Notes from Mathilde Scholl 1904–1906

GA 91 — 14 September 1906

20. The Connection Between the Spiritual and Physical Worlds

Every single incarnation of man is an expression of the ego. The I pushes man into the chain of incarnations. And the development in the incarnations serves to fix the I in the consciousness, "I am." Mineral, plant and animal cannot speak to themselves, "I am," cannot say of themselves, "I am." Only man can do that on the physical plan. With each incarnation, man steps out of the sea of soul-life and out of the realm of spirit onto the mainland of physical existence; there he emerges from the hidden because his "I" wants to manifest itself.

As the whole earth is a manifestation of the World-I, the God-I, so each and every human incarnation is a manifestation of the Human-I. The divine I, too, has gone through many cosmic incarnations and will go through many more. Between the incarnations of the world ego it has withdrawn into itself and processed within itself the experiences of the cosmic manifestation in order to work out from them the plan for a higher expression of its beingness. So also the human ego between the incarnations withdraws into itself and processes there the experiences which it has made in the physical incarnation, in order to express them more fully in the next incarnation. Thus force upon force flows forth from the source of the I in the physical incarnations and streams into the world.

From the effects of the out-flowing forces the I gathers the experiences which it assimilates in the intervening periods between incarnations in order to be able to express itself more and more perfectly. Everything that the gods formed in the human being before the I moved into him was a preparation for the absorption of the I. After the I, the germ of God, was drawn into man as a part of God's will, God's life and God's consciousness, this I itself had to learn little by little to take the work of the Godhead in hand. Whereas before the Godhead gave and wove together the forces which surrounded the I and were to give it the means to manifest itself, now the I had to learn to further spin out its beingness itself by means of these forces given to it by God. Thus the ego lives and weaves within the Godhead, and what it lives and weaves is its own beingness, which it shapes according to the plan that rests in the divine core of its being, in the God-germ slumbering in it. The consciousness of the human I is a reflection of the divine I-consciousness. When the divine consciousness said, "I am," when the God-word sounded, then the world became, then it emerged from chaos.

When the human consciousness awakens, when the human being says to himself "I am", it acts like the immersion of a magnet into a mass containing iron particles. Then all forces flow to the I, in order to bring it to the formation. Just as the plant seed draws all forces from the environment, from air, light and moisture, just as the human germ before birth in physical existence draws all forces from the maternal organism in order to form itself, so the I draws all forces from the cosmos in order to bring about its formation, in order to express itself more and more.

The I is the divine in man, the germ of God, which contains within itself all possibilities of growth. It is divine, but only a dormant God-germ as long as it is not driven to growth by the environment. In the environment lies the whole fleshed-out higher self of man; the environment is the manifestation of the Godhead; all cosmic forces are forces of the Godhead; and into the individual I the Godhead put the possibility of letting all cosmic forces pass through it and utilize them for its fleshing out. Thus the I breathes and lives in the Godhead; thus it grows and develops in the Godhead; thus it rests in the Godhead, in the intermediate states between incarnations; thus it emerges from the Godhead as something special in each physical existence. In each physical existence it brings more of the divine powers; its physical existence is the expression of these divine powers. In the physical existence it learns which divine powers it still lacks for its perfection. Therefore it dives down again and again into the sea of the divine powers and gathers out of it the powers it still lacks, and those which it had before and expressed and recognized in physical existence, it fastens with every diving back into the divine primordial ground.

The entrance into each life is the manifestation of the I; death denotes the moment when the I withdraws again from the physical in order to incorporate the God-forces manifested in the physical into its own beingness. With every descent into the spiritual world two things happen: The I receives new forces from the source of the Godhead, which drive it to a new manifestation; but since it can express these forces only in the physical and recognize them as its own, it must then, with every descent into the nucleus of being, first incorporate them into this own nucleus of being as a permanent possession. That is why the physical incarnations are of such importance for the growth of the spiritual man, of the I. Without the physical incarnations this growth would not be able to proceed.

It would not be possible for the I to grow out of the divine Urgrund as a special entity if it did not again and again emerge into the physical, manifest itself, that is, express and exercise its powers received from God and recognize them as its own. The powers flow to him from the primordial ground of the Godhead - but thereby they are not yet his own. When man creates and works with them in physical existence, they become his own, and only then can he incorporate them into the core of his being as something permanent. Everything that we have in forces is given to us by God; so that the forces become our own, we must work with them in the world. Thus, on the one hand, man works in the world in every incarnation and reshapes it, but the whole external reshaping of the world is, on the other hand, the ground on which the ego fortifies itself, for through its work in the world its ego grows, the forces of God fortified in it by the work in the world are incorporated into its essence. Thus the spiritual world and the physical world are intimately connected. The physical life is that in which the spirit of man grows. That is why the physical life should be sacred to us. Everything that we are and have has come forth from the Godhead, from the spirit; that we can be and say to ourselves "I am," that we can acquire powers of our own, that was made possible for us through life in the physical.

Deity also multiplies its inner power through physical manifestation. Thus, with each incarnation, we multiply our inner powers. That we incarnate, that arises from the will of the innermost core of being. The being, which wants to say I to itself, must incarnate. Minerals, plants and animals cannot say I; they do not incarnate as individual beings willed from themselves, but as parts of higher beings that say I to themselves. They are the organs of higher I-beings, just as our sense organs, our organs of movement, our organs of work are only parts of the incarnation that our I expresses. Animal groups, plants and minerals express the I of higher beings.

So the I is rooted in the spirit of the Godhead; but independently it must form itself in the physical shell of the Godhead. There it gains for itself the divine powers which flow through it, because there, cooperating in the garment of the Godhead, it acquires the right to take complete possession of the divine powers communicated to it. Until then they had been given to him and could have been taken away from him again. Now, however, the human being acquired the right to a part of the divine powers in his physical existence. And he could permanently incorporate these self-acquired divine powers into the ego; they can no longer be withdrawn from him. In this acquisition of the powers by devotion of the powers to the whole, in the work on the world, therein lies the divine growth plan for all world development. This is how the Godhead grows; this is how man grows. Powers are given to us, but not for idle possession. All powers are to be expressed in our work. And by working our powers into the world, they fulfill our whole being more and more. While idly we are only containers into which the forces flow, actively we become channels through which the forces flow. And in this harnessing of God's forces, therein lies our own growth. Everything that we pass on to the outside expands our own being. Our I grows to the extent that we communicate our powers to the environment. Thus man works his spirit into the physical world until the whole physical world will be more and more the expression of the human spirit. This is the goal that lies before us. The perfection of the world, the perfection of our own existence is in our hands. Therefore, we should not ask, "Is the world advancing toward perfection?" but say, "We want to help lead it toward perfection."