Meaning of Free Man Creator

"Free Man Creator" was chosen as a shortest key to coin an essential message of spiritual science (and Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy specifically).

It expresses the importance of the fact that Man is truly the first spiritual entity that was totally set free in creation, set free of the work of the creative hierarchies and divine providence. Freedom of choice as a precondition to develop love. The implication of this, which can not be underestimated and requires so much insight to truly realize in its full extent, is that Man becomes Creator through all his thoughts, feelings and actions. Man contributes directly to the creation of future worlds, he co-creates the Seeds for future worlds. The implication is responsibility. With conscious free choice comes a responsibility which extends far from what Man currently sees as the impact of his actions.

The teachings of reincarnations add perspective to this, because we ourselves will come back again and again in this world we co-create. And the future, not just the past, is created by the impulses coming from waves of incarnating individualities like yourself, a spirit in a physical body. Again the implication is responsibility.

Therefore the topic of Free Man Creator is also about the most fundamental questions that Man can ask:

what is the Meaning of life?
where are we coming from?
where are we going?
who are we, really? .. which is the same question as 'Man, know Thyself'

What this site offers

These questions are so deep and encompassing that they can not be answered in a single phrase or page. You can keep going to deepen your own understanding on each of these main questions which form a foundation for a conscious and good human life.

Therefore the only way to approach this is as a personal quest or hero's journey, a process that will lead to light, and answers. In other words, this becomes a process or a journey, and you will discover that what matters is the how instead of a what.

This site provides some guidance along the way - see Schema FMC00.053 below.

Aspects

the lecture proposed here as central or key to the theme of Free Man Creator is 1909-06-17-GA107 and has to be read in full as introduction

Schema FMC00.055 below provides a high level positioning of how Man becomes Creator. Relate this to Schema FMC00.400 on Cosmic breath of Brahma
another angle of perspective to approach developing an understanding of how Man becomes Creator is Schema FMC00.143B on The elementary kingdoms
in the future (why this is needed in these times, 'signs of the times')
- Man will experience in the near future that he's living at the cost of a dying process. This knowledge can make man very sad. Men will be overcome by deep sadness and melancholy, and the number of suicides will rise sharply. While outer courage is growing in sensory life, inner courage will decline. (1913-11-17-GA266)

Inspirational quotes

Dostoevsky

taken from Virtues#Inspirational quotes

You are working for the whole .. acting for the future. Seek no reward, for great is your reward .. the spiritual joy which is only vouchsafed to the righteous Man

Sigismund Von Gleich in 'The transformation of Evil and the Subterranean Spheres of the Earth'

The human being, who remains at the center of existence, has the task in the second half of .. evolution (Future Jupiter, Future Venus, Vulcan), to redeem the sub-earthly forces, in spiritual fraternity with the divine mediator and upper power

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.336 (is an old pencil drawing that) provides a map for the territory of a lifelong study, and maps to the structure of this site.

(1) It starts with (in brown-grey) the trigger: Man's most important questions that live in our soul: the three with arrows, and the 'meaning of life?' below.

(2) This leads to 'Man: know thyself' which leads to the study of Man as microcosm and (an integral part of, and relationship with, the) macrocosm. This is studied on this site in the area Man - the human being (in red)

(3) This study really requires an understanding of evolution (in blue): evolution of both Man as the microcosm, and the macrocosm or great Cosmos. This is the second great area of study on this site: Evolution

(4) Clearly as spiritual beings are the make up of both microcosm and macrocosm, it is they who evolve, and it their evolution that make up the evolution of Man and the cosmos. Hence spiritual hierarchies (in green) is the next great area of study. As Rudolf Steiner points out regularly "all is beings" - see also Cosmic fractal.

(5) The framework of the Body of Knowledge and insight, thus developed, also allows to re-frame the question 'meaning of life', as that question depends fully on the frame of reference, and the meaning one gives to the words 'meaning' and 'life'. The answer is Free Man Creator, see Meaning of Free Man Creator. However the answer alone, without the journey and context, and frame of reference thus developed, will not be meaningful.

(6) It is this study that fills heart and soul with the conscious responsibility to act in the world, and to have the strength of will to put Initiation as a personal priority in our life, to make best use of this incarnation and 'lead the best life possible'.

