Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 19 October 1907, Berlin

7. On Chaos

My dear theosophical friends! The mental images that humanity receives today through real and true Theosophy are not taken from the past. He who, as a geologist, explores the layers of the earth and can only say what has arisen in the past in the world of the senses, can never explore what is significant for Theosophy. The future form of humanity must emerge from chaos into the sensual cosmos. It is therefore of infinite importance that through the theosophical worldview man absorbs mental images, sensations and impulses of will which are not taken from our cosmos as it is as a cosmos of the senses, but which are taken directly out of the form which the spirit has before it forms itself externally, which are taken out of chaos.

If there is a general assembly here, it is also appropriate to talk about things that concern more intimate tasks. As the days go by, there will be an opportunity to delve deeper into the theosophical matters that interest us all.

Today let us begin with a seemingly quite remote consideration, but at the same time with a consideration which, as you will see, can again interest us in a certain way in our everyday lives. In this reflection today, we will really try to link not only heaven, but also that which is beyond heaven, with the earth and our everyday experience.

That which is to form the leitmotif of our contemplation is called chaos, a name borrowed from ancient times. So, as you can see, it is a somewhat remote theme, a theme that really still lies beyond the heavens and that we should perhaps link to our most everyday experiences.

You know that not only does the wonderful Greek myth and legend tie in with chaos by saying that the oldest gods, i.e. 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 under different names. After all, what is that yawning abyss of the Nordic-Germanic saga “Ginnungagap”, from which the cold Niflheim or Nebelheim emerges on the one side and the hot Muspelheim on the other, and what does the beginning of our Bible itself ultimately point to other than chaos? In the first book of Moses you will find the words: "In the beginning the Godhead created the heavens and the earth. And the earth became desolate and confused, and darkness settled over the waters. And the Spirit of the Godhead weaved over the waters, brooding. And the word of the deity rang out: “Let there be light!” - and there was light. And the deity perceived the light and realized that it was beautiful, and separated the world of light from the world of darkness." - “The earth was still desolate and confused” is just another expression for the chaos from which the highest spiritual beings themselves emerged.

What is it? Such high concepts have had a strange fate in human development. For quite a long time people have completely lost the sense of a correct understanding of what is meant by such things. The materialistic age, from which all people of the present have emerged in a certain respect, has hardly any words to characterize [such a thing] at all. What lies behind such mental images is chaos. Our words have also taken on a completely different meaning over the course of time than they used to have, indeed, than they had a very short time ago. They have been assigned to external material objects. [Today, when we no longer try to think of what a word means in the spiritual world, when we hear a word from language, we think only of what it means in the sensory world.] This results in something significant. Words have been used up by the sensual world for various reasons, of which I have already spoken on various occasions for the justification of the present theosophical current. Among the various reasons, there is also a reason connected with this transformation of words into materialism. The fact that the theosophical movement has now entered the world and had to enter the world is connected with various facts, sensual and supersensible. But one of the reasons is that if [...] at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century this theosophical movement, this spiritual world current would not come into the world, would not find entrance, that such a theosophical movement would probably be quite impossible in a hundred years. It is really just a matter of waiting for the favorable conditions of the time.

The words take on more and more the character of being applied only to material things. If we had waited another hundred years, it would no longer be possible to put into words what Theosophy has to say, because then people would only hear what applies to the material world. People would then no longer have a feeling for 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 have to renew the language.

People must regain a sense that a word does not just mean something tangible or something that can be seen with the eyes, but something that points upwards into the higher worlds.

Now we will quite apparently leave the subject and try to seek out the sensations of a person who was much, much more strongly directed and guided towards the spiritual world than the sensations and mental images of present-day humanity. It is always of great interest to those who delve into the mysterious and yet so clear course of the human spirit, it is interesting for them to pick up any old book and not just delve into it, as many scholars do, by reading out what “the Lord's own spirit” is, but to feel their way into it, to put themselves in it. You could pick out anything you like, and it would be something that could interest all theosophists and all people interested in occultism. But we want to pick out the “Physicae” by Comenius, published in 1635. These are “Physicae”, under which today's man can no longer well imagine anything, because they speak of physical things, but in such a way that it is quite clear that the one who speaks, with every physical thing, at the same time points to the spiritual background and that he sees in every matter, in every force an instrument, an outflow of underlying spiritual entities and spiritual forces. In this book, the “Physicae”, much is described that was the subject of knowledge at that time. But Comenius, the great pedagogue and thinker of the 17th century - born in 1592 - not only recorded and summarized the knowledge of his time, but Comenius also gave his own great thoughts and summaries of the deeds of mankind. Comenius is a strange personality, as there have been quite a few since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

