It's time to do or die

 

Rudolf Steiner, June 24, 1904:  "All physical events are shadows of supernatural events. The battle between spiritual forces and materialism is a reflection of the battle between the hosts of Beelzebub and Mammon against Michael. This battle first had to be fought on higher planes; it was decided there thirty years ago in favor of Michael, and the current battle here on the physical plane is a reflection of that. The battle has been decided above, but for the individual human being the battle is not yet over. If the people of today are not up to the task, we must all perish and new people must come. This shows the way, the place where the individual human being must enter today."

Source: Good and Evil

Good and Evil

 

Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, June 24, 1904

Today I would like to follow up on the things I discussed a fortnight ago. In the near future, we may also have the opportunity to talk about our experiences in Amsterdam. But today I would like to talk about some specific things that reach into our physical plane – something we already started the other day.

I have often emphasized that the events that take place in our physical world are nothing more than a kind of shadow reflection of what is happening on the higher planes. It is clear to the occultist that he can only understand the events in the physical world if he knows what is happening on the supersensible planes. To the occultist who has insight into the higher planes, it appears as if people are pulled by threads that emanate from the higher planes. This could seem to be an infringement of human freedom. But today I would like to show that this is not the case. Some examples may show us how the higher planes affect us.

First of all, I must refer back to something I have already said earlier: that in principle there is no absolute good and absolute evil. Evil is only a kind of “displaced” good. If something has happened, let us say in the lunar epoch of development that preceded our epoch, and part of it has been transmitted into our development, then it appears as out of place in the present time. It was good during the lunar epoch, but it appears evil to us during the earthly epoch. During the lunar epoch, someone might have had the task of organizing the instinctual urges in a harmonious way; but this activity was completed when the lunar epoch ended. The task of the earthly epoch now consists in controlling these urges again from the level of the manas. If someone today were to live out their urges as the Pitri were forced to live them, they would be an evil person in our epoch, whereas in the lunar epoch he would have been a wise man.

People do not usually think about what events such as the appearance of Muhammad, the founder of the Muslim religion, meant in the sixth and beginning of the seventh century.

One must imagine that at first Christianity endeavored to grow into the various other forms of religion. At first we see only a small Jewish community in Palestine; it has remained quite small. The Folk-souls do not easily allow a principle such as that contained in Christian teaching to be imposed on them. The Apostle Paul found the way to the Gentiles by first leaving the thoughts of the Gentiles as he found them and then using the pagan religious forms to infuse the Christian essence into them. In the southern regions of Europe, the Mithras service was cultivated; it was similar to today's Sacrifice of the Mass. The pagans there accepted Christianity because they were allowed to keep the Mithras festival that had become dear to them. It was similar with the Germanic peoples with the festival that became a Christian symbol as Christmas. Their sacred ancestors were accepted as Christian saints. In this way, Christianity grew into ever new areas and among new tribes. It was the adaptability of Christianity that made this possible. The Christian religion expanded more and more; but because of this multiformity, it also needed a powerful central point: that is the Roman papacy. All the damage that was later caused by Christianity is linked to this world-historical mission of the papacy.

The Semitic peoples had to be handled differently. Mohammed did that. He formulated the first great doctrine when he said: All gods but the One are no gods. Only the one I teach you is the only God. This doctrine can only be understood as an opposition to Christianity. From the very beginning, Christianity's task in conquering the physical plane was to work its way into the human personality; it does not build on old forces, but seeks to work through manas.

We see that in Mohammedanism there is no conscious attempt to take up the old spiritual forms of paganism, but that the right way to conquer the physical plane is to be found only through physical science. We see how this physical science takes hold of the art of healing, which originated in Arabia and later spread to other countries. The Arabian doctors only started from the physical plane, unlike the healers of the ancient Egyptians, the Druids and even the ancient Germanic tribes. All of them had come to their healing profession by developing their psychic powers through asceticism and other exercises. Today we still see something similar in the practices and processes of shamanism, only that these have degenerated today. So psychic powers were developed in these early healers. Muhammad introduced the art of healing that takes its remedies only from the physical plane itself. This art of healing was developed where one did not want to know about spiritual beings, but only about a single God. Alchemy and astrology in the old sense were abolished and made into new sciences: astronomy, mathematics and so on. These later became the sciences of the Occident. The Arabs who came to Spain, we see men educated in the physical sciences, especially mathematicians. The true followers of this school said: We respectfully revere what lives in plants, animals, etc., but man should not imitate in an amateurish way what only God is called to create. Therefore, we find only arabesques in Moorish art, forms that are not even plant-like, but are purely the product of the imagination.

