The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. The Macrocosmic and the Microcosmic Fire. The Spiritualization of Breath and Blood

[ 1 ] In a moving way, one of the most inspired minds of modern times, Goethe, knew how to depict the power and strength of Easter tones, of Easter bells. Goethe presents us with Faust, the representative of striving humanity, as he has come to the edge of earthly existence, and shows us how it is the sounds of Easter, the light of Easter, that can overcome the thought of death, the impulse of death, even in the heart of this death-seeker.

[ 2 ] Just as Goethe presents this inner impulse of the Easter sounds to us, so this impulse has run through the entire development of humanity. And when, in the not too distant future, human beings will understand through a renewed spiritual deepening how the festivals are meant to connect our souls with everything that lives and weaves in the great world space, then in a renewed form during these days of early spring, we will also feel our souls expanded to grasp how the sources of spiritual life can redeem us from material life, from the narrowness of existence that is bound to matter.

[ 3 ] It is precisely during the Easter season that the human soul will learn to feel most strongly what can pour into the soul: the unshakeable confidence that in the innermost depths of the human being there dwells a source of eternal, divine existence, a source that drives us out of all narrowness and allows us to be one, without losing ourselves, with the source of universal existence, in which we rise again at any time when we are able to rise to its knowledge through enlightenment. Nothing else and nothing less is what constitutes the true essence of Easter than an outward sign of the deepest thing that humanity has been able to experience, an outward sign of the deepest Christian mystery. And so it is for us today at Easter, as if in the external festival and in the external signs of the festival there were a symbol of what human beings could only find at the beginning of human evolution on earth and what they had only known in the depths of the sacred mysteries. Wherever the peoples of the earth celebrated what we call Easter—and it was celebrated in the widest circles of humanity among the ancient peoples—we see it blossoming everywhere out of the sacred mysteries. And everywhere it evokes the intuition and conviction that life in the spirit is capable of conquering death in matter. Whatever it was that instilled this conviction in the human soul had to be proclaimed in ancient times from the depths of the sacred mysteries.

[ 4 ] But this is precisely the further development of humanity, that now more and more of what is the secret of the sacred places is coming forth, and that the wisdom of the sacred mystery places is spreading throughout humanity, becoming the common property of humanity. And so let today's and tomorrow's celebration be dedicated to an attempt to describe how this intuition, this feeling, this conviction has increasingly gained ground in the course of human development and has emerged from ancient knowledge into ever wider circles. Today we want to look back into the past so that tomorrow we will be able to describe what the present feels about this celebration.

[ 5 ] However, because Easter is the festival of the resurrection of the human spirit, we must gather ourselves today in serious contemplation in order to attain the wisdom that can, in a certain sense, lead us to the highest heights of spiritual scientific insight.

[ 6 ] Our Christian Easter is only one of the forms of the human Easter in general, and what the sages of humanity had to say out of their strongest, deepest convictions, out of the deepest reasons of wisdom, about the overcoming of death through life, was hidden in the symbols of Easter. Everywhere we will find elements that help us understand Easter, the festival of the resurrection of the spirit. A beautiful, profound, Eastern legend tells the following story:

[ 7 ] The great teacher of the East, Shakyamuni, the Buddha, blessed the lands of the East with his profound wisdom, which was drawn from the primordial sources of spiritual existence and therefore filled the hearts of humanity with the deepest bliss. What was deeply blissful for the hearts of humanity when man was still able to look into the divine world—ancient wisdom from the divine-spiritual worlds—was preserved for humanity by Shakyamuni until later times. He had one great disciple, and while the other disciples more or less failed to understand the comprehensive wisdom taught by the Buddha, Kashyapa – for that was the name of this disciple – did understand it. He was one of the most deeply initiated into this teaching, one of the most important followers of the Buddha. The legend tells that when Kashyapa was dying and, thanks to his maturity, was about to enter Nirvana, he went to a steep mountain and hid himself in a cave. And in this cave his body remained incorrupt after his death and continued to exist. Only the initiates knew of this secret and where the body rested. For in a hidden, secret place rests the incorruptible body of the great initiate, Kashyapa. But the Buddha had predicted that one day his great successor, the Maitreya Buddha, the renewed great teacher and leader of humanity, would come, and when he had reached the summit of that existence which he was to attain during his earthly life, he would seek out the cave of Kashyapa, touch the incorruptible body of the Enlightened One with his right hand, and a wonderful fire would descend from heaven, and in this fire the incorruptible body of the great Enlightened One, Kashyapa, would rise from earthly existence into a spiritual one.

