The Cosmic Christ and the etheric plane
In esoteric science, Christ is a cosmic spiritual Being standing above the Hierarchies, who descended from Cosmic Heights to the sphere of the Sun, then united with the earth in the body of Jesus of Nazareth.
The great and sublime Sun Being descended from cosmic heights, descended to Earth—that is the event that came to pass in the Mystery of Golgotha. And when He had descended from spiritual worlds and passed through death, and His body had been laid in the Earth, then this same Christ—after His death, after His resurrection—had initiate pupils.
And it is important that many should know today what Christ taught at that time to His initiate pupils; it is important that many should know of this teaching of the risen Christ, in order that they may be able to participate in the forces that are now at work for the further evolution of mankind.
Following His death and resurrection, He abides within the etheric plane of the earth. This central event in human evolution is known as the Mystery of Golgotha.
We must learn to understand that in the future we are not to look on the physical plane for the most important events but outside it, just as we shall have to look for Christ on His return as etheric form in the spiritual world.
The etheric realm is the first world opened to clairvoyant vision, wherein nature spirits reside, also known as elementals, like the four elements: earth, fire, water, and air.
Within the earth's etheric body an etheric human being feels himself to he a member of a whole. This progress in clairvoyance is a process of growing familiar with the nature of the elemental world. That world is inhabited by beings of the most widely different kinds.
All ancient traditions centered around Sun-worship referred to the Christ prior to His physical incarnation. Just like the Sun affects all life on earth and all weather systems and workings of nature, the Christ lives within the realm of nature as well since the Mystery of Golgotha.
In the ancient past, before the days of the Jews, veneration was paid to the Sun, because the Sun was known to be the source of this all-powerful influence during life. When no such influence was received, men ceased to venerate the Sun. By whom, then, was the Sun replaced? By Christ Jesus Himself! Before the founding of Christianity there had been a Sun Religion in which the Sun itself was the object of veneration. Christ Jesus was the last to receive this Sun influence, and thereafter men could do no other than point to Christ, saying: There, within Him, is the Sun Spirit!
Herein lies the great and fundamental change. It denoted a sheer revolution in thought to be able to say: Christ Jesus brought down upon the Earth that which was formerly in the Sun. In the first Christian centuries, Christ was always called the Sun and in the Gospels we still find the words: “the Sun, the Christ.” Later on, the meaning was entirely forgotten.
Ireland and the Hibernian Mysteries
This presents the basis of Celtic Christianity, which emerged between the 5th and 9th centuries in Europe until it was overtaken by the form of Christianity coming in through Eastern channels, based on the physical life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
These are two streams of Christianity; one is a lived experience of one's self within Nature, the other is based upon an analysis of the events in Palestine and their historicity.
In the time preceding the incarnation of Christ, a mysterious and powerful Mystery Tradition had its beginnings in the island of Ireland, or Hibernia. They are considered the last of the Great Mysteries to perish.
On the island which later endured so many sore trials there was a centre of the Great Mysteries, a centre of ‘Christian’ Mysteries before the Event of Golgotha—a centre where the spiritual gaze of human beings living before the Mystery of Golgotha was directed in the right and true way towards it.
They are, fundamentally speaking, the last of the Great Mysteries, the last Great Mysteries through which the secrets of human and cosmic life could be revealed.
They are protected from clairvoyant vision of the Akashic record with an intense power; the one who approaches them is repelled forcefully.
It is much more difficult for later vision to find in that eternal Record the pictures of these Mysteries which have remained there, than those of other Mystery centres, for in trying to approach the Hibernian Mysteries the impression is that the pictures contain extraordinarily powerful forces which repel and thrust one back. Even if the pictures are approached with a certain courage of vision—a courage which in other cases meets with less resistance than is experienced here—the opposition is so intense that it may give rise to a kind of stupefaction.
It is as though one were being held back by some force, as though the soul could not pierce its way through. The nearer one approaches, the darker the goal becomes and a kind of stupefaction comes upon the soul.
Something appears to be hidden within the Hibernian Mysteries, to be awakened at a later time when man possess a necessary quality of soul, likely developing within our modern times.
Unlike other Mysteries that can be passively observed, the Hibernian Mysteries require full participation of man's soul life, which is a testament to how they were a direct experience of the divine worlds.
