The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. The Macrocosmic and Microcosmic Fires: The Spiritualization of Breath and Blood

[ 1 ] In a deeply moving way, one of the most inspired minds of modern times—Goethe—knew how to portray the power and strength of the sounds of Easter, of the Easter bells. For Goethe places before us the representative of aspiring humanity, Faust, just as he has arrived at the edge of earthly existence, and shows us how the sounds of Easter, how the radiance of the Easter festival, are capable of overcoming even in the heart of this seeker of death the thought of death, the impulse toward death.

[ 2 ] Just as Goethe presents this inner impulse of the sounds of Easter to us, so has this impulse run through the entire development of humanity. And when, in the not-too-distant future, humanity comes to understand—through a renewed spiritual deepening—how the festivals are meant to connect our souls with all that lives and weaves in the vast expanse of the universe, then, in a renewed form, we will also feel our souls expand during these days at the beginning of spring, enabling us to grasp how the sources of spiritual life can redeem us from material life, from the narrowness of an existence bound to matter.

[ 3 ] It is precisely during the Easter season that the human soul learns most keenly to feel what the unshakable confidence can instill within it—the conviction that at the very core of every human being dwells a source of eternal, divine existence, a source that draws us out of all confinement and allows us to be one, without losing ourselves, with the source of universal existence, in which we are resurrected at all times when we are able to rise to its knowledge through enlightenment. Nothing else and nothing less constitutes the very essence of the Easter celebration than an outward sign of the deepest experience humanity has ever known, an outward sign of the deepest Christian mystery. And so, on this Easter, it is as if the outward festival and its symbols were a representation of what people at the dawn of human development on Earth could only find and what they had known only in the depths of the sacred mysteries. Wherever the peoples of the earth have celebrated what we call Easter—and it was celebrated among the ancient peoples in the broadest circles of humanity—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 overcoming death in matter. Whatever it was that instilled this conviction in the human soul, it had to be proclaimed in ancient times from the depths of the sacred mysteries.

[ 4 ] But this is precisely what the further development of humanity consists in: that more and more of what is the mystery of the sacred sites is now coming to light, and that the wisdom of the sacred mystery sites is spreading throughout all of humanity, becoming the common heritage of humanity. And so, in terms of our reflection, let today’s and tomorrow’s festival be dedicated to an attempt to describe how this intuition, this feeling, this conviction has, in the course of human development, increasingly broken through and spread from ancient knowledge into ever-wider circles. Today we wish to look back into the past so that tomorrow we may be able to describe what the present feels in relation to this festival.

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

[ 6 ] Our Christian Easter is just one form of humanity’s Easter as a whole, and what the sages of humanity had to say—based on their strongest, deepest convictions and the deepest foundations of wisdom—about the triumph of life over death has been enshrined in the symbols of Easter. Everywhere in these traditions we will find the elements that help us gain an understanding of Easter, the festival of the resurrection of the Spirit. A beautiful, profound, Eastern legend tells the following:

[ 7 ] The great teacher of the East, Shakyamuni, the Buddha, brought joy to the lands of the East with his profound wisdom, which was drawn from the primordial sources of spiritual existence and thus filled the hearts of humanity with the deepest bliss. What was a source of profound bliss for the hearts of humanity—when people were still able to glimpse into the divine world—ancient wisdom from the divine-spiritual realms—Shakyamuni preserved for humanity well into later times. He had one great disciple, and while the other disciples more or less failed to grasp the comprehensive wisdom that the Buddha taught, Kashyapa—for that was the disciple’s name—did grasp it. He was one of the most deeply initiated into this teaching, one of the Buddha’s most significant successors. The legend tells that when Kashyapa was about to die and, by virtue of his spiritual maturity, was 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 endured. Only the initiates knew of this secret and where the body rests. For in a hidden, secret place rests this incorruptible body of the great initiate, Kashyapa. But the Buddha had foretold that one day his great successor would come—the Maitreya Buddha, the renewed great teacher and guide of humanity—and that when he had reached the summit of the existence he was to attain during his earthly life, he would seek out that cave of Kashyapa, touch the incorruptible body of the Enlightened One with his right hand, and a wondrous fire would stream down from heaven, and in this fire the imperishable body of the great Enlightened One, Kashyapa, would rise from earthly existence into a spiritual one.

