The Ether, the Shapeforces

The ethereal and elemental world "The entire macrocosm is based on an ether-macrocosm, an etheric body, just as man has an etheric body." (B001, 27.9.1911). Immediately adjacent to the physical world is the world of the etheric and the elements. Even higher areas such as the astral and the spiritual world work through this etheric world into the physical. Man also has such a division into a physical body, a pictorial body1, astral body and an ego. This world of the etheric eludes our sensual perception and can only be observed with the higher organs of perception. The etheric and elemental world permeates everything physical. The physical substances are created from the activity of the pictorial forces. (B095, capital: "Of the etheric body of man and of the elementary world"). The more the physical substances are permeated by a pictorial body, the more alive this physical body is. If the image-force body withdraws, then this living becomes a dead body. Thus, all minerals and substances of nature are something that originated from living things. It is not from the dead substances that living things have slowly formed, but from living things that the dead has come into being through the withdrawal of the image power body. It is these pictorial forces that make the plant grow out of a seed. Bring in substances from the environment and join them together to form a living body. The etheric body of a plant has the blueprint for the growth but also for the death of the plant; it causes growth, blossoming, fertilization and death. Life emerges in several stages and qualities in the substances and elements in its activity of transforming dead into living. The first condition is the presence of heat, where there is no heat at all, where there is too little heat, there cannot be the corresponding life. The second prerequisite is the light, without light nothing will grow and can become2. Dead matter becomes in a third quality what one can call organization, structure. From indiscriminate quantities of material qualitatively different forms, limbs, organs, movements in which only that which is life in the physical can arise and as a fourth prerequisite is the presence of the meaning of life in becoming, growing, special, becoming, consciousness of being, preservation, reproduction and decay. These four qualities can be found in four different types of ether: heat ether, light ether, chemical ether and life ether. The heat ether associated with heat, the light ether associated with light and air, the ether which divides, forms and is called sound, chemical or number ether and the life ether associated with the earthly, solid, earthy. These types of ether form organs, shapes and movements. There is the simplifying attempt of Guenther Wachsmuth to represent the ether types graphically, to bring them into a relationship with individual forms, the heat ether through the circular all-pervading, the light ether through the triangular coming out of a source, the chemical ether through the crescent-shaped - singing bowl like and the life ether through the square (B040). Ether (image forces) is found where physical matter is not. "Emptier than empty is everywhere in the universe where ether is" (B069, p. 62). Matter becomes negative where ether is; it becomes sucking. "Ether is suction" (B069, p. 63). Geometrically thought, there where one crosses over into the other of the 3-dimensional space. Thus, man also consists of pressing and sucking. "...woven of pressing and sucking, of weighable matter and ether, that is in living organizations" (B069, p. 63). These pictorial forces underlie the whole world, just as a pictorial body underlies the human being (B001, 27.09.1911), and the types of ether described have an effect on the physical via the elements related to them. Here four different elements3 are distinguished. The fire, the water, the air and the earth which are connected with the different kinds of ether. The heat (the element fire) with the heat ether, all gaseous (the element air) with the light-ether, everything liquid (the element water) with the sound, chemical or number ether, everything solid, crystalline (the element earth) with the life ether. The types of ether can be characterized here: The life ether as plasticizing and shape-forming force, the chemical ether as separating and creating relationships, the light ether creating growth force and wisdom and the heat ether creating and giving movement (B041). They work through the elements into physical substances. Ernst Marti (B041, "The Etheric") tried to bring the connection between the under-nature (subphysical), nature, elements and ether types into a picture in a method similar to the Rosicrucian depictions. In the course of the development of the earth over its previous planetary embodiments, the old Saturn, the old sun, the old moon, the elements were created by higher beings, and with this emergence, other properties of the world have also become. In the figure above, the orbital forces, the etheric action, the heat, light, chemical and life ether, the central forces of physical heat, electricity, magnetism and nuclear power and various states can be seen in their relationship to the elements. The forces working in the world can also be divided into supernatural forces working from spiritual worlds, of heat, light, chemical and life ether. In natural forces of physical heat, density force (darkness), gravity, dissolving (dividing) force and in forces that act under what is nature (can also be called sub-nature), which are physical heat, electricity, magnetism, 3rd force (some assume nuclear power). So represented is a connection between the pictorial forces and the elements, the elements again in a connection with the physical substances, with matter. Regarding the transition from etheric substance to physical substance, Rudolf Steiner says: "Nothing in the world is similar to what lies between the physical and the etheric substance" (B001, lecture 27.9.1911). It is an essence of the physical, which is contained as a substance, as a modification in all substances of the physical. It could be found by the Rosicrucians through special meditative observation in the