One has to work one’s way through this stupefaction and the only possibility of doing so is to rekindle one’s own, independently acquired knowledge of similar matters. And then one understands why it is so difficult to approach the Hibernian Mysteries. It becomes evident that they were the final echo of an age-old gift to humanity from the divine-spiritual Powers, but that when these Mysteries withdrew into a shadowy existence they were at the same time surrounded by an impenetrable wall, so that a man cannot fathom or have vision of them if he maintains a passive attitude of soul; he can approach these Mysteries only by kindling spiritual activity, in other words when he has become a modern man in the true sense.
Access to the Hibernian Mysteries was closed in order to make it impossible for men to draw near them in the old way; they were to be compelled to experience with the full activity of consciousness that which must be discovered inwardly in this age of freedom. Neither by a scrutiny of history nor by clairvoyant vision of ancient, great and wonderful secrets can these Mysteries be discovered, but only by the exercise of a man’s own inner, conscious activity.
The Great Mysteries of Hibernia thus provide the very strongest indication of the fact that a new Age begins at the time when they faded into the land of shadows. But they can be seen again today in all their glory and majesty by a soul sustained by inner freedom; for through true inner activity they can indeed be approached and the menace of stupefaction overcome.
The soul has nevertheless to confront obstacles standing before the revelations that were once accessible to those who were to be initiated— revelations of the ancient secrets of the spiritual wisdom, instinctive it is true, but none the less sublime, which once poured over men on the Earth as a primeval power of the soul. The most beautiful and significant memorials in later time to the primeval wisdom of men, to the grace of divine-spiritual Beings manifesting in the earliest stage of human life on Earth, the most beautiful tokens of that Age are the pictures which can be revealed to us when we direct our spiritual gaze to the Mysteries of Hibernia.
The Hiberian Mysteries were also a remnant of the Atlantean Sun Oracles; the island may have been settled before the sinking of Atlantean continent. You can read more about this in Atlantis: the Antediluvian World - The Irish Colonies from Atlantis: https://sacred-texts.com/atl/ataw/ataw507.htm
In its origin legend, Ireland formed as a likeness to Paradise on earth before Lucifer's entry, preceding the Fall of Man as widely known. Lucifer could not enter Paradise before a portion of it was separated and fell to earth so to speak. Lucifer represents all that is abstract, as opposed to a direct experience of the divine. Suffice to say, Ireland is a very important and mystical place.
The island Ireland, as we call it today, has particular characteristics. This island distinguishes itself from the rest of the earth in certain ways...it is different with Ireland, however; it does not belong in the same sense to the rest of the earth, because before Lucifer had set foot in paradise a likeness of paradise had formed itself upon the earth, and this likeness has become Ireland.
You should well understand that Ireland is therefore that bit of earth that had no part of Lucifer, to which Lucifer had no relationship. That which had to be separated from paradise so that the earthly likeness of paradise could arise would have hindered Lucifer from entering paradise.
Initiates of the Hibernian Mysteries spoke of the Christ who will appear in the future. The initiation of pupils was to prepare them for this event, when the whole of earth evolution would receive its greater, cosmic meaning.
The Hibernian Mysteries were verily the Great Mysteries. They were in their prime during the era preceding the Mystery of Golgotha. But the essential feature of the Great Mysteries was that in them the Christ of the Future was spoken of, just as men spoke later on of the Christ as One was connected with events already past.
And when, after the first Initiation the image of Christ had been shown to the pupil as he was leaving the Temple, the purpose was to bring home to him that the whole evolutionary course of the Earth in cosmic existence is orientated to the Event of Golgotha which at that time lay in the future.
And when, after the first Initiation the image of Christ had been shown to the pupil as he was leaving the Temple, the purpose was to bring home to him that the whole evolutionary course of the Earth in cosmic existence is orientated to the Event of Golgotha which at that time lay in the future.
The preparation for this event dates back thousands of years before Christ; initiates belonging to brotherhoods in Asia Minor, the Anatolian Peninsula, were sent to Hibernia to develop under the influence of the land and its exceptional characteristics.
At a particular time in the third post-Atlantean epoch a certain brotherhood took occasion to send a large number of colonists from Asia Minor to Ireland. These settlers came from the region where much later, in the fourth epoch, the philosopher Thales was born. It was from this same milieu and spiritual background that the initiates sent colonists to Ireland—why? Because they were aware of the special characteristics of a land such as Ireland, as indicated by the esoteric legend I have told you about.
They knew that the forces which rise from the earth through the soil of Ireland act in such a way that people there are little influenced towards developing intellectuality, or the ego, or towards a capacity for taking decisions. The initiates who sent these colonists to Ireland knew this very well, and they chose people who appeared to be karmically suited to be exposed to such influences.
