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Esoteric Evolution - 26The Origin of LifeWhat is life?The answer is: Something is alive when it is permeated by life forces that originate in the etheric world. Etheric forces are spiritual life forces. As such they form part of the spiritual world. Just like physical earthly forces, etheric forces are governed by laws. However, these laws are totally different from the laws that govern physical-earthly matter. The task of etheric forces is to bestow life, growth, and development on the physical element of human beings, animals, plants, and the Earth itself. But we do not find the source of what we call "life" in the etheric world, but in the world above it, the higher spiritual world that permeates the etheric world. There we find what is called in esotericism the original source of streaming life. In this chapter we will try to form a picture of this higher spiritual world with its high creative spiritual beings and the origin of life emanating from them. In the next chapter we will return to the world of the etheric to investigate how the different etheric forces fulfill the bridging function between the activity that radiates in from the high creative beings in those higher worlds and physical life on Earth. The higher spiritual world, DevachanBoth in oriental and in western esotericism, the higher spiritual world is called Devachan. Deva means God, and chan means realm or dwelling. Devachan is thus the realm where "God" or "the Gods," in other words the high heavenly hierarchies, live and from where they create. The Jewish Kabbala also refers to this high spiritual world as the world of radiating essence where the cause of everything is to be found. As scientist of the spirit, Rudolf Steiner spoke and wrote much about the spiritual world, which he also called the world of Spirit. Especially his book Theosophy gives much lucid insight into the different areas of the spiritual world.1) Rudolf Steiner was able to bring this knowledge because in him, a spiritually highly developed human being and spiritual scientist, both the spirit eye and the spirit ear were opened. This gave him direct access to these high worlds so that he could behold and hear them. In addition, he was able to express in earthly language what he saw and observed there. That is extraordinary, because it requires even higher capacities. In Theosophy he points out that the world of the spirit is so unlike the physical world we are familiar with that someone who relies only on his physical senses and knows nothing about the spiritual has to view all statements about that world as pure fantasy. Add to this that our language and the way we use it serve our everyday, sense-perceptible, physical reality. Because of that, it lacks the ability to express things that are attributes of the realm of the spirit. In his book, Rudolf Steiner therefore requests the reader to understand what he writes or says about the spiritual world as indications, because he can only sketch spiritual realities that he observes by means of comparisons. The same holds true for what is described in this and subsequent chapters. The different realms of existenceIn the book Theosophy, Rudolf Steiner shows that we can subdivide the reality in which we live into different realms of existence, each of which has its own state of consciousness. From the bottom up these are: 4. the actual spiritual world or Devachan (7 different realms) 3. the astral or soul world (7 different realms) 2. the etheric world or world of life forces 1. the physical-material earth world For the sake of clarity, the different realms are here mentioned separately, but in reality, they work into and through each other. In other words, in the physical-material world not only do etheric forces and astral soul forces work, but also spiritual forces from Devachan. Because it is important for our subject of "What is life?" to come closer to the essence of the higher spiritual world and to better understand Devachan, a sketch of that extraordinary world follows below. Archetypal imagesImagine that by schooling our spirit we could raise and expand our consciousness so high that we could ascend to the higher spiritual world, to Devachan. What would we then observe there? What we would see are the spiritual archetypal images of all beings and phenomena that come to manifestation in the physical world and soul world. For, everything that manifests itself on earth and in our soul has its spiritual origin in the spiritual world, in Devachan. That is why we might also call this world the world of archetypes or ideas. What does the expression archetypal image mean? Think of a painter, says Rudolf Steiner, who sees something he wants to make already inwardly, spiritually before him, before he paints it. That picture, which he already has in him, is comparable with what is here called an archetypal image in the spiritual world. It makes no difference whether the painter has such an archetypal image already consciously in his head, or whether this only begins to show as he is painting. In the same way as in the painter, such archetypal images of all phenomena are present in the world of the spirit, in Devachan. That which occurs in the world of matter in the way of physical beings and phenomena are in reality pictures of these archetypal images from the spiritual world, imprinted into physical-material reality. In this way, before the beginning of the creation, the archetypal image of the human being and the human form was already living in the consciousness of the creative beings we have come to know as the Elohim, the Spirits of Form. Down into their physical form, earthly human beings are pictures of this archetypal image in the spiritual world. Hence, the Bible says in Genesis 1:26 that God (the Elohim) created the human being after his image. Devachan, the realm of the Spirit, is