very things that had to pass over to the Jupiter stage with the Earth. Man would have imparted death to the Earth. A dead Earth would have given birth to a dead Jupiter.

It could not have been otherwise, because if the Mystery of Golgotha had not come about, man would not have been able to permeate the radiations he gives out with the essences of the Music of the Spheres and the Cosmic Life.

These essences would not have been there; they would not have flowed into the human radiations; but Christ brought them back through the Mystery of Golgotha. And when there is a fulfillment of the words, “Not I, but Christ in me”, when we bring about a relationship to Christ within ourselves, that which rays out from us and would otherwise be dead, is made living. Because we bear death within us, the living Christ has to permeate us, in order that He may give life to the spiritual Earth-being that we leave behind us. Christ the living Logos, permeates and gives life to the objective guilt and sin which detaches itself from us and is not carried further in our Karma, and because He gives it life, a living Earth will evolve into a living Jupiter. This is the outcome of the Mystery of Golgotha.

Henry Barnes - foreword to 1917-03-GA066

In the second lecture, Rudolf Steiner links his anthroposophical spiritual-scientific research with the work of those pioneering forerunners among the idealistic German thinkers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries who came to realize that the life of the organism pre-supposes an invisible, persistent body of supersensible forces which unites with, organizes and sustains the physical organism and survives its dissolution.

And he goes on to show how the etheric from without, enlivened by the etheric within, gives rise to mental images, to thought representations, and to memory, and when rightly intensified, can lead to genuine imagination, but can also spawn hallucinations when the etheric reaches too deeply into the physical organism.

In contrast, he describes how in willed activity, when the soul unfolds an impulse of will, the etheric is partially withdrawn from the organism and the soul works directly through the etheric into the metabolism. When this activity is intensified, intuition becomes possible, but when the etheric is bound by the physical, compulsive actions arise.

...

1917-03-17-GA066

see also: Process of perception#1917-03-17-GA066

In order to characterize this today, I must seek access to this question, in a certain sense, from another side.

[metabolic - fluid]

Let us approach that which actually occurs in the metabolic processes for the human being. Simply expressed, we can think of the metabolic processes in the human organism as occurring in such a way that, essentially, they have to do with the fluid material element. This can be easily understood if one acquaints oneself, even only to a limited extent, with the most easily accessible natural scientific ideas in this field. What constitutes a metabolic process lives, one can say, in the fluid element.

[breathing - air]

That which is breathing lives in the airy, gaseous element; in breathing we have an interchange between inner and outer processes in the air, just as in the metabolism we have an interchange between substance processes which have occurred outside of our body, and such which occur within our body.

[process of perception]

What happens then when we perceive with our senses and then proceed to form mental representations? What corresponds to this actually? In just the same way that the fluid processes correspond to the metabolism, and the airy processes correspond to breathing - what corresponds to perception?

What corresponds to perception are etheric processes. Just as we in a sense live with our metabolism in the fluid, and live with our breathing in the air, we live with our perceiving in the ether.

And inner etheric processes, which occur in the invisible body, about which we have just been speaking, occur, come into contact with external etheric processes in sense perception.

  • When it is objected: Yes, but certain sense perceptions are self-evidently metabolic processes!—this is especially obvious for those sense perceptions which correspond with the so- called lower senses, smell, taste. A more accurate consideration shows that along with that which is substantial, that belongs directly to the metabolism, along with every such process, also with tasting, for example, an etheric process occurs, by means of which we enter into relation with the external ether, just as we enter into relation with the air with our physical body when we breathe.

Without the understanding of the etheric world, an understanding of sense perception and sensation is impossible.

What is it that actually happens?

Well, one can only really know what happens there when one has gone far enough in the inner soul process that the inner etheric-bodily element has become a reality for one. This will happen when one has achieved what I called imaginative thinking in lectures which I recently gave here. When one's thinking has been so strengthened, by means of the exercises given in the book already mentioned, that they are no longer abstract concepts, such as we normally have, but are thoughts and mental representations filled with life, then one can call them imaginations.

When these representations have become so alive that they are, in fact, imaginations, then they live directly in the etheric, whereas, if they are abstract representations, they live only in the soul.

They grasp the etheric. And then, if one has progressed far enough, one might say, in an inward experimentation that one experiences within oneself the ether as living reality, then one can know, through experience, what happens in sense perception, in sensation.

Sensation as it arises through sense perception—1 can only present this today in the form of results—consists in the fact that the outer environment sends the etheric from the material surroundings into our sense organs, thus making those gulfs, about which I spoke the day before yesterday, so that that which is outside also becomes inward within the sphere of our senses.

We have, for instance, a tone between the life of the senses and the outer world. As a result of the fact that the external ether penetrates into our sense organs, this external ether is deadened. And as the outer deadened ether enters our sense organs, it is brought to life again through the fact that the inner ether from the etheric body works towards the deadened etheric coming from outside. Herein we have the essential being of sense perception and sensation.