The Greek power was superseded by Rome, but Greek education was passed on to the Romans. The Arabs received what they have from Muhammad. Muhammad introduced science, which is only permeated with laws of the physical plane. The Christian monks were inspired by the Moors. Although the Moors were beaten back through political power, monotheism, which brings with it a deepening of physical science, came to Europe through the Moors and led to a purification of Christianity from all paganism.

Through Christianity, the emotional life of man was led up to Kama-Manas. Through Mohammedanism, the intellect, the spirit, was led down from the spiritual life to the abstract comprehension of the purely physical laws. This physical science had to develop through various stages to reach the level it now occupies. It had to go through the science of the Vedic priests and all the following stages to reach the achievements of our present time. Some of this had already been achieved by the Atlanteans, albeit through psychic powers. Since the Atlantean times, this development towards physical laws has been in preparation.

The Chinese are a remnant of the Atlantean Mongol race. When we hear the word Tao in Chinese, it is something difficult for us to understand. The Mongols of that time had developed a form of monotheism that went as far as the psychic tangibility, as far as the feeling of the spiritual. When the old Chinese, the old Mongols, pronounced the word Tao, they felt it when they pronounced it. Tao is not “the way”, as it is usually translated, it is the fundamental power by which the Atlanteans could still transform plants, by which they could set their remarkable airships in motion. This basic power, also called “Vril”, was used everywhere by the Atlanteans, and they called it their god. They felt this power within themselves; it was “the way and the goal” for them. Therefore, every Mongolian considered himself to be an instrument in the hands of the great Vril power.

This monotheism of the Atlanteans remained with those races that survived the great flood. From this form of religion, which was still spiritual, the fifth root race emerged. These old spiritual forms of religion, the worship of a unified God, gradually degenerated into polytheism. Monotheism only remained among the most highly developed priests. At the beginning of Christianity, the monks behaved cunningly: they said that Baldur had become a human being in Palestine. In the early centuries, one would have found Christianity colorfully mixed with paganism, even in Arian Christianity. This development took place at the same time as a particularly vivid glimmering of religious feeling in the old Mongolian races was being induced by highly developed shamans. We see, as a reaction to polytheism, on the one hand, the emergence of a new unified religion in Arabia through Mohammed. On the other hand, we see, somewhat earlier, an initiated shaman rising up in his Tao consciousness, taking revenge on those who had fallen away from the old monotheistic idea of God. Attila was called “The Scourge of God.” We see the princes he deposed living in splendor and pomp all around his kingdom, but he, the shaman, lived in the greatest simplicity. It is said of him that his eyes glowed and the earth trembled when he raised his sword. This great initiate would have been fully justified in the Atlantean era; in our time, he would look like a criminal. The same power that is an expression of the divine fire in its time appears as divine wrath in another period. Why does this happen? It is necessary in order to make further development possible. If development is to be continue, viewed from a higher plane, the individual threads must once again intertwine harmoniously.

We had also spoken of the Druid priests who taught the people through fairy tales and myths. They were healers, priests and astrologers at the same time. They possessed inspired knowledge. When the Celtic element was replaced by the Germanic tribes, the belief in the old form of inspiration also receded. The conquest of the physical plane was entrusted to man; he became a warrior. The intuitive and productive power comes to us in the feminine. The woman became a priestess, who was at the same time a healer, for example the Weleda. All healing arts were in the hands of women at that time; the man was pushed out onto the outer, physical plane. We still encounter this in the time of the Merovingians and Carolingians. It was only through the science learned by the monks from the Moors that the spiritual element was increasingly replaced. And from the 16th to the 19th century, the material way of thinking increased more and more. The psychic healers gave way; they were discredited and despised as magicians or witches. The loss of the ability to work with psychic means of healing is connected with this; healing in this way is no longer as effective. Paracelsus still possessed these abilities completely.