[ 8 ] So says the great legend of the Orient, perhaps somewhat incomprehensible to the West. It also speaks of a resurrection, a rapture from earthly existence, of an overcoming of death, which is brought about in such a way that the forces of decay on earth have no power over the purified body of Kashyapa, and that when the great initiate comes and touches him with his hand, the miraculous fire lifts him up into the heavenly spheres. And it is precisely in this deviation of the Eastern legend from what we know as the content of the Western Christian Easter story that we find a possibility of arriving at a deeper understanding of Easter. Hidden in such a legend is a primordial wisdom that we can only approach little by little. And so we might ask: Why does Kashyapa not become the victor over death after three days, as the savior does in the Christian Easter story? Why does the incorruptible body of the Eastern initiate wait for such a long time before being carried up to the heavenly heights by a miraculous fire?

[ 9 ] Today, we can only hint at the depth that lies in such things. Only gradually will we gain an inkling of the wisdom expressed in such profound legends. Especially at such festive times, we must first remain shy and reverent in the distance with our feelings, and only gradually learn to look up through such festive celebrations to the heights of wisdom. We should not try to grasp what lies in such legends with our sober intellect. True understanding can only be achieved if we approach these truths in such a way that we first make our feelings and emotions suitable and mature before we approach the great truths, so that we can then grasp the great truths with our feelings in full fire and with full warmth.

[ 10 ] For humanity today, two truths stand like powerful lights on the horizon of the spirit, symbols that are intimately related to each other. They are two important points of reference for humanity at its present stage of development, striving toward the spiritual.

[ 11 ] The first landmark is the burning bush of Moses, and the second is the fire that appears amid thunder and lightning on Mount Sinai, through which Moses receives the proclamation: “I am who I am.”

[ 12 ] Who is this spiritual being who revealed himself to Moses at that time, who speaks in both appearances?

[ 13 ] Those who understand the message of Christianity in a spiritual sense also understand the words that announce who is the being who appears to Moses in the thorn bush and then on Mount Sinai amid thunder and lightning, and who presents the Ten Commandments to him. The writer of the Gospel of John himself tells us that Moses foretold Christ Jesus, and the evangelist has him point precisely to those passages where, in the burning bush and later in the fire on Sinai, the power is announced that was later called Christ. No other deity is to be imagined than Christ in the one who speaks to Moses of himself: “I am who I am.”

[ 14 ] The one God who later appeared in human form and presented the mystery of Golgotha to humanity reigns invisibly, foretelling himself in the fire element of nature, in the fire of the burning bush and in the lightning fire on Mount Sinai. And only he understands the proclamation of the Old Testament who understands the New Testament, who knows that the God proclaimed by Moses is the Christ who is to walk among men. Thus the God who is to bring salvation to mankind announces himself in a way that cannot be seen in human form. He announces himself in the fiery element of nature, for it is in this element that Christ lives. His divine essence announces itself in a wide variety of forms. Throughout antiquity, the same essence prevailed, which then became visible through the events in Palestine.

[ 15 ] So we look back at the Old Testament and ask ourselves: Who did the ancient Hebrew people really worship? Who is the God of the ancient Hebrew people? The members of the Hebrew mysteries knew: they worshipped Christ; they saw Christ in the one who spoke the words: “Say to my people: I am who I am.” But even if all this were not known, the fact that within our human cycle God announces himself in fire would be decisive enough for those who look into the deep mysteries of nature to recognize that the deity of the burning bush and the deity who announced himself on Sinai are the same, who comes down from spiritual heights in order to accomplish the mystery of Golgotha through the descent into the human body. For there is a mysterious connection between the fire that is kindled outside by the elements of nature and that which pulsates as warmth through our blood. It has often been emphasized in our spiritual science that the human being is a microcosm that stands opposite the great world, the macrocosm. Therefore, if we look at it correctly, what happens in the inner processes of the human being must correspond to outer processes in the universe. For every inner process, we must be able to find the corresponding outer process. We must enter the deep shafts of spiritual science if we want to understand the meaning of this. Here we touch the edge of a deep mystery, a great truth, the truth that answers the question: What is it in the great outer world that corresponds to the mystery of the origin of human thought within us?