Just as the death process and enlivening arise in the breathing process, when we breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, so also a process of exchange takes place between the dead ether and enlivened ether in our sense experience.

This is an extraordinarily important fact which can be found through spiritual science. For that which no philosophical speculations can find, and on which the philosophical speculation of the last centuries has ship-wrecked countless times, can only be found along the path of spiritual scientific research.

Sense perception can thus be recognized to be a fine process of exchange between the outer and the inner ether; to be the enlivening of the ether that is deadened in the sense organ by the forces of the inner etheric body.

So that that which the senses kill for us out of the environment, is inwardly made alive again through the etheric body, and we come, thereby, to that which is indeed the perception of the outer world.

This is extraordinarily important, because it shows how the human being when he devotes himself to the sensations arising from sense perception, does not only live in the physical organism, but rather in the supersensible etheric, and shows how the entire life within the senses is a living and weaving in the invisible etheric. It is this which, in the time mentioned above, the more deeply insightful researchers have always sensed, have inwardly divined, but which will be raised to certainty through spiritual science.

...

What is brought forward as anthroposophy in no sense arises arbitrarily. Spiritual life leads to it with necessity, when concepts and mental pictures are not experienced as mere concepts and mental pictures, but rather are—I once again wish to use the expression—condensed to the point where they lead into reality, where they become saturated with reality.

One does not, however—and this is the weakness, the lack, in this research—if one merely raises oneself from the physical to the etheric body, one does not really find one's way; rather one comes to a certain boundary, which must, however, be transcended; for only beyond the etheric lies the soul-spiritual. And the essential thing is, that this soul-spiritual can only come into a relationship with the physical through the mediation of the etheric. We thus have to seek the actual soul element of the human being, working and impulsating within the etheric in a fully super-etheric way; working in such a way that the etheric, in its turn, forms the physical, just as it (the etheric) is itself formed, impulsated, enlivened by the element of the soul.

[other pole of will]

Let us now try to understand the human being from the other pole, the pole of will. We have said that the will-life is directly connected with the metabolism. In as much as the will impulse lives in the metabolism, it not only lives in the external, physical metabolic processes, but as the entire human being is everywhere present within the limits of his being, so the etheric also lives in that which is active as metabolism when an impulse of will occurs.

Spiritual science shows that what lives in the will impulse is exactly the opposite of that which is present in sense perception.

  • In the case of sense perception, the etheric outside of us is, in a certain sense, enlivened by the etheric within us. That is to say, the inner etheric pours itself into the dead etheric from outside.
  • In the case of an impulse of will the situation is such that when the will impulse arises from the soul- spiritual, the etheric body is loosened, is expelled out of the physical body in those areas in which the metabolism occurs, through the activity of the metabolism and everything which is connected with it. As a result, we have here the exact opposite: the etheric body in a certain sense pulls back from the physical processes. And it is just in this that the essential element in will actions lies. In such actions of the will the etheric body draws back from the physical body.
1920-05-16-GA201

.. in this lecture is explained how the MoG transforms this process into enlivened pictures with inner reality for the life to come.

quote A

[Part 1]

Philosophers today say that the effect of the soul and spirit upon the body cannot be perceived, because they imagine an arm as a sort of solid lever appliance; and of course they cannot see how the activity of the soul and spirit, which is conceived of as abstractly as possible, is to be transmitted to this solid lever-appliance. But one need only fix one's attention on the transition, and we find there that which has been organised for Man out of the whole universe.

If we really study human thought, we find that the thought which asserts itself in our head has very much to do with this inner work that goes on within the heat-relationships. (This is not quite exactly spoken, but the inaccuracy can perhaps only be corrected in the course of time. We must try to get a complete picture, therefore I will begin with a more cursory description.)

[the warmth element and ether is meant here - see Spectrum of elements and ethers]

If we observe this inter-working of thoughts in the heat-space, in the isolated heat-space, it is evident that something like a co-operation of thought-activity and heat-activity takes place. In what does this consist? Here we come to something which demands very careful consideration.

Taking first the whole of the rest of Man, and then his head, we can of course, trace a transmutation of matter (metabolism) from the former to the latter; and the fact that ultimately the head has to do with thought — that we perceive as a direct experience.

Yet what really happens? We will lead up to this gradually by way of appropriate imagery.

  • Let us suppose we have some fluid substance; we bring it to boiling point, then it evaporates, and changes into a more rarefied substance. This same process takes place far more intensely with human thought. All that plays its part as transmutation of substances in the human head, brings it about that all substance falls away like a sediment, it is precipitated, and nothing remains of it but the mere picture.
  • I will now use another example. Suppose you have a vessel containing a solution. This you cool down, which is again a heat-process. A sediment collects below, and above remains finer liquid. This is also the case with the human head; only here no substance whatever is collected above, nothing but pictures, all matter is expelled. This is the activity of the human head; it forms what are mere pictures, and expels the matter.