This is connected with the transition of the leadership of humanity from a Dhyan Chohan of a higher kind to another Dhyan Chohan. The Christian esoteric calls the healing Dhyan Chohan “Saint Michael”, which is the Archangel who guides the psychic idealism of man. Man only becomes free by realizing that everything that happens on the physical plane is caused by higher forces. He must enter into a relationship of discipleship with the Archangel Michael.

Two entities played a role in the Old Testament: the leading spirit is harmonious. Beelzebub, also a Dhyan Chohan, is disharmonious. He is the leader of all disharmony on the physical plane. He must be understood in order to know why one form can have a destructive effect on another. Since the 16th century, the hosts of Beelzebub have gained the upper hand over the hosts of Michael. Mammon is the god of obstacles, which holds man back from pursuing his straight path. It would be out of place if this were to continue into the next century.

All physical events are shadows of supernatural events. The battle between spiritual forces and materialism is a reflection of the battle between the hosts of Beelzebub and Mammon against Michael. This battle first had to be fought on higher planes; it was decided there thirty years ago in favor of Michael, and the current battle here on the physical plane is a reflection of that. The battle has been decided above, but for the individual human being the battle is not yet over. If the people of today are not up to the task, we must all perish and new people must come. This shows the way, the place where the individual human being must enter today.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Bonfire Of The Vanities: Anthony Fauci, The Sorcerer's Apprentice

 

Rudolf Steiner:  "The end of the Lemurian continent was brought about by the magnificent egoism of the last Lemurian races, who practiced a form of black magic beyond our powers of imagining."

John 3:19-21

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

Related: 

Fauci Diaries

Dogma

 Fauci Diaries

Science without a soul

Fauci and AIDS

Source: April 16, 1906

We're dancing on a volcano

 Rudolf Steiner, in 1906:  "Humanity is unaware that it is dancing on a volcano. But it is."

Source: January 2, 1906. GA 93

Let not your heart be troubled

  

Rudolf Steiner:  "Whatever one may experience, one can look with complete trust toward the future. For just as the crystal first develops out of an alkaline solution only after it has been vigorously stirred, so also something new can only develop after great upheavals."

Continued:

45 years at the Himalayan Institute

Source: November 5, 1905

cognition: ignition of the cog

   

"I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" — Luke 12:49-50

Hebrews 12

1 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,

2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

3 For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.

4 Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.

5 And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him:

6 For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.

7 If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?

8 But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.

9 Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?

10 For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.

11 Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.

12 Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees;

13 And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed.

14 Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord:

15 Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled;

16 Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.

17 For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.

18 For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest,

19 And the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard intreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more:

20 (For they could not endure that which was commanded, And if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart:

21 And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake:)

22 But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,

23 To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect,

24 And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.

25 See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven:

26 Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.

27 And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.

28 Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear:

29 For our God is a consuming fire.

Rudolf Steiner:  “The true value of the Anthroposophical Society can only be assessed by verifying whether it understands not only dead anthroposophy, which concerns itself with what is past, but whether it also understands living anthroposophy. Living anthroposophy can also be a sum of flaming sparks! But these sparks of fire will be inside a temple that is not made of external material. Physical flames consume temples that consist of outer materials. The flames of genuine spiritual enthusiasm, of true spiritual life―which must permeate the temple because they must illuminate it with what lights up in the spirit―these flames cannot destroy the temple; they can only give an ever more glorious form to this temple. Let us think of what living anthroposophy is; let us think of it as the fiery flame that will lead us ever further, like the living spirit of anthroposophy itself―which shall lead us to the further evolution of humanity and to the rebuilding of what is now in such an evident decline.”

My guru, Swamiji
Glenview, Illinois, 1975

Swamiji, referring to his ashram: "Isn't this a cremation ground? You come here to be burned, and if you can't get that into your head, there's no point in your being here!"

O Flame,

to you I commit all that is mine on Earth.

As the smoke rises upward,

may the gods accept it.

May that which is borne upward by Flame

be changed into divine blessing,

pouring down upon Earth

as creative, fructifying power!

— Rudolf Steiner

Continued: 45 years at the Himalayan Institute

Source: May 23, 1923

"Rejoice, and be exceeding glad!"

