Spiritualizing Our Pedagogy

I used to always get held up on the intro when engaged with creative writing. My younger years witnessed quite often myself needing so desperately that opening—that attention grabber—that there was no longer any ability for the spirit to flow; it had other purposes at that point. I would throw the pencil down in frustration, unable to continue.  Now that I am older, I can, for the most part, enjoy the creative act of writing. When one uses their entire being in a poor attempt to retrieve inklings from the world yonder, it has its rewards, yes, but it also can cause much discomfort. The attempt below might be prematurely sent forth, a naive attempt to articulate my intended ideas because they involve so many realms of specialized knowledge.  Obsession can be fatal, and at times it seems that I fight so hard to write and realize through the struggle that my desire for originality ends up being others’ voices, seen and unseen.  And when I go to pen my name in the byline, my actual self — that which now seems to be exposed on all sides  — has no idea what to do with how it feels.  It often feels like a hypocrite to claim any credit for the words that follow, if anyone should ever think them clever.

“To preach morality is easy, to found it difficult.” – Schopenhauer – On the Will in Nature (Ueber den Willen in der Natur, 1836/1854 editions).

[ When sincere effort is made to assimilate a philosophy into one’s thinking, feeling, speech, and gestures—or, in more colloquial terms, to “practice what you preach”—it can deepen into a conviction strong enough for true repentance to take hold. Or when aesthetic and artistic pursuits begin to merge with higher moral spheres, and one no longer finds the motivation to wander aimlessly in any direction, then one realizes again the importance of being made ready for the lessons of life and the treasures of the spirit that approach. Otherwise, one may miss what the higher worlds have to offer. This act is far more urgent than any curated talking points or neatly packaged “remedy”.]  – The author 

“What does it mean to found morality? It means to bring about a state of mind in which a person can act morally. Anyone who is familiar with the life of nations knows that preaching morals is not only easy, but mostly very useless; because one can very well know quite good moral principles – and act quite badly. If it were just a matter of listening to sermons, there would certainly be many more moral people than there are”.  –Rudolf Steiner.

It is occurring as I write: an inner warmth is kindled. This activity seems to move from my heart outward and may at times cause it to pulsate out of sync. If I catch it in a tachycardian act, trying to remedy itself, the anxiety loosens.  If one is squeamish in drawing near to the substances or organs that live within us, perhaps even the slight awareness of this muscle – this giver of life that nourishes and sustains us – can cause quite unpleasant feelings.  One might have to be flattened and iced down in order to not to lose consciousness.  I wonder why, at times, just the thought of this special organ may cause the feeling that one is losing blood.  What happened in utero, or in the life before birth, that could have made the fluid which carries such vital spirits so uneasy even to think upon?  Is it only because we have evolved to perceive blood in the most intimate relation to experiences of survival, and thus react with an ever-changing range of physiological responses, such as the lowering of blood pressure?  Or is there another way to live into reality – to possess a philosophy or to utilize an intellectual essence by means of concepts that include all the realms in which the human being participates (i.e., the terrestrial, the world of soul or inner life, and the spiritual world—that eternal act of divine creativity)?

A pedagogy that helps bridge the alienation from spirit that has developed in the cognition of our species – or in the felt experience of perceptive consciousness – morphing from a member of spiritual hierarchies (not by name, but by instinct) into a withdrawal or isolation from what we call nature, where one says: I must not pass the boundaries of faith with my thoughts or feelings, for I have squandered the last remnants of clairvoyance allotted by my ancestors, both human and godly.  A philosophy set forth that can bring heightened activity to the concepts and mental images we possess, and translate them into actual impulses that strengthen the soul, is the aim.  A pedagogy that breeds deep convictions that state—‘genuine knowledge, truth itself, is what transforms the human being at all levels.’ It says: “I must have confidence that the life of soul, with its passions, longings, antipathies, and sympathies, can be heightened to encapsulate genuine spiritual impulses that once lay untenable, or could not be consciously drawn down into my thinking, feeling, and willing.   This knowledge, which may be passed off as a simple intellectual accent by some, can and will become the fruit of the spirit—a direct expression of what has birthed the physical creation.  A path of knowledge that brings a fuller understanding of the soul, one that may have been lost in modernity’s physiological and psychological expressions.

