The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. On Chaos

My dear Theosophical friends!

[ 1 ] Since we are holding a General Assembly here, it is surely appropriate to discuss matters pertaining to more intimate concerns. Over the course of the next few days, there will be further opportunities to delve more deeply into the theosophical matters that interest us all.

[ 2 ] Today, let’s begin with a reflection that may seem quite remote at first, yet one that, as you will see, can still be relevant to our daily lives in a certain way. In today’s reflection, we will truly try to connect not only the heavens, but also what lies beyond them, with the Earth and our everyday experiences.

[ 3 ] What is to serve as the central theme of our discussion is known by a name borrowed from ancient times: chaos. So, as you can see, this is a somewhat abstract topic—one that truly lies beyond the heavens—and one that we might now seek to connect to our most everyday experiences.

[ 4 ] You know that it is not only the wonderful Greek myths and legends that refer to Chaos—by stating that the oldest gods, that is, the oldest spiritual beings, were born out of Chaos—but you also know that the myths and legends of other peoples refer to this Chaos by various names. For what, after all, is that yawning abyss of the Norse-Germanic legend “Ginnungagap,” from which, on one side, the cold Niflheim or “Land of Mist” arises and, on the other, the hot Muspelheim—and to what else but Chaos does the very beginning of our Bible ultimately point? In the Book of Genesis, you will find the words: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And the Deity spoke, saying, ‘Let there be light!’—and there was light. And the Deity saw the light and saw that it was good, and separated the world of light from the world of darkness.”—“The earth was still formless and void” is simply another expression for the chaos from which the highest spiritual beings themselves emerged.

[ 5 ] What is it? Such lofty concepts have met with a strange fate in human development. For quite some time now, people have completely lost the sense of what such terms truly mean. The materialistic age—from which, in a certain sense, all people of the present day have emerged—hardly has the words to characterize [such things] at all. What lies behind such mental images is chaos. Our words, too, have taken on a completely different meaning over time than they used to have—indeed, than they had even a very short time ago. They have been reduced to referring only to external, material objects. [Anyone who today—now that we no longer try to consider what a word means in the spiritual world—hears a word from language thinks only of what it means in the sensory world.] This has a significant consequence. Words have been exhausted by the physical world, for various reasons, which I have already discussed on various occasions in explaining the origins of the current theosophical movement. Among these various reasons is one that is connected to this transformation of words into materialism. The fact that the Theosophical Movement in particular has now entered the world—and had to enter the world—is connected to various facts, both physical and spiritual. But one of the reasons is that if [...] at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century this theosophical movement, this spiritual world trend, had not come into the world, had not gained a foothold, then such a theosophical movement would probably already be entirely impossible in a hundred years. It is truly a matter of seizing the favorable conditions of the time.

[ 6 ] Words are increasingly taking on the character of being applied only to material things. If one had waited another hundred years, it would no longer be possible to put what Theosophy has to say into words, because then people would hear only what applies to the material world. People would then no longer have a sense of it, and so everything the theosophist has to say would no longer fit. He must therefore impose new words on everything, give everything a new character. They must renew the language.

[ 7 ] People must once again develop a sense that a word does not merely refer to something tangible or visible to the eye, but to something that points upward toward the higher worlds.

[ 8 ] Now we will seemingly stray from the topic and attempt to explore the feelings of a person who was oriented and guided toward the spiritual world much, much more strongly than are the feelings and mental images of present-day humanity. It is always of great interest to those who immerse themselves in the mysterious yet clear workings of the human spirit; it is interesting for them to pick up any old book and not merely delve into it—as many scholars do—by extracting what “the author’s own spirit” is, but rather to empathize with it, to put themselves in the author’s place. One could pick out anything at all, and it would be something that could interest all theosophists and all those devoted to the occult. But let us single out Comenius’s Physicae, published in 1635. These are the Physicae, a term that is no longer easily comprehensible to people today because it speaks of physical things—but in such a way that it is quite clear that the author, in discussing every physical thing, simultaneously points to the spiritual background, and that he sees in every material substance and every force an instrument, an outflow of the spiritual beings and spiritual forces that lie behind them. In this book, the Physicae, much of what was the subject of scientific inquiry at that time is described. But Comenius, the great educator and thinker of the 17th century—born in 1592—did not merely assimilate and summarize the insights of his time; he also offered his own profound thoughts and syntheses of humanity’s achievements. Comenius is a remarkable figure, one of many such figures who have emerged since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