So, you see, preparations were made a very long time in advance for the peaceful interpretation of Christianity which eventually found scope in Ireland, and for the glorious developments which led to the Christianising of Europe. The fellow-countrymen of the later Thales sent to Ireland people who proved well suited to become those monks who could work in the way I have described. Such plans were often carried through in earlier times.
Throughout generations, those who lived in Ireland developed a unique feeling of soul, a type of warmth contrary to any dry or abstract intellectualism. The "Black Irish", Irish people who have darker hair and complexions, are descendants of this ancient population from Asia Minor.
The whole earth must essentially be regarded as an organism from within which stream different forces upon the inhabitants of different territories.
In Ireland there still exist descendants of the old immigrants from Asia Minor who were intended to develop no trace of intellectuality, or of reasoning power or of decisiveness, but were on the other hand to manifest certain special qualities of temperament to an outstanding degree.
Initiation: the Cosmos, nature, and the inner being
In the Hiberian initiation, the pupil underwent experiences that translated the external environment of the earth as an inner experience of the soul: moods, sensations, and emotions. The pupil was made to experience the past conditions of the earth; its three prior embodiments known as Old Saturn, Old Sun, and Old Moon. The past was experienced through his senses as winter.
In my Mystery-winter-wanderings I have experienced what is Past in the Cosmos. The snow and ice in my enchanted winter have revealed to me deathbringing forces and impulses of destruction in the Cosmos.
The pupil also experienced its future embodiments, known as New Jupiter, New Venus, and Vulcan. The future was experienced as "summer", because in a future condition of the earth, physical warmth and soul-warmth become one in the same.
He felt warmth as a physical quality and simultaneously as a quality of soul, and this was possible because his consciousness was projected into the Jupiter-existence that will follow the Earth. For we shall become Jupiter-men in that we unite physical warmth with soul-warmth.
The Pagan Christianity in Europe developed from the influence of the Hibernian Mysteries, in which the life of soul was deeply connected to the cycles within nature, such as the rising of the Sun in the festival of Midsummer. Even the celebration of Christmas coinciding closely with the winter solstice represents the triumph of the day over night, the Sun over darkness.
In the Summer the Earth is more given up to its own environment, to the atmosphere surrounding it. It has not contracted because of the cold or enveloped itself in a raiment of snow; it is in perpetual intercourse with its atmospheric environment. Hence man too is given up to the wide cosmic expanse. In the Summer he feels himself united with the Upper Gods.
And in those ancient times man waited for the Midsummer season—the time when the Sun is at the zenith of its power—in order at this season and in certain places he regarded as sacred, to establish contact with the Upper Gods. He availed himself of his natural connection in Summer with the whole etheric environment, in order out of his deepest feelings to make a sacrificial offering to the Gods who had revealed their thoughts to him.
For the community that centered around the Hibernian Mysteries, the life of soul was deeply connected to nature and changed along with the seasons; the warmth of summer was a feeling of divine love enveloping the person, or the cold of winter was also felt as a coldness in one's soul. And just as the scent of a rose is beautiful, it was also felt to be divine goodness.
Divine goodness spread through the whole Earth-planet is also streaming into this rose; and when the rose communicates its own essence to my organ of smell I become aware of that Divine goodness.’ Anyone saying this honestly and sincerely today would be experiencing something like a faint shadow of what in those ancient times was felt inwardly as the very life-element of the individual human being.
In the same way you shiver in the cold, you feel cold in your body, but you have no feeling that out there, on account of the prevailing climatic conditions, demons are approaching you, bringing such bitter frost that your very soul feels cold.
Physical warmth is not at the same time an experience of your soul because as an earthly man you do not, in your ordinary-level consciousness, feel the element of soul with any intensity. An earthly man can feel warmed by the friendship or love of another; he can feel chilled by his coldness, perhaps also by his philistinism, and that is understood to be a quality of the soul.
Two streams of Christianity
The Hibernian community was outside the physical vicinity of the Christ event; but they experienced it spiritually, through Imagination instead of by physical senses like those in Palestine where Jesus lived. At the exact time of the event in Golgotha, they had a direct experience of a transformation undergone in the spiritual planes of Earth.
In Hibernia, current Ireland, was a Mystery School so advanced it was forward looking to the Mystery of Golgotha as the pivotal event in world evolution, and nowhere on Earth was the understanding as high when the Mystery of Golgotha actually took place.