This process, as a matter of fact, takes place in everything that may be called the transition to pure thinking. All the material substance which has co-operated in the human inner life falls back into the organism, and pictures alone remain. It is a fact that when we rise to pure thought, we live in pictures. Our soul lives in pictures; and these pictures are the remains of all that has gone before. Not the substance, but the pictures remain.

[Part 2]

What has just been presented can be followed into the thoughts themselves, for this process only takes place at the moment when thoughts change into mere pictures.

At first thoughts live, as it were, embodied. They are permeated by substance; but as pictures they separate themselves out from this substance. If however, we go to work in a truly spiritually scientific way, we can quite easily distinguish pure thought, sense-free thought that has separated itself out from the material process, from all thoughts belonging to what I have called in these lectures the “instinctive wisdom of the ancients.”

This instinctive wisdom of the ancients, as we learn it today, bears in it, quite literally and exactly, the character of not being brought to such filtration of thought that all material substance fell away. Such falling away of all matter is a result of human development. Although not observed by external physiology, it is a fact that

  • virtually — of course virtually and approximately — the thoughts of earthly humanity before the Mystery of Golgotha were always united with matter, and that
  • at the time of the intervention of the Mystery of Golgotha in Earth-life, humanity had arrived at the point in evolution of being able to dissociate itself from matter in the inner process of thought; matter-free thought became possible.

This is not to be regarded as unimportant! It is indeed of the utmost importance that we should observe this development in earthly life — that Man in his evolution has become free from the embodiment of thoughts; that they have changed to pure pictures.

Thus we may say that

  • up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, embodied pictures lived in Man; but
  • after the Mystery of Golgotha, matter-free pictures lived in Man.

[ or again]

  • Before the Mystery of Golgotha, the universe worked upon Man in such a way that he could not attain to pictures free of the body, free of matter.
  • Since the Mystery of Golgotha, the universe has, as it were, withdrawn. Man has been transposed to an existence which only takes place in pictures.

What Man felt before the Mystery of Golgotha as his connection with the Universe, that he related also to the Universe. He related human life on Earth to Heaven.

  • This we can observe quite exactly. The Hebrew of old was clearly and distinctly conscious that the twelve tribes of old Israel were projections on Earth of the constellations of the zodiac. The twelve-foldness of the universe comes to expression in the life of man; and we may say that in those days the life of man was pictured as a result of the twelve-foldness of the heavens, of the zodiac. Every man felt the starry heaven streaming into him; and above all a group of men felt themselves as a group into which the starry heaven rayed. In the evolution of Hebrew antiquity we must go back to the time when we are told of the twelve sons of Jacob as the projection on Earth of the twelve regions of heaven.
  • Just as there was this in-streaming of the heavenly forces upon Earth-man in gray antiquity, so also, since in the different parts of the Earth's surface evolution came about at different times, in Europe we find a similar thing at a later time. We must go back to the Middle Ages and study the legends of King Arthur and his Round Table, those significant Celtic legends. For Mid-Europe developed later to the stage reached by the old Hebrews thousands of years before. Mid-Europe was only so far on at the time to which the Legends of Arthur and his Round Table are assigned.
  • There was however, a difference. Hebrew antiquity evolved to the point where the in-streaming from the universe still yielded embodied pictures. Then came the point of time when the body was withdrawn from the pictures, when the pictures had to be given a new substance. There was indeed a danger that, as regards his soul-life, man would pass completely into a picture-existence. This danger Man did not at once recognise. Even Descartes was still floundering, and instead of saying: ‘I think, therefore I am not’, he said the opposite of the truth: ‘I think, therefore I am’. For when we live in pictures, we really are not! When we live in mere thoughts, it is the surest sign that we are not. Thoughts must be filled with substance. In order that man might not continue to live in mere pictures, in order that inner substance might once more be in the human being, that Being intervened who entered through the Mystery of Golgotha. Hebrew antiquity was the first to meet with this intervention of the central force, which was now to give back reality to the human soul that had become picture. This, however, was not at once understood.
  • In the Middle Ages we have the last ramifications in the twelve around King Arthur's Table; but this was soon replaced by something else — the Parsifal Legend, which places One man over against the twelve, One Man, who develops the twelve-foldness from out of his own inner centre. Thus, over against that picture which was essentially the Grail picture, must be the Parsifal picture, in which what man now possesses within him, rays out from the centre. The endeavour of those in the Middle Ages who wished to understand the Parsifal picture, who wished to make the Parsifal striving active in the human soul, was to bring into the picture-existence that could crystallise out in man after all the materiality had filtered away — to bring into it true substance, inwardness of being. Whereas the Grail legend shows still the in-streaming from without, the Parsifal figure is now set over against it, raying out from the pictures that which can restore reality to them. Inasmuch as the Parsifal Legend appeared in this form, it represented the striving of humanity in the Middle Ages to find the way to the Christ within. It represents an instinctive striving to understand that which lives as the Christ in the evolution of humanity. If one studies inwardly what was experienced in the form of this figure of Parsifal, and compares it with what is to be found in the modern creeds, one receives a strong impulse towards that which must happen today. People are now satisfied with the mere husk of the word ‘Christ’ and believe that they thus possess Christ, whereas even the theologians themselves do not possess Him but hold to the outer interpretation of the word. In the Middle Ages there was still so much direct consciousness left, that by comprehending the representative of humanity, Parsifal, men were able to wrest their way upwards to the form of Christ. If we reflect on this we receive the impression of man's place in the whole Universe. Throughout the world of Nature, conversion of forces prevails. In man alone matter is thrown out by pure thought. That matter which is actually cast out of the human being by pure thought is also annihilated, it passes into nothingness.