[ 9 ] You know from other discussions that the so-called Rosicrucian Order was founded in the fourteenth century and definitively established in the fifteenth century—that order which, in a modern form, studies and preserves the occult mysteries. The Order, which originally consisted of only seven members at its founding, has served the great mystery and acted accordingly right up to the present day. And no one knew anything [about it]—who a Rosicrucian is—except the Rosicrucians themselves. Nor has anyone ever been able to learn anything about the secrets of the Rosicrucians. Therefore, everything that has been written about Rosicrucianism by its supporters and opponents is either charlatanism, a misunderstanding, or something that has come to light through betrayal. Only now has the time come when certain aspects of Rosicrucianism may be revealed to the general public. However, there are many other ways and means by which such secrets, which flourish in the occult schools, find their way into general intellectual and cultural life. For example, it was nothing other than a secret Rosicrucian current—one of which the person upon whom it poured down was himself completely unaware—when Lessing, at the end of his Education of the Human Race, blurts out as if from a gun that man returns to the world again and again, that he is reincarnated. This significant treatise, which concludes with the words, “Is not all eternity mine?”, is, to the initiated, nothing other than a means by which the Rosicrucian worldview reached humanity in a way that was unconscious even to Lessing himself—through his own words. Thus, much has come about through Rosicrucianism.

[ 10 ] There are many ways and means through which the spiritual world manifests itself, without the people affected by it always being fully aware of it. It does not matter whether what is brought about in the world is linked to a particular name. The Rosicrucians never brought lawsuits for plagiarism. They would never have pursued any so-called borrowing of their ideas in any way. They were indifferent to such matters. And what could be more indifferent to someone concerned with the effect than the personal source from which such things originate? In our time, when lawsuits are even filed over the borrowing of ideas and other things, the reality is that the actual borrowers are generally impossible to track down. It is therefore nonsensical. Through a high level of spiritual development and an energetic will, this can be avoided.

[ 11 ] [Among those who, by virtue of a high level of spiritual development, attained higher knowledge—and who, through a strong, energetic will, ascended into the higher worlds as a result of Rosicrucian influence—is Amos Comenius, that great educator. It is certainly beneficial for humanity to delve into the thoughts of Comenius. It is also beneficial to delve into the thoughts of Johan Baptista von Helmont, his contemporary, who was also a Rosicrucian. From them we now gain a clarification of what we mean by the word “chaos.”]

[ 12 ] You all know a word that you probably all—or at least a great many of you—believe to be very old. Namely, the word “gas,” which most people know only as “illumination gas.” You know from physics that there are many gases and that, basically, most substances can be converted into gas. If one does not think carefully, one can easily be led to believe that the word is as old as all the others. But that is not the case. [“Gas” and “gaseous” were not yet known terms before the time of Comenius and Helmont.] [Helmont] was the first to coin the word “gas.” It has only been part of the language since that time. The work [in which this word first appears] was written in 1615. So consider just how short a time that is. — Now, of course, you must also realize that one must have a reason for using such a word. He was the one who first introduced the mental image of gas to humanity. Let us first clarify what a gas is according to today’s school definitions.

[ 13 ] You all know that when you take water and bring it to a boil—that is, cause it to evaporate—water vapor is produced first. Steam is not a gas—not even according to today’s school definitions. Steam is actually, to put it simply, what you can still see with your eyes. It is the same substance, only distributed in finer particles, so that one can say: Water turns into water vapor when heated. In this way, you can also—or at least for the vast majority of substances—transform them into vapor at low, high, or very high temperatures. However, you can continue heating them even further, and if you do so, you will reach a state in which the substances in question are, so to speak, no longer visible—a state in which they truly transition into a form other than that of water. While the vapor state is merely an intermediate form between the liquid state and the gaseous state, this gaseous state is, in essence, simply a more advanced form of vapor that has arisen at a higher temperature. Before Comenius, there was by no means a clear mental image of these vapor and gaseous states. Helmont, too, worked with the vapor state. [Before the Rosicrucians Helmont and Comenius, this gaseous state was not known to anyone to this extent.]