This approach is to be won by a method of education that secures knowledge in a way suited to impact not only the student’s mind or psyche, but their heart – their moral imaginative faculty—by developing dexterity within the soul’s capacities of thinking, feeling, and willing.  If developed consistently,  will swing open the expanses of consciousness, bringing to life dormant organs of spirit that are needed as the world becomes quite painful to live in under a materialistic worldview.  A science of the spirit will begin to move, at first, as abstract; but as time passes, it becomes concrete. One actually feels that they are building the armour of God within their subtle bodies.  One loses their sure footing in the foundations they may have trusted in, learning quickly that they have to work at grasping content in ways they are unaccustomed to.  Why should the willing spark, needed to ignite an evolution of one’s consciousness, be easy?

There is, existing now in many, an increasing sensitivity to the spirit moving in manifold ways as it dips down from the eternity’s highest heaven.  There is no need to doubt that the spiritual world has unlocked a higher level of cognition, where our own intention—the effect of individual thoughts—can now be demonstrated in a scientific manner, providing further proof that they move in certain ways that interact with the flow of time, the budding of life, including the ability to impact our personal health and even inanimate objects within our environment.  The soul and spirit are quite capable of filling in the missing gaps of knowledge when one has begun to seek, in an earnest and, in some sense, desperate manner, the substance behind the physical.  One can experience a moment of bliss where the “I,” or ego, disappears because it is so infatuated with other bodies and beings.  We can have an intuition that from the crudest atomic material, the lowliest element, up to the loftiest breath of the gods, there exists an unbreakable chain that our species is coming to know.  Ideas that truly make their way to the heart, transforming the entire body of man—not with images of mechanical corpses, but those consisting of living soul and spiritual forms—are the ones to be prescribed.  This prescriptive pedagogy dares to grasp the higher bodies or principles of man (i.e., his soul and spirit)—his very ego, the part of us that is granted the option of saying “I” to itself.  Traversing these realms, which are undetectable to the naked eye or even the newest spectral analytical technologies, but not to a soul that has birthed itself anew—in the dimensions of imagination, inspiration, and intuition—the inner life of thoughts and feelings becomes the new atmosphere in which we swim, and which envelops us.  There can be a blending of the inner experience that does not remain merely subjective, but retains its position as something real—a lawful point within objective reality—despite a perception shaped by the typical consumerist pedagogy. This results in us looking upon the blood, now with eyes of spirit, and seeing that its creation is the heart itself.  This spiritual science can perceive this inner life of consciousness, and how the higher principles that make up the soul and spirit of man mobilize the human being – literally moving the blood rhythmically through the body.¹

In addition to whatever one’s personal experience of their own heart might be, one then might  simply consider it as a regulator of sorts—circulating nutrients and removing waste, imagining some type of hydraulic apparatus, a pump.  It is interesting, however, that even as it is believed with more and more certainty that the ancients, in many ways, far surpassed our own abilities—that these older generations- some say primitive- discovered much of modern science’s “Eurekas”  millennia prior—why is it that many still will not consider trying to glean treasures from our ancestors, to begin to tactfully enter their minds and hearts—a technique which has not always been available to so many of those incarnated?  The spirit is seeping into man’s consciousness, often in chaotic form. This is coupled with the fact that we are at a point in historical evolution where the chasm in the depth and breadth of perception—or consciousness itself, as it exists from one individual to another—traverses massive distances, even among those in close geographical proximity.  The opportunity for widespread deception has already secured another degree of strength in the thinking of humanity. We find this confusion expressed in the fanciful presentations we so often encounter, led by egoisms of many forms when engaging with anything occult or esoteric. And on the other hand, the messages that remain less fanciful—those said to be rational and level-headed—typically suffocate any impulse of spirit, as they too often view all wrestling in spirit as merely “new age” propaganda. Anything that carries even a tone of novelty – must be dismissed as pseudoscience.  One might object that it doesn’t matter in the slightest if I have knowledge of a higher intelligence, or of an angel that has given me gifts in the form of impulses, and that by use of senses not given enough notice—ones like the conceptual sense, the sense of language, or of tone ² —it is through these that I live into ideas and concepts that form connective threads from these angels’ lips to my own inner physiological and psychological movements, which wrap me in security and whisper to me with an inner voice of silence: “there is no separation from my physical flesh to the soul’s perception” (Romans 8:28—esoteric view).  What if it does matter?  That it does, in fact, change the form of my being—the structures which are less conspicuous, but no doubt present—and directs my impulses of thought and of feeling with wisdom, and through this, my receptivity is heightened, thus allotting the chance to be molded further by divine architects – all when my paradigms change?  I can have confidence that I can intermingle with gods, monads, and atoms when my thinking enlarges, and from this battle, or repentance, be rewarded with a refreshed experience of all that I encounter.  Can the human anatomy be restored to its spiritual glory, as the heart maintains its position at the body’s center, acting as an equilibrium—a balance of sorts within the human structure?