You know from other reviews that in the fourteenth century and finally in the fifteenth century the so-called Rosicrucian Order was founded, the order that works on and preserves the occult secrets in a modern form. The order, which originally consisted of only seven members when it was founded, has served the great secret and worked accordingly right up to the present day. And no one has known who a Rosicrucian is except the Rosicrucian himself. No one has ever been able to learn anything about the secrets of the Rosicrucians. Therefore, everything that has been written by followers and opponents about Rosicrucianism is charlatanism or something that has been misunderstood or has come out through betrayal. It is only today that the time has come when some of the Rosicrucianism can be communicated to the general world. But there are many other ways and means by which such secrets, which flourish in the occult schools, flow into the general spiritual and cultural life. For example, it was nothing other than a secret Rosicrucian current, which the person on whom it poured out did not even suspect, when Lessing, at the end of his “Education of the Human Race”, says, as if shot from a pistol, that man always returns to the world, that he is reincarnated. This significant treatise, which concludes: “Is not all eternity mine?”, is for the knowledgeable nothing other than something through which the Rosicrucian worldview came to mankind in a way that Lessing himself was unaware of - through his mouth. So much has come through Rosicrucianism.

There are many ways and means by which the spiritual world pours itself out without the people who are affected by it always knowing it exactly. It is not important that what is done in the world is linked to a name. The Rosicrucians have never been sued for plagiarism. They would never have pursued any so-called borrowing of their thoughts in any way. They were indifferent to that. And what was more indifferent to those who cared about the effect than the personal source from which such things emerged? In this day and age, where lawsuits are brought for the borrowing of thoughts and other things, the actual borrowers are usually untraceable. So it is nonsensical. With a highly developed mind and an energetic will, this can be avoided.

[Amos Comenius, this great pedagogue, is one of those who had higher knowledge due to a high spiritual development, who soared up into the higher worlds through a strong, energetic will as a result of the Rosicrucian influence. It is quite useful for humanity to immerse itself in the thoughts of Comenius. It is also useful to delve into the thoughts of Johan Baptista von Helmont, his contemporary, who was also a Rosicrucian. We now take from them a clarification of what we mean by the word “chaos”.

You all know a word that you probably all - or at least very many of you - believe to be very old. It's the word “gas”, which most people only know as “illuminating gas”. You know from physics that there are many gases and that basically most substances can be transformed into gas. If people don't think about it, they can easily be misled into believing that the word is as old as all the others. But this is not the case. [Gas“ and ”gaseous" were not known terms before the time of Comenius and Helmont.] [Helmont] was the first to coin the word “gas”. It has only been in the language since that time. The work [to which it refers, in which this word first appears] was written in 1615. So consider how short a time that is. - Now, of course, you must also realize that there must be a reason for using such a word. He was the one who first gave mankind the mental image of gas. Let's clarify what a gas is according to today's school concepts.

You all know that if you take water and bring it to boiling point, to vaporization, the first thing that is produced is steam. Vapor is not a gas - not even according to today's school concepts. Vapor is actually, to put it crudely, what you can still see with your eyes. It is that which contains the same substance, only distributed in finer particles, so that one can say: Water turns into water vapor through heating. So you can probably turn all - or at least the vast majority - of substances into vapor at low or high or very high temperatures. But you can push the heating even further, and if you push it further, then you get a state of the substances in question where they are no longer visible, so to speak, where they really change into a form other than the water form. While the vapor form is only a kind of intermediate form between the water form and the gas form, this gas form is basically only a vapor form at a higher stage of development, which has arisen at a higher temperature. This vapor form and gas form was by no means a clear mental image before Comenius. Helmont also worked with the vapor form. [Before the Rosicrucians Helmont and Comenius, this gas form was not so well known to anyone.

It can be of little interest to us at first that it was carbonic acid that [Helmont] studied in detail and that he used to clarify the nature of the gas. However, he had associated mental images with carbonic acid and its gases that would no longer be completely understandable to today's physicists and people. Now things turned out for him in such a way that he said to himself: “Among the various other states there is also this finer state, to which he gave the name gas”. [Helmont's work “Ortus medicinae” contains the sentence: “Hunc spiritum, incognitum hactenus, novo nomine ‘Gas’ voco”]. This means in German: I call such a spirit, as it was previously unknown, gas. - This is the first time that this word enters into the way of looking at things.

Now this sentence teaches us a great deal. Above all, he calls what he refers to as gas “spiritus” - spirit - so that it is clear that what he constructed as gas was for him the instrument for a spiritual entity.