If we reflect upon this, we must think of all Earth-existence as follows:

Here is the Earth, and on the Earth, Man; into Man passes matter. Everywhere else it is transmuted. In Man it is annihilated. The material Earth will pass away in proportion as matter is destroyed by man.

When, some day, all the substance of the Earth will have passed through the human organism, being used there for thinking, the Earth will cease to be a cosmic body. And what man will have gained from this cosmic Earth will be pictures. These however, will have a new reality, they will have preserved an original reality. This reality is that which proceeds from the force which, as central force, makes itself felt through the Mystery of Golgotha. Thus, when we look to the end of the Earth, what do we see? The end of the Earth will come when all its substance is destroyed as described above. Man will then possess pictures of all that has taken place in earthly evolution. At the end of the earthly period the Earth will have sunk into the Universe, and there would remain merely pictures, without reality. What gives them reality however, is the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha having been there in humanity; that gives these pictures inner reality for the life to come. Through the Mystery of Golgotha, a new beginning is set for the future existence of the Earth.

From this we can see that what is contained in our stream of evolution is not to be regarded merely as a continuous stream, where one thing is always related to another as effect to cause, but we must so consider the Earth-evolution that we recognise in the first place a pre-Christian evolution, out of which came all that men were able to think at that time, for what they were able then to think was contained in the Father-God, was imparted to the Earth through Him. The nature and work of the Father-God however, was such that what He created as Earth-evolution was given over to that part of Earth-evolution that tends to pass away. A new beginning was made with the Mystery of Golgotha. Of all that went before only pictures were to remain, as it were descriptive paintings of the world. These pictures were, however, to receive new reality through that which entered as Being into the evolution of the Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha. That is the cosmic significance of the Mystery of Golgotha; that is what I meant years ago, when I said: Christianity will not be understood until it has penetrated even into the physics of our Earth, until we understand how, even in physical things, the Christian substance works in the world-existence. We have not grasped Christianity until we can say to ourselves: Precisely in the domain of heat such a change is taking place in man that through it matter is being destroyed and a purely picture-existence comes forth out of the matter; but through the union of the human soul with the Christ-substance this picture-existence is made into a new reality.

...

Man however, retains these pictures, and they derive a reality for the future because a new substance has laid hold of them, the substance which has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha.

quote B

I think I have now shown how the possibility of permeating the moral law with what we can know of nature, and conversely, of permeating nature-knowledge with moral law—is bound up with spiritual science.

For the phantom which figures today in external science as Man, that delusive picture which shows Man as a configuration of mineral substance, simply does not exist. Man is just as much organised into the fluid element as into the solid [mineral]; he is organised also into the element of air, and above all, into that of warmth.

When we come as far as warmth, we find the transition to the soul-and-spirit nature, for in warmth we have already the transition from space to time; and that which is of the soul flows in the temporal. Beyond warmth we pass more and more out of space into time, and it becomes possible, by the roundabout way here indicated, to seek the moral in the physical.

Indeed it might be said that one who thinks short-sightedly will scarcely arrive at the connection of the moral with the physical in human nature—for one might certainly go to meet death as a miscreant without dislocating a limb, but remaining a well-formed Man. The warmth condition in the Man is however not examined. The warmth condition is changed far more subtly and delicately than is supposed, and works back upon what Man carries through death.

Today the method of study is such that we look up into abstraction, we have our thoughts up there; and we look down into the physical-material. We do not make the transition unless we pass over to the inwardly stirring warmth lying between these, which has, at least for human instinct, still a physical as well as a soul aspect.