The initiates beheld the actual event of Golgotha in spiritual vision from Ireland and at the exact same moment enacted a sacred ritual in the Mystery Center of Hibernia so that a living picture of it was present in the astral light.
The Great Mystery was celebrated by this community in solemn festivals, and later preserved as memory in the various iconographic images presented in Celtic temples and churches.
And when eventually that Mystery actually happened, when in Palestine those remarkable occurrences took place which we describe when speaking of Christ Jesus on Golgotha and of His environment—at that very time solemn Festivals were celebrated within the Hibernian Mysteries themselves and the community associated with them, that is to say by people who belonged in some way to the Mysteries.
And what was actually happening in Palestine was revealed in Hibernia in pictures that were not memories of anything in the past. On the island of Hibernia men experienced the Mystery of Golgotha in pictures, simultaneously with the historical occurrence in Palestine. And when, later on, the Mystery of Golgotha was presented in pictures in the various temples and churches and was experienced in this way by the people, the pictures were reminders of something that already belonged to the past and was therefore an historical fact which ordinary consciousness could recollect.
But these pictures were seen on the island of Hibernia at a time when they could not have been memories of past history but were a direct revelation from the spiritual world. The events that took place in Palestine at the beginning of our era and were visible there to physical eyes, were beheld spiritually in Hibernia. Men experienced the Mystery of Golgotha in the spirit. And this was the basis of the greatness inherent in everything that subsequently went out from Hibernia into the rest of the civilised world but disappeared as time went on.
Centuries following the birth of Christianity and the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, Irish monks would play a significant role in Christianizing Europe, who were known for their piety and devotion. The association of Irish identity with being devoutly Catholic would endure for many centuries, into present times.
In the first of my Mystery Plays you will find what has been often described: how Europe was Christianised by Irish monks. After Patrick had introduced Christianity into Ireland, it came about that Christianity there led to the highest spiritual devotion.
In further interpretation of the legend I have just described, Ireland—Ierne for the Greeks and Ivernia for the Romans—was even called the island of the saints, because of the piety that prevailed in the Christian monasteries there. This is connected with the fact that the forces which radiate from the earth and lay hold of the “double” are at their very best in the island of Ireland.
Also related to this is the Mystery Center of King Arthur, who was a high initiate. The Order of King Arthur was an esoteric order founded on finding Christ in nature and the elemental forces in nature.
The spiritual life of the European people had been taken ahold of by mischievous elemental beings, and the task of the two Mystery Centers was to develop a pagan Christianity, where Christ would be found as the God in nature, through the Sun's influence of elemental spirits of light and air, earth and water.
The Order of King Arthur, a high initiate, was founded around the 9th century on instructions of Merlin, and was a Mystery Center part of the Northern stream of development in the Central European cultural basin.
They represented an esoteric order in the tradition of pagan Christianity, to find Christ in nature and the elemental forces of nature, but also had a task to cultivate and civilize Europe in spiritually difficult times...It was the task of the Order of King Arthur to cultivate and civilise Europe at a time when all Europe in its spiritual life stood under the influence of the strangest elemental beings.
There are not many historical records on this activity, as the Hibernian tradition that had spread was not based upon physical records or proofs, but rather a direct relationship to the spiritual worlds.
But just think how scanty the historical accounts become in the period which begins a few centuries after the birth of Christianity and ends approximately in the ninth or tenth centuries of the Christian era. If you examine the records that exist, in all the earlier and more honest historical works you will find only very few and very meagre accounts of events in these centuries. It is only after that period that records begin to be more detailed.
It is nevertheless a fact that records of the period described as that of the folk-migrations and their aftermath are very scanty. Little is known about what was actually happening; little is said, for example, about what was going on in this neighbourhood, or in France, or in Germany. But it was precisely in these regions that faint echoes of what had been revealed in the Hibernian Mysteries streamed over Europe; it was here that the effects and impulses of the Great Mysteries of Hibernia penetrated into civilisation, even if only in faint echoes.
Two Christian streams were generated, one coming from the East through the Roman channels, and the second from Hibernia where the Christ-event was experienced spiritually.
The two streams met in Europe but eventually the physical one associated with historical analysis predominated. At the time, human evolution still required further development of the faculties of logical thought and analysis.
Two streams met. The one that came over from the East by way of Greece and Rome reckoned with the increasingly prevalent faculty connected with intellect and the senses and worked on the basis of historical remembrance of outwardly visible, outwardly experienced events. From Palestine, through Greece and Rome, came the tidings which spread abroad and were received by men into their religious life—the tidings of something that had taken place in Palestine in the physical world through Christ, the God.