Its spiritual side will need to come alongside it, like all else that we direct our attention toward, so that the soul and spirit are not erased from the minds of men permanently.  The heart does not need to become a dead thing, but can be elucidated to its very heart of hearts, and grasped truly as the protector of our “I Am.”  This path of evolution has even shown itself in philology – the evolution of language itself. The semantics of the word heart holds within its repertoire as much of an inner meaning as an outer or literal material referent.  One does not know what the future holds for it, as it could shift, like many of its peers have been known to do—losing balance and becoming quite far-winged, either positioning itself in the inner realm or the outer world of meaning.  In our modern age, when language functions as a tool of expression, the speaker—the participant in this evolution of consciousness—is at their own mercy to dispense its context, giving it layers of figuration, referencing and supplementing communications from spirit with symbolic imagery that has grown up around the inner faculties of man, as Wordsworth himself experienced in The Prelude—as he exchanged the mind for the heart throughout its evolution from 1802 to 1850, giving it that inner sense of moral sensibility, moving away from imagination.

“I had a world about me; ’twas my own,
I made it; for it only liv’d to me,
And to the God who look’d into my mind/heart—”

—Wordsworth (1802)

This knowledge from antiquity has to be restored in many ways and is already being done so, just as in all times and with various intensities. Surely the writer understands that these departures into the learning of our origins and place in the cosmos may not translate into an immediately identifiable pragmatic purpose or be gifted in a manner that so many are accustomed to when they are interacting with knowledge or information.  The knowledge that one begins to ingest is building future seeds of the world, the world we will come to know in the future, therefore this education can’t be measured by society’s older rules of engagement. These are measured by the fruits of the spirit quite literally – one can judge for themselves, in time whether these inner faculties are beginning to have their own life –  ask themselves, “has my thinking, feeling, and willing as an individual been infused with new life?”

The intention in this essay is not to provide a presentation of herbal remedies that can be found to be connective links to nature or merely try to excite one by finding this or that link with a comparative anatomy lens—in relation to plants, animals, and crystals. We are here less concerned with the specific pragmatic content but with what happens within the observer—before he or she has before themselves the finished thought or experiment, but is existing in the often misinformed higher worlds that so many branches and spiritual circles identify with names like Heaven, Devchan, or Tian — or if one has the poet’s blood perhaps it is then called imagination, or a union with a muse —to a mystic ecstasy or illumination—with the new age it is the astral, or if one is a scientist it is some kind of ether.

The writer might be more disposed towards the unbiased stripping away of humanity’s ancient religious exoteric deities into their esoteric cores, but we are not here to squash any budding spiritual perception. When one begins with breathing in new spiritual dialogue or when they are receptive to the imaginative or spiritual content of life, it must be imbued with a true spiritual foundation of axioms.  It does help immensely when there is clear historicity given that blends the clear tangible details of religious ideals but also allows the other arts to gently let one come to know the god that is spirit does not have a name.  We are climbing to a higher vantage point where one can take seriously a commitment to gaining knowledge for oneself—the violent manner in which the gospel claims that the kingdom’s possessors throughout all time fought for its riches.  Here are three things to consider, possible suggestions to heed where one can take a newfound vision of their own bodies and spiritualize their hardened concepts that under the surface were strangling the spirit—making new life and life to the fullest unable to unfold or manifest.

