Notes from Mathilde Scholl 1904–1906

GA 91 — 26 September 1906

33. Prana and More

In fire we recognize the expression of the God-power, which sustains and quickens all, which creates all, but also destroys all. Where it expresses itself as fire, there it works as a destructive force. Therefore men also saw in the lightning, which kindles the fire, the sign by which the Godhead manifests its power. That is why the symbol of lightning was given to Jupiter in his hand, and the symbol of a hammer to the god Thor, to show that he proclaims his power to men in thunder and lightning. Where the power of fire does not express its destructive and consuming force, but appears in a subdued form, it is the life-giving power that expresses itself in all that lives, in the plant, animal and human kingdoms, as warmth. It is this warmth that sustains all life and that always gives rise to new life, that reveals life. What grows and thrives, what sprouts and blossoms, is enabled to do so by warmth.

It is the mitigated power of fire, the moderate power of God, which withholds some of its power and gives some of it to call the world of phenomena into existence. In order for man to bring forth something new in his environment - through his work, through art and technology - he must learn to tame the fire in such a way that it becomes warmth, and thus transform the mineral kingdom. While fire itself has a destructive effect, warmth has a revitalizing effect. At first, man learned to control fire and use it to work with the mineral world. But it was a far greater achievement when man harnessed the warmth radiated by fire. The harnessing of warmth and the resulting transformation of the mineral world represented one of the greatest cultural advances. Through fire, man had learned to transform the solid into the liquid, and had thus become a master in the processing of ore. A further advance was that he learned to transform the liquid through heat into the gaseous – water into steam – and to utilize the steam. The entire subsequent cultural epoch was based on this utilization of steam. Another step in human development was that man learned to transform fire into light and to use this light to explore nature in his service. Light is also an expression of fire, but of the tamed power of fire. Yet even greater effects can be produced by light than by heat. While heat only affects the immediate vicinity, light affects the entire space.

The range of the effect is much greater with light than with heat. We know about the existence of long-vanished celestial bodies because their light, which they emitted many years ago when they were still physically present, is visible to us today. Fire contains both light and heat, and man can coax out both and make use of them, just as both show their beneficial effects in the world. We live through warmth and live in light. Nothing living could flourish permanently in the dark. Both light and warmth are necessary for our existence. These are the two poles in which the divine power of fire shows itself as an invigorating power in the world. As warmth, it works within beings, as light, it surrounds them from the outside.

The emotional expression of fire in the human and animal kingdom is passion, Kama. He must learn to transform this passion, which is indeed the power that enables him to become independent, so that it becomes warmth of soul within him. As warmth of soul it becomes invigorating in him, while as passion it has a destructive effect in him. This warmth of soul, however, which manifests itself as love, not only gives him the strength to live independently, but also to have a life-giving effect on the rest of humanity. In love, he radiates his inner being, his inner strength. It is this that connects him with people and also with God, while passion separates him from people and from God. Just as the physical expression of the power of God can be recognized in fire, so love, the life of the Godhead, descends through the warmth of the soul into the physical human being. The power of the Budhi, the Christ power, the power of the second Logos, is absorbed in man himself, while the will, which is first expressed in passion - as in fire in nature - is the power of the first Logos. Thus man lives in his will in the power of the first Logos. But while the first Logos lives on the plane of Nirvana, this will expresses itself in its passion at first as the greatest turning away from the Divine. Through love it turns to the Divine, and thereby the Divine streams towards it from the plane of Budhi. There it is imbued with the Divine warmth which lives on the plane of Budhi with the power of the second Logos. Love is the power that leads man from the lowest point of his estrangement from the Divine up again into the Divine. After man has united with the Deity living on the Budhiplan through love, this love works in him in such a way that the other pole of passion is also expressed: love leads him to knowledge. You radiate from above the light of divine wisdom. Through love, the human being unites with divine love, but this union has the consequence that he is enlightened by God with his light, the light of the knowledge of God's wisdom. This resides on the Devachan plan, it is what emerges from the love of God, which resides on the Budhiplan.

And while man rises through love to the buddhic plane, he rises through knowledge to the devachan plane, the world of the second Logos. First, through love, there must be a complete reversal of man, his passion, which was expressed in the astral, must become love, which is expressed in the Budhi element, then his thinking, which lived on the lower layers of the mental plane, is raised to the realization of the upper parts of the devachan plane.

Only then can he participate in the works of the Godhead and its various aspects. He must learn to acquire love and wisdom in order to understand the will of the deity, which is revealed in life, and the thought of the deity, which is expressed in living forms. First he penetrates into this divine thought, which then appears to him in the devachanic world. It is the wisdom of God that shines forth to meet him. Resting in this divine thought, he first finds the way into the essence of the deity. He is enabled to do so by the power of thought given to him by the third Logos. From this power he is able to penetrate further and understand the world in which the second Logos comes to revelation, in the astral world, where the essence of the second Logos is revealed. The second Logos is the revelation of divine life; this reveals itself to man in the soul, in the astral, just as the wisdom of the third Logos reveals itself to him in the mental. Only through the realization of the wisdom of God and through the assimilation of the revelation of the life in the soul can he now become conscious of the Divine Will, the elemental power of the Divine Life in the physical world. There he unites again with this elemental power, as before this power had united with him.

