Notes from Mathilde Scholl 1904–1906

GA 91 — 11 September 1906

17. On the Creator's Word

Every sound we speak, every word brings forth vibrations in our environment, vibrations that spread in waves in all directions. These vibrations propagate through the air, but also through the denser bodies. Through our organ of hearing, these vibrations of the air and also of the denser bodies, for example the vibrating string of an instrument, are fed to our brain and interpreted there by the consciousness; that is, the sound vibrations are converted there into consciousness vibrations. If we could now make the vibrations, which are produced by our words, visible, they would produce visible changes in the matter around us. If we would let a certain word sound continuously, and if we could give form to this word in the matter around us, then our environment would finally form the formation of this word. Our surroundings would then have become the expression of the word emanating from us.

When we thus communicate ourselves to our surroundings through sound, we set everything around us into a certain vibration, into a movement, into a rhythm. One hears our words only by the fact that we let them sound, but also let them fade away again. We create a rhythm through our words and then let it fade away again. At first our environment is without this rhythm produced by us through the sound. Then it is put into rhythm by the sound. Then the rhythmic waves flood off again, and everything goes back to a state of immobility. If we would let a word sound continuously, the oscillations would always remain the same; one would follow the other without a cessation of the movement. If these vibrations were to follow one another without interruption, one would not be able to distinguish one vibration from the next, and this continuous following and passing over of vibrations would be equal to complete rest. So we can think of such a degree of movement, of rhythm, which is equal to rest. It is then a uniform, uninterrupted rhythm.

If we were able to transfer the rhythm of a word to our whole environment, this environment of ours would at last become the expression of that word; we would set the matter around us in such motion by our word and keep it in a certain tension by the continuously sounding word, which at last would also be visibly expressed.

So also in the beginning, that is, at the beginning of our earth's development, the divine Creator's Word resounded and set the earth in a certain rhythm, and by the continuance of this rhythm the movements of matter became condensation; matter was kept in a certain tension by the sound of the Word. However, this divine creator word sounded not only in the beginning. It sounds incessantly. If it would sound only one second no more, then the world would be changed immediately into a chaos. Everything around us is the expression of this divine word of creation that resounds through the world. Everything visible is the outwardly perceptible vibrational limit of the divine word; it is the rhythm of life pushed to the surface that we behold in the sense world around us, and the forms of the sense world are the thoughts of God expressed in this divine word of creation.

The world is in a constant rhythm brought forth by the divine Creator Word. The Divine is all that is there; the Word is the movement that enters into the Divine Eternal; all that enters into appearance is the thought of the Divine flowing out through the Word from within the Godhead. Thus, out of the divine Being, out of the rest, which is at the same time unceasing, undifferentiated movement, life comes forth through the Word and puts everything into the unceasing differentiated movement and thereby shapes the thought of God in what was previously undifferentiated. Thus the Divine is everywhere at the same time eternal rest, according to being; then eternal life, which is like eternal change, for eternal life means eternal change, eternal springing up, growing forth, and last of all eternal consciousness; a constant expression of the God-thought that has become is the world.

All that we perceive externally in the world is the consciousness transformed into external being by the divine life. Man also develops one day to the point that he can send his consciousness outward through the Word and transform it into an external creation. For this he must first be able to send out the clear thought from within himself. Then he must be able to imbue this thought with a life. Then he must be able to imprint this living, rhythmic thought permanently on the environment, to bring it to embodiment. Then he himself has become a creator in a higher sense, then he is godlike. When he sends out clear thoughts into the world, he works by the power of the divine spirit; when he produces living thoughts, he works by the power of the Son; when he sends out formative, living thoughts, he works by the power of the Father.

Everything that comes to manifestation in the world is God-thought, the Spirit of God; that it can be expressed is conditioned by divine Being, the Father; who expresses it is divine Life, the Son.

So the world lives through the life of the Son and brings to expression, to revelation the spirit, the consciousness, the thought of the divine Father-power. In this divine Father-power the future worlds all slumber; in the divine consciousness they are already eternally there; the consciousness rests eternally in the divine Being; Father and Spirit are one. Through life the consciousness emerges and becomes in the divine being the revelation, the world of forms. The being encloses the world - the consciousness rests in it -; the life brings the consciousness in the being to the appearance. Father and Spirit are one; but the Son expresses the Spirit and thereby establishes the Trinity. The Son is the life of the Father, which expresses the Spirit.

We are first met by the expressed Spirit in the formed reality; then we find the life which expresses the Spirit; then the life leads us up to the fountainhead of being, the Father. That is why Christ could say, "No one comes to the Father except through me." He is the world life that leads to the Father. By our thinking we can become one with the Spirit; by our living we become one with the Son; by our willing we become one with the Father, having united ourselves with the Spirit and the Son.

As long as we immerse ourselves in the world only with the thought, we come to understand the Spirit; but when we place our life in the rhythm of the world, we become one with the Son, the Word; we help to keep the thought alive. As soon as we unite our whole will with the divine will, we become partakers of the power of the Father, from which everything comes forth.