We can develop warmth for our fellows morally—soul-warmth, which is the counterpart of physical warmth. This soul-warmth however, does not arise through a physical change in the sense of Julius Robert Mayer's theory; it arises ... but how does it arise? I might say that here it gives palpable evidence of itself.

Why do we speak of ‘warm’ feelings?

Because we feel, we experience that the feeling we call ‘warm’ gives the picture of outer, physical warmth. The warmth percolates into the picture. What today is only soul-warmth will in a future cosmic existence play a physical part, for the Christ-Impulse will live therein.

What today is simply picture-warmth in our world of feeling—will live on, that it may become physical when the Earth-warmth has disappeared, for it is what the Christ-substance, the Christ-Nature is. Let us try to find that delicate connection between external physical warmth and that which we instinctively call warmth of feeling; let us try to find it.

Let us go to what Goethe said in his book called ‘The Material-Moral effects of Colours’, let us see how in his colour-perception he places the cooling colours on one side, and the warming colours on the other; how he unites the material-moral with the physical conditions which can to a certain extent be measured with a thermoscope, and shows how the element of soul interplays with the external and physical. Then we arrive at one aspect of how a moral cosmogony can be found in the study of Goethe.

The Jesuits of course hate this alliance. ... [cont'd]

1921-05-13-GA204

.. is an eye-opener lecture and also refers to the 'enlivened images' the 'quickening to life of the current shadow-pictures of the intellect' and projects an dramatic destiny for those who will not be able to achieve this by then (last paragraph of this long quote)

See more on: Mineral plant like spiders

Quote A

Just as the separation of the moon was a decisive event, so too will be its re-entry. It is true that as human beings we shall still be inhabiting the earth, although birth will no longer take place in the ordinary way. We shall be connected with the earth by other means than through birth. We shall, however, have evolved in a certain respect by that time. And we must learn to connect what is happening today — I mean the fact that the intellect is becoming more and more shadowy — with what will one day be a great event in earthly evolution — the re-entry of the moon into the substance of the earth.

If the intellect continues to become even more spectral than it is already, if men never resolve to receive into their being what can now flow to them from spiritual worlds, then they will inevitably be absorbed into the shadowy grey-ness of their intellectual life.

What is this shadowy intellect? It cannot understand the real nature and being of man. The mineral world is the only realm which the shadowy human intellect is to a certain degree capable of understanding. Even the life of the plant remains enigmatical; still more so the life of the animal; while human life is altogether beyond the grasp of the mind. And so man goes on his way, evolving pictures of existence which in reality are nothing but a great world-question. His intellect cannot begin to grasp the real nature of plant or animal, and least of all that of the human being. This state of things will continue if man fails to listen to what is being given to him in the form of new Imaginations, in which cosmic existence is pictured to him.

The living wisdom that Spiritual Science is able to impart must be received into his shadowy, intellectual concepts and thoughts, for only so can the shadow-pictures of the intellect be quickened to life.

This quickening to life of the shadow-pictures of the intellect is not only a human but a cosmic event.

You will remember the passage in the book Outline of Esoteric Science dealing with the time when the human souls ascended to the planets and afterwards descended once more to earth-existence. I spoke of how the Mars-men, the Jupiter-men and the others descended again to earth. Now an event of great significance came to pass at the end of the seventies of last century. It is an event that can be described only in the light of facts which are revealed to us in the spiritual world. Whereas in the days of old Atlantis human beings came down to the earth from Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and so on — that is to say, beings of soul were drawn into the realm of earth-existence — since the end of the seventies of last century, other Beings — not of the human order — have been descending to the earth for the purposes of their further development. From cosmic realms beyond the earth they come down to the earth and enter into a definite relationship with human beings. Since the eighties of the nineteenth century, super-earthly Beings have been seeking to enter the sphere of earth-existence. Just as the Vulcan-men were the last to come down to the earth so now Vulcan Beings are actually coming into the realm of earthly existence. Super-earthly Beings are already here, and the fact that we are able to have a connected body of Spiritual Science at all today is due to the circumstance that Beings from beyond the earth are bringing the messages from the spiritual world down into earth-existence ...

.. I repeat, that since the last third of the nineteenth century Spiritual Beings from the cosmos have been coming into our own sphere of existence. Their home is the sphere lying between the moon and Mercury, but they are already pressing forward into the realm of earth-existence and seeking to gain a foothold there. And they will be able to find it if human beings are imbued with the thought of their existence. This can also be expressed as I expressed it just now, by saying that our shadowy intellect must be quickened to life by the pictures of Spiritual Science. We are speaking of concrete fact when we say: Spiritual Beings are seeking to come down into earth-existence and ought to be willingly received. Catastrophe after catastrophe must ensue, and earthly life will fall at length into social chaos, if opposition is maintained in human existence to the advent of these Beings. They desire nothing else than to be the advance-guards of what will happen to earth-existence when the moon is once again united with the earth.

