What is the atom?
The atom of physics is nothing else but frozen electricity...It stands in the same relationship to electricity as ice does to water out of which it has been frozen. The physical atom is condensed electricity.
The developments in electricity in recent centuries heralds a new era in which human knowledge of the atom will be used for spiritual purposes.
New electrical theory...is something of enormous importance...[it] hints at the critical turning point in the development of man's thinking...Before the end of the fifth epoch of culture, science will have reached the stage where man will be able to penetrate into the atom itself.
It is true that only now...human thinking has turned to tracing natural forces as far as the atom, and indeed, he who would understand this precisely must follow the latest phase of the various developments in electricity.
Thinking...must be carried right into the atom. When man has learned to think right into the mineral atom, when he has an understanding of how to make use of what lives in the atom and place it in the service of the whole.
The use of the atom spiritually is in its infancy stage, and had to be preceded by a scientific-materialistic understanding of electricity, as well as the development of the concrete intellect in human thinking. However, knowledge of the atom was known to occultists before its discovery in modern science.
If you read Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, you will find there a passage relating to electricity, which expresses word for word what physicists are now gradually arriving at...the fact has been known to occultists for millennia.
...what is now seemingly only vegetating receives form for outward manifestation...it is already noticeable that certain things are physical truths today, that are in primeval occult perceptions.And what is electricity? It is human thought itself. It will be used to build things in the physical world.
The secret which will be discovered is that electricity...is exactly the same as what human thought is. Human thought is the same thing as electricity, viewed one time from the inside, another time from the outside.
We are going forward to an age when, as I indicated recently, men will understand what the atom is...nothing but coagulated electricity.—The thought itself is composed of the same substance.
When the similarity of substance between the thought and the atom is once comprehended, the way to get hold of the forces contained in the atom will soon be discovered and then nothing will be inaccessible to certain methods of working.
...something living within him which, in a frozen state, forms the atom. Here is the bridge from human thought to the atom. One will learn to know the building stones of the physical world; they are tiny condensed monads, condensed electricity.
Steiner explains the necessity of cultivating selflessness and morality moving forward, so we may protect ourselves and others in the upcoming age, the sixth cultural epoch.
Just as by setting up a wave-movement here and causing it to take a particular form at some other place, wireless telegraphy is possible...[it] will be within man's power when the occult truth that thought and atom consist of the same substance is put into practical application.
It is impossible to conceive what might happen in such circumstances if mankind has not, by then, reached selflessness. The attainment of selflessness alone will enable humanity to be kept from the brink of destruction...Great and mighty forces will be let loose by the discoveries, turning the whole earth-globe into a kind of live electric mass...the tiny handful will be protected and preserved.
Many occult groups, such as the Freemasons, have been preparing for this time in history, by creating structures that will be restored with this new knowledge. This will revolutionize industry, which is currently taking place chaotically. The new masonry, using the atom, will seek to create harmoniously and through moral principles.
Occult knowledge has to be cast in existing moulds...It is important that moulds exist into which can be poured the spiritual metal.
Just as Freemasonry has developed out of working masonry, out of the building of cathedrals and temples, so one will in future learn to build with the smallest of building blocks, with entities of condensed electricity.
That will call for a new kind of masonry. ...They will have learned how to build with atoms through the power of thinking.
If we take this approach, it will go a long way, because human civilization is currently built upon a lack of harmony.
Industry will not be able to carry on any more as it does today. It will become so chaotic and will only be able to work purely out of the struggle for existence per se ...or else it will be cast in the moral mould of Freemasonry...[things will be done] harmoniously, as is the aim of Freemasonry; then the highest development will be achieved.'
This plan is already finished; so that if one studies it one can see what is yet to come by way of wonderful buildings, wonderful machines, and so on.
When the earth has reached the end of the physical Globe [state] the whole earth will have an inner structure, an inner articulation, given to it by man himself, so that it will have become a work of art, as planned by the Masters of the White Lodge.
Through building and creating, the human spirit unites with the mineral kingdom of life, thereby developing it, which is the present task of our age. And this principle was the essence of masonry. The atoms themselves are changed as a result of this activity, they become spiritualized.
We are living now in the epoch of evolution that may be called the mineral epoch; and our task is to permeate this mineral world through and through with the spirit within us. Think of what this means.—You are building a house. You fetch the stones from a quarry and hew them into the shapes required by the building, and so on.
If you construct a machine, you have laid the spirit that is part of you, into that machine; the actual machine does, of course, perish and become dust; not a trace of it will survive. But what you have done, what you have achieved, passes into the very atoms and does not vanish without a trace. Every atom bears a trace of your spirit and will carry this trace with it.
Whether an atom has at some time been in a machine, or has not been in a machine, is not a matter of indifference. The atom itself has undergone change as a result of having once been in a machine, and this change that you have wrought in the atom will never again be lost to it.
The use of an atom for a selfless aim is imprinted upon it, and puts in the right path of evolution to be later absorbed by humanity in a future epoch.
The whole of the mineral kingdom will be included in the progress of the world during the present Round of evolution. It will be included in such a way that man will gradually transform the whole of nature through his own spirituality...that the whole of mineral nature will effectively be transformed.
Man will have put his stamp on it, just as he imprints his stamp on a quantity of metal when, for example, he fashions a watch. Thus, when a new Round of evolution begins, the mineral kingdom can be sucked in, absorbed.
A new point of departure from the atom into the mineral-physical world. That will be what will enter into the world in the sixth cultural epoch.
What is outside of us now, the mineral, and later the plant and animal kingdoms, will be absorbed by humanity just as a child is instilled with what is contained in his or her environment.
Just as the mineral world, the plant world and the animal world are around you now, so were the worlds of soul and of spirit once around you. And what was then outside you, is now your soul; you have taken into yourselves, made inward, what to begin with was outside and around you. What is now your innermost being was once part of an external world. This has become your soul.
The spirit, too, once spread out around you. And what is now around you will become your inner life. You will take into yourselves what is now the mineral kingdom and it will become part of your inner being; similarly the plant kingdom. What surrounds you in nature will become your inner being.
Think of a child who is learning to read and write. To begin with, all the accessories are around him; the teacher is there, the books are there, and so forth, but nothing is yet within the child. Work continues until what was once outside the child has been instilled into him and he is able to read. And so too is it with nature. In times to come we shall have within us what is now spread out around us.
So it will become important to build things for others selflessly, with no desire for recognition.
You build a church for others, not for yourself...what is done for the higher self is at the same time done for all.
This is the truth that was known to the Freemasons. When the Freemason was working with his fellow-builders, he knew: In future times the mineral world will be spiritualized; to build means nothing else than to spiritualize the mineral world. He knew that the edifice would one day become the content of his soul.
If a man does nothing with what he can in this way [to] draw into his soul from outside, then his soul remains empty. It must therefore be possible for mankind to spiritualise—as far as this can be achieved—the four kingdoms of nature, of which man is one. To bring spirit into the whole external world—that has been the task of the secret societies of every age.
Notes on:
The Work of Secret Societies in the World, The Atom as Coagulated Electricity GA 93
The Temple Legend I GA 93 10. Evolution and Involution as they are Interpreted by Occult Societies
The Temple Legend II GA 93 15. Atoms and the Logos in the Light of Occultism