We behold in the environment the creator thought that has become. That we do not see the becoming itself, the life, that we do not really hear the world-word sounding, that comes from the fact that we have developed only the senses which can take up the becoming, the embodied thought. Now we cannot recognize life with our physical senses, because our physical senses are the expression of our desire for the world that has become, for the existence of the senses. We have infused all our powers into this sense life and are initially absorbed in it. We are completely immersed with all our powers into the sense existence. That is why we miss everything that stands behind it, the real life of the world; that is why we only see what is, but not what will become, [we see] what has become and not what is becoming. And we do not hear the word of life itself, but see only the external expression of this word in the material sense world around us. Just as the whole world with its forces has turned itself outward to the objective existence, to the external world of appearance; just as the objective creation has emerged from the living Word, just as if the bottom of the sea had lifted itself out of the depths and risen above the surface of the water, so also man has lifted all his forces of the soul out of this reason of the soul and directed them outward in the sense organs, which bring to his consciousness the world that has risen out of the sea of life.

With the emporium of the Word of Life, man is able to see the world that has risen out of the sea of life. With the rising of the sense world out of the sea of the soul world, of the world life, there also rose up in man the ability to receive the sense world, to live in it. Man also went through the world process in his development. The life that stands behind what has become, the sea of worlds out of which what has become rises, is now recognized by man only outwardly in the eternal change of things. The eternal change of the world of appearances is that which proclaims to man that behind it flows a living, never ceasing power, which eternally generates itself anew. On the waves of the world life the appearances flow. Seemingly at rest, the outer world of appearances is nevertheless just the eternally changing. Just as our thoughts detach themselves in unceasing succession, so outside in the world the forms that have become detach themselves. The life behind it is eternal. Thus the world that has become floods up and down in the eternal life, like the waves of the air flood up and down through the sounding of the tone. The Creator Word sustains all things in eternal becoming.

If man had remained only in the process of eternal becoming, he would never have become an embodied thought of God. He also had to pass for a time through the world in which there is not only eternal life without change, but in which there is becoming and passing away, living and dying. Now if he had rested constantly in the eternal life, life itself would never have become his own consciousness. He had to learn to recognize what had become externally, he had to recognize himself as a special being, a being that had become, in contrast to the indiscriminate life. He had to win once for a time the mainland emerging from the sea of the world, in order to incorporate from there himself consciously as a special, individual being of the environment. He had to make a part of the divine consciousness his own in such a way that he himself could believe for a time that his consciousness, his life, his existence was separate from all the rest; he even had to be alienated from God for a time, so that he could find him again self-consciously afterwards. If the world life had not brought the world thought to the outer expression, then man could never have become a thinking, self-conscious being himself. He would have lived in the world-thought, but he would never have grasped the world-thought for himself. Now he cuts out, as it were, a piece of the world-thought for himself with every thought that he thinks in the sense of the world-thought. He thus consciously appropriates the world thought. He could only do this by descending into the world of the senses, by emerging as an individual being from the totality of life. Only through this he could himself become partaker of the divine consciousness.

At every incarnation he goes through this process of becoming. He appears first as an individual being, as a special, physical being. Then in this physical body the life works and comes to expression in it. Then the thought, the spirit, connects with it, and man awakens to self-consciousness. The cosmic career repeats itself with every embodiment of man. The descent into physical existence, into the body world - from the spirit world, consciousness and the soul world, life - happens in the same sequence as the cosmic descent of the world and of man into condensation. This descent repeats itself before every birth in the higher worlds, in secret. Spirit and soul were there first; only then the physical body was formed. The ascent happens in every single life also like in the cosmic life. First the formation of the physical, in the world of the senses, happens; then the formation of the sensation, in the world of the soul, then the formation of the thinking, in the world of the spirit.

When man has learned all that he should learn in the world of the senses, namely, when he has learned to read out the thoughts of God from the world of appearances and has united himself with the pure thought of God, with the spirit of God, then he can fertilize his soul with it and awaken to life in the soul the powers slumbering therein. Then the life force itself begins to blossom there, and he begins to realize, through the soul's own life forces, the life of the world, the life and being of the Word. He then lives in a world that transcends the world of the senses. And new organs open up to him and become for him the key to life itself.

He then hears the word, because he himself can consciously resonate in his inner being with the world-word. Then he hears the world word in everything that has become. He then recognizes everything that has become as a vibrational expression of the world-word. He then recognizes the sense world as floating on the ocean of world life. Consciously he then incorporates himself into this world-life.

The world-light has become manifest in the world of appearance. As visible light the world wisdom has appeared before us. The light shone into the darkness of the twilight dream life of mankind, so that they could see the thoughts of God appear before them in objective forms. But the darkness did not understand the light. The people did not read out of the world of appearance the thought of God, which became clearly visible before our eyes through the light. That is why they could not yet rise to the consciousness of the world life, to the recognition of the word. First we have to understand the light, the God-thought that became objective; then we can understand the word, the living God-thought. The Word was there first, but we comprehend it later. What was there from the beginning is recognized only at the end. Thus closes the circle of human development, which emerges from the divine through the Word and re-enters the divine through conscious becoming one with the Word.

We should recognize the divinity in what has become. We should live in it through union with life itself. It is this life that connects us to the primordial power of being, from the beginning. Through this life we flow back into the primordial power of being and then consciously flow forth as a part of it. Then our consciousness also becomes creative consciousness. Then, just as we now live consciously and producing in the physical, we will live consciously and producing in the spirit, and through our word we will bring our consciousness to form. A new cosmos will then emerge from us.