[ 8 ] So says the great legend of the East, though it may be somewhat difficult for the West to understand. It, too, speaks of a resurrection, a rapture from earthly existence, of a triumph over death brought about in such a way that the earth’s forces of decay have no power over the purified, cleansed body of Kashyapa, and that when the great initiate comes and touches him with his hand, the wondrous fire lifts him up into the heavenly spheres. And precisely where this legend of the East diverges from what we know as the content of the Western, Christian Easter narrative lies an opportunity to arrive at a deeper understanding of the Easter festival. Hidden within such a legend is a primal wisdom that we can only approach little by little. And so we might ask: Why does Kashyapa not, like the Savior—as we are told in the Christian Easter narrative—triumph over death after three days? Why does the incorruptible body of the Eastern initiate wait through long ages until it is carried up into the heavenly heights by a wondrous fire?

[ 9 ] Today we can only begin to touch upon the depth that lies in such things. Only gradually will we begin to glimpse the wisdom expressed in such profound legends. Especially during such festive seasons, we must first remain at a distance with our feelings, timid and reverent, and only gradually learn to look up through such celebrations to the heights of wisdom. We should not immediately seek to grasp with our sober intellect what lies within such legends. True understanding is attained only when we approach these truths in such a way that we first prepare and mature our sensibilities and feelings before drawing near to the great truths, so that we may then grasp them with our sensibilities in full fervor and warmth.

[ 10 ] For humanity today, two truths stand like powerful beacons on the horizon of the spirit—landmarks that are intimately related to one another. They are two important points of reference for humanity at its current stage of development, as it evolves and strives toward the spiritual.

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

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

[ 13 ] Whoever understands the message of Christianity in a spiritual sense also understands the words that reveal the identity of the Being who appeared to Moses in the burning bush and later on Mount Sinai amid lightning and thunder, and who presented the Ten Commandments to his soul. The writer of the Gospel of John himself tells us that Moses foretold Christ Jesus, and the evangelist has him point specifically to those passages where, in the burning bush and later in the fire on Mount Sinai, the power is revealed that would later be called Christ. No other deity is to be conceived than Christ in the one who speaks of himself to Moses: “I am who I am.”

[ 14 ] The God who later appeared in human form and who presented the mystery of Golgotha to humanity reigns invisibly, revealing Himself in advance through the element of fire in nature, in the fire of the burning bush, and in the lightning on Mount Sinai. And only those who know that the God proclaimed by Moses is the Christ who is to walk among humanity can truly understand the message of the Old Testament and the New Testament. Thus, the God who is to bring salvation to humanity reveals Himself in a way that cannot be seen in human form. He reveals Himself in the fiery element of nature; for in this element, the Christ lives. His divine essence reveals itself in the most diverse forms. Throughout antiquity, the same essence reigned, which then emerged visibly through the events in Palestine.