These tidings were accessible to man’s faculty of understanding which was now entirely dependent upon what we know today as the ordinary-level consciousness, based upon reason and the senses. The tidings spread far and wide and finally superseded what came over from Hibernia, from the West, and as a last echo of the ancient, instinctive wisdom took account of the fact that the traditional wisdom of humanity was now shedding its light into a new kind of consciousness.
From Hibernia there spread across Europe an impulse which in the matter of spiritual illumination did not depend upon physical vision or upon ‘proof’ based upon evidence of any actual historical event. This impulse spread in the form of cult, in the form of Hibernian cult and wisdom. It was concerned with illumination that comes to man from the spiritual world, even in the case of an event which, like the Mystery of Golgotha, had taken place simultaneously in physical reality in another part of the world. In Hibernia, the physical reality of the event in Palestine was seen spiritually.
The return of Christ and man's relationship with the kingdoms of life on earth
We come to present times, truly a time where the Mysteries have completely withdrawn. Humanity must accomplish the task of developing its soul life to the extent that it can re-enter into a direct relationship with the spiritual worlds.
It becomes evident that they were the final echo of an age-old gift to humanity from the divine-spiritual Powers, but that when these Mysteries withdrew into a shadowy existence they were at the same time surrounded by an impenetrable wall, so that a man cannot fathom or have vision of them if he maintains a passive attitude of soul; he can approach these Mysteries only by kindling spiritual activity, in other words when he has become a modern man in the true sense.
Many of us now have a very faint idea of what the spiritual worlds are like, and can only formulate ideas about it. Thus, our relationship with the Heavens remains distant and abstract, unlike the direct experience it was for an earlier humanity.
Therewith begin the times which I indicated when describing the fading of the Hibernian Mysteries—the times when man comprehended the Earth with his knowledge, but the Heavens became for him a matter of mathematics.
As modern man you can penetrate only to the world of ideas; thereby, however, you lose the very essence of your being as Man...abstractions of the modern brain are not suited to penetrate into the spiritual worlds, and that he must make a recantation of the merely abstract, if he would enter those worlds.
As mentioned before, Ireland is the place on Earth that represents Paradise before the Luciferic infection, whence the Fall of Man occurred and humanity lost its guidance from divine spiritual powers. In our age, we are in a process of reversing the Fall of Man, and the Hibernian Mysteries might hold the key to understanding our place in the Cosmos.
I indicated how one must grasp the spiritual—which, to be sure, has been filtered down into pure thinking—and how, from there, one can reverse the fall of man. I showed how, through spiritualizing the intellect, one can work one's way back up to the divine spiritual.
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The return of Christ entails an awakening of etheric vision for many people, where the etheric plane and its beings that have remained hidden will become visible once again. Pre-cognition will also become more frequent. This faculty of clairvoyance will naturally evolve for more and more people, and has been since the late 19th century onwards.
One is that it will be possible for men to acquire the new faculty of perception in the etheric world—a certain number to begin with, and they will be followed by more and more others, for mankind will have 2,500 years during which to develop these faculties in greater and greater perfection. This faculty will consist in men being able to see in their environment something of the etheric world which hitherto they have not normally been able to see.
He will have pictures and premonitions of happenings in the spiritual world and find that in three or four days’ time such happenings take place on the physical plane. We will see certain things in etheric pictures and know that tomorrow or in a few days’ time this or that will happen.
The task of present and future humanity is to raise the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms of life on earth to cosmic heights, just as the Cosmic Christ came to Earth. Man acts as a bridge between Nature and the Cosmos.
The preparations are the Hibernian Mysteries, buried in the earth, to raise the earth and her mineral, plant and animal kingdoms to the angelic spiritual hierarchies that are the true Creator Beings.
We are implored to speak an extraterrestrial language. This is a knowledge of the stars and constellations in relation to the terrestrial world.
They would have to be clear about the fact that Christ, as a heavenly being, descended to earth; he therefore did not speak to man in an earthly language, but in a heavenly one. We must therefore make an effort to understand him. We must make an effort to speak a cosmic, extraterrestrial language.
That means that we must not limit our knowledge merely to the earth, for, the earth was in fact a new land for Christ. We must extend our knowledge out into the cosmos. We must learn to understand the elements. We must learn to understand the movements of the planets. We must learn to understand the star constellations, and their influence on what happens on earth. Then we draw near to the language that Christ spoke.