He himself had the feeling that he had to address this transparent substance as spirit. He calls this spirit by the new name “gas”. Now we grasp exactly what mental images he had. He also knew that if you cooled this gas, you would see strange phenomena. Dark, cloud-like clouds form. It becomes vaporous again and then watery again. The gas was a foundation for it, a transparent, clear foundation from which dense, condensed things emerge.

If you know a soul like that of [Johan Baptista van Helmont], then you also know that you can apply Goethe's beautiful words to something like this sentence: “Everything transient is only a parable.” If you read it carefully and know it completely, you can see how much he saw in the process of condensation. He saw things that were all inside the gas. A person who felt this way could still say: [“hunc spiritum incognitum ”Gas voco"].

[Looking at the world, he asked himself:] All the matter in the world, how did it originally come into being? Originally, the whole world was filled with something, perhaps of a much greater subtlety than what he had discovered, as gas, something that passes through the light and which cannot be seen at all, but from which, as from the light, colors and clouds emerge. The thought once stood in the background: The world is transparent, luminous in itself, containing no opacity, perhaps of a much greater, higher spirituality. And just as gases are split off from this gas, which look like masses of mist, so minerals, plants and animals have emerged from the transparent, cloudless infinity. The spirit has become dense, has become an entity.

Even in ancient times and among primitive peoples we find parables that are well suited to evoke a similar mental image. Such original and primitive peoples sometimes see what happens outwardly materially as also spiritual. Such a person knows that out of him comes the breath from which he sees when he steps out into the air, that he becomes vapor, that the same thing is created from the soul that is sealed from the transparent clarity and infinity. Thus man feels in the breath of the soul, in breathing out and becoming dense, a parable for the same process on a large scale. Hence the view that sees the world as the result of an exhalation of the Godhead. This is really an ancient mental image. We must be clear about what this ancient mental image involves. This ancient mental image contains a completely different concept of space than the dry, abstract concept of space that people have today. What does modern man think of as “space”? He thinks of infinite, vast emptiness where there is nothing inside. This is what you can find today under the concept of space wherever people talk about space. But what did those who stood on the ground of spiritual science think of as space? The extended spirit, which has its likeness in the unclouded, from which the vapor arises. And space, they said, is the source from which all seeds of things are created through the word of the original spirit of God. If all beings were again dissolved in a moment, there would seem to be an endless void before us. In truth, this endless void is no more a nothing than the gas in which substances have dissolved is a nothing. This is the space for those who think occultly. And in it, they think, the beings are like condensed space, as if born out of space. For space is conceived here as primordial spirit. [Helmont was also aware of this. He knew the primordial ground from which all beings were condensed.

That [Helmont] had something like this in the background of his thinking, he now shows us quite clearly. He shows us that he had the thought: Yes, a gas like the one I discovered is very thin, very permeable. The light passes through, and you would not suspect anything if you did not feel from the effect that there is something there at all where the gas spreads out. But in relation to the original source, this gas is still a condensation, a turbidity. It is based on something else, something much, much deeper. But one can rightly recognize this deeper thing if one thinks of the gas as a parable and if one imagines the emergence of the whole world from the seed-rich space as evaporation and vaporization. Thus the mental image is allowed that the gas is a vapor of the spirit, just as a spirit is the vapor of a gas. In having this mental image in the soul, [Helmont] says a strangely beautiful word. He says: “Halitum illum ‘gas’ vocavi, non longe a ‘chao’ veterum secretum.” That means: “This vapor, which I have called gas, is not far from the chaos that the ancients distinguished.”

You see, he links the term “gas” to the word “chaos”, indeed, he formed the word ‘gas’ after the word “chaos” in the first place. Gas is chaos transformed. It is the word that [Helmont] formed in order to put his secret scientific concepts into it. This is an extraordinarily interesting scientific connection.

So we are led by someone who knew about these things to a concept of space that is not a barren, empty, abstract concept of space like the one known in physics, but we are led to a concept of space that is infinitely rich in seeds, because it contains the seeds in an invisible way. The things that are condensed today were all once vapor and have been condensed from space. Space thus becomes alive to us, the world becomes the seed of that which is spread out in space. Thus we replace the empty, abstract space with the living spirit from which all, all things have emerged. In this way we transform all kinds of abstract things; and it is good that we get over such abstractions, over concepts that have a killing effect on all human thought and life.