[ 15 ] So we look back at the Old Testament and ask ourselves: Whom do the ancient Hebrews actually worship? Who is the God of the ancient Hebrews? — The initiates of the Hebrew mysteries knew the answer: they worshiped the Christ; they saw the Christ in the one who spoke the words: “Say to my people: I am who I am.”—But even if none of this were known, the fact that within our human cycle God reveals Himself in fire would be, for those who look into the deep mysteries of nature, be decisive enough to recognize that the deity of the burning bush and the deity who revealed Himself on Sinai are one and the same—the One who descends from spiritual heights to fulfill the Mystery of Golgotha through the descent into the human body. For there is a mysterious connection between the fire kindled outside by the elements of nature and that which pulses through our blood as warmth. It has often been emphasized in our spiritual science that the human being is a microcosm that stands in contrast to the greater world, the macrocosm. Therefore, if we observe correctly, the inner processes within 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 delve into the depths of spiritual science if we are to understand the significance of this. Here we touch the edge of a profound mystery, a great truth—that truth which answers the question: What is it in the vast 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 Earth. Through their thoughts, human beings experience a world that takes them beyond this Earth. No other earthly being experiences thoughts in the way that they arise within human beings. What sparks thought within us? What takes place within us when the simplest or most magnificent thought flashes through our minds?—Two forces interact within us when we allow thoughts to pass through our soul: our astral body and our “I.” The physical expression of our “I” is the blood; the physical expression of our astral body is our nervous system—what we call “life” within our nervous system. And our thoughts would never flash through our soul if there were not an interaction between the “I” and the astral body, which finds its expression in the interaction between the blood and the nervous system. It will one day seem strange to a future human science when today’s science seeks the origin of thought solely in the nervous system. The origin of thought does not lie in the nerves alone. Only in the living interplay between blood and the nervous system can we perceive 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, a thought flashes through the soul. And the emergence of thought within the soul corresponds in the cosmos to rolling thunder. When the fire of lightning ignites in the air masses, when fire and air interact to produce thunder, this is, in the greater world, the same macrocosmic event as the process in which the fire of the blood and the interplay of the nervous system discharge themselves in the inner thunder—which, however, resounds gently, calmly, and inaudibly to the outside world within the thought. What lightning is to the clouds, the warmth of our blood is to us, and the air outside—with all the elements it contains in the universe—corresponds to what permeates our nervous system. And just as lightning, in its interplay with the elements, produces thunder, so does the interplay of blood and nerves produce the thought that flashes through the soul. We look out at the world around us: we see the flickering lightning in the formations of the air and hear the discharging, rolling thunder. And then we look into our soul and feel the inner warmth pulsing in our blood and feel the life coursing through our nervous system—then we feel the thought flash through us and say: Both are one.

[ 18 ] It 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. It is only that for materialistic mythology. But for those who see the spiritual beings interweaving and surging through material existence, for them 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 about how He must reveal Himself to us. This is the invisible God who weaves through 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 Mount Sinai in the fire of lightning.

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

[ 20 ] Thus the two poles of human development meet: the macrocosmic God on Mount Sinai, who reveals Himself through thunder and flashes of fire, and that same God in the microcosm, embodied in the people of Palestine.

[ 21 ] The sublime mysteries of humanity are drawn from the deepest wisdom. They are not fictional legends, but profound truth. Yet they are such profound truth that we need all the tools of spiritual science to unveil the mysteries that shroud this truth. - And what impulse has humanity received through this greatest of examples—the being who descended and united with the microcosmic images of the elements within a human body, the being of Christ?

[ 22 ] Let us look back once more at the teachings of ancient peoples. All ancient peoples, stretching back into the distant past of the post-Atlantean era, knew well how human evolution unfolds. Everywhere, in all the mystery schools, it was taught—as spiritual science teaches again today—that human beings consist of four parts: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the “I”; but that they can ascend to higher stages of existence if, through their “I,” they actively transform the astral body into the spiritual self —Manas—the etheric body into the life spirit—Buddhi—and if he spiritualizes the physical body into Atman, or the spiritual human being. This physical body must be gradually spiritualized in all its parts; it must be spiritualized so deeply during our earthly life that that which has made the human being human—the inflow of the divine breath—is 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 proclamation states that at the beginning of his earthly existence, man received the breath of life, and all ancient wisdom traditions see in the breath of life that which man must gradually spiritualize. All ancient worldviews saw the great ideal to be striven for in ‘Atman,’ in that which deifies the breath to such an extent that human beings are permeated by a spiritual breath.