The power of God descended through life, through the manifestation of life in numbers - by dividing its power into different powers - through the light that was to bring enlightenment to mankind, and through the warmth that was to invigorate it. Finally, it expressed itself as fire in all its power to be recognized by man, and imparted to him a part of its power in passion so that he might gain independence.

— In life was the power of the first Logos.
— In number was the power of the Son, who emerged from the first Logos through revelation, the power of the Word, rhythm, harmony.
— In light was the power of the Spirit, of God-consciousness, which now streamed into the world and had a shaping-creating effect.

The light lured the figures out of the darkness. Then life poured all its power into the world of figures through fire – which became self-heating and passion in the animal and human realm, and led man to independence. Now he could begin the ascent, the return to the Godhead, to the primal source from which he had gone out. But for this, the power of God had to reach out to him again and again to draw him up. Through the first Logos, self-will was given to him in passion; now the second Logos poured into him self-warmth and love. The power of the first Logos, which had been expressed in him as fire and passion, now passed over into the power of the second Logos; and then the power of the third Logos united with him in wisdom, knowledge, and light, and led him together with it through light and knowledge.

Thus man could now live in the power of the third Logos, in thought, in divine wisdom. This divine wisdom must increasingly attract the divine life in him, then he learns to shape his thoughts vividly, then he can bring forth forms on the astral plane, just as he now brings forth thoughts on the mental plane.

A further ascent of man is that he then unites with the divine will and expresses it in the animation and transformation of the physical plan.

Thus, divinity and humanity are closely interwoven and intertwined. When the powers of God descend into man, a force must connect with the power of God in order to then descend again into nature in union with the divinity.

Descent of the One Life in Revelation: the number – ascent from expression to unity

Life – warmth
Number – light
Expression of unity: fire.

Connection of the human with the divine.

The ascent of man and union with the divine and the effect of the divine in man:

While life lives as the highest pole of the Godhead on the physical plane, warmth lives as the lowest expression of the Godpower on the Budhi plane. The number or revelation lives on the astral plane and thus complements the light that lives on the devachan plane. Through this concatenation of life in its expressions of power and in the worlds in which it works, everything around us in the cosmos and in man comes into being. We must understand the laws of life in order to penetrate into them. But it is love that leads us to the knowledge of these laws – for love is the power given to man to enable him to rise to divinity.

In order for humanity to become independent, the Father-power of the Godhead gave them a part of their own will in the inner fire, the passion. So that man could direct and guide this passion so that it would not become a consuming fire, he sent them his son, Christ, who brought love into the world to transform passion into life. But He sent the Spirit, the Paraclete, to lead them through love to knowledge, to light.

Only then, after humanity had been illuminated by the Spirit, could it recognize the life of the Son, could it understand the revelation of the Godhead. And only after it had united with this revealing love could it lead the Son to the Father, to the union with the will-to-live, the creative power. Thus the Godhead works in him as Father, Son and Spirit; but through the light of knowledge he first unites with the Spirit, then through love with the Son and through the will with the Father.

Through Christ, the power of love came into the world, which was to fulfill and purify the ego of man, which first revealed itself in passion, so that he could absorb the power of the spirit and penetrate to knowledge. But through this knowledge he will unite completely with love - and through love with the divine will. Therefore Christ had to lower his spirit upon mankind, as it happened at Pentecost. Since His appearance He has always permeated humanity with His spirit, and this spirit teaches them to find the way to Him and to the Father. In the middle of the Lemurian race, passion first descended into man with its own warmth. In the fourth sub-race of the fifth root race, love descended to purify passion, and from then on this love sent its spirit into humanity.

This descent of the spirit must continue until people, through knowledge, find their way back to love, as love had guided them to knowledge before. When Christ appeared, it was the beginning of the transition from love to knowledge.

Our time is the time when knowledge must pass over into love again. Parzival denotes the completion of the path through love of knowledge. Lohengrin denotes the beginning of the path through knowledge to love. We live in the completion of the path.

And just as Christ Jesus once brought love and, through love, light, so now light brings us love again. Lucifer appears in humanity to lead it back to Christ. And the new Christ will arise when humanity has learned to walk in the light of knowledge. Then Christ will arise. He was born in the fourth sub-race, and will arise in the sixth sub-race.

Then love in humanity will be brought to perfection and humanity will be uplifted to the power of the Father. Regarding the time in which we live, Christ Jesus said: “I will send you the Spirit of truth; he will guide you into all truth, and the truth will set you free. He is the Spirit of Truth who is now working among people and wants to lead them to spiritual freedom by freeing the spirit from the fetters of the physical. He gives the human spirit the strength to recognize, behind the physical world of appearance, the world in which it has its origin, its home. And thanks to this knowledge of the spiritual world, love for the spiritual world is kindled in him, and he unites with the power that works in the world as love, with Christ. And again it is this love that gives him the strength to unite with the life itself from which love emerged, with the divine will.

There the human being finds perfect union with the divine and perfect freedom from everything that fettered him; the completion of his freedom is perfect union with the Godhead.