The first thing to consider is to try sitting with one’s current ideas which may or may not be succinct with our modern theories of physiology and of medical science, but nevertheless are likely embedded in our mental images and then after a time penetrate into a picture—an imagination of what those that pursued the medicine of old thought about areas of life that we may have placed into a box—maybe that of embryology or of circulation. See for themselves what can be reformed from the thoughts of antiquity’s physicians who served the poor in spirit—when the working with higher beings was as natural as the skepticism of the day.

Second, by allowing spiritual events to color our views of human evolution—the coming into being of man—what was, what is, and what will be his inheritance from the gods. Where the unfolding of history or of our own bodies is not such a linear progression but one that in many ways is still counterintuitive for the man in the west – a cyclic nature or an emanating from an unfathomable first cause, manifesting in rhythms not so easily noticed with  sense bound knowledge. Two in particular will be our foundations – the first occurring in the primeval sense and the other in history proper—the moment that divided time in many respects—the birth, life and the death of Christ.

The last suggestion is the most important and the reason for this is no mystery. One’s ideas need to be enlarged, one has to digest increasing amounts of content, and of course must become aware of much, but where this pedagogy would separate itself in contrast to the materialistic shading of educational paths is by the disciplining of one’s very thinking, feeling, and willing —void of content or at least in this context it is not the primary focus.  And by this development one’s awareness grows and the ability to link ideas of our intellectual life improves—the content that is so often pushed upon us too quickly is allowed to retain a dynamic creativity.  The inner life that consists of swirling impulses of love and hate, of longings and seeds of judgments that will be forthcoming, is directly trained in order to attract—to squeeze out of the spheres of spirit and soul the substance – that mysterium that is vibrating around us and within (something that remains hidden until it is coaxed out of hiding, [carries a root meaning of closing the eyes and the lips – bringing the soul to that place of inner silence).  One then learns to co-exist with these hidden forces –  to weave ideas more easily into reality, into consciousness – much like a god.  I will briefly shed light on a modern apotheosis or a modern initiation.  When one is able to combine their philosophical ideas – their notions that seem abstract and mold it into a form that is taken in as John did his revelation, one can then begin to perceive that part of us that is never able to be fully known—our selfhood, our self-consciousness, I or Ego – the  I am  or Atman — come to know this mysterious part  of us that is so intrinsically wrapped up in the special fluid of blood.  All of religion’s blood and ritual sacrifice is revealed in a truer delineation and the most exhilarating inner spiritual experience may result. Or in other words enigmas begin to fall into place. One begins to see a truer conception of our origins and goals in cosmic evolution.

Our pedagogy, if one remembers anything at all from human anatomy and physiology, might recall the many diagrams presented of the cardiac muscle—the heart—and how, by sheer memory, one was left to glean the glory of the human structure in fragments of abstract definition. Any fuller breadth and scope of knowledge seemed reserved for the adepts—medical students, or those who would go on into some field of practice or research.  Looking into today’s high school AP textbooks, such as Essentials of Human Anatomy & Physiology, one finds an increasing attention given to the moving parts of the heart and to the evolving theories of circulation. But what, then, is offered to those who seek something richer—something that speaks more fully to the significance of this organ within the human being?

