Esoteric Evolution - 29

Life Ether

Creative thoughts

Life ether

The life-creating original force, prana

The Logos

Everything has become through the Word

The solid earthly

The living physical human body

The Elohim, the Spirits of Form

The first days of creation

The creation of the human being

The planetary incarnations of the Earth:

The eras of development of the Earth:

In the light of the question of the significance of the Tree of Life in Paradise, in these chapters we are considering the question of how the spiritual forces of the four different kinds of ether work in the creation.

Knowledge and insight in the working of these etheric forces not only enables us to understand to some extent how the creative angelic hierarchies work into the Earth and in the cosmos. They also give us some possibility to imagine how these divine forces - called in the Bible the forces of the Tree of Life - will at some point be able to work creatively from us humans.

It is important to realize that the four kinds of ether we are discussing here are not only to be found in the etheric world, but also in our own personal etheric body or life body. Our etheric body is part of the general etheric world and is most profoundly connected with it.

This means that the creative powers that work in the different kinds of ethers in the etheric world are also present in us. However, we have as yet only a minimal ability to use them - and only in the realm of the physical-material - but not at all in the way the creative beings create. That will only become possible if and when we humans have developed much more as spiritual beings.

In previous chapters we have spoken about warmth ether, light ether, and sound ether. This chapter is about life ether.

Before we begin with this, first the following. It is important always to be conscious of the fact that what shines as spiritual forces of the heavenly hierarchies from high Devachan to the Earth, consists of divine thoughts. It is these high thought forces of the creative spiritual beings that work creatively on Earth. They "think" the world and all that lives on it which, as a result, then "becomes."¹⁾

In very beginning times of the Earth, the separating and order-creating thought activity of the Dynameis, Spirits of Motion, brought about through sound ether out of the harmony of the spheres the "dance of substances." This caused in Lemurian times certain movements, structures and forms to arise in the fluid protein substance.

In the course of evolution, as the Earth further densified, these developed into the multiplicity of substances and forms we currently encounter in nature and in the laws of nature.

The Dynameis and Kyriotetes, Spirits of Motion and Spirits of Wisdom, bestowed on us humans also the thinking capacity so that we could come to know those forms and laws of nature. Human thinking namely consists of the same spiritual "substance" as divine thinking of the heavenly hierarchies, albeit that our thinking is on an infinitely lower level than that of the creative angelic beings.

Because the cosmos and the world are built up of thoughts, said Rudolf Steiner, we can understand them through our thinking.²⁾ We may add to that: …and scientifically explore and come to know them.

We now move on to the life ether.

Life ether has many layers and is because of its grandeur more difficult to fathom than the other kinds of ether. It only came into existence during the Earth period, compared with warmth ether during Old Saturn, light ether during Old Sun, and sound ether during Old Moon. All these ethers are there again at the very beginning of Earth. Then the fourth and highest ether force is added to them.

Life ether, and with it also the spiritual elemental beings working in it, was created by the divine leadership in order to enable divine beings to create down into the Earth that was densifying into solid materiality.

Creating in earthly materiality namely demanded something entirely different from creating in the sphere of light, air, and the watery. For the solid earthly element, besides the existing etheric forces, life ether was also required with the spiritual beings working in it.

Rudolf Steiner made a connection between life ether and the concept of prana.³⁾ Prana (Sanskrit) means living breath, life force, or universal life energy. Both in eastern and in western esotericism, it is called the creative original force of all life on Earth. The Bible calls it the "breath of life." It was this "breath of life" that made the human being a living being, a living soul during the creation process in Genesis (Genesis 2:7).

The life-creating original force, prana, works in and through all etheric forces, but particularly through life ether, and with it in all that has life and development on Earth.

In one of the previous chapters, it was said that the source of all life on Earth can be found in higher realms of the spiritual world, Devachan. This is true, but it is not the whole story.