[ 23 ] But even more of the human being must be spiritualized. If his entire physical body is to be spiritualized, not only the breath but also that which is continually renewed through 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 the mysteries of the blood—the fire enclosed within the human being—to the ancient mysteries. The ancient mysteries say: The human being on Earth, as he lives in earthly form, has descended from spiritual heights into physical, earthly corporeality. Humanity has lost what constitutes its spiritual essence. It has enveloped itself in physical corporeality. But it must return to the spiritual realm, must cast off the physical shell once more, and must ascend to a spiritual existence.

[ 24 ] As long as the human “I”—which finds its physical expression in the blood—had not been touched by an impulse originating on Earth, religions could not teach what is called the power of self-redemption of the human “I.” Thus we are told how the great spiritual beings, the great avatars, descend and incarnate from time to time in human bodies when people need help. These are beings who do not need to descend into a human body for their own development, for they had already completed their human evolution in an earlier world cycle. They descend because they wish to help humanity. 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 explaining the nature of an avatar. He himself declares what he is in the divine song, the Bhagavad Gita. In it we find the magnificent 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, fire among the elements, the cosmic ocean among the waters, the eternal serpent among the serpents. I am the foundation of the world.”

[ 25 ] There is no more beautiful or magnificent way to proclaim the all-pervading Divinity than is done in these words. The Divinity that Moses sees in the element of fire—which not only interweaves and surges through the world as a macrocosmic Divinity—can also be found within the human being. That is why the Krishna-essence lives in everything that bears a human face, as a great ideal toward which the human seed develops from within. And if, as the wisdom of antiquity strove for, the human breath can be spiritualized through the impulse we receive within ourselves from the Mystery of Golgotha, we possess the principle of redemption through that which lives within us. All avatars have redeemed humanity through power from above, through what they allowed to radiate down to Earth from spiritual heights. The Avatar Christ, however, redeemed humanity through that which he drew from the very forces of humanity itself, and he showed us how the forces of redemption—the forces to overcome matter through the spirit—can be found within ourselves.

[ 26 ] Thus, even an enlightened being such as Kashyapa—despite having rendered his body incorruptible through the spiritualization of his breath—could not yet attain full salvation. The incorruptible body must wait in the mysterious cave until the Maitreya Buddha comes to claim it. For only then—when the physical body has been spiritualized by the “I” to such an extent that the Christ impulse flows into it—only then is the wondrous cosmic fire no longer needed to bring about salvation; rather, it is the fire surging within the human being, in our very blood, that brings about salvation. Therefore, we can also use the light radiating from the Mystery of Golgotha to shed light on a legend as wonderfully profound as the one told about Kashyapa.

[ 27 ] At first, the world appears dark and full of mysteries to us; but we can compare it to a dark room containing many magnificent objects that we cannot see at first. But when we light a lamp, the full splendor of the objects in the room is revealed, along with everything that these objects are. So it can be for the person striving for wisdom. At first, the person strives in darkness. He looks out into the world, toward the past and the future, and at first can see only darkness. But when the light that comes from Golgotha is kindled, then everything is illuminated, all the way back to the most distant past and all the way into the most distant future. For all that is 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 are celebrating these days. And when humanity realizes how far it can penetrate through spiritual science —that the soul, by recognizing the mysteries of existence, can immerse itself in the mysteries of the universe during such important symbolic festivals as the Easter season—then the soul will sense something of what it means to no longer live merely within its narrow personal existence, but with all that shines in the stars, all that glows in the sun, all that lives in the universe. It will feel itself expanding into the universe. It will become ever more spiritual as it immerses itself in the universe.

[ 28 ] To move from human life, through the Resurrection, to universal life—these are the notes that we allow to resonate within our hearts through the spiritual Easter bells. And when we hear them—these spiritual Easter bells—all our doubts about the spiritual world will vanish. Then we will realize with certainty that no death in the material world can harm us. Then life in the spirit will have us back, if we understand these spiritual Easter bells.