Notes from Mathilde Scholl 1904–1906

GA 91 — 16 September 1906

23. Evolution and Involution

The plant kingdom is the symbol of evolution. It is the real realm of life, of the second Logos, of the Christ Principle. How evolution and involution proceed in the cosmos and in all parts of the cosmos, we see daily before us in the plant kingdom. A plant develops before our eyes. From the one seed sprouts a new life that was previously dormant in it. The forces of the world surround the seed, moisture, warmth and light act on it; the life forces contained in the seed respond to this and come forth; they reveal themselves, they pass from unity into majority, into number, More and more the hidden forces unfold, and leaves and blossoms come into being. Thus the life of the plant sprouts up before us. Thus life becomes recognizable to us in the outer form.

In this shaping of life and in this transposition of life into external form, there then occurs a point at which the life force has apparently exhausted itself, since the plant no longer increases in growth, since at first it apparently stops in its growth; and thereupon [following] we see it even wither and die, become lifeless. But its life is not lost, for it leaves behind the viable seed. It contains everything that is necessary for a new entity to arise from it. The life forces of the dead plant have therefore not disappeared; they have rather moved into the seed. There all the vital forces of the plant are gathered together, and there they rest until the time comes when they awaken anew.

This is how the mystery of evolution and involution plays out before our eyes every day. As with the plant, so we can observe the physical evolution and involution also with the animal and man. All the forces of the animal and of man, after they have reached maturity in the individual being, flow together in the germs into new physical beings.

If we lift our gaze to cosmic evolution, we see there also how evolution and involution follow each other apart. Out of chaos the Godhead created this earth. Before, the earth was desolate and empty; that is, no life manifested itself. The spirit of God hovered over the waters. He rested on the germs of life in order to awaken them to development, to life, so that the life hidden in them could reveal itself. And so the divine power awakened form upon form from the slumbering germs of life, just as also today the sun calls forth the seed resting in the earth and awakens it to life.

In the cosmos, too, there follow periods of revelation, of life, and those in which life withdraws into itself. These great cosmic periods are called by the Indian sage the "days and nights of Brahma," his breathing out and breathing in; Hebrew religious teaching also speaks of days of creation. They are great, cosmic periods of the revelation of life. There, too, day does not follow day without interruption, but the nights lie in between, in which life withdraws into itself again, in order to reveal itself with increased strength on a new day. As in mathematics the process of exponentiation goes on, so in the cosmos and in everything what lives, the life unfolds. On the other hand, as in mathematics the process of radiating is carried out, so also in the cosmos the life flows together again into one point. On the one hand, we recognize highest revelation, unfolding, passing into number; on the other hand, highest accumulation of force, drawing together into one point, overflowing into unity.

The expression for the highest unfoldment of force is the greatest manifoldness; but the possibility of unfoldment lies in the one root from which all revelation arises, in the One, which is the origin of all numbers, although it is not itself number. One is the root of all numbers; the unrevealed is the root of all revelation; rest is the root of all motion; darkness is the root of light, nothingness is the root of all being. That we can observe life is conditioned by the revelation, the unfolding, the growth around us. But that life always renews itself, that its power never runs out, that is conditioned by the confluence of life in one point, the leaving of the periphery and the drawing back to the center. During a world day, a manvantara, life lives on the periphery, during the intermediate states, during the pralaya, life lives in the center of the cosmos. While it lives on the periphery, it becomes manifest; in the center, it hides. But while it shows the highest power development at the periphery, it possesses the highest power in the center. Now, as life flows out, it surrenders; and as it flows into the center, it gathers again, in order to be able to renew itself later in increased measure. It is precisely this confluence of life in one center, one point, that causes the new, higher possibilities of manifestation. Thus, in the end, the highest power rests in the point, the atom, into which all life withdraws again from the revelation, into which all revealed life forces flow again. Not in the leaves and blossoms of the plant rests the highest power but in the seed in which the life forces have concentrated. Unfolding is the expression of power, but concentration is the accumulation of power. Therein lies the secret of all evolutionary possibility. In every evolution life exercises its forces, unfolds all possibilities of force. By concentrating these again into one point, a much higher new force is created, which now unites all the unfolded possibilities of force into a greater force. The whole evolution of the earth is arranged and proceeds according to this plan.

The seasons are also an aid to the maintenance of life. One season is a time of life development, the other a time of life concentration. In the middle of winter falls the festival of life concentration. In the spring falls the festival of life unfoldment, of resurrection. Just as in winter the germs of life slumber under the earth, and as in spring they unfold and sprout, so the whole life of the world passes through periods of concealment and accumulation of strength, and such periods where it reveals itself.

This mystery of evolution and involution of life we recognize in the whole process of life which takes place before our eyes in the world, But it should be implanted in the consciousness of man still especially by the appearance of the Christ Jesus on earth. In him the life of the whole world flows together, and from him it goes out again. He contains everything that is called life. That it is in him, that life rests in Christ, and that it also goes out from him, was proven to the world by his death and the overcoming of death in the resurrection. Then the whole process of the world, the whole involution and the whole evolution, was repeated in three days.

Christ is the world self, the world life. That lived visibly among men. By his death and his resurrection they had to recognize that this world life in truth does not pass away, that it only withdraws into itself, into the hidden, in order to rise from the hidden again anew, with new strength. The otherwise imperceptible process of world involution and world evolution took place here before the eyes of man. Based on this law, the life in the world renews itself continuously; in the plant, animal and human kingdom we can observe this. But what arises there new, are new physical forms. With our eyes we see only the growth of the physical.

