Occult Colors and the Development of Higher Bodies

GA 266I — 7 January 1908, Berlin

Esoteric Lesson

Record A

If we want to look at an occult figure (the hexagram) like the one we saw last time in a useful way, it's not enough to just stare at it. Instead, we need to picture it in our minds over and over again during quiet moments and think about what each color means. Only in this way will we gain the advantage and benefit that such occult signs can have when viewed in the right way. For all the wisdom of the world is given to us in a few such occult figures. And by delving deeper into them, the spiritual connections of the higher worlds will gradually become clear to us.

Let us take two colors from the hexagram that are opposite each other: red and green. These two colors are deliberately placed opposite each other. What might the red color mean, and what might the green color mean? We find the green color in the plant world outside, which covers the earth with its blanket. And what is the relationship between humans and plants? We know that humans once existed on Saturn in a form that corresponds in a certain way to our present-day minerals. Not that humans were ever minerals! Our present-day mineral kingdom is in fact the youngest of the kingdoms of nature. We also know that humans led a plant-like existence on the Sun. Today, a greenish sap flows through plants. A similar sap flowed through the human being at that time. If, by some magic, astral elements could be pressed into plants today, they would turn red! When humans acquired their astral body on the moon, the inner sap turned red—it became red blood.

Consider that plants are chaste; they have no desires, no passions: anger, fear, anxiety. Because human beings became in a certain sense worse than plants, they gained something that raised them above plants: alert daytime consciousness. The plant world of today is asleep. A plant is the reverse of a human being. A plant points with its roots toward the center of the earth, where its ego is located. The same force that acts downward in the plant acts upward in humans. The fact that humans received blood expresses the reception of the ego. The expression of the ego is red blood.

If you look at the inner surface of a green leaf with spiritual eyes, it appears red. This red force is, so to speak, spiritual. If you look at a red surface against a white background, stare at it intently, and then look at the white surface, a green spot will appear. The same is true in reverse. These colors are called complementary colors. Thus, even in such a physical phenomenon, the inner spiritual connection is expressed.

Or let us take two other colors: blue and orange, which are opposite each other. You must know that orange has two aspects: orange and gold.

Where do we find blue in nature? When we look up into the boundless distances of the vaulted sky! And where is gold? In paintings by the old masters, we see golden backgrounds. These old masters still painted according to a tradition that possessed some knowledge of the phenomena and beings of higher worlds. When we look out with spiritual eyes into the space of the heavens, it appears in golden depths. That is why we see angel heads on a golden background in old paintings, because when you look out (spiritually) into the space of the heavens, it appears to you in golden colors.

So we must seek to gather together what lies scattered throughout the cosmos according to the senses, in order to build up our soul. Just think how all the foodstuffs that serve to build up our body are scattered over the earth. Imagine this very vividly! It is exactly the same in a spiritual sense. Out of chaos, the soul must also gather together what is suitable for its development.

When a soul begins to meditate in this way, an organ in the physical body begins to develop: the mucous gland. In the average person, the mucous gland is an organ behind the pineal gland that is barely the size of a cherry pit. But it contains disproportionately great powers. It regulates the proper development of the body in terms of its size. The so-called giants who are put on display have a disease of the mucous gland. The forces set in motion by it must find an outlet in some way. When the meditator begins to work on himself, forces are awakened in the mucous gland. From the mucous gland, the organic structure develops from the chaos of sensations into the astral body. When the mucous gland flows around the pineal gland with golden threads, the time has come when the transformation of the astral body into the spirit self, into manas, has progressed so far that the etheric body can now be transformed into buddhi.

Those who meditate in this way on such occult signs will work purposefully on the development of their higher bodies. Sometimes, in complete silence, the soul grows tremendously quickly in a very short time. One could say that development does not require time, but only deep inner peace.

Record B

Meditate on the hexagram. Point upwards red, downwards green. Opposites: complementary colors. Green is the color of plants. Red is the color of human blood.

Humans could only achieve progress by also accepting desires and passions. The part of the Earth's astral body that belongs to the plant world is red. Physically green, spiritually red: the plant. In plants, the red astral forces point downwards towards the centre of the Earth, while in humans these same forces are reversed and point upwards.

Green and red: opposites. The same applies to blue and orange, or in one of two aspects: gold [addition by another hand: violet and gold]. These are also complementary colors. In the physical world, the sky is blue, in the Devachanic world it is gold, as depicted in ancient early medieval paintings. The same applies to the other opposites.¹

By contemplating such symbols given to us by the masters, we organize and shape our astral body, especially the aura, in order to (into the manas). All kinds of minor external experiences can point us to these color relationships, and thus our spiritual body is formed, shaped, and developed by making use of all kinds of scattered experiences, just as our physical body is formed by assimilating all kinds of physical nourishment gathered from the whole earth.

And as our astral body thus arranges and organizes itself, it acts specifically on the mucous gland or pituitary gland (hypophysis), a small organ, barely the size of a cherry pit, which is initially involved in the growth of the body. Through such organization of the astral body, the pituitary gland begins to become more and more luminous; it emits rays, and gradually surrounds the pineal gland lying before it with its rays, stimulating it;² As a result, the effects extend to the astral body and begin to influence and reorganize it.