Today people may consider it comparatively harmless to elaborate only those automatic, lifeless thoughts which arise in connection with the mineral world and the mineral nature of plant, animal and man. Materialists revel in such thoughts which are — well — thoughts and nothing more. But try to imagine what will happen if men go on unfolding no other kinds of thoughts until the time is reached in the eighth millennium for the moon-existence to unite again with the earth. These Beings of whom I have spoken will gradually come down to the earth. Vulcan Beings, ‘Supermen’ of Vulcan, ‘Supermen’ of Venus, of Mercury, of the Sun, will unite with this earth-existence. But if human beings persist in nothing but opposition to them, earth-existence will pass over into chaos in the course of the next few thousand years.

It will be quite possible for the men of earth, if they so wish, to develop a more and more automatic form of intellect — but that can also happen amid conditions of barbarism. Full and complete manhood, however, cannot come to expression in such a form of intellect, and men will have no relationship to the Beings who would fain come towards them in earth-existence.

And all those Beings of whom men have such an erroneous conception because the shadowy intellect can only grasp the mineral nature, the crudely material nature in the minerals, plants and animals, nay even in the human kingdom itself — all these thoughts which have no reality will in a trice become substantial realities when the moon unites again with the earth. And from the earth there will spring forth a terrible brood of beings, a brood of automata of an order of existence lying between the mineral and the plant kingdoms, and possessed of an overwhelming power of intellect. ...

.. And from the earth there will spring forth a terrible brood of beings, a brood of automata of an order of existence lying between the mineral and the plant kingdoms, and possessed of an overwhelming power of intellect.

This swarm will seize upon the earth, will spread over the earth like a network of ghastly, spider-like creatures, of an order lower than that of plant-existence, but possessed of overpowering wisdom. These spidery creatures will be all interlocked with one another, and in their outward movements they will imitate the thoughts that men have spun out of the shadowy intellect that has not allowed itself to be quickened by the new form of Imaginative Knowledge by Spiritual Science. All the thoughts that lack substance and reality will then be endowed with being.

The earth will be surrounded — as it is now with air and as it sometimes is with swarms of locusts — with a brood of terrible spider-like creatures, half-mineral, half-plant, interweaving with masterly intelligence, it is true, but with intensely evil intent. And in so far as man has not allowed his shadowy intellectual concepts to be quickened to life,

  • his existence will be united not with the Beings who have been trying to descend since the last third of the nineteenth century,
  • but with this ghastly brood of half-mineral, half-plantlike creatures. He will have to live together with these spider-like creatures and to continue his cosmic existence within the order of evolution into which this brood will then enter.

This is a destiny that is very emphatically part of human evolution upon the earth, and it is quite well known today by many of those who try to hold humanity back from the knowledge of Spiritual Science. For there are men who are actually conscious allies of this process of the entanglement of earth-existence. We must no longer allow ourselves to be shocked by descriptions of this kind. Such facts are the background of what is often said today by people who out of old traditions still have some consciousness of these things and who then see fit to surround them with a veil of mystery. But it is not right any longer for the process of the earthly evolution of humanity to be veiled in mystery. However great the resistance, these things must be said, for, as I constantly repeat, the acceptance or rejection of spiritual-scientific knowledge is a grave matter for all mankind.

Quote B

The intellect will become more and more shadowy. If Man does not resolve to absorb what is to descend from the spiritual world, he will pass completely over to the shadowy side of his intellect. The intellect is now only able to understand the mineral kingdom, it cannot penetrate to the human being. Plant life is a deep riddle to it, animal life is more so, human life is completely opaque. The formation of images devoid of reality will continue unless man resolves to develop imagination. If he does this the shadowy pictures will be re-animated by Spiritual Science, and become not merely human events but cosmic as well.

.With pictures is meant, all that Man has taken in as mineral substance on earth gets used and destroyed, so all that has taken place in earthly evolution. Man experiences this through the senses, and these astral images are then 'annihilated' or pass into nothingness.The context of the Christ Impulse of the higher ether linked to the etherization of blood, with this context the 1911-03-23-GA128 can be the door-opener lecture in this matter, if we also consider this destruction of matter in the head, which is mentioned in the GA201 lecture.

It can also resonate with ao the following extract from 1909-07-06-GA112 on this page.

1921-10-01-GA207

see Process of perception#1921-10-01-GA207

1921-10-29-GA208

for longer extract, see Seven life processes#1921-10-29-GA208

3/ The life of breathing gives image quality to the fleeting life of the senses that tends to preserve itself.

We are able to have images of the outside world because the breathing rhythm is in touch with the currents that pass through the nerves. Ideas and abstract thoughts are still entirely bound to the life of the nerves, but anything to do with images is connected with the life of breathing. When we breathe we have creative life in us, a life we may call the image-creating life.