 

They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.  —Psalm 126:5-6

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.  — Romans 8:28

"Rejoice, and be exceeding glad"  — Matthew 5:12

Once when we were passing each other Swamiji planted himself in front of me and said "You should be happier." I replied "I'm sure you're right, Swamiji. Almost everyone—" Swamiji cut me off: "No! No! YOU should be happier!"

"Why, you should be leading lives of joy — deep inner joy in the truth! There is nothing in the world more delightful, nothing more fascinating, than the experience of truth. There you have an esotericism that is far more genuine, far more significant, than the esotericism that goes about with a long face. Before everything else — and long before you begin to talk about having a “mission” — there must be this living inner experience of truth." — Rudolf Steiner

"And the Veda was made flesh,

and dwelt among us."

Jesus: Krishna, redeemed by Christ

John 16:33 ― 17:26

These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee:

As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.

And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.

And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.

I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.

Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.

For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.

I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.

And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.

And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.

While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.

And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.

They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.

As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.

And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.

Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;

That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:

I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.

Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.

O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me.

And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.

The hidden working of karma. Yoga: past, present, and future

 

Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, November 3, 1905

We will now throw yet more light on the hidden working of Karma and consider the Karmic relationships between peoples and individuals. Those who take earnestly the principle of not looking at the world materialistically, but who seek for explanations out of the spirit will understand this.

We have learned from history that illnesses which previously did not exist make their appearance in the course of evolution. So today, to begin with, we shall hear something about the origin of such illnesses as are connected with epochs and peoples. We shall understand this from out of the spirit. The explanation the doctor gives is that this or that illness is caused by bacilli. We must however ask: where do the bacilli come from? They are just as much incarnated living beings as man. Of those beings too which act as disturbers of human life we must ask: Where do they come from? What has brought them into their present material existence? What were they before they incarnated?

Let us suppose, for example, that some nation or race is in its decline, is moving towards its downfall. It puts up a resistance. This resistance to its downfall is a spiritual expression of something that lives in the astral body of the nation in question. Were such a decline to concern only that which was to come to an end, then the feeling engendered would have no special effect upon others in the world. Let us assume however that it comes in conflict with another nation, plunging it into fear and anxiety and thus sets up a reaction in this other nation. Then we have a two-fold situation: the nation suffering decline, and what arises out of the confluence of the disturbance of the one people fighting against their own decline, and the fear and alarm of the other people. This is something lasting.

Let us take a particular case: the Mongolian onslaughts of the Middle Ages, when the Mongols came into conflict with the Europeans, spreading among them fear and alarm. Such fear and such alarm are then present in the peoples in question. When one looks at these attacking hordes, of which the Mongolians are the last, placing oneself in the mood of all these mediaeval peoples, one sees how the desperation of the last branches of the Fourth Root-Race and the fear and alarm engendered in the Europeans created spiritual forms. If such an onslaught were to be met with courage and love, then the putrefying substance would be dissolved. But fear, hate and alarm conserve such decaying forms and these provide a source of nourishment for beings such as bacilli. Later they incarnate in those material forms suitable for such an incarnation. Thus the decaying substances embedded themselves in the fear and alarm of the European peoples as seeds of decay. These are minute living beings. In this way arose the mediaeval disease, leprosy. It arose out of the decaying substance of the declining Mongolian peoples.

What then is the origin of those disturbers of human physical nature? They come from earlier spiritual causes, from sinfulness. This is Karma as it manifests in national communities. From this you can estimate how the moral life of a nation conditions the external life of the future. It lies in the power of a nation to care for its physical future through a corresponding moral life in the present.

All the European esoteric schools say that all the bacterial illnesses of modern times have a similar origin. The illnesses caused by bacilli are traced back to their spiritual origin. This is an esoteric tradition among the Rosicrucians and in other esoteric schools where these things are taught. A fundamental teaching exists in small circles of esoteric schools, the content of which is that in the seventies quite definite battles took place in the astral world which caused things to take a better turn, even though ... [Gap in text ...]. These events are called the battle between the hosts of the archangel known to Christian esotericism as Michael and the hosts of the god Mammon.⁷⁶ Mammon is, on the one hand, the god of hindrances, who places destructive, hindering things in the path of progress. On the other hand one sees in this god Mammon the creator of quite definite forms which work disturbingly in human life just in the sphere of infectious illnesses. Certain infectious illnesses, unknown in earlier times, are brought about by the god Mammon.

