Our after-death journey through the spheres of Mars and Jupiter : Cosmic Speech and Cosmic Thoughts

 

Rudolf Steiner:

So it comes about that in our day a shrill discord sounds up from Earth into the Cosmic Music when man enters the Sun existence after death. And this quality that has crept into speech makes manifest to certain spiritual beings the degeneration that earthly existence has suffered, showing them too at the same time how the right forces and impulses can be found that will lead once again to an ascent.

Man continues his wandering and comes into the Mars existence. What do we mean when we say: Man comes into the Mars existence? It is now no longer possible, you must remember, to speak of man in his spirit-form, for by this time he is wholly changed; he has become a spiritual image of the great cosmic sphere. On and on leads the path, through the spheres of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, out into the surging waves of the cosmos. In the Mars region the human being lives among the “population” of Mars — if I may so express myself. The inhabitants of Mars are discovered to be either discarnate human souls or beings of the Hierarchies, but above all those of the Hierarchies from whose entire being Cosmic Speech sounds forth into universal space. For man is now in the region where Cosmic Music becomes Cosmic Speech. At first he hears it; then he is himself interwoven into the Cosmic Speech. Instead of the imitative speech of humanity, he hearkens to a speech that is creative, a speech out of which things are born and have their being. During man's passage through the sphere of Mars he acquires conscious knowledge of the beings who people this region. The spiritual population of Mars consists of beings who are the Knowers of the Cosmic Speech. There are other beings too, — for example, beings who are warlike in nature. But so far as man is concerned, the most important beings in the Mars sphere are those who in their whole nature are Cosmic Word. They are the Guardians of the Cosmic Speech.

Man's journey then leads him into the region of Jupiter, where dwell the beings who are the guardians of the Cosmic Thoughts. These beings radiate thought-beings into our planetary system and its environment. Through this region also man must pass, and he is involved there in a process of metamorphosis which I can only describe in a rather prosaic way.

Picture to yourselves that man becomes a kind of image of the cosmic sphere; that is to say, his whole being is really the spirit-germ of the head as it will be in his next life on Earth. In the Sun existence, having experienced the shrill discord set up by earthly speech, he learns to lay aside this earthly speech. During his passage through Mars he becomes part of the Cosmic Speech, he grows one with it, and begins also to lay the foundation for an understanding of Cosmic Speech. For it is like this. The metamorphosis of the lower man has begun — the legs into the lower jaw, the arms into the upper jaw, and so on. In community with the beings of the Hierarchies the human being builds the spirit-germ of his future head. But, to begin with, this head is built for understanding the Cosmos — not the Earth! It learns first to understand Cosmic Speech, Cosmic Thoughts. Cosmic Thoughts and Cosmic Speech find a home in the human head; just as here on Earth man knows of minerals, plants, and animals, so, during his journey through the spheres of Mars and Jupiter, he is made acquainted with the mysteries of the spiritual universe. We shall never have a true feeling or perception of the nature of man until we realize in clear consciousness that between death and rebirth the human being has learned to know the names of the wonderful and majestic beings of the higher Hierarchies, has learned to understand the work and creative activities of these beings in the cosmos, has learned to follow in his thought — not little everyday problems of personal life, such as, How am I to get back to Amsterdam? — but such a question as: How is one world-epoch born out of another through the workings of the higher Hierarchies? So much for man's experience in his passage through Jupiter.

Source: November 17, 1923. GA 231

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