If we now put ourselves in the state of space, when space was still completely spiritual, and follow with our soul how the beings condense out of this infinite space, out of the laws that are innate in this space, if we put ourselves there, we will feel, clearly feel the beautiful words of the Bible, for example. Just think how originally the pure spirit was there like transparent space. And what happened in this space? We imagine quite vividly what we have often imagined. Here in this room is also the expanded air gas. My words are spoken into the space where the air gas has been expanded. There the vibrations arise, and from there the words penetrate into your souls. Every word that is spoken is formed here in the space that is filled with air. Think of the air as still - nothing is spoken. And now think again that it is being spoken. The whole air comes into a regular movement through this speaking.

Now imagine the infinitely expanded space, which is not an empty abstraction, and the word of God sounding into it, shaping the whole space according to the words that the deity utters. That was in the beginning. And the word resounded in the space, and the spiritual world came into being. And the chaos were these nebulous formations developing out of space, which for the first time showed in the turbidity that which was later to be formed. Above the earth was desert and confusion, and the spirit of God brooded over it. There you have chaos at the moment of creation.

So deep, however, are the mental images that underlie such a religious document. People first have to reacquire the feeling to understand something like this. But chaos does not only have an effect at the beginning of world development, it continues to have an effect. That which now leads us beyond the heavens, into our everyday lives, is the realization that chaos is still present today, that just like the harmonious heavens, just like the beautifully formed beings around us today, there is chaos. Originally, the first design developed out of space. The seeds became clouded, the beings formed themselves into their present perfection. But just as when you have a mass of gas and cool a part of this mass of gas so that gas remains between the individual parts and continues to have an effect, so it is with our world. Everything, every stone, every being, you yourself, are permeated and permeated by chaos. And not only are the beings outside in the world of the senses permeated by chaos; your soul and your spirit are also permeated by chaos. Just as the human being is here, his soul and spirit also participate in what is left behind from the chaos; only a part has separated itself from the chaos. The chaos is all around us. This chaos is at the same time a reason for continuing fruitfulness.

Now let's get a mental image of how chaos works with a simple example. You can see - if you will allow me to use an example that is not very appetizing, but it is true - that chaos occurs where waste products, products of destruction occur that are highly useful and without which progress could not be possible. They take animal excrements, which are carried out as fertilizer by the farmer onto the field and which provide the basis for fertility. The new seed emerges by putting the fertilizer into the soil. What happened there?

What was the fertilizer at first? The fertilizer was first all kinds of beautifully formed plants and other beings out in the world, that which has emerged from chaos. It took its course and served as food for the animals. The laws according to which plants and animals have nourished themselves have been pushed out, so to speak, and it is the case that such end products are a return of the beings to chaos. The chaos works in the fertilizer that you carry out. Without you mixing chaos into the cosmos at any time, further development is never possible. What we have here at the lowest level, at an unappetizing level, leads us to something completely different. It leads us to be able to rise to the realization that it is necessary for all development to go beyond the connection of the causes in the past and somehow take up the chaos again. No one can continue to exist if only the cosmos has an effect on them. For what is cosmos? Cosmos is nothing other than that which has formed from previous causes and formative forces. [Everything in the cosmos was formed from causes, from preceding things. Not only all physical things, but also all moral and intellectual teachings arise from causes that have been laid beforehand.

I will give you a radical example of what cosmos is. It is cosmos when Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Herder, Schelling have worked in Germany and a schoolmaster comes and reproduces the wonderful thoughts and beauties of Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Herder, Schelling for us. The schoolmaster would not be able to reproduce anything that was not there beforehand through the causes that were laid down. Or let us take any man in another field. He stands entirely on the ground of what has gradually developed. [Let us contrast this with genius. Why does it seem to you that genius only seems to be understood by the other in that you can say that a new spark enters the human soul? There would be no progress if there were only the external cause. It is the marriage of the cosmos with chaos that creates something new. The new is created by the cosmos taking up again what was once there and thrown back into chaos. This is the divine spark, that which does not come from the laws of the world, but from other worlds. [The fact that all earlier laws of development are thrown back into chaos gives rise to something new that is not connected with the laws of development that come from ancient times].

At every moment the world must become chaos again. The marriage of the past with the present is a marriage of the cosmos with chaos. [Genius is the marriage of the past with the present.] Hence come those deep, meaningful feelings that the old man had and the secret researcher has when the name Chaos is even uttered. For those who cannot feel it, chaos is something that is confused, something that is unclear, just as the thoughts of geniuses are confused and desolate for most people. The sensation of confusion and desolation in the way that the thoughts of the geniuses were perceived is only experienced by people who stand on the ground of what is active from the past. This is what is working in, what is new, what emerges again as something new from the chaos and which must connect with us properly if we want to contribute something to the further development of humanity. The theosophical movement should be such a movement, which is capable of fertilizing humanity with new spiritual seeds, and those who understand the theosophical current must be clear about the fact that they cannot only continue to work with what comes in from the old father cosmos, but that new seeds of the spirit must also come into humanity as if from chaos. This will spiritually fertilize humanity in the right sense.