the world where everything on Earth and in the cosmos has its origin. Continuous creative activityRudolf Steiner describes the spiritual world as a world where everything is continually in active movement and in ceaseless creative activity. It is a world that consists of many different dimensions and infinite spaces of consciousness. In those infinite spaces of consciousness, spiritual beings work creatively out of different, unimaginably high states of consciousness into the cosmos and on Earth. Essentially, nothing exists in the world-all but this kind of consciousness.2) Elsewhere Rudolf Steiner calls this collective cosmic consciousness "cosmic intelligence."3) We should imagine this high consciousness of divine-spiritual beings as living thoughts that are unceasingly creatively active. Taken together, these living thoughts form the "substance" from which the whole spiritual world is built up, including the spiritual archetypal images.4) It is interesting to know that what we humans experience as our own thoughts comes from this high spiritual world.5) In other words, our thinking capacity is an image of cosmic thoughts, of cosmic intelligence, of high spiritual beings. But in their current form, our human thoughts are no more than shadows of what originally were actual thought beings. Nevertheless, these high consciousness forces are potentially present in our thinking. The creative cosmic hierarchiesThe high creative beings that live in the spiritual world are called "divine-spiritual beings" or the "heavenly or cosmic hierarchies." They act by order of the highest creative power in the cosmos, the Divine Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.6) In this series about esoteric evolution, we have already seen the names of the creative cosmic hierarchies several times. We have come to know them as:
These spiritual beings are all more or less related to each other. They do not work separately from each other but cooperate very closely. They all need the help of others in their creative work. Often countless beings work together to bring a certain being into existence in the physical world or in the soul world.7)
Archetypal soundsA person who, in addition to spiritual "seeing," can also spiritually "hear," will also perceive archetypal sounds in Devachan. The spiritual world is a world of radiating, sounding images. When archetypal images are mentioned, we should always add archetypal sounds to them in our minds. These archetypal tones or spiritual sounds are inaudible to our normal physical ear and cannot be compared with the sounds we hear on earth. That is because earthly tones are not generated by a spiritual but by a physical, sensory sound through the air. A person who perceives spiritual hearing in the world of the spirit, says Rudolf Steiner, feels immersed into a sea of divinely sounding tones. Lofty beings of the spiritual world express themselves in this spiritual sounding. In their sounding, their harmonies, rhythms, and melodies, the archetypal laws of their existence, their mutual relationships come to expression.8) This sea of sounds appears to those who can spiritually hear it as spiritual music—spiritual music of a beauty and harmony unknown on earth. Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher and mathematician who in antiquity was the leader of a secret esoteric school, was an initiate who could hear this heavenly music. He called this harmony of sounds the "harmony of the spheres" or the "music of the spheres."9) In one of the subsequent chapters, we will come back to this. Then we will see what extraordinary, creative forces emanate from it. The realm of streaming lifeDevachan can be subdivided into seven different realms which, admittedly, flow into each other and permeate each other, but can still be clearly distinguished from each other. In these realms we find the archetypal images themselves, but also the impulses, the creative forces that work in those archetypal images. A person who is able to ascend to this high level, says Rudolf Steiner, learns to know the intentions that underlie our world.10) For our subject, it is important to know that these realms contain the archetypal images of the physical world, those of all that is related to the soul, and those of life, or the living. The archetypal images of life, or the living, are in the second realm of Devachan. There is what is called "the original source of streaming life," which streams as a fluid element through the whole spiritual world, and thus through all that permeates the spiritual world. We can compare it, says Rudolf Steiner, with the way the blood circulation pulsates through the physical bodies of humans and animals and permeates everything. Just as everything else in the spiritual world, this streaming life is also built from thought substance.11) All life comes forth from this eternally streaming source of life, which consists of the creative archetypal forces of all that exists in the cosmos and on Earth in the form of life, living element, or living being. The breath of lifeRudolf Steiner sometimes called this cosmic archetypal force "prana."12) With this he expressed that this archetypal force corresponds with what in Hinduism and Buddhism is viewed as life force or universal life energy. The same goes for Chinese "qi" or "chi" and Japanese "ki," which have the same meaning. In both the Christian and the Hebrew Bible, the creative archetypal force of everything that lives is called the "breath of life." (Genesis 2:7) Earlier in this series it was described how Yahweh-Elohim in Lemuria breathed the breath of life into the becoming human being. Thus, he became a living soul. Sources
For English translations of Rudolf Steiner's works see www.rsarchive.org. Translated by Philip Mees © Margarete van den Brink 2007-2025 - www.margaretevandenbrink.nl
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