macrocosmic as well as in the human being. "In man they saw it emerge when there is a harmonious interaction between thought and will." (B001, lecture 27.9.1911). It is the pictorial forces that cause a delicate root and stem to sprout from the germination of a plant, first to make it sprout, to hold back and form flowers, to envelop what is to come, to blossom, dust, receive, fruit, facilitate, solidify and bring it to germinate again. In plant growth we can thus observe the effects of the pictorial forces. If we look at the area that impulses the pictorial forces, this is the astral world. From there the ideals work, which are then expressed in the physical through the pictorial forces4. So there is also a cooperation of fixed and changing stars in relation to plant growth. "The fixed stars show them resting constellations, which give form to the plants. But the moving planets, they send down forces of motion. They are the ones that first pull the plants out of the root, then make them grow higher and higher and higher, and so on. Just as the shape of the plants is formed from the fixed starry sky, so the movement is formed from the movement of the celestial bodies closer to the Earth. Only what happens in the plant itself, the metabolism ... that is from the forces of the earth itself" (B068, page 231). The planetary forces work into the earthly, so that the soul-spiritual can connect with the elements and ensure the right relationship to the ether types (see section "The spiritual individualities of the planetary system"). In this way the beings whose physical expression are the planets have an effect on what happens on earth. Also in their motions the planets have an effect on, for example, the growth and shaping of plants, animals and man. "In the etheric spheres in which these macrocosmic planetary movements took place, the genesis of the human organism also took place, and it therefore received its basic form imprinted by the laws of the etheric sea in which it developed" (B040, p.228). We can find a spiral course in the formation, in the process of forming the leaves and also the flower. In a sense, the plant's forming powers follow a kind of spiral path around the stem, due to the effects of the extra-Atellurian planets. It is an upward formation process dependent on the sun. The planets Saturn, Jupiter, Mars cause a decrease of the upward force, towards flower and seed formation. The planets Mercury, Venus, Moon are the ones that produce the downward tendency in the plant, towards root formation (B070, p. 117ff). But just as the original forms come down from the zodiac, just as the movements from the planetary spheres work their way in, so it is earthly processes that are connected with the metabolism. Here in this harmony between the images, the movements, the materials and the pictorial forces, the respective elemental beings act as mediators. The root spirits (also called gnomes) live in the earthly-wet, in the water-earth elements, they mediate there between the roots and the earth, they are completely connected with the life ether. They bring the spiritual, mineral of the earth into flow, so that it can connect with the plant, their element is the solid. The water spirits (or also called undines) have their area in the humid-air, i.e. in the elemental connection water-air, they are the elemental spirits that are connected with the chemical, numerical or clay ether. Their element is water, they are the chemists of the world, from materials they form, shape and form that which is physical, on plants. In a kind of "characteristic of their own being: Gnomes : I hold the root-being power, she creates the form body for me. Undines : I move the water growth force, She creates my life substance. Sylph : I slurp the airy life force, She fills me with the power of being. Fire being: I hold the fire power, it redeems me in soul-spirituality.", (B098 , p. 155) The spirits of light or air (also called sylphs) live in the airlike-heatlike element, and are receptive to that which is related to light. They experience what can be called spiritual-sounding in the moving air element, they become carriers of cosmic love through the air space, they bring it to the plants. They are thus close to the light ether, their element is the air, they carry the light into the plant. The fire spirits (or also called salamanders) inhabit the warmth-like, light-like, they collect when the earth's heat has risen the highest and carry it into the flowers of the plants (B065, 7th lecture of November 2, 1923). Thus fire spirits carry the effect of the heat ether into the plants, their element is heat5. So what we can call the whole cosmos is involved in the creation of life and forms. The mediator from the spiritual to the physical is the astral, from the astral to the physical, the etheric. This is described when one speaks of how a moral ideal works from the spiritual into the physical: Process it arises 1. man is enthusiastic about a high moral ideal figurative idea of a high ideal 2. this is expressed by the increase of heat in the warmth organism (it becomes mentally warm) Heat source of the ideal 3. the heat of the warmth organism acts on the air organism, germs of the glow communicate with the air organism. Triggering of dark, still invisible light sources. In the astral body these light sources appear Light source of the ideal 4. this causes sound sources in the fluid organism Sound source of the ideal 5. an ethereal life germ is released in the physical body release of an etheric source of life Table 4: From the moral idea in the spiritual to its physical manifestation Thus the source of life lies in what moral ideals stimulate (B042, 18.10.1920). The world is created and developed through the word, the thought, the idea (B008, 18.1.1909). The word works as spiritual into the astral, this works into the etheric and this brings about its appearance in physical life and forms. So the development can always be seen in the stages of consciousness, life, form. So the forms also go through seven (see chapter and B116, 25.10.1904) stages: 1. the Arupian form, the form in its very first disposition, as it is not yet an actual form, but is already pushing outward. 