[ 16 ] Human beings are the only truly thinking beings on our earth. Through their thoughts, human beings experience a world that leads them beyond this earth. No other earthly being experiences thoughts in the form in which they are kindled in human beings. What ignites thoughts within us, what happens within us when the simplest or most wonderful thought flashes through our minds? Two things work together within us when we allow thoughts to pass through our souls: our astral body and our ego. The physical expression of our ego is blood; the physical expression of our astral body is our nervous system, what we call life in our nervous system. And our thoughts would never flash through our soul if there were not a cooperation between the ego and the astral body, which finds its expression in the cooperation between the blood and the nervous system. It will seem strange to a future science of man when today's science seeks the origin of thought solely in the nervous system. The origin of thought is not in the nerves alone. Only in the living interaction between blood and nervous system can we see the process that gives rise to thought.

[ 17 ] When our blood, our inner fire, and our nervous system, our inner air, interact in this way, thought flashes through the soul. And the emergence of thought within the soul corresponds in the cosmos to rolling thunder. When lightning flashes in the air, when fire and air interact and produce thunder, this is the same macrocosmic event in the greater world as the process whereby the fire of the blood and the activity of the nervous system discharge themselves in the inner thunder, which, however, sounds gentle and calm and inaudible to the outside world in the form of thoughts. What lightning is in the clouds is the warmth of our blood, and the air outside, with all the elements it contains in the universe, corresponds to what runs through our nervous system. And just as lightning produces thunder in its interplay with the elements, so the interplay of blood and nerves produces the thought that flashes through the soul. We look out into the world around us: we see the flashing lightning in the formations of the air and hear the rolling thunder as it discharges. And then we look into our soul and feel the inner warmth pulsating in our blood and feel the life that runs through our nervous system—then we feel the thought flash through us and say: Both are one.

[ 18 ] This is truly and really so! For we think within ourselves, and when thunder rolls in the sky, it is not merely a physical, material phenomenon. That is only true for materialistic mythology. But for those who see spiritual beings weaving and surging through material existence, it is truth and reality when a person looks up and sees the lightning and hears the thunder and says to himself: Now God is thinking in the fire, how he must reveal himself to us. That is the invisible God who weaves and surges through the universe, who has his warmth in the lightning, his nerves in the air, and his thoughts in the rolling thunder. He spoke to Moses in the burning bush and on Sinai in the lightning fire.

[ 19 ] The same elements of fire and air that are in the macrocosm are in man, in the microcosm, as blood and nerves; and as lightning and thunder are in the macrocosm, so are thoughts in man. And the God whom Moses saw and heard in the burning bush, who spoke to him in the lightning fire on Mount Sinai, appears as Christ in the blood of Jesus of Nazareth. In the human body of Jesus of Nazareth, Christ appears, descending into human form. Thinking like a human being in a human body, he acts as the great model for the future development of humanity.

[ 20 ] Thus the two poles of human development meet: the macrocosmic God on Mount Sinai, who proclaims himself in thunder and lightning, and the same God in microcosm, embodied in the man from Palestine.

[ 21 ] The sublime mysteries of humanity have been drawn from the deepest wisdom. They are not invented legends, but profound truths. But they are such profound truths that we need all the means of spiritual science to reveal the secrets that surround them. And what impulse has humanity received through its greatest example, through the being who descended and connected himself with the microcosmic images of the elements in a human body, through the being of Christ?

[ 22 ] Let us look back once more at the teachings of ancient peoples. All ancient peoples, back into the gray past of the post-Atlantean era, knew well how human evolution proceeds. Everywhere, in all mystery schools, it was proclaimed what is being proclaimed again today by spiritual science: that the human being consists of four members — the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I — but that he can ascend to higher stages of his existence if, through his I, he transforms the astral body into the spiritual self — manas — the etheric body into the life spirit (Buddhi), and when they spiritualize the physical body into Atman or the spiritual human being. This physical body must gradually be spiritualized in all its members; it must be spiritualized so deeply in our earthly life that what has made human beings human, the inflow of the divine breath, becomes spiritualized. And because the spiritualization of the physical body begins with the spiritualization of the breath, the transformed, spiritualized physical body is called Atma or Atman — breath: Atman. The Old Testament proclaims that at the beginning of his earthly existence, man received the breath of life, and all ancient wisdom sees in the breath of life that which man must gradually spiritualize. All ancient worldviews saw the great ideal to strive for in Atman, in that which deifies the breath so much that man is permeated by a spiritual breath.

