The Earth as the spiritual center of the cosmos
L E S S O N Please note: this is not a regular FMC wiki topic page but a narrative, as part of a curriculum of lessons under development The suggestion is to read the text in a flow. Hyperlinks have only been added for study purposes afterwards, but should not distract from the text that is focusing on answering the title question.
Trigger question
This short text was written in response to a question, it was deliberately densely written to keep the flow focused on addressing the question.
Dear RS friends! On a number of occasions Steiner mentions that Earth is "the spiritual center of the cosmos". This meaning always bypassed me. For I tend to interpret this quite literally. But then, the cosmos is, as I suppose, teaming with star systems with planets that are suitable for life. Keep in mind that according to astronomy there are over 2 billion (known) galaxies, and possibly many more! So is Earth then so special as to be the 'spiritual center'? And not just of our galaxy, but of the Universe ... Can anyone please explain what is meant by this?
Introduction
The difficulty in answering the most fundamental questions is that, when one answers elaborating for a complete or the best possible answer, we base ourselves upon a whole pyramid of knowledge that can not be assumed as fully known to the reader of the answer, so by necessity concepts and insights are mentioned implicitly that make up the answer.
Having thought about this, I now consider the best approach to be the ‘pyramid principle’ [*], that is: that an answer is composed in the form of a densely written 'pyramidion' statement, whereby double clicking each word or sub-phrase allows one to drill down and expand any sub-phrase, and so on (to the pyramid of the knowledge foundation below). The drilling down is optional and part of follow up study when things are not clear. As spiritual science is a body of knowledge and a worldview, one can not expect that everything is simple and clear all by itself. However as one invests soul work into deepening one’s understanding, the image becomes better, like a fuzzy real low resolution thumbnail becoming a highres jpg image.
What it is not
This phrase 'The Earth as the spiritual center of the cosmos' ... is not to be approached from the materialistic worldview of mineral science with its contemporary cosmological views of the universe (believing everything is matter and energy). These views do not reflect the reality of spiritual beings and the various worlds of consciousness. So whatever orientation one tries to grasp from this physical-materialistic worldview is just not correct or even relevant for understanding this statement, as the meaning of the word ‘center’ is there related to physical space.
Answer – real short
With ‘a new center’ is meant, the new center for humanity as the tenth spiritual hierarchy.
Human beings have been set free from the direct guidance of the higher spiritual hierarchies, they now have free choice and become co-creators of future worlds. In this development and as part of the future spiritualization, the Earth as a planet and its community of spiritual beings is evolving from the physical material planet that we know to a shining spiritual body, to a Sun. Afterwards the evolved humanity, as creative ‘gods’, will be at the center of a new creation. Earth and humanity are therefore truly the start of a new cosmos that is in embryonal development.
Evolutionary perspective – general and necessary background leading to the essence
All spiritual hierarchies that make up our cosmos, in their evolution 'climb the CoC-ladder', so to speak, that is an expression to say they grow in the Condition of Consciousness (CoC). The lower CoC-levels are receiving, then there is a pivoting point, and then the higher CoC levels are about giving, creating, to self-sacrifice. (Schema FMC00.048 and FMC00.660). Humanity has now reached CoC-4 (human stage) on Earth, but will grow to CoC-7 on Vulcan and from then on will be creators of a new cosmos, just like the spiritual hierarchy of the Thrones did when starting a new solar system evolution with Old Saturn. (The situation is not quite comparable though because humanity, as tenth spiritual hierarchy, is special versus the previous hierarchies, but that would lead us too far here.) So we are just at the start of our future as Free Man Creator, and the Mystery of Golgotha was a turning point in that whole process from receiving to giving, it is pivotal towards giving and selfless spiritual love (which is the meaning of Christos, as a cosmic principle in the higher spirit world).
Whereas we are living in a physical reality, we humans are in truth spiritual beings in the process of individuation, that is we are ‘in the works’ of becoming individual balanced autonomous spirits. That is the principle referred to as mahat. (Schema FMC00.568)
Now when human beings have attained autonomy with an individualized human ‘I’, like on Earth today, we have both lower bodily principles (physical, astral), and higher (in the spirit world). Through our journey, we have first ‘descended’ (as part of a cosmic out-breathing, and received) and become more complex beings with lower principles in order to achieve ‘separate-ness’ (you and me are different as different physical bodies) and freedom. Then from now onward however follows a re-ascent and spiritualization (as part of a cosmic in-breathing, with giving).
Now as human beings develop virtues and live and share moral ideals, they basically connect to those ‘things’ that are actually real things, the substance or essence in the spirit world. When two or more people live moral ideals, they form like the straw from which a dune develops on a beach. A new center gets created. (please study Schema FMC00.188). “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matthew 18:20)
And the vantage point, the scaffold for that evolution in the higher spirit world is the Christ principle (Schema FMC00.481). For us down below on Earth, this is the idea of the Second Adam (Schema FMC00.189) or future group soul of humanity. Just as we had (physical) divergence for the sake of becoming individualized, this is followed be (spiritual) convergence. (Schema FMC00.568 or 594?)