We can estimate to what degree the esoteric schools must rouse a progressive thinking in the inmost depths of the human being when one realises that the actual source of these modern illnesses is nothing other than a retrogression, the longstanding conservatism of the so-called upper classes as opposed to the poverty-striken lower classes who are striving towards a new ... [Gap in text ...]. They are hindered, held back by what the god Mammon brings about. We find two forces confronting one another: the sentimental world of the declining upper classes, who like to preserve antiquated conditions, and the feeling of hatred in the lower classes—an astral life projected against the others by the masses. In this opposition esotericism again sees decaying substance and therein the cause of modern infectious illnesses. Whoever sees into these things will of course not take them as a reason for opposing modern medicine with its external remedies. But a real improvement will never come about through these external methods.

What will come about later always reveals itself in advance through esoteric knowledge. This consists of rightly perceiving how the morality of the present day can lead to better health in the future. One can judge from this how profound was the perception of those who introduced the Theosophical Movement into the world. It arose out of the knowledge of such relationships. It was foreseen that the threat of the War of All against All would take on ever more menacing forms. The things that must come about fulfil themselves with an inner necessity, just as events in the East develop like a fire there where there is especially inflammable material.⁷⁷ It would be senseless to wish to arrest such things. The appropriate and serviceable means to avert the War of All against All was sought by the Theosophical Movement through the spreading of the axiom of brotherhood. For brotherhood dissolves what streams into the world as means of decay, as hate. For as regards races we find ourselves on a downward path. If one were to believe that this downfall could be delayed and contained by hatred, not resolved by love, then naturally the very worst would follow. The Theosophical Movement would overcome this decline by love. Its founders know that the Theosophical Society is not only a remedy, but the source of the development of humanity as it goes into the future.

So one sees how the physical is a result of what preceded it spiritually and how in particular circumstances people have it in their power, through knowledge of certain relationships, to connect the physical with its spiritual origin. For example, if one knows how a particular illness is connected with particular feelings and emotions, he knows that by calling up these feelings he can also call up the illness. The black magician can make use of this knowledge to destroy the people. The deep occult truths can therefore not be taught to everyone without due consideration, for it would immediately bring about a sharp demarcation between good and evil. This is the danger inherent in the spreading of occult teachings, for no-one can be taught how to make people well, without at the same time learning how to make people ill. Where occult teachings have penetrated more into certain peoples such things have happened. There are districts in the East where one can hear true reports that there are sects who make it their task to produce definite illnesses. Thus we penetrate to an ever greater degree into the understanding of the ways in which the material arises out of the spiritual.

Now we will try to survey somewhat longer periods of time. We know that today there is a beautiful complementary interaction between everything that exists as animal life and the plant world. The plant makes use of carbon for itself and breathes out oxygen, thereby creating the source of life for all creatures in its surroundings who need to breathe. This source arises from the plant world. All that breathes today is there through the action of this mysterious workshop of the plant world. From this we can form a concept of how Worlds go under, how the World which preceded our Earth passed away. On the Old Moon breathing did not exist as it does now in human beings and animals. A quite different process took the place of the breathing process on the Old Moon. We can form a picture of the earlier process when we look at something remaining over from this time: the varying warmth of animals which develop the same temperature as their surroundings. On the Moon there was warmth or fire breathing. The inhaling and exhaling of fire or warmth corresponded at that time to the present day inhaling and exhaling of the air. In the middle of the Lemurian Age the breathing process began to take on the form it has today.

The spiritual process of the embedding of the Monad in the lower man finds its material reflection in breathing. Breathing signifies the inhaling of the Monad. In Hatha Yoga therefore the pupil goes through a breathing process. He regulates rhythmically what man has today as a natural process in order to bring breathing under his control. Just as before man advanced to this process of breathing, he inhaled and exhaled warmth, transforming this into the circulation of the warm blood, so the pupil of Hatha Yoga seeks to form the breathing process into something inward, to bring it inwardly under his control. The Hatha Yoga rules signify the transformation of the breath into a process that does not go from within outwards, but is inwardly regulated, just as today the circulation of the blood is also inwardly regulated. In the case of animals with variable temperature the process of blood circulation has the same relationship to that of human beings as the breathing process of the Hatha Yoga pupil. Behind all these things lie deep thoughts concerning evolution which ought to be the foundation of real processes.