[ 14 ] For now, it may be of little interest to us that it was carbon dioxide that [Helmont] examined closely and through which he came to understand the nature of the gas. He had, however, formed mental images of carbon dioxide and its gases that would no longer be entirely comprehensible to today’s physicists—or to people in general. Now, as things turned out for him, he said to himself: “Among the various other states, there is also this finer state, to which he gave the name ‘gas.’” [In Helmont’s work Ortus medicinae, the following sentence can be found: “Hunc spiritum, incognitum hactenus, novo nomine ‘Gas’ voco.”] In English, this means: “I call this spirit, which was previously unknown, ‘gas.’—This is the first time this word appears in scholarly discourse.”

[ 15 ] Now, this statement teaches us quite a lot. Above all, it refers to what it describes as a gas as “Spiritus”—spirit—so that it is clear that what he conceived as a gas served as an instrument for a spiritual entity.

[ 16 ] He himself felt that he had to refer to this transparent substance as a spirit. He gave this spirit the new name “gas.” Now let us grasp exactly what mental images he had. He also knew that when this gas was cooled, strange phenomena occurred. Dark, cloud-like formations appear. It becomes vapor-like again and then watery once more. To him, the gas was a foundation—a transparent, clear foundation—from which dense, condensed matter arises.

[ 17 ] If one is familiar with a soul such as that of [Johan Baptista van Helmont], then one also knows that one may apply Goethe’s beautiful words to something like this sentence: “All that is transitory is but a parable.” If one reads him closely and knows him thoroughly, one can see how much he perceived in the process of condensation. He saw things that were all contained within the gas. A person who felt this way could still say: [“hunc spiritum incognitum ‘Gas voco’”].

[ 18 ] [As he contemplated the world, he asked himself:] How did all the matter in the world originally come into being? Originally, the entire world was filled with something—perhaps of a much greater subtlety than what he had discovered—like a gas, something that passes through light and cannot be seen at all, but from which, as if from light itself, colors and clouds coalesce. The thought once lingered in the background: The world is transparent, luminous in itself, containing no opacity—perhaps of a much greater, higher spirituality. And just as gases separate from this gas, appearing like masses of fog, so too have minerals, plants, and animals emerged from the transparent, unclouded infinity. The spirit has become dense, has taken on a form.

[ 19 ] Even in ancient times and among primitive peoples, we find parables that are well suited to evoke a similar mental image. Such original and also primitive peoples sometimes view what happens outwardly and materially from a spiritual perspective as well. Such a person knows that the breath emanating from within him—which he sees, when it enters the air, turn into vapor—is created from the soul, just as that which arises from transparent clarity and infinity takes on a solid form. Thus, in the breath of the soul, in the exhalation and the process of solidification, the person senses a parable for the same process on a grand scale. Hence the view that regards the world as the result of a breath exhaled by the Divinity. This is truly an ancient mental image. We must be clear about what this ancient mental image entails. This ancient mental image contains a concept of space entirely different from the dry, abstract concept of space held by people today. What do people today imagine when they think of “space”? They imagine an infinite, vast emptiness containing nothing. You can find this understanding of space everywhere today whenever people speak of space. But what did those grounded in Spiritual Science understand by “space”? The expansive Spirit, which finds its likeness in the unclouded expanse from which steam arises. And space, they said, is the source from which all the seeds of things are brought forth through the Word of the primordial Divine Spirit. If all beings were to be dissolved again in a single moment, there would seemingly be an endless void before us. In truth, this endless void is no more a nothing than the gas into which substances have dissolved is a nothing. This is space for those who think in occult terms. And within it, they imagine, beings are like condensed space, as if born out of space itself. For space is conceived here as the primordial Spirit. [This was also clear to Helmont. He knew the primal source from which all beings have condensed themselves.]