This lives in the human form and therefore also takes part in the human form. We have seen that the human form arises out of the zodiac, and because the creative life that comes with our breathing lives in the human form, it also has part in the whole outer form that has been created out of the starry heavens.This form is therefore also part of the inner aspect of the human being.

And it is thanks to our breathing that we have not only the contents of our conscious mind but also images of all our internal organs, images based on the outer form. Our internal organs therefore arise at first in a roundabout way, as images created in the breathing process. They do not yet have substance at this point. The breath creates an image of the internal human being. With our breathing we are in the outside world, moving within the zodiac with the Earth, and we are continually inhaling the images of our internal organization.

These images are inhaled from life outside us. This, then is our creative life. The images we inhale are spread through the whole organism by the life of circulation. This and the life of breathing take human beings to the point where they are inwardly image of the world. Thus we may say: "This is the creative life", and then say: "These are images that spread, something that spreads out, images of our organs."

4 and 5/ The life of circulation is in touch with the life of metabolism, with the result that the images are given physical substance and physical organs develop on the fifth level of life. Matter infiltrates the images; it suffuses or tinges them. Thus the upper human being creates images in the life of breathing and these images are made tangible reality by the matter that infiltrates and tinges them.

1924-02-10-GA234

describes memory in various stages as it is experienced not only in life, but also those same memories of life experiences, in the process between death and a new birth where they are metamorphosed in the etheric view, the astral, and then the spirit world

It is only now, after having undergone all this, that we enter the spiritual world and are really able to live there. Our faculty of memory now undergoes its fourth metamorphosis.

We feel that everywhere behind the ordinary memory of earthly life something has been living in us, though we were not aware of it. It has engraved itself into the world and now we, ourselves, become it.

We have received our earthly life in its spiritual significance; we now become this significance.

After travelling back through birth to the spiritual world we find ourselves confronting it in a very peculiar way. In a sense, we ourselves in our spiritual counterpart — in our true spiritual worth — now confront the world. We have passed through the above experiences, have experienced the pain caused to another, have experienced the spiritual value corresponding to an experience with a tree, let us say; we have experienced all this, but it was not self-experience. We might compare this with the embryonic stage of human life; for then — and even throughout the first years of life — all we experience does not yet reach the level of self-consciousness, which only awakens gradually.

Thus, when we enter the spiritual world, all we have experienced backwards gradually becomes ourself, our spiritual self-consciousness. We are now what we have experienced; we are our own spiritual worth corresponding thereto.

With this existence, that really represents the other side of our earthly existence, we enter the world that contains nothing of the ordinary kingdoms of external nature - mineral, plant and animal kingdoms - for these belong to the Earth. But in that world there immediately come before us, first, the souls of those who have died before us and to whom we stood in some kind of relationship, and then the individualities of higher spiritual beings. We live as spirit among human and non-human spirits, and this environment of spiritual individualities is now our world. The relationship of these spiritual individualities, human or non-human, to ourselves now constitutes our experience. As on Earth we have our experience with the beings of the external kingdoms of nature, so now, with spiritual beings of different ranks. And it is especially important that we have felt their sympathies and antipathies like spiritual rain (to use yesterday's metaphor) permeating these experiences during the retrospective part of the life between death and birth that I have described to you schematically.

We now stand face to face with these beings of whom we previously perceived only their sympathies and antipathies while we were living through the spiritual counterpart of our earthly life: we live among these beings now that we have reached the spiritual world. We gradually feel as if inwardly permeated with force, with impulses proceeding from the spiritual beings around us. All that we have previously experienced now becomes more and more real to us, in a spiritual way. We gradually feel as if standing in the light or shadow of these beings in whom we are beginning to live. Before, through living through the spiritual worth corresponding to some earthly experience, we felt this or that about it, found it valuable or harmful to the cosmos. We now feel: There is something I have done on earth, in thought or deed; it has its corresponding spiritual worth, and this is engraved into the spiritual cosmos. The beings whom I now encounter can either do something with it, or not; it either lies in the direction of their evolution or of the evolution for which they are striving, or it does not. We feel ourselves placed before the beings of the spiritual world and realise that we have acted in accordance with their intentions or against them, have either added to, or subtracted from, what they willed for the evolution of the world.

Above all, it is no mere ideal judgment of ourselves that we feel, but a real evaluation; and this evaluation is itself the reality of our existence when we enter the spiritual world after death.