Schema FMC00.525 is a notebook drawing (dated 1906) by Rudolf Steiner, whereby he depicts the evolution of Man as the divine seed of atma, (arising from the nirvana world) that gives rise to Man's bodily principles in the consecutive planetary stages of evolution as it descends through the various planes or worlds of consciousness, see the image of the Golden Chain (eg Schema FMC00.141). Man originates from this spark or divine seed of atma and buddhi and our solar system evolution takes place in the planes from the higher spirit world downwards. The process consist of evolution and involution (1907-12-29-GA101), and on the return the spiritualization leads to Man becoming atma or spirit-man, Man becomes a God. Man adds something new to development, creates out of nothingness in addition to involution and evolution (1909-06-17-GA107). See Meaning of Free Man Creator. The turning point is given by the Christ Impulse at the Mystery of Golgotha, see also Cosmic breath of Brahma (eg Schema FMC00.400) and Overview of solar system evolution.

For the spiral symbol of evolution, see also Schema's FMC00.169, FMC00.438 (and FMC00.444), and FMC00.486

Schema FMC00.055 illustrates Free Man Creator as participating to creation since Man received his 'I' and thereby can write into the fourth layer of the Spirit World, and through his thoughts feelings and actions contributes to the creation of future worlds. See also: seeds for future worlds.

Schema FMC00.479A is a densely written narrative to the responsibility of Man as a Free Man Creator contribution to the future development of the cosmos. It requires us to see ourselves as more than our body in the physical world, as per mineral science and the contemporary worldview where first the spirit, and now the soul is being eradicated. In today's world Man's meaning of life is left without higher purpose or ideals in a materialistic worldview of the cosmos, with dramatic implications for each individual soul and humanity as a whole.

The goal of this website is to support souls to emancipate oneself from this through education into spiritual science and the Christ Impulse, and the study of the site contents should let some light into the cracks.

Notes:

the terms in bold in the text below are topic pages on this website, for further study
for a more elaborate version of the drawing with explanations, see Schema FMC00.479

Schema FMC00.053 below illustrates pointers we can follow in our quest: .. to study the Golden chain, the meaning of waste and sacrifice in nature, the occult atom, the '25920' theme where we, Man, the microcosm, can 'feel' ourselves into being an integral part of the macrocosm. These terms are - at this stage - nothing but labels for or pointers to important themes that can help along the path, as will become clear once you dive into them and start deepening your understanding. Consider them study topics that contains clues.

You will need to integrate all these topics in your soul, together with a vision of Man as the 10th hierarchy in an evolutionary framework. If you can do this with your heart and soul, not just your brain and intellectual understanding, then this will bring you closer to the light that will begin to dawn and shine in you. This has a deep impact for your own development whereby you also contribute to the development of mankind. (see also note in Discussion area)

Lecture coverage and references

1907-12-29-GA101

describes the three main steps that always occur in the great evolutionary dynamic.

How evolution and involution balance eachother out in some way, and the true progress comes from the additional influences that are esoterically referred to as 'create from nothing' (see also GA089).

evolution
involution
create from nothing

1909-06-17-GA107

The lecture proposed here as central or key to the theme of Free Man Creator is 1909-06-17-GA107 and has to be read in full and in context:

.. Man adds something new to development, creates as it were something out of nothingness in addition to involution and evolution

1912-06-20-GA133

See the 1912-06-20-GA133 quote on The two halves of an evolutionary cycle :

.. something quite definite will come about during the second half of the period of Earth-evolution into which we have now passed ... towards the end of a planetary age it is always the case that the being of central importance — and on the Earth this is Man — is left free, so that the qualities with which he was originally endowed may pass more freely into his own hands.