[ 20 ] He now makes it very clear to us that [Helmont] had something like this in the background of his thinking. He shows us that he has the thought: Yes, a gas like the one I have discovered is very rarefied, very permeable. Light passes right through it, and one would suspect nothing if one did not perceive, through its effect, that anything is there at all where the gas spreads. But in relation to the primordial ground, even this gas is still a condensation, a cloudiness. Underlying it is something else, something much, much deeper. But one can rightly perceive this deeper reality if one thinks of the gas as a metaphor and imagines the emergence of the entire world from the seed-rich space as a process of vaporization and evaporation. Thus, the mental image is permissible that the gas is a vapor of the spirit, just as a spirit is the vapor of a gas. With this mental image in mind, [Helmont] utters a remarkably beautiful phrase. He says: “Halitum illum ‘gas’ vocavi, non longe a ‘chao’ veterum secretum.” That is to say: “This vapor, which I have called gas, is not far removed from the chaos that the ancients distinguished.”

[ 21 ] As you can see, he links the term “gas” to the word “chaos”; in fact, he coined the word “gas” based on the word “chaos.” Gas is chaos in a transformed state. It is the word that [Helmont] coined to encapsulate his esoteric scientific concepts. This is an extraordinarily interesting scientific connection.

[ 22 ] Thus, we are led by someone who was well-versed in these matters to a concept of space that is not a barren, empty, abstract concept of space—such as that known to physics—but rather to a concept of space that is infinitely rich in seeds, for it contains the seeds in an invisible way. The things that are condensed today were all once mist and have been condensed from space. Space thus becomes alive to us; the world becomes the seed of what is spread out within space. In this way, we replace the empty, abstract space with the living spirit from which all—all things—have emerged. In this way, we transform all manner of abstractions; and it is good that we move beyond such abstractions, beyond concepts that have a stifling effect on all human thought and life.

[ 23 ] If we now place ourselves in the state of space, when space was still entirely spiritual, and follow with our soul how beings condense out of this infinite space, out of the laws inherent in this space—if we place ourselves there—then we will perceive, clearly perceive, the beautiful words of, for example, the Bible. Just imagine for a moment how, in the beginning, the pure spirit existed like transparent space. And what happened in this space? Let us vividly imagine the mental image we have already formed many times before. Here in this space is also the expanded air. My words are spoken into the space where the air has been expanded. There, vibrations arise, and from there the words penetrate into your souls. Every word that is spoken takes shape here in this space, which is filled with air. Imagine the air in stillness—nothing is spoken. And now imagine again that words are spoken. The entire air is set in regular motion by this speaking.

[ 24 ] Now imagine infinite, boundless space—which is not an empty abstraction—and the Word of God resounding within it, shaping the entire space according to the words spoken by the Deity. That was in the beginning. And the Word resounded in that space, and the spiritual world came into being. And chaos consisted of these nebular formations emerging from space, which for the first time revealed, in the murk, that which was later to take shape. Over the earth there was desolation and confusion, and the Spirit of God hovered over it, brooding. There, at the moment of creation, you have chaos.

[ 25 ] The mental images underlying such a religious document run that deep, however. People must first rediscover the sensibility needed to understand something like this. But chaos is not only at work at the beginning of the world’s development; it continues to be at work. What now leads us beyond the heavens, into our everyday lives, is the realization that chaos still exists today—that just as there is the harmonious heavens and the beautifully formed beings around us today, so too is there chaos. Originally, the first form emerged from space. The seeds took shape, and beings evolved to their present perfection. But just as when you have a mass of gas and cool a portion of it, so that gas still remains between the individual parts and continues to exert its influence, so it is with our world. Everything—every stone, every being, even you yourself—is permeated and interwoven with chaos. And it is not only the beings out there in the sensory world that are interwoven with chaos; your soul and your spirit are also interwoven with chaos. Just as human beings exist here, so too do their souls and spirits participate in what remains of chaos; only a part has emerged from chaos. Chaos is all around us. This chaos is, at the same time, a source of ongoing fertility.

[ 26 ] Now let’s get a mental image of how chaos works through a simple example. You see—please bear with this somewhat unappetizing example, but it’s true—that chaos arises where waste products and byproducts of destruction occur, which are extremely useful and without which progress would not be possible. Take animal manure, for example, which the farmer spreads on the fields as fertilizer and which provides the basis for fertility. The new crop sprouts when you work the manure into the soil. What has happened here?