When humanity moves away from the standard theory of evolution taught in schools today, it will discover the cosmic influence upon the kingdoms of nature. There is an celestial element necessary to understanding the animal kingdom and its evolution. It's no wonder gods and spirits with animal forms appeared in many ancient cultures.
If one wants to understand the animals, one must take recourse to the extraterrestrial, for the animals are ruled by forces that are extraterrestrial. I showed you this yesterday with respect to the fish. I told you how moon and sun forces work into the water and shape him out of the water, if I may put it so.
And in the same way, the bird out of the air. As soon as one turns to the elements, one also meets the extraterrestrial. The whole animal world is explainable in terms of the extraterrestrial. And even more so the human being.
This understanding is also the basis of bio-dynamic agriculture, which utilizes a knowledge of the celestial world in relation to our life here on earth. For example, we discover that Mars produces the color red, or a cosmic force produces a round rather than oblong shape in a fruit or vegetable. You can learn more about this in the work of biodynamic farmer L.A Rotheraine: https://rotheraine.com/
Biodynamic Tomatoes - Color and Form
Biodynamic Tomatoes-Heavenly Forces at Work
The origin of all life is the heavens; cosmic energy emanating from the Heavens creates all earthly life...in plants, the seed is impregnated with life from one cosmic constellation or another. The Earth herself is the womb for all plant seeds.
If used properly the biodynamic preparations reorient not only the earth with the celestial formative forces but the human being with a conscious knowledge of how man is an immortal being. People must use these preparations in conjunction with their internal weather to win a bit of the knowledge of the Hibernian Mysteries back from the negative human beings and the negative spiritual hierarchies that wish to keep this wisdom from humanity.
Spiritual science must go even further and see a transformation of all humanities, sciences, and other disciplines. We already help develop the lower kingdoms of life, but a new knowledge of the cosmic element will be introduced in the future.
When we build machines, we develop the mineral kingdom of life. When we take part in agriculture, we develop the plant kingdom. When we care for animals and help preserve their habitats or domesticate them, we develop the animal kingdom.
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During his time, Rudolf Steiner indicated to one of his students, Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, that humanity was not ready to use etheric, formative forces beyond just their application in biodynamic agriculture due to a risk of mis-use.
I have no choice but to lock the instructions concerning the use of etheric energy deep in my breast, presumably to take this secret with me to the grave, in the hope of other times, other circumstances and other lives - where the time will then be ripe. My conscience is deeply moved - but I must obey a higher law - for this means that for the time being the world must continue with the use of energies which carry in their essence powers of death and destruction.
We can only hope that the world will now learn the hard way, through endless suffering, that it will one day wake up and accept the mission of life, of peaceful social coexistence, of mutual recognition and cooperation. Everything that we developed experimentally in anthroposophical natural science has had to remain the first step - the proof of the actual existence of [etheric] formative forces. Only in the application of the biodynamic method of soil improvement could we go a step further.
How this developed has been described [by me] elsewhere. But I must regard all this as piecemeal compared with the one great task: the discovery and application of etheric energy. Thus my life's work, however interesting and productive it may have been, must remain a torso, unfinished.“
This ability used to exist naturally in humanity but was lost after Atlantean times. Man worked in tandem with the nature spirits utilizing the life-force. It was used a source of energy, like electro-magnetism is today, but eventually this sacred power was severely misused. In the future, it will once again be possible to work with the life-force when humanity regards it as holy-rite.
If you construct a machine, or build a house, you do this in accordance with the laws of the mineral world. A machine is build according to these laws of the mineral world; but you cannot construct a plant in this way. If you wish to have a plant, you must leave this work to those Beings which form the foundations of Nature.
In the future, it will be possible to produce plants in the laboratory, but only when human beings will regard this as a sacrament, as a holy rite. Only when man has become so earnest and purified, that he looks upon the laboratory-table as an altar, will he be permitted to produce living substance. Until this time has arrived, however, not even the slightest detail concerning the way in which living beings are constituted, will be revealed to him.
Until humanity can be purified through the Christ impulse, and understand its sacred connection with all life, this power will stay locked away.
This thought is the same as that contained in the Quest for the Holy Grail, where the chaste plant blossom, striving towards the sun, is contrasted with human desire filled nature.
The Holy Grail therefore does not just have one meaning, it represents both a cosmic aspect relevant for the development of humanity and related to the Christ Impulse, the related physical-scientific and physiological aspects to this (as in transsubstantiation, pineal gland, higher ethers, ..) , as also a medieval epic that has known centuries of storytelling in so many artistic versions.