When you have done something wrong as a Man in the physical world, you condemn it yourself if you have sufficient conscience and reason; or it is condemned by the law, or by the judge, or by other men who despise you for it. But you do not grow thin on this account — at least, not very thin, unless you are quite specially constituted. On entering the world of spiritual beings, however, we do not merely meet the ideal judgment that we are of little worth in respect of any fault or disgraceful deed we have committed; we feel the gaze of these beings resting upon us as if it would annihilate our very being. In respect of all we have done that is valuable, the gaze of these beings falls upon us as if we first attained thereby our full reality as psycho-spiritual beings. Our reality depends upon our value. Should we have hindered the evolution that was intended in the spiritual world, it is as if darkness were robbing us of our very existence. If we have done something in accordance with the evolution of the spiritual world, and its effects continue, it is as if light were calling us to fresh spiritual life. We experience all I have described and enter the realm of spiritual beings. This enhances our consciousness in the spiritual world and keeps us awake. Through all the demands made upon us there, we realise that we have won something in the universe in regard to our own reality.

Suppose we have done something that hinders the evolution of the world and can only arouse the antipathy of the spiritual beings whose realm we now enter. The after-effect takes its course as I have described and we feel our consciousness darken; stupefaction ensues, sometimes complete extinction of consciousness. We must now wake up again. On doing so, we feel in regard to our spiritual existence as if someone were cutting into our flesh in the physical world; only, this experience in the spiritual is much more real — though it is real enough in the physical world. In short, what we are in the spiritual world proves to be the result of what we ourselves have initiated. You see from this that man has sufficient inducement to return again to earthly life.

Why to return? Well, through what he has engraved into the spiritual world man has himself experienced all he has done for good or ill in earthly life; and it is only by returning to earth that he can actually compensate for what, after all, he has only learnt to know through earthly experience. In fact, when he reads his value for the world in the countenances of these spiritual beings — to put it metaphorically — he is sufficiently impelled to return, when able, to the physical world, in order to live his life in a different way from before. Many incapacities for this he will still retain, and only after many lives on earth will full compensation really be possible.

If we look into ourselves during earthly life, we find, at first, memories. It is of these that, to begin with, we build our soul-life when we shut out the external world; and it is upon these alone that the creative imagination of the artist draws. That is the first form of memory. Behind it are the mighty ‘pictures’ which become perceptible immediately after we have passed through the gate of death. These are taken from us: they expand to the wide spaces of the universe. When we survey our memory-pictures we can say that there lives behind them something that at once proceeds towards the cosmic spaces when our body is taken from us. Through our body we hold together what is really seeking to become ‘ideal’ in the universe. But while we go through life and retain memories of our experiences, we leave behind in the world something still further behind our memories. We leave it behind us in the course of time and must experience it again as we retrace our steps. This lies behind our memory as a third ‘structure’. First, we have the tapestry of memory; behind it, the mighty cosmic pictures we have ‘rolled up’ within us; behind this, again, lives what we have written into the world. Not until we have lived through this are we really ourselves, standing naked in spirit before the spiritual universe which clothes us in its garments when we enter it.

We must, indeed, look at our memories if we want to get gradually beyond the transient life of Man. Our earthly memories are transient and become dispersed through the universe. But our Self lives behind them: the Self that is given us again from out of the spiritual world that we may find our way from time to eternity.

1925-GA026 - LT010 and LT011

LT 10:

Consciousness, therefore, does not arise by a further enhancement of activities which proceed from the physical and etheric bodies. On the contrary, these two bodies, with their activities, must be reduced to zero—nay even below zero—to ‘make room’ for the working of consciousness. They do not generate consciousness, they only furnish the ground on which the spirit must stand in order to bring forth consciousness within the earthly life.

As Man on Earth needs the ground on which to stand, so does the spiritual, within the earthly realm, need a material foundation on which it may unfold itself. And as a planet in the cosmic spaces does not require any ground beneath it in order to assert its place, so too the spirit, when it looks—not through the senses into material—but through its own power into spiritual things, needs no material foundation to call its conscious activity to life.

LT 11:

The self-consciousness which is summed up in the ‘I’ emerges out of the sea of consciousness.

Consciousness arises when the forces of the physical and etheric bodies disintegrate these bodies, and thus make way for the spiritual to enter into Man.

For through this disintegration is provided the ground on which the life of consciousness can develop.

If, however, the organism is not to be destroyed, the disintegration must be followed by a reconstruction. Thus, when for an experience in consciousness a process of disintegration has taken place, that which has been demolished will be built up again exactly.

The experience of self-consciousness lies in the perception of this upbuilding process.

The same process can be observed with inner vision. We then feel how the conscious is led over into the self-conscious by Man's creating out of himself an after-image of the merely conscious.

The latter has its image in the emptiness, as it were, produced within the organism by the disintegration. It has passed into self-consciousness when the emptiness has been filled up again from within. The being, capable of this ‘fulfilment,’ is experienced as 'I'.

Discussion


Related pages

References and further reading

Retrieved from "https://anthroposophy.eu/w/index.php?title=Enlivened_images&oldid=32506"
Powered by MediaWiki
Powered by Semantic MediaWiki