True, the source of life that streams from the spiritual world to the Earth springs from Devachan, the higher spiritual world. But in its turn, Devachan receives this life from an even much higher, divine source that far exceeds the realm of the creative hierarchical beings. In esoteric Christianity this original source is called the Logos, or the creative Word.

The Logos is the divine creative thought-force that emanates from God the Son. From him, life streams out. Together with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, God the Son forms the divine Trinity.

The Trinity is the Godhead from which everything that exists has come forth: the creative angelic hierarchies, the cosmos with all its starry systems, the Earth with all its incarnations, nature, plants, animals, and human beings. Before all of this came into existence, there was only the Logos, the creative Thought or the creative Word, which was still with God, the Trinity.⁴⁾

John, the author of the Gospel of John in the Bible, who was initiated in the highest Christian mysteries, put this truth into words as follows (John 1:1-5):

'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.

All things came into being through him, and nothing of all that has come into being was made except through him.

In him was life, and the life was the light of human beings.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.'

Rudolf Steiner describes the Logos as the very highest creative divine thought- and word-force - the Word that surges through space. The Logos or the Word, also called the Sun Logos or Christ, is the bearer of cosmic life, of true, surging, pulsating Life⁵⁾ that gives "life," meaningful form, and purpose. The divine Word works in and through warmth ether, light ether, and sound ether, but most directly through life ether.

Hence, Rudolf Steiner sometimes also called life ether "word ether." Through the ethers, word ether works out of the divine Word sounding, speaking, and life-creating through into the deepest depths of the material earthly world. There it brings about two important developments.

First, in the early times of the Earth, life ether brought about the solid earthly element. Earthly materiality developed in the course of Lemuria, but mostly during Atlantis, as a result of an ever-progressing process of densification and hardening.

As described before, because of the working of the harmony of the spheres, certain still fluid substances, structures, and elements came into being in the original protein substance. What happened now was that the Word, the Logos, the bearer of which is Christ, as it worked in the life ether, brought into these still fluid substances the ash-like, mineral element, and impregnated them with it. This ash-like, mineral element arose as a result of a certain cooling of the fire element at the time.⁶⁾

In the course of evolution, this penetration of the mineral, ash-like element into the watery forms led to the solid earthly materiality we are familiar with today.

In this way, through the work of the Thrones, Spirits of Will (increasing densification) and the Dynameis, Spirits of Motion (differentiation in the undifferentiated materiality), separate entities gradually came into being in physical earthly materiality - entities that at the same time are most closely related to each other and thus form one whole, a unity.

Example: the cells of an organ, or the organs in a living body. Also in nature do we encounter this principle everywhere. Although in nature we see that living organisms like plant- and animal species have their own existence as such, they are also mutually very closely connected with each other, thus forming an important unity that is important for their life: an ecological system.

This order shows that the creative, life-bestowing force of the Logos, Christ, permeates and gives form to earthly reality through all layers, down into the atomic and sub-atomic realms. Rudolf Steiner predicted that there will in the future be chemists and physicists that will say that earthly matter is built up as Christ arranged it in the course of time. We will then be able to find Christ himself even in the laws of chemistry and physics, he said.⁷⁾

The second thing the Word brought about with the aid of the creative beings in the angelic hierarchies, and continues to bring about, is that it creates, down into the solid earthly, mineral element, living forms that grow and develop.

Christ's Cross as the Tree of Life

By far the most important living form that the Godhead and the hierarchical beings generated in the course of evolution is the living physical human body. Why was this so important?

Because at some point in the future, the creative Word has to sound from this human body. For this purpose, and for their own human development, human beings had to receive the gift of the Word, of speech, on Earth - the Word, speech, that originally belonged to the Godhead.⁸⁾

Which creative hierarchical beings are connected with life ether and therefore with this grand creative work on Earth? They are the Elohim, also called Exousiai or Spirits of Form. They are, just like the Dynameis, the Spirits of Motion, part of the second hierarchy of creative beings.