What is the student left with, in terms of a truer cause of blood circulation, within the prevailing theories of modern medical science?  In cardiology, one may speak of hemodynamics, fluid dynamics, electrical conduction, pressure gradients, and wave propagation. These may be further refined through the use of electrochemical language —electrical depolarization, calcium influx, and  actin–myosin contraction.  And yet, for many, this will never translate into genuine satisfaction.  It seems that since that decisive moment in history —curiously near the time when King Charles introduced the waistcoat, placing the timepiece close to the heart and subtly shaping how we perceive it- time that is – our understanding has been increasingly fixed in mechanical terms.  Roughly two decades prior to 1675, William Harvey published Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus (“On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals”), along with the work of Marcello Malpighi in Bologna-  showing for the first time the blood circulation of the frog – giving a powerful and lasting impulse to the conception of the heart as a pump and its circulation being understood merely from the physical side.   Since then, the sciences – through their many branches concerned with this most esoteric fluid, blood (physiology, hematology, vascular biology, hemodynamics)—have each contributed their will toward forming a multitude of various modes of motion to grasp the inner movement of the body. These attempts to grasp the mystery of life by applying the laws of outer physics—once used to measure the celestial spheres—to the inner workings of the human body, or, at times, to move in the opposite direction –  one might think, for instance, of the Doppler principle, first arising in astronomy in the late 19th century and later finding its place in medicine as Doppler ultrasound for measuring blood flow in the mid-20th century.

To make this idea of spiritualizing our mental images more clear lets take a moment to visualize the orbits of the planets about the sun. For example, one might think of neatly perfect circles orbiting the sun disc, but if one would familiarize themselves with just a little of the vast amount of literature since Newton on the orbits of the stars, one will soon learn that the sun is no longer stationary in the same way they once imagined it  or thought about it in their mind, one then realizes the many spirals itself is traveling, and one also then understands what is then meant when science is said to always be abstract — which only lessens or grows depending on the number of ideas of astronomy or astrophysics over the last few centuries one has at their disposal.  And if we were to next imagine our own circulation within the heart, we may retrieve the images that were created when we had learned of a few theories of circulating blood—you may have heard of the “suction” and vortex theories of the heart, or the heart as part of a fluid-dynamic system, or as a dynamic pressure–volume regulator. But what a freeing experience it is when one realizes that any valued knowledge and its translation to general knowledge is always at the mercy of the language of its time and culture.  When one comes to recognize how profoundly the way we speak or write shapes understanding  – one begins to see how strongly outer forms condition the inner life.  From this, one learns to recognize their responsibility in working on the soul: one learns that thinking and any creative endeavor is not an isolated event, but a joining of one’s own thoughts with the thoughts and creations of others.  When one finds that they are applying simply a mode of motion—for example, a rotational one in particular—and begins to experience how specialists in certain domains come to the knowledge we so often think as impossible to touch or when we take some theory as gospel truth or then to assume that we are clearly processing it then one begins to separate what is mere triviality from what is substantially present in both outer phenomena and inner perception and in inner confidence is achieved – one has had a spiritual experience their consciousness has been raised.  For example, one can find this motion in astronomy, where galactic rotation curves ultimately end and must be reduced into an unknown —expressed through a symbol because it  cannot be identified by modern physics.  One may also see it in theories of blood circulation, where hidden phenomena (such as vortices, stenosis, or wall effects) are revealed through the lens of modern technology and it is precisely here that the spirit is now encountered, through these very mediations.  In this way, one can remove much of the mystery that science may have brought about through one’s own disadvantages in learning its frameworks and methodologies. You cannot open an artery and observe every layer directly. Instead, one uses Doppler ultrasound to measure blood speed at different depths. If the curve changes shape – becoming flatter, showing reversed flow, or turbulence —one  then can begin to imagine the hidden phenomena: like plaque narrowing the vessel, or a clot, or what we will shortly lift out for closer examination—the swirling vortices, this whirlwind motion occurring at branches and also at many other critical points, not only in the body, but in the broader movements of consciousness itself – of the macrocosmic events within the greater solar system.  One cannot transport themselves to the edge of the Milky Way.  Instead, Doppler shifts in spectral lines (such as 21-cm hydrogen radio waves or starlight) are used to measure orbital speeds at varying distances from the galactic center.  The “mental picture” of these swirling flows seen in cardiac vortices or in the cosmic galactic rotational curves all stem in part from 19th century physics and physiology which are then extended outward into astronomy.  And by this, we can have confidence that when the spirit – these notions from spiritual science—are applied to these domains, whether in classical or quantum physics, they do not diminish or distort their work, nor damage their credibility, but instead hold them to a higher standard. This extends equally to their polarity—the humanities—where humanistic sacredness and religious anteriority are not reduced, but are given their deserved level of respect and admiration.