1914-01-23-GA151

We are thought out from the cosmos — the cosmos thinks us.
And just as we, in our little daily thought-work, make little engravings in our brain, and then the ideas “lion”, “dog”, “table”, “rose”, “book”, “on”, “right”, “left”, come into our consciousness as reflections of that which we have prepared in our brain — i.e. just as we, through the working-up of the brain, finally perceive, lion, dog, table, rose, book, on, off, right, write, read — the beings of the cosmic hierarchies work in such a way that they carry out the great thought-activity which engraves upon the world things far more significant than our daily thought-activity can accomplish.
So it comes to pass that not only the tiny little markings arise and are then reflected singly as our thoughts, but that we ourselves, in our whole being, appear again to the Beings of the higher Hierarchies as their thoughts.
As our little brain-processes mirror our little thoughts, so do we mirror the thoughts of the cosmos which are engraved upon the world. When the hierarchies of the cosmos “think”, they “think”, for example, men. As our little thoughts emerge from our little brain-processes, so do the thoughts of the hierarchies arise from their work, to which we ourselves belong. As parts of our brain are for us the reflecting-apparatus which we first work up for our thoughts, so are we, we little beings, the substance which the hierarchies of the cosmos prepare for their thoughts.
Thus we might say, in a certain sense, that we can feel ourselves with regard to the cosmos as a little portion of our brain might feel with regard to ourselves.
But as little as we, in our soul-spiritual nature, are our brains, so little are the beings of the hierarchies “we”. Hence we have an independent status in relation to the beings of the higher hHierarchies.
And we can say that while in a certain manner we serve them so that they may be able to think through us, yet at the same time we are independent beings with identities of our own, as indeed, in a certain way, the particles of our brain have their own life.
Thus we find the connection between human and cosmic thoughts.
Human thought is the regent of the brain; cosmic thought is such a regent that we belong with our whole being to that which it has to accomplish. Only, because in consequence of our karma it cannot direct its thoughts on to us all equally, we have to be constituted in accordance with its logic.
Thus we men have a logic according to which we think, and so have the spiritual hierarchies of the cosmos their logic.

1913-11-17-GA266

A man's memory goes back to a time between birth and the change of teeth; that's when I-consciousness began. The physical body's form is already finished then, it only grows some more. One could ask what things would be like if one's memory only went back to age ten. Suppose that someone who awakened to self-consciousness at 10 asked to be awakened at a certain time.
Then, on waking, he would have the impression that he went to his door himself, knocked, and woke himself up. Or on awaking by himself, he would see himself coming in as a light figure, walking towards himself, opening his eyes and awaking himself thereby. He would be able to know: In the realm from which his light form comes to him, there the Christ is also.
Many people will experience this in the near future, even though Man's self-consciousness arises already during the first seven years. We're standing at an important turning point, and this must be pointed out.
A Man will then experience that the light form of his astral body is floating towards him, and he'll know that this light form is consuming his physical body, and that every time it leaves the latter it takes a piece of it along, as it were. And when the apparition takes possession of the physical body again in the morning, Man will see that he's living at the cost of a dying process. This knowledge can make men very sad and melancholic. They'll no longer value their physical body.
And whereas men's courage will be tremendously increased by outer culture, air vehicles and other technological attainments, at the same time life will be considered to be of little value. Men will be overcome by deep sadness and melancholy, and the number of suicides will rise sharply. While outer courage is growing in sensory life, inner courage will necessarily decline and give way to a disguised cowardice.
Men become ever more materialistic and don't want to know anything about the soul and spirit. Angels inspired Kant to set up his limits to knowledge, so that men could develop outer courage. But just as a compressed rubber ball springs back, so this will produce a reaction in souls, and then men's courage will want to turn to the attainment of knowledge of spiritual worlds again.
Men who don't find their way to the Christ see the figure of death walking beside them. But we know that Christ lives in the Earth's aura and that we're always connected with him. If we know this and keep it alive in us, the picture of death takes on Christ's features and he walks beside us like a Man, even if we don't see him clairvoyantly. Then we know where to look for the Christ. We can't escape the spirit of the times, it works everywhere. But the knowledge that Christ lives and that we can get to him will keep our souls from desolation, deep melancholy and disdain of life. We'll understand the word in our rosicrucian verse: In Christo morimur. If we let all of this become really alive in our souls in quiet moments it can become a big help to us.

1919-11-09-GA191

The all-essential causes of what happens on the Earth do not lie outside Man; they lie within mankind. And if earthly consciousness is to expand to cosmic consciousness, humanity must realise that the Earth—not over short but over long stretches of time—is made in its own likeness, in the likeness of humanity itself. There is no better means of lulling Man to sleep than to impress upon him that he has no share in the course taken by Earth-existence. This narrows down human responsibility to the single individual, the single personality.
...
The destiny of our physical Earth-planet in another two thousand years will not depend upon the present constitution of our mineral world, but upon what we do and allow to be done.
With world-consciousness, human responsibility widens into world-responsibility. With such consciousness we feel as we look up to the starry heavens that we are responsible to this cosmic expanse, permeated and pervaded as it is by spirit—that we are responsible to this world for how we conduct the Earth. We grow together with the cosmos in concrete reality when behind the phenomena we seek for the truth.