Such mental images, which are taken out of chaos, are the symbols and signs of those ideas and sensations which are brought in through the students of occultism from the higher worlds, the outflow of which appears to us like chaos. Such signs should always be given to the things that underlie the appearance of the world as imagination and inner knowledge.

What is in the seven seals of the Munich Congress, no one can find it in the cosmos of law. But it will be in what will become. These imaginations work on the human soul out of chaos. This is how they work, these figures, so that there is a whole world view in the way described in the introduction that I gave. Chaos has a living effect and leads man up into the higher worlds that lie beyond the sensual cosmos. This is what condenses into such new impressions for man, which first come as images and then become reality. When one comes to such images, one feels the effect of that which is great and mighty, which continues to work through the infinity of time. One feels the overwhelming effect of chaos, which contains the seed of all things. If you let these things work on you, they will bring up the deepest primal reasons from your soul.

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

Here in the seven seals and in the seven columns or pillars with their capitals you have expressed sun, moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus motifs. Here you have the concepts that will come into our cosmos, that will come into our world. If you look at these pillar capitals, you will find that they interact with each other. If you live in them with feeling, then you will feel that which orders your feeling in a way that it could never be ordered out of the sensual world, and which can give you a concept of that spiritual music or harmony of the spheres which is the Devachan.

These chapters are a stimulus to bring out the feelings that need to be taken out of old contexts and put into completely new ones. We must not tear them out senselessly, otherwise we will tear ourselves apart. We take them with us when we extract them from the chaos. Thus such imaginations belong to the means by which the spiritual current, which we call theosophical, has its mission in the world. Everything that occurs in this world current must be regarded as a unity. A single thought permeates the whole current. Only when a single thought permeates it can we promise the movement its proper fruitfulness. You can convince yourself that the capitals are working. But they can also work in a very bad way.

These images are there to lead people into the most beautiful world. Those who look at them in 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 up in everyday life, in the dining room for example, you would spoil your physical organism down to the level of digestion. These things cannot be enjoyed with an unholy soul, but only in the right mood. From this you can see that what is strong light can also have strong shadows. Weak light also has a weak shadow. Theosophy should not be blamed if it becomes a strong darkness for those who enjoy it unlawfully. But it is not by talking in the abstract that we can work, but by passing on what the students of occultism can give us, and by giving people the means to participate in these things again to a greater extent.

Theosophy is not a gimmick.

Theosophy is not a gimmick with mental images, it is a real force that must flow into the spiritual life of humanity. It can only do this if it is power, just as such things are power. Therefore, we must not play with such things, but we must be aware that they are effective things.

This example, which directly concerns us, can show us how comprehensive the concept of chaos is for those who understand this chaos in the right way. That which stands behind the physical, that out of which the physical is made and born, chaos, everyone has known it. Whether the Greeks called it chaos, whether Genesis describes it to us in the way we have seen it, or whether Indian philosophy speaks of it, of the state that lies immediately before it: “Akaos”, “Akasha” - it is always the same thing that should remind us from the students of occultism how that which was in the beginning continues to work through all time. Only by connecting with one's true origin can progress take place. To those who are bound to the world of the senses, chaos appears confused and desolate. It is not so to the knowing. He hears the harmony of the spheres of which the Pythagoreans spoke and the translation of which is what is being communicated to the public today in the theosophical world movement. Just at the right time - because it is still possible today that some people, who stand out from the great majority of people, get the feeling that this spiritual truth is being pointed to. Let us feel the fertilizing power that acts on that which is.

[Because it is still possible today that individual people get the feeling for some words from the spiritual world, therefore it is time to speak of these things. In the future, just as the Corinthian and Ionic orders of pillars emerged from deep knowledge in the past, new orders of pillars will emerge from theosophical wisdom. All art is only a crystallized secret teaching. Thus all real, future art will be the crystallized secret teaching. First there were the people who felt in the sacred groves the rule and work of the Godhead. Who could not feel it in a Gothic work of art, in a Gothic cathedral, that the same atmosphere is at work there. Gothic is nothing other than the crystallized secret doctrine of the pre-medieval period. What we now clothe in words will emerge in colors and forms in the future.

Only then will the spiritual current flow alive, when it flows not only into thoughts and feelings, but into all things that surround us.