[ 23 ] But even more must be spiritualized in man. If his entire physical body is to be spiritualized, not only the breath, but also that which is continually renewed by the breath, the blood, the expression of the I, must be spiritualized. The blood must be seized by an impulse driving it toward the spiritual. Christianity has added to the ancient mysteries the mysteries of the blood—the fire enclosed within man. The ancient mysteries say: Man on earth, as he lives in his earthly form, has descended from spiritual heights into physical-earthly corporeality. Human beings have lost what constitutes their spiritual essence. They have enveloped themselves in physical corporeality. But they must return to spirituality, must throw off their physical shell, must ascend to a spiritual existence.

[ 24 ] As long as the human ego, which has its physical expression in the blood, was not seized by an impulse originating on earth, religions could not teach what is called the power of self-redemption of the human ego. Thus we are told how the great spiritual beings, the great avatars, descend and incarnate themselves from time to time in human bodies when human beings need help. These are beings who do not need to descend into a human body for their own development, because they completed their human development in an earlier world cycle. They descend because they want to help human beings. Thus, from time to time, when humanity needs help, the great god Vishnu descends into earthly existence. One of Vishnu's incarnations, Krishna, speaks of himself, clearly stating what the nature of an avatar is. He himself reveals what he is in the divine song, the Bhagavad Gita. In it we have the glorious words that Krishna, in whom Vishnu lives as an avatar, speaks of himself: “I am the spirit of creation, its beginning, its middle, its end; I am the sun among the stars, the fire among the elements, the ocean of the world among the waters, the eternal serpent among the serpents. I am the foundation of the world.”

[ 25 ] There is no more beautiful or glorious way to proclaim the omnipresent divinity than in these words. The deity that Moses sees in the element of fire, which not only permeates and pervades the world as a macrocosmic deity, can also be found within human beings. That is why the Krishna essence lives in everything that bears the human face as a great ideal toward which the human germ develops from within. And if, as the wisdom of antiquity aspired, the human breath can be spiritualized through the impulse we receive from the mystery of Golgotha, we have the principle of redemption through what lives within ourselves. All avatars have redeemed humanity through power from above, through what they allowed to shine down upon the earth from spiritual heights. But the avatar Christ redeemed humanity through what he took from the forces of humanity itself, and he showed us how the forces of redemption, the forces for the victory of spirit over matter, can be found within ourselves.

[ 26 ] Thus, even an enlightened being such as Kashyapa, despite having made his body imperishable through the spiritualization of his breath, could not yet find complete redemption. The imperishable body must wait in the mysterious cave until the Maitreya Buddha comes to fetch it. For only then, when the physical body has been so spiritualized by the I that the Christ impulse flows into the physical body, only then is the wonderful cosmic fire no longer needed to bring about salvation, but rather the fire surging within our own inner being, in our blood, which brings about salvation. That is why we can also illuminate with the light that radiates from the mystery of Golgotha such a wonderfully profound legend as the one told about Kashyapa.

[ 27 ] At first, the world is dark and full of mysteries for us; but we can compare it to a dark room in which there are many magnificent objects that we cannot see at first. But when we light a lamp, the whole splendor of the objects in the room appears, and everything that these objects are. So it can be for the person striving for wisdom. Man initially strives in darkness. He looks at the world in terms of the past and the future and can initially see only darkness. But when the light that comes from Golgotha is kindled, everything is illuminated, right back to the most distant past and into the most distant future. For everything material is born of the spirit, and from matter the spirit will rise again. And to express this certainty in a festival linked to world events such as Easter is the meaning of this festival that we celebrate during these days. And when humanity realizes where it can penetrate through spiritual science—that the soul, by recognizing the mysteries of existence, can settle into such important symbolic festive seasons as Easter and the mysteries of the universe—then the soul will feel something of what it means no longer to live merely with its narrow personal existence, but with everything that shines in the stars, that glows in the sun, that lives in the universe. It will feel expanded to the universe. It will become increasingly spiritual in this living into the universe.

[ 28 ] To come from human life to universal life through resurrection—these are the tones that we allow to ring in our hearts through the spiritual Easter bells. And when we hear them, these spiritual Easter bells, then all our doubts about the spiritual world will vanish. Then we will realize with certainty that no death in matter can harm us. Then life in the spirit will have us again, if we understand these spiritual Easter bells.