We came to know these high beings already when we were discussing the creation process in Genesis. The Elohim are the leading creators and maintainers of living physical forms, and therefore also of the solid materiality of the Earth. Hence their name, Spirits of Form.

It is their task to make life in physical-earthly reality possible for human beings and their further development to higher levels of consciousness and existence.

For that lofty goal, they lead and coordinate the input of the other creative hierarchical beings in their work on Earth, and work together with them.

The Elohim can do this because through them, very directly, works and speaks the Logos, the creative Word, Christ. As sun beings who have their dwelling place in the Sun, they were and are deeply connected with the high Sun Spirit, Christ. From the very beginning of time, the Sun Logos has worked creatively through them as the Living Word. Yes, ever since the period of Old Sun, Christ, has been their leader.⁹⁾

In their creative work, the Spirits of Form, the Elohim, and the Logos working through them, make use of warmth ether, light ether, sound ether and most of all, life ether.

We can recognize that in the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible, where on the first day of creation it speaks of "brooding warmth" (warmth ether) in which the Spirit of the Elohim - Ruach Elohim, the creative Word that works through the Elohim - hovers over the waters. Then sounds divine speech: "Let there be light," through light ether.

On the second day of creation, we see forces of sound ether appearing which, in the still etheric state of the Earth, separated what is above from what is below: "God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven" (Genesis 1:7).

On the third day of creation the element of life ether appears. That becomes evident when sprouting green is mentioned: "The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind" (Genesis 1:12). Thus, the element of life, brought forth by life ether, appears for the first time on Earth.¹⁰⁾

Old Saturn

The culmination of their creative work, the crown on their work, is reached when, in Genesis 1:26, the Elohim proceed on the sixth day of creation to the creation of the human form, the image of God. To make that possible, the Elohim together had to rise so high above themselves and form a unity, that the Logos, the divine Word, with the aid of the life ether, could create through them the living basis for the human form on Earth.

Elohim creating Adam - William Blake, ca. 1805

In Genesis 2, during the second creation, it is again an Elohim, Yahweh, who breathes the living breath into the becoming human being, who thus becomes a living soul and receives the beginning of an I.

Because of the I, the spiritual self could later work in human beings, and they could become autonomous individuals. Because of the I, human beings started to walk upright and to think and speak, and obtained the capacity to give and receive love.¹¹⁾

In this way, the Elohim or Spirits of Form, with the aid of the Sun Logos, the other angelic hierarchies and also of the spiritual elemental beings that work in the four etheric forces, fulfilled their great earthly task, the creation of the human being. The human being who as a living being on Earth grows and develops, and goes his way towards ever higher levels of consciousness and existence.

Sources

Rudolf Steiner, Human and Cosmic Thought, GA 151, lectures of January 20 and 23, 1914.
Rudolf Steiner, Practical Training in Thought, from GA 108.
See https://anthrowiki.at/Prana/Beiträge 060, page 23.
Rudolf Steiner, Awareness, Life, Form, GA 89.
Rudolf Steiner, Genesis – Secrets of Creation, GA 122, lecture of August 18, 1910.
Rudolf Steiner, The Influence of Spiritual Beings upon Man, GA 102, lecture of March 16, 1908
Rudolf Steiner, Spiritual Guidance of Man and Humanity, GA 15, lecture of June 8, 1911.
Rudolf Steiner, The Gospel of St. John, GA 103, lecture of May 19, 1908.
Rudolf Steiner, The Spiritual Hierarchies and the Physical World, GA 110, Answers to questions April 21, 1909.
See Chapter 11 in this series about esoteric evolution: The six days of creation.
See note 8 and articles 12 and 13 in this series.

Most of Rudolf Steiner's lecture cycles (GA numbers or CW numbers = Collective Works numbers) have been translated into English. They can be downloaded free of charge from www.rsarchive.org.

Also look at https://en.anthro.wiki

On www.anthrowiki.at pdf's of the GA numbers and the lectures can be downloaded in German.

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Translated by Philip Mees