According to the same laws according to which the physical life takes place, according to the same laws also the spiritual life develops. That the spirit of man lives, reveals itself and increases in strength, this is based on the fact that all the development of strength of man in the individual physical incarnations, where his life is expressed in the world, is revealed, is again included in his I, in the inner, spiritual life center. What Christ is for the world, the I is for man. His I is a part of the Christ, from his I all forces emerge; but in order that they may grow and increase, they must flow together in his I again and again. This confluence of the human forces in the I happens in the intervening periods between incarnations. There the forces that have unfolded during a human life gather and consolidate in order to emerge strengthened in a new incarnation. But when man reaches a somewhat higher stage of development, he learns more and more to carry out this process consciously also during his life on earth. He consciously unfolds his powers in the service of the world, and the experiences thus gained he consciously transfers into his I, into the center of his being. They are then implanted in the I already during his life on earth; he thereby anticipates the work of many years of the intervening time between his incarnations, where this gathering of the unfolded forces in the I takes place through the help of higher beings.

As soon as man begins to collect and redevelop forces himself consciously during life in this way, his spirit grows in the spiritual world, and he transforms more and more his whole being into an immortal one. For what he himself incorporates into his being, that remains with him as a permanent component of his being.

In the exercises that the yoga student does, he first learns to concentrate his thoughts. Through this, his mind gains new strength. From each concentration of thought, as from a focal point, new powers emerge. Thus, at a later stage, he also learns to concentrate his life. By drawing all life forces together from the periphery as into one point, he awakens a higher life force there. And by learning to concentrate his whole will, there he brings his will to growth.

In this way man becomes stronger and stronger in thinking, in living, in willing. The more he radiates all these forces on the one hand in the service of the world and on the other hand pulls them together into his innermost being, the more he acts as a co-worker of the Godhead, because in this way he becomes more and more integrated into the evolutionary process. Everything that man experiences can be used for his growth. He must participate in the life on the periphery of existence in order to work and to gain experience. But he must again and again let his thoughts, his life and his will flow in from the periphery of existence into his I and there unite with the Divine and deify all experiences there, so that they can flow out of him as new, higher forces.

The disciple thereby anticipates the work of the Devachan, and when he has in this way completely placed himself in the process of evolution, then he no longer needs the Devachan time for his transformation. He can then live permanently completely for the world. This is the process by which man incorporates world-life, by which he himself becomes one with world-life; then he himself becomes the Word, because all his powers have become rhythmic and harmonious.

All the disharmonies of life flooding up to him he then lets flow together in the innermost core of his being, and there he transforms them into harmony, which he streams back into the world. He transforms evil into good, impurity into purity, darkness into light, passion into enthusiasm, pain into joy, hatred into love, and death into life.

So, for our further development it depends much less on where we live, how people confront us, how the circumstances are, but rather it depends on the fact that in any environment, in any circumstances, among any people, we know how to gather and utilize the right experiences, that in the right way with all these experiences we undertake the transformation process that leads to our own growth and to the enrichment of our environment, to the ennoblement of the environment.

The person who understands this in the right way, to perform this spiritual alchemy with all the currents of life that approach him, no matter where he lives, becomes a center of peace for the world. Unaware of the surroundings, this transformation takes place within him. It is saved by him from greater disharmonies, from greater pain and suffering, because he is there. Perhaps often misunderstood and misjudged, such a person nevertheless learns to transform everything into harmony and to transfigure the pain into new, higher forces within himself, which he then again helpfully pours out into the environment.

So the world has always been saved from the greatest disharmonies by those people who have learned to become conscious co-workers in the work of the Godhead, and consciously to place themselves completely in the development of the world.

The ascent of man is conditioned in the transformation and utilization of the forces of the environment. The more a man understands how to make all the forces that approach him from the environment his own, the higher he rises. It is the forces of the environment flowing together in him that lift him up. Thus we can learn to build ourselves up from the forces that flow into us, from the forces of nature around us, but to an even greater extent from the forces of the people around us. In the environment, and especially in our fellow human beings, lies our future, our ascent. Through them higher forces flow into us. Each individual is more or less the special expression of a certain cosmic force. If we learn to absorb this force and concentrate it within us, it becomes our own, as if we had trained it ourselves beforehand. The fact that we live among people also has this great significance, that we accumulate forces from them and incorporate them into our own being. Whoever understands this in the right way, learns to unite in himself everything that the individual people around him represent in cosmic forces. Thus Christ united in himself all the individual forces that were expressed in his twelve disciples. He was as the thirteenth the center into which all these forces flowed in order to emerge from it as a higher force. So also the earth as the expression of the second Logos is the center, which unites all forces of the twelve zodiacal images in itself and will emerge as higher from these forces one day. In the Manvantara it passes through seven, in the Pralaya through five stages of consciousness.

We are the building blocks used to make a world temple. But the more we are able to build ourselves from all the forces of the world, the more beautiful this world temple will become. We should learn to absorb the forces of the other individualities into ourselves, so that we can again let these collected forces become a higher force, in order to let them flow together in union with our brothers for the construction of ever higher beings. In this way the living world-temple builds itself up. Around us we behold in the kingdoms of nature the steps on which we have ascended; in our fellow-men lie hidden the forces for our higher ascent; and in our elder brothers, the masters and leaders of humanity, there lies our future, the goal toward which we are to strive.