[ 27 ] What was fertilizer in the beginning? Fertilizer was, in the beginning, all kinds of beautifully formed plants and other beings out in the world—that which emerged from chaos. It followed its own course and served as food for animals. The laws by which plants and animals have nourished themselves have, as it were, been pushed aside, and it is true that such end products represent a return of beings to chaos. Chaos is at work in the fertilizer you spread. Unless you mix chaos into the cosmos at some point, further development is never possible. What we have here at the lowest level—an unappetizing level—leads us to something entirely different. It enables us to rise to the understanding that, for all development, it is necessary to transcend the interconnection of causes in the past and somehow reintegrate chaos. No one can endure if the cosmos alone acts upon them. For what is the cosmos? The cosmos is nothing other than what has been formed from preceding causes and formative forces. [Everything in the cosmos has been formed from causes, from preceding things. Not only all physical things, but also all moral and intellectual teachings arise from causes that were previously established.]

[ 28 ] I want to use a radical example to explain what the cosmos is. The cosmos is when Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Herder, and Schelling were active in Germany, and a schoolteacher comes along and conveys to us the magnificent thoughts and beauties of Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Herder, and Schelling. The schoolteacher could not convey anything that was not already present as a result of the foundations that had been laid. Or let’s take any person in another field. He stands entirely on the ground of what has developed step by step. [Let us] contrast this with the genius [for comparison]. Why does it seem to you that genius can only be grasped by others in such a way that you can say, “Here comes a new spark into the human soul”? No progress would take place if only the external cause were present. It is the union of the cosmos with chaos through which something new comes into being. The new arises when what once was—and had been cast back into chaos—is taken up again by the cosmos. That is the divine spark; that is what does not come from the laws of the world, but what comes from other worlds. [Because all previous laws of development have been cast back into chaos, something new arises that is not connected to the laws of development that come from ancient times.]

[ 29 ] At every moment, the world must once again become chaos. The marriage of the past and the present is a marriage of the cosmos and chaos. [Genius is the marriage of the past with the present.] Hence come those deep, significant feelings that the ancient man had and that the esoteric researcher has when the name “chaos” is even merely uttered. For those who cannot feel this, chaos is something that is confused, something that is unclear—just as the thoughts of geniuses are confused and bewildering to most people. Only those who stand on the ground of forces working from the past can perceive this sense of confusion and disorder in the way that the thoughts of geniuses were perceived. This is what is working upon us, what is new, what emerges anew from chaos, and what must truly connect with us if we wish to contribute to the further development of humanity. The Theosophical Movement is meant to be a movement capable of fertilizing humanity with new spiritual seed, and those who understand the Theosophical current must be clear that they cannot merely continue to work with what comes from the old Father Cosmos, but that new seeds of the spirit must also enter humanity as if from chaos. In this way, humanity is spiritually fertilized in the true sense.

[ 30 ] The mental images that humanity receives today through true and authentic theosophy are not drawn from the past. A geologist who studies the Earth’s strata and can only describe what arose in the sensory world in the past can never explore what is significant for theosophy. The future form of humanity must emerge from chaos into the sensory cosmos. Therefore, it is of infinite importance that, through the theosophical worldview, human beings take in mental images, feelings, and impulses of the will that are not drawn from our cosmos as it is—as a sensory cosmos—but are drawn directly from the form that the Spirit possesses before it takes on an external form, that is, from the chaos.

[ 31 ] Such mental images, drawn from chaos, are the symbols and signs of those mental images and sensations that are brought to us through the secret schools from the higher worlds, whose outflow appears to us as chaos. Such signs should always be attributed to the things that underlie the world’s appearance as imagination and inner knowledge.

[ 32 ] No one can find in the legal cosmos what is contained in the seven seals of the Munich Congress. But it will be found in what is yet to come. These imaginations work their way into the human soul from within the chaos. This is how they work—these figures—so that an entire worldview emerges in the manner described in the introduction I have provided. There, chaos is alive and leads human beings upward into the higher worlds that lie beyond the sensory cosmos. This is what condenses into such new insights for human beings, which first come as images and then become reality. When one encounters such images, one senses the impact of that which is great and mighty, which continues to work through the infinity of time. One senses the overwhelming power of chaos, which contains the seed of all things. When one allows these things to take effect within oneself, they will draw forth the deepest primal sources from the soul.

