Esoteric Evolution - 28

Sound Ether

Creating through sound ether

Creating through watery substance

The dance of substances

The origin of protein

Substances come free

The task of sound ether

Chemical ether

Number ether

Mathematical ether

Sources

The eras of development of the Earth:

By venturing into the realm of the living, we inevitably discover the reality and the working of very high creative spiritual beings, the heavenly hierarchies. The heavenly hierarchies are divine beings who dwell in the higher spiritual worlds, Devachan.

In addition, concerning the aspect of the living, we are confronted with spiritual forces from the etheric world. The spiritual beings who live and work in the etheric world¹⁾ give form, out of the etheric forces on Earth and in the cosmos, to what originates from higher spiritual realms and is willed there. In this way, the etheric world performs a bridging function between the creative forces from higher spiritual worlds and the physical earthly world.

The etheric world encompasses four different kinds of ether:

warmth ether
light ether
sound ether
life ether

Warmth ether and light ether are called the lower etheric forces. Both are connected with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Sound ether and life ether are part of the higher etheric forces. They coincide with the forces of the Tree of Life, and are directly related to that which creates life. In this chapter we will discuss the sound ether.

The Thrones, Spirits of Will, create through warmth ether. The Kyriotetes, Spirits of Wisdom, through light ether. The Dynameis, Spirits of Motion, use for their creative work the sound ether.

Just like the Kyriotetes, the Dynameis belong to the second hierarchy. They live and work in the realm in Devachan that is called the "harmony of the spheres," which consists of creative, sounding tones, sounds, and harmonies generated by lofty spiritual beings.

In those sounding tones and harmonies their high thoughts and consciousness express themselves, as well as the archetypal laws of their existence.

It is out of this sounding realm of the music of the spheres that the Dynameis, Spirits of Movement, create substances and forms by means of the forces of the sound ether, both in the cosmos and on Earth.

In the earliest times of the Earth, these creative beings, the Dynameis, were the ones who brought forth the fluid, watery element in its then existing state.

By their creative deed, the Earth then developed, besides a warmth, air, and light element, also a watery state. This original fluid wateriness cannot be compared with the water we are today familiar with. The fluid state was at that time much denser and thicker than our current seawater, because it still had large quantities of substances in suspended form in it.

What the Dynameis now did, by means of sound ether, was that they let radiant tones and sounds from the harmony of the spheres stream out of Devachan into the newly arisen state of water, air, light, and warmth. The whole still-developing cosmos and Earth were thus permeated with the grand, creative sounds of the harmony of the spheres.²⁾

The consequences were most extraordinary and fundamental. For due to the effect of the creative sounds, that which existed at the time in suspended form in the original watery state, was gradually freed and came into movement. That occurred in the Lemurian period of the Earth.

The coming into movement of the substances that were dissolved in the original water is called in esotericism "the dance of substances." Rudolf Steiner also calls it that way. In his explanation of the creation process of the Earth, he compares the dance of substances with the way Chladni sound figures are created. When you spread fine sand or powder evenly over a copper plate and then stroke the edge with a bow, he said, then not only will a tone sound, but the sand or powder will form figures along certain lines on the plate - lines that show beautiful figures in geometric patterns.

The patterns correspond with the sound of the tone. It shows that, in this case, a physical sound or tone is able to bring about division in material substance and, on that basis can create certain forms and figures, the Chladni sound figures.³⁾

In a comparable way, the instreaming music of the spheres of the Dynameis created forms and order in watery world space through the effect of sound ether. The first thing to develop from this in the course of evolution was our current solar system, the sun and its planets.⁴⁾

Subsequently the Dynameis worked into the still becoming Earth - in Lemuria - and the watery material that was suspended in the watery substance obeyed the archetypal sounds of the music of the spheres and came free.

The first to arise from this was the original form of protein. And therefore, it was also the very first beginning of organic matter on Earth.⁵⁾

The more this protein matter made its appearance through the dance of the substances in the course of time, the more did the watery substance of the Earth change into a protein-rich atmosphere. We can compare that atmosphere with a kind of soup that consisted of a very fine, fluid, protein-like substance.⁶⁾ Protein, together with protoplasm, forms the material basis of all that lives on Earth.⁷⁾

Here also, in this protein atmosphere, the Dynameis continued their creative work out of the sounding tones of the music of the spheres. If we could look back, said Rudolf Steiner, we would get a grandiose, impressive picture of the creation process of that time.