What today is usually not understood is that in the air there is something spiritual. When there was still a consciousness of this, spirit was called: Air, Wind = Pneuma. Pneuma means a current of air and also the soul-spiritual. This terminology stems from times in which one still had a consciousness of the true connections. Let us now take the fact that on the predecessor of our Earth (the Old Moon) certain beings had evolved beyond the stage of the human evolution of that time. These were the Luciferic beings. When one considers these beings one must say: They did not live in an environment such as the Earth has today. They could not breathe air, thus they could not take in the spirit, for the taking in of spirit corresponds to the breathing of air. They were obliged to carry out in the warmth-principle what today takes place in the air. We differentiate on the Earth seven conditions of the physical: Firstly Life-ether, Secondly Chemical-ether, Thirdly Light-ether, Fourthly Warmth-ether, Fifthly Air, Sixthly Water, Seventhly Solid. Thus the Luciferic Beings had to carry out in warmth what man today carries out in air. Now you can understand that owing to this, these Beings who gave man his separate consciousness, his independence, are in a certain sense connected with fire. For this reason, when they make their appearance, it is connected with a certain craving for everything that manifests in man as heat, as fire. The craving attaches itself to man's individual warmth. So the donors of knowledge and freedom are bound up with something which seeks to incarnate in the element of warmth in man in a similar way to how this happened on the Old Moon. This is the connection between knowledge and birth and death, illness and so on in the world. With knowledge, birth, death and illness came into the world. This was the price man paid for knowledge. We see therefore also the connection between certain heat phenomena and illness, namely fever. This is the origin of fever. Traditions of this lingered on into the 19th century.

In the earlier Planetary conditions, the forerunners of our Earth, we had not to do as yet with human beings, animals, plants and minerals as they are today. At that time beings existed who had not yet descended so deeply as present-day animals, nor yet ascended so high as present-day man. At that time plants did not exhale oxygen. Oxygen, this breath of life, did not as yet exist. Only with the coming into being of our plant kingdom did nitrogen become mingled with oxygen. The Moon was surrounded by an atmosphere of nitrogen. In the second half of this previous Planet the beings did certainly already strive towards such forms as could breathe, which were endowed with lungs and so on; but only in our present Earth-Cycle did the plant kingdom evolve as it is now. The animal beings then developed the organs of breathing. They pushed the plant kingdom a stage lower, in order that it should provide oxygen for breathing.

These processes on the predecessor of our Earth had to be followed by a condition where life in the same form was no longer possible. The form had developed into something else and needed a new Planet. The preceding Planet had to meet its end; everything living suffocated. Thus do the Planets with their life perish, and from what has been prepared a new life evolves in the body of the Mother Planet. This is how the decline and uprising of Planetary evolution is to be understood.

Just as man previously had the other kingdoms within himself, so today he still has the evil in his Karma within him. This he is now working out of himself. In the future good and evil will be there in external forms, a race of the good and a kingdom of the evil side by side. At that future time the human countenance will appear in transfigured form out of the separated, downward-thrust evil of animality. Let us think of the transfigured human countenance that today slumbers like a riddle in animal matter, separated from the animal evil and represented symbolically. You can represent it to yourselves in no better way than in the great intuition of the Egyptian Sphinx. This not only points back to the past, but it also points towards the future. Not for nothing did the old Egyptians place the Sphinx in front of the Temple of Initiation. Initiation is the implanting of the secret of the future into human souls. At the entrance to the Temple it was through the Sphinx that the milieu for initiation was already created.

What outwardly is the body of oxygen is inwardly the Monad. As soon as oxygen appeared on the Earth the Monad had the possibility of incarnating. It is an attempt to possess the Monad when the pupil breathes in much oxygen and endeavours to retain it. Oxygen is not only something externally material. One must examine oxygen in the light of its spirit. Thus outwardly we have oxygen and inwardly the Monad. Oxygen therefore in the Lemurian Age formed the body for the descending sons of Manas.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive November 3, 1905