This section above went into how a new center is created, what center is meant. What has not been yet covered is why this would be a spiritual center of the/a cosmos.
New cosmos, creation, center ... ‘Earth becomes a Sun’ .. and beyond
As a starting point, the poem by Morgenstern ‘So the Earth becomes a Sun’ coins the essence of Steiner’s teaching in condensed phrasing. In Steiner’s words: with the Mystery of Golgotha, “a new focal point has been created” ... that “provided the first impetus for the Earth to become a sun” ... and “suffused the Earth with an astral light that will gradually become an etheric and then a physical light” (1909-07-06-GA112 and 1909-07-07-GA112) or “the Earth ... is an embryo .... the germ of a new universe” (1925-GA026 – LT). Or again “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17).
This phrasing confirms: a ‘new focal point’, ‘a new universe’, ‘a new creation’.
How to understand all this?
To come full circle, unfortunately there is no other way but to put forth two considerations. I say ‘unfortunately’ because indeed, these are more complex thoughts to get one’s head around in spiritual science (they also put in perspective the relativity of our materialistic worldview).
The first is the consideration that, as a community of spiritual beings evolves along the CoC-ladder of creation, their nature/habitat evolves from a planet, to a sun, to zodiac.
o To relate to that: the Second Hierarchy today has their abode on the spiritual Sun, the First Hierarchy started the current solar system evolution creating from the periphery - that evolved to what we call a zodiac today. Imagine: those triads are already ‘giving’ the current cosmos and creation that we are part off, in so many higher ways.
o That explains why a new center is spoken of, because humanity as the Tenth hierarchy is at the center of such development and new creation (as the other hierarchies were before us), and the MoG represents the start of a new creation cycle (Schema FMC00.400)
The second consideration is that, if a spiritual being (the human being) individualizes and spiritualizes, he becomes an independent droplet containing the divine monad with totally other attributes or natural characteristics or capabilities. As humanity will rise this CoC ladder in future planetary stages of evolution and evolve from receiving to giving, the nature of that giving will evolves to higher forces and substance. He becomes master of the various forces that make up Homer’s Golden chain of creation, and hence can also create with these formative forces. [note: This creative power is depicted in the first apocalyptic seal (Schema FMC00.367)].
Man (as the tenth hierarchy) becomes a God ... "You will become like the Gods" (Genesis 3:5) or “Jesus answered them .. You are gods” (John 10:34).
o To try and imagine something like this today, we can look at the creative capabilities of advanced initiates. We know that in the future, as the human being refines the lower bodies by working on elemental balance, Man will spiritualize and develop totally new capabilities. Initiation is a fast track process of that evolution, so it gives an outlook on capabilities to come for humanity in future periods of evolution. Magic is about this capability of conscious creation. To give just one example, the late Rawn Clark called this working with the ‘adonai light’ and ‘kethric brilliance’, other terms referring to what is called in anthroposophy the formative forces, here generated through and by the will of the conscious creative human being. Another example is the language of creation referred to with the term kabbalistic speech.
o So, what Rudolf Steiner describes in various ways is that the act of a human being giving out of selfless love and higher morality, is something that we do not ‘see’ (below), but that does generate astral and spiritual streams (above). Moral ideals and selfless love here in the physical world (below) are reflections below of the essence of our future functioning as spiritual beings (above), as in any case these worlds are one and interpenetrate, even if we are not conscious of it today. And this connects to what was described above with FMC00.188 and a new center gets created, also visualized on the right of FMC00.594.
Additional note
These above considerations provide background to lead up to an understanding of the spiritualization impulse by the Christ being. As a higher planetary spirit unified with humanity and the Earth, this high cosmic being provides the ‘pull’ effect of the higher (chemical and life) ethers and impulse towards spiritualization. (For the technical principle of give and take, please study Schema FMC00.187). The spiritual being Christ has become the planetary spirit connected with humanity in its evolution, a guiding impact that will effect until Future Venus (Schema FMC00.022) when humanity will have fully developed the life-spirit, buddhi or Christos bodily principle (Schema FMC00.130).
Further study
- Whereas the whole of Rudolf Steiner’s work touches on this narrative from so many angles, the two essential elements described above that underlie a more cosmic understanding are covered in the lecture(s) of 1904-11-09-GA089 (and 1904-11-10-GA089), from which the two Schemas FMC00.188 and FMC00.187 are taken.
- See also:
- A dozen Schemas were referenced embedded in the text, these provide pointers for further study based on the text commentary and context of the topic pages on which they appear.