[ 33 ] [In the seven seals we see images of the astral world, and in the seven column capitals we see concepts that enter our cosmos when we contemplate the devachanic world.]

[ 34 ] Here, in the seven seals and in the seven columns with their capitals, you have expressed motifs of the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, and Venus. Here you have the concepts that will enter our cosmos, that will enter our world. If you look at these column capitals, you will find that they interact with one another. If you immerse yourself in them with feeling, you will sense that which orders your perception in a way that could never be achieved through the sensory world alone, and which can give you a sense of that spiritual music or spherical harmony that is Devachan.

[ 35 ] These capitals serve as an inspiration to draw out the feelings that must be extracted from old contexts and brought into entirely new ones. We must not tear them out senselessly, lest we tear ourselves apart. We unite them with ourselves when we extract them from the chaos. Thus, such imaginings are among the means by which the spiritual current—which we call theosophical—fulfills its mission in the world. Everything that occurs within this world current must be viewed as a unified whole. A single thought permeates the entire current. Only when a single thought permeates it can we promise the movement its true fruitfulness. You can see for yourselves that the capitals have an effect. But they can also have a very harmful effect.

[ 36 ] These images are meant to lead people into the most beautiful world. Those who view them with a true theosophical spirit and in places where theosophical life flows will find that they have a soul-liberating and refreshing effect on them. If you were to hang them in your everyday life—in the dining room, for example—you would harm your physical organism, right down to your digestion. These things cannot be enjoyed with an unholy soul, but only in the right frame of mind. From this you can see that what is strong light can also cast strong shadows. Weak light, too, casts only a weak shadow. Theosophy must not be blamed if it becomes a deep darkness for those who partake of it in an improper manner. But we cannot bring about change by merely talking in abstract terms; rather, by passing on what the mystery schools can give us and providing people with the means to participate in these things to a greater extent again.

[ 37 ] Theosophy is not a game with mental images; it is a real force that must flow into the spiritual life of humanity. It can do so only if it is a force in the same way that such things are forces. Therefore, one must not play with such things, but must be clear that they are active forces.

[ 38 ] Thus, the example we are currently considering shows us just how comprehensive the concept of chaos is for those who understand it correctly. That which lies behind the physical world, that from which the physical world is formed and born—chaos—has been known to all. Whether the Greeks called it Chaos, whether Genesis describes it to us in the way we have seen, or whether Indian philosophy speaks of the state that lies immediately before it—“Akaos,” “Akasha”—it is always the same thing that the students of occultism intend to remind us of: how that which was in the beginning continues to work through all ages. Progress can take place only when human beings connect with their true origin. To those bound to the sensory world, chaos appears confused and desolate. This is not the case for the initiate. He hears the harmony of the spheres of which the Pythagoreans spoke, and the interpretation of which is what is being conveyed to the public today within the theosophical world movement. Precisely at the right time—because it is still possible today for a few individuals who stand out from the vast majority of humanity to sense that this spiritual truth is being pointed toward. Let us feel the life-giving power that acts upon all that is.

[ 39 ] [Since it is still possible today for individual people to develop a sense for certain words from the spiritual world, it is time to speak of these things. In the future, just as the Corinthian and Ionic orders of columns once emerged from profound knowledge, new orders of columns will emerge from theosophical wisdom. All art is merely a crystallized secret doctrine. Thus, all true, future art will be the crystallized secret doctrine. First there were the people who sensed the presence and workings of the Deity in the sacred groves. Who could fail to sense, in a Gothic work of art or in a Gothic cathedral, that the same atmosphere is at work there? The Gothic style is nothing other than the crystallized esoteric teaching of the early Middle Ages. What we now express in words will take shape in the future through colors and forms.

[ 40 ] Only then will the spiritual current flow vibrantly—when it flows not only through thoughts and feelings, but also into all the things that surround us.]