1920-08-28-GA199

When you live in a house and wish to have contact with the outer world without actually stepping outside, you must look out of the window. When the gods of the nine hierarchies wish to communicate with this world, they must do so through Man. They cannot do it directly, they must do it through Man. It is a region of the world that can be contemplated by the gods only by means of human beings. Man must enter the physical world from the world he inhabits between death and rebirth in order to bring about a reciprocal intercourse for the gods with the world evolving here (see sketch below).
And for what purpose does this world, developing beyond the sense tapestry, exist?
If this world were not there, the physical world would disperse in all directions. It is the world that would be reduced to dust, for it is the world in which only forces of antipathy hold sway. The world beyond the sense tapestry (circle) holds this physical world together. In the physical world, the tendency exists to expand and spread out constantly; this world (circle) holds it together.
The gods only come into contact with this centripetally working world through the human being. The reason man has entered the cosmos is so that the world of the gods can come into a relationship, into a perceptive relation and intercourse, with this centripetal world.
Viewed from beyond the threshold, this centripetal world is cold and icy. To experience it is to be affected by something rigidifying, calcifying; yet it is filled with wisdom. It is woven, as it were, out of wisdom-filled thoughts, but it is cold, rigid, evoking chills. This cold, rigid world of forces holds the other (physical) world together. The human being is not organized so that he can sense this centripetal world directly. The person who enters the realm beyond the threshold feels this chill, this cold contraction. This coldness is the sign that one is actually entering with one's I and astral body into the world which man enters each night, but without consciousness, not experiencing it. It is a sign that you enter consciously when you come into a world that makes you freeze, pervades you luminously with infmitely intensive wisdom, yet makes you freeze. Without this experience of freezing and stiffening to begin with, you cannot sense yourself an the other side of the threshold with your ego and astral body.
...
Then why does one go about in it — for, after all, one also goes about in the same world when one is awake — why does one?

Man brings into this world of centripetal forces cosmic forces that dwell within his inner being. When we grasp clearly in our mind's eye what it is that lives as forces in man's inner being (more detail in the next lecture) it is an element that we can call love, warmth of soul; the human being carries this soul warmth into the cold domain. This is preeminently his cosmic task. He is the source of warmth for this sphere. If I may so express myself, inasmuch as the gods have created Man - to put the matter trivially - they have created the opening for just this region that must hold together for them the world that would otherwise disperse in dust.

1920-10-31-GA200

Describes how Man will continue to evolve in the current times and how this will evolutionary tendency will influence his state of mind in the world of today. Evolutionary Man is currently already in an age developing the future spirit soul in a preliminary way, and this impacts how Man stands in the world, a world which - with a materialistic worldview based on mineral science, stands squarely tangential to this feeling. (SWCC)

In reality the human being is not an earth-being but a cosmic being belonging to the whole universe. On the one side the human being will feel himself bound to the earth; on the other he will feel himself to be a cosmic being. This feeling will weigh down on him. And when this is no longer mere theory but is experienced by individual human beings whose karma enables them to grow beyond the trivial feelings of today — when humanity comes to feel disgust at the thought of purely inherited characteristics and at the emotions engendered by chauvinism and turns against all this — only then will a kind of reverse begin.
The human being will feel himself to be a cosmic being. As though with outstretched arms he will ask for the solution to the riddle of his cosmic being. This is what will come in the next decades: as though with outstretched arms — I mean this, of course, symbolically — the human being will ask:
'Who can decipher for me my nature as a cosmic being? Everything that I can establish on Earth, all that the Earth can give me, all that I can get from the natural science that is so highly valued today, accounts for me only as an Earth-being and leaves the true being of Man as an unsolved riddle.
I know that I am a cosmic, a super-earthly being. Who can unravel for me the riddle of this super-earthly being?'
This will live in the human soul as a question rising up from a fundamental experience. .. this question will be more important than anything else or any other feelings people may have. And the expectation, the longing, that there has to be a solution to this human riddle — the riddle that the human beings are, after all, cosmic beings. This feeling towards the cosmos —that one day it must reveal what cannot come from the earth —all this will create a mood to which the cosmos responds.
Just as the physical Christ appeared at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha so the spiritual Christ will appear to humanity. He alone can give the answer because He is not in some indefinite place but must be recognized as a Being from beyond the earth who has united Himself with earthly humanity. People will have to understand that the question of cosmic man can be answered only if He who unites Himself with the earth from out of the cosmos comes to their aid. This will be the solution of the most significant disharmony that has ever arisen in earth-existence; the disharmony between the human being's feeling as an earthly being and his knowledge that he is a super-earthly being, a cosmic being. The fulfilment of this longing (Drang) will prepare man to recognize how, out of grey spiritual depths, the Christ-Being will reveal Himself to him and will speak to him spiritually, just as, at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, He spoke to him physically.