For what would we see? We would experience moving, resounding tones of unsurpassed heavenly beauty and harmony, streamed through by a sea of radiant, shining, splendor of light, warmed through by warmth ether.⁸⁾

The dance of substances in that original protein substance had great consequences. For gradually the substances that were suspended in it came free; these eventually formed the elements we know as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sodium, potassium, and the many metals and minerals we are familiar with today.

Rudolf Steiner points out that these substances were previously not separately present in the protein atmosphere. Within the protein atmosphere, what we now know as carbon was not carbon, oxygen was not oxygen. All later, now familiar, substances existed at that time only in high etheric forms.

As noted before, this original state was characterized by undifferentiated unity. Everything was one whole.

As a result of the suspended substances coming free, this situation gradually grew into a differentiated state consisting of large quantities of different substances. That happened because, due to the effect of the sounds of the spheres, forms gradually arose in the protein atmosphere that went in the direction of the current chemical elements.⁹⁾

Now, what is the task of sound ether in this gigantic creation process? The most important task of this remarkable ether was (is) to help bring to expression the creative forces of the harmony of the spheres in the becoming physical existence of the Earth. For this was the only way the Dynameis could work on "lower" realms.

For it is thanks to sound ether that these creative beings could create new elements via warmth ether and light ether, down into the fluid element. In that creative work, the Dynameis made use of forces and spiritual beings that lived and worked in those etheric spheres, the elemental beings. The elemental beings are the ones that bring the tasks of the sound ether sphere to realization.

What is characteristic of sound ether?

Sound ether enabled the harmony of the spheres, the heavenly music of the spheres, to let forms and harmony arise in the watery state. It worked this way in the far distant past and does so even today.¹⁰⁾

In this process, sound ether separates that which is a unity into individual parts. Next, it orders these in such a way that new forms and new harmony arise. An example of this can be seen in the process of cell division. In cell division (see picture below) first a division into two poles takes place; these poles then also split and multiply.

In every stage of this process a new harmonious unity and a new ordering arise. Thus, the living grows and development takes place.

We can therefore say: sound ether is a separating force; but it is also a force that creates, harmonizes, and orders new relationships, and calls into being certain distances, rhythms, forms, and measures in an existing reality.

This property shows that there is a direct connection between sound ether as a separating and new relationships creating force with what we are familiar with as chemistry. Hence, sound ether is also called chemical ether.

In our current world there exist chemical substances that can split, bind, and enter into a new ordering. Such ordering comes about mutually between the chemical elements and in substances such as salts, acids, proteins, etc. An example is water: H2O, a chemical connection between two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom. Together they form a harmonious unity: water, H2O.

Here too it is sound ether which, as a spiritual force, separates the chemical substance and orders it as to a certain measure, number, and geometric proportions. In the periodic system of chemical elements this ordering force of sound ether is directly observable.

Rudolf Steiner:

What we call chemical action is projected into the physical world from the world of Devachan - the realm of the harmony of the spheres. In the combination of two substances according to their atomic weights, we have a reflection of two tones of the harmony of the spheres. The chemical affinity between two substances in the physical world is like a reflection from the realm of the harmony of the spheres.¹¹⁾

The foregoing indicates that the fundamental attribute of sound ether is that it lets new ordering arrangements come into being that are based on certain number relationships. These number relationships are characterized by balance and symmetry, and thus by beauty and harmony.

Because everything in physical reality is created through sound ether, everywhere in creation we find certain number relationships, both in the cosmos with its stars and planets as on Earth in the forms of plants, animals, and humans.

In each of them the effect of sound ether, and through it of the harmony of the spheres and the influence of the Dynameis, can be recognized. We can see it in the spiraling sprouting of twigs and leaves in trees, plants, and bushes, and in the forms of flowers that have four, five, six, or even many more petals or seeds, such as dahlias and sunflowers. And also in the specific form of the honeycombs of bees.