2. the rupic form, the spiritual form, the most delicate hint of an outer form. 3. the astral form, it is beginning to become externally visible. 4. the physical form. 5. the plastic form, which is no longer rigid, but asserts itself from within, in which life pushes outwards into the form. 6. the intellectual form, which has become even more mobile, in which the spirit pushes outwards. 7. the archetypal, the archetypal form. This form controls itself absolutely, is completely mobile in itself. Everything pushes outwards, it can shape everything, it is active. A certain feeling can be developed for the ether types, if the close relationship of individual sense organs is taken into account. Thus, the sense of heat is connected with the heat ether, the sense of sight with the light ether, the sense of taste with the chemical ether, the sense of hearing with the sound ether, the sense of smell with the life ether, "... as well as the other senses in their intimate relationship with the etheric processes. (B040, P.251). Apart from that, the exercises from "How to gain knowledge of the higher worlds" (B023) should be mentioned, which make it possible for every human being to develop higher organs of perception that make him able to perceive the ether. A task that offers mankind, which today is only at the very beginning of its research in the field of the etheric, a wealth of new areas of research. In the agricultural course Rudolf Steiner described how the etheric forces can have an effect on the physical through certain elements and elemental connections. "... if we look at man or, finally, at another living being, then - and this has been emphasized many times in our being together - this living being must be permeated by an etheric which is the actual carrier of life. That which represents the carbon-like scaffolding of a living being must, therefore, be permeated by the etheric in turn, ... And this physical carrier of the spiritual, which works in the etheric - we can say that the lowest spiritual works in the etheric -, this physical carrier, which is permeated by the etheric, ... this physical, which carries the life effects from the ether with the help of sulfur, that is the oxygen", (B127, 11.6.1924). The spiritual world has an effect on the living of the physical world and it is the elemental beings that accomplish this spiritual weaving on the physical world. The elementals form the physical matter from the living thoughts of the etheric world. "We harden, we strengthen The material dust flicker... And tighten slowly Lockres With our bodily spirits, woven of mind fabric, ...", (B119, second picture). The ether sphere is the sphere where thoughts are alive. From living spiritual beings we experience there living thoughts, living thoughts that are physically hardened into e.g. plants and become the life impulses in man. The sublunar sphere as the sphere which envelops the earth is the ether sphere, the place of living thoughts. In his development before the appearance of the consciousness soul, man was still closely connected with these living thoughts. Man had a consciousness of 'it thinks in me', his thoughts came from this divine-spiritual sphere. The human thought life darkened, what remained were the dead thoughts. In our time of the consciousness soul we live with the 'I think'. Today we experience the thoughts as if we would bring them out of ourselves alone. But our life is impulsed and carried by the living thoughts that we experienced before birth in the spiritual-divine world. "I entered this world of the senses, the world of thought, carrying with me the inheritance of thought ...", (B123, 13th hour). If our today's earthly dead materialistic thoughts would penetrate back into the etheric sphere, they would lead to ruin there. "SPIRIT OF THE ELEMENTS: Thus you are in the place you so ardently desire... "The elements and spirits, when entering their domain... Why does the deep tremble? Why does the height roar? Why does the most beautiful dream of hope escape the youthful soul? (lightning and thunder.) SPIRIT OF THE ELEMENTS: To you dreamers of men, such words of hope ring proudly. But in the depths of the world, the madness of thought's folly echoes such echoes forever... But follow your work, unleash storm forces in the depths of the primeval world", (B119, The Gate of Initiation, 4th picture). Earthly thoughts, carried by death or meditation into the aetheric sphere, if they are not first purified, harmonized, truthful and alive through practice, cause unrest and disharmony in this sphere. So human life in its incarnation on earth can also be seen as an inhalation of living thought from the etheric sphere, these impulses are lived out in life between birth and death and in death all that is taken in is breathed out again into the etheric sphere. "Thoughts are in the sub-lunar sphere, that's where the thoughts live. -...so that one had to deal with an inhalation: beginning of life; holding breath: duration of life on Earth; exhalation: sending the thoughts out into the world. ... What is this exhalation? Exactly the same, my dear friends, as that of which we say: in the three days after death, the etheric body of man increases. Man looks back at the slowly enlarging etheric body, he sees how his thoughts spread out into the cosmos", (B201, 1.7.1924). Now the human being absorbs various impulses and thoughts in his earthly life. Thoughts can be well spiritual, Christian and Michaelic or they can also be influenced by adversary beings. The former bring about good things into the sphere of the ether, the latter carry harmful things into it. "This is how the Revenants, I would like to say the very real ghosts of an earlier age, really go about spiritually in a later age. It is one of the fine general karma effects that are present in the world. ... something so tremendously fertile for the Ahriman people. The Ahriman people today, without people noticing, are working in a particularly bad way. They try to galvanize as much as possible of these ghosts of the last century, I would say, Ahrimanic and to bring them to influence on the people of the present", (B201, 4.7.1924).
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