1920-12-19-GA202

See also quote about Freedom and Love of 1920-12-19-GA202 on Christ Module 10 - Tenth Hierarchy

1923-03-18-GA222

We shall realize that in the present age what was once the necessary world-order is still opposed by all that has remained from those Spirits of Form who are still intent upon ruling over the cosmic thoughts in the old way. And this is the most important concern of civilization in our time.
The deeper talks of Man today consist in this: through a right attitude to the Archai, to become truly free so that he may also adopt the right attitude to the Spirits of Form who today are not within their rights when they strive to exercise rulership over the cosmic thoughts as formerly, but were once the legitimate rulers. On the one hand we shall find what makes life in the world difficult, but we shall also find everywhere ways out of these difficulties. Only we must seek for these ways as free individuals. For if we have no will to achieve a free development of thoughts, what could the Archai possibly make of us?
What is important in our age is that Man should have the resolute will to be a free being. In most cases he still does not will it and so has to accommodate himself to the idea. It is still difficult today for a Man to wish to be a free being. What would please him most would be to wish what he likes and that the right spirits would be there to carry out his wishes in an invisible, super-sensible way. Then he would perhaps feel free, feel his dignity as Man! We need only wait for one or two incarnations — not such a very long time, until about the year 2800 or 3000 — and then in our next incarnation, when looking back on the earlier one, we should never be able to excuse ourselves if we had confused human freedom with the furtherance of human comfort by indulgent Gods!
Today Man does exactly this: he confuses freedom and indulgence of benevolent Gods with his love of ease and his wishes for comfort. There are still many people today who wish that there were benevolent Gods to carry out their wishes without much assistance from themselves. But as I said, we need only wait for the year 2800 or 3000 and in a subsequent incarnation we shall thoroughly despise such an attitude.
Today, if we develop a truly moral attitude of mind this must be allied with a certain moral strength, with a genuine desire for freedom — inner freedom in the first place; outer freedom will soon follow in the right form if the will for inner freedom is present.
But to this end it is essential to perceive exactly where the unauthorized Spirits of Form are active. Well, they are active everywhere. I could imagine — the human intellect has such a strongly Luciferic tendency — that there may be people who say: Yes, it would certainly be much more sensible for the divine ordering of the world if these backward Spirits of Form were not causing havoc, indeed if they were not there at all ! I advise individuals who think like this also to consider as sensible people whether they could nourish themselves without at the same time filling their intestines with unpleasant substances. The one process is simply not possible without the other. Similarly it is not possible in the world for the things upon which the greatness and dignity of Man depend to exist without their correlates.

Discussion

Note 1 - A personal note on Free Man Creator

Note from the author:

The above quote from 1920-10-31-GA200 touched me deeply as it resonated with how I felt since my youth. And so I feel for my fellow human beings who live with the same state of soul.

A first early answer came many years ago, as part of a whole path of discovery and learning of the topic of '25920'. When one parses all these lectures carefully and feels one's way into it, it really can induce the mystical feeling of feeling one with the macrocosmos.

Later on I realized it goes much further, and how we are literally made up of the hierarchies, that are all concurrently in a dynamic of evolution, hence the 'golden chain' topic, and the Cosmic fractal. That is why these topics are presented on the site, and same goes for the 'occult atom' which is of the same class.

This topic raises the most difficult questions, and Free Man Creator is just a term, to be filled with meaning through study .. but how about the content of the answer?

Freedom and Love (see Philosophy of Freedom, or quote above) are the central answer to the question about Man and the purpose of evolution. It is possible to understand this spiritual scientifically in an almost technical way, looking, for example, at how Man creates in the fourth sublayer of the Spirit world, and how through his creation by 'morally good willing' he co-creates the future Tenth Hierarchy along the processes of consecutive evolutionary phases and planetary stages (see eg the pralaya between Earth and Future Jupiter).

In all this, what emerges as the center of evolution that gives meaning to Man's past and future, is the Mystery of Golgotha and the Christ Impulse - see Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha and the three times seven study modules on this site.