We also find this high influence in the size and proportions of the human body, as the well-known drawing by Leonardo da Vinci shows.

Because of these number relationships, sound ether is sometimes also called "number ether."¹²⁾ We also find a noteworthy effect of number ether in music. Music comes into existence because sound ether creates separate notes and harmoniously combines these via intervals (thirds, fifths, octaves). This also shows the effect of the harmony of the spheres.

As the bearer of number ether with its relationships and laws of creative power, sound ether forms the basis of all existing mathematical laws and ordering in the universe. Hence, it is also called "mathematical" ether. In Greek antiquity these number-based mathematical relationships on Earth and in the cosmos were already known to philosophers such as Pythagoras.

Pythagoras, an initiate with his own mystery school, knew from his own observation and experience about the existence of the heavenly harmony of the spheres and how it works. God ordered the cosmos with numbers, he said.

That is the reason why the world consists of mathematical or number relationships. "God is unity, the world is multiplicity and consists of opposite poles. What brings the opposite poles together and unites them into cosmos is harmony. Harmony is divine and consists of number relationships."

Pythagoras had great influence on astronomers and mathematicians such as Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton, many centuries later. These men formulated their laws of nature on the basis of mathematical relationships. Others again discovered on that basis laws in nature and the cosmos that are called the "Golden Section" and the "Fibonacci Sequence".

Because of the reality that the cosmos is driven by laws that have their basis on the physical plane in mathematical relationships that can be understood through thinking (consciousness), there are even in our time scientists who believe that God, if he exists, has to be a mathematician.¹³⁾

Also, scientists who are atheists acknowledge the reality of number relationships in the world and in the universe. But they assume that these arose purely by coincidence.

The next chapter will discuss life ether.

7. Seventh era

2. Hyperborea

6. Sixth era

5. Post-Atlantean era

4. Atlantis

Just as in the higher spiritual world, Devachan, spiritual beings, elemental beings, work at different levels also in the etheric world. In this series we will not go more deeply into this because it would be too much in this context. See Rudolf Steiner, Man as Symphony of the Creative Word, GA 230; Rob Gruben, The Etheric World and Its Forces; and Karsten Massei, School of the Elemental Beings.
Rudolf Steiner, The Influence of Spiritual Beings on Man, GA 102, lectures of March 16 and 24, 1908; and Mystery Knowledge and Mystery Centers, GA 232, lecture of December 1, 1923. See for the Harmony of the Spheres: Rudolf Steiner, Theosophy, GA 9 , chapter The Spiritland and https://en.anthro.wiki/Harmony_of_the_Spheres
Named for Ernst Chladni (1756-1827), German physicist who discovered them. His research was continued, among others, by Hans Jenny (1904-1972) and Alexander Lauterwasser (1951).
Rudolf Steiner, Occult Signs and Symbols, GA 101, lecture of September 13, 1907.
Rudolf Steiner, Natur- und Geistwesen – ihr Wirken in unserer sichtbaren Welt, GA 98, lecture of March 17, 1908.
Rudolf Steiner, Mystery Knowledge and Mystery Centers, GA 232, lecture of December 1, 1923.
See note 2 GA 102 and note 5.
See note 6.
See notes 2, 5, and 6.
In our time the harmony of the spheres vibrates and weaves through us during the night, and puts order into what we humans have brought into disorder during the day. See Rudolf Steiner, The Gospel of St. Matthew, GA 123, lecture of September 3, 1910.
Rudolf Steiner, Esoteric Christianity, GA 130, lecture of October 1, 1911, answers to questions.
Rudolf Steiner, The Gospel of St. Luke, GA 114, lecture of September 21, 1909. See also Ernst Marti, The Four Ethers; and M. Gradenwitz, Die vier Elemente und die Harmonik als die Wissenschaft vom "Klangäther".
One of them is Michio Kaku, world-renowned futurist, theoretical physicist. See also www.wasserklangbilder.de.

For English translations of Rudolf Steiner's works see www.rsarchive.org.