Now we will make a reach for knowledge from other spheres, and by doing so might make others squeamish in ways other than the sight or talk of blood—but we will elucidate our position from as many reference points as we please, for it is the human being we must always have as a variable—we must include all spheres he touches with his soul. When one refers to the Bible or any religious document and then finds things to say in relation to modern medicine or theories on consciousness—a topic which only the neuroscientists are thought to be concerned with—one can become rather upset, unable to find the justification for such a thing. Yet if one takes the time to become more well-rounded in their inner life of images, in the knowledge they retain, they would come to know that it does much for presence of mind and strength of soul to have interlinking concepts and living imaginations that can be retrieved at will from multiple sides.

One example will show how this could be pieced together into a living form of content—from seemingly far apart domains—and interlocked in the most beautiful weaving. So let us try to see these various vortexes—these swirling rotations—not just within medical science but also within humanity’s older medicine, when there wasn’t so much of a distinction between the healing of a doctor and the motivation of the shepherd. We find this swirling whirlwind throughout the cosmos as it is has been studied in domains of science such as embryology and the coming into being of the germ cell, when its core develops a double cone within the cell—to be more specific, in the process of oocyte meiosis, not in the spindle but in the surrounding substance and activity.  If we had eyes that could see in the minuteness of our veins, we would witness small, seemingly random eddies (turbulence) in arteries that are often problematic—which can be likened to small rotating vortices. But on the other hand, there is a large, organized vortex ring that is the opposite—it is a useful eddy that makes circulation more efficient in the heart chambers. Here we have a positive and a negative in our own body—a blessing and a curse found in the swirling of various forces and substances all about us. This blessing and its curse i.e. – this very dualism that befalls the consciousness of man —was not the same the further one moves back in time. The  ancient spiritual scientist could instinctively perceive both the blessing and the curse as coexistent.  What is so often the biggest hindrance in us entering those minds of the ancients is when we don’t consciously notice the subtle nuances in the meaning and feeling given off by a symbol or sign —not in its content that has changed but that the cognition of its observer is also different. Men in ancient times could refer to something that seems to apply to a tangible physical organ, like the heart but have in mind something much more dynamic, something that still beats with impulses and rhythms of spiritual monads or higher beings.  One has to use a certain amount of mental finesse to inwardly grasp what is being presented in ancient documents, or to understand how they felt in the world they were in.  The blessing and the curse would eventually find that symbol in form —would confidently choose the whirlwind as the sign that was grasped by all men at these most ancient periods – signifying the very threshold between the physical and spiritual worlds. It was through the evolution and involution of his being that this portal to the higher dimensions now needed a symbol that could impart the mystery of what consciousness is, or what is responsible for perceived reality.  It would let the initiated remember that one must combine various streams from the past and the future to arrive at the truth, and they needed a symbol that could last for the men of future times.  For example, we see in the Old Testament that its very pages clearly have set in them the changes in consciousness that have happened in many of history’s upheavals—like the old atavistic clairvoyance being traded in for the ever-evolving process of man becoming an isolated observer of what happens before him, until at a certain point man becomes free from his bondage to the gods, or to his need of a hive mind—the nation or tribe—and begins to perceive as a self-conscious individual. This man was Joshua. And he looked back to Moses and to Abraham in a certain sense – could still feel them within his blood – he was able to see the last vestiges of that clairvoyance when he set up the first campsite of the Israelites after crossing the Jordan.  And what is the name of the town that Joshua set up his remembrance in? Where city names are so much more than physical geography—what is that town’s name? Gilgal. What does GLGL mean? It possesses the etymology, carries a meaning that is likened to a whirling thing or rolling object.  Joshua is here pointing toward no other, than the fact that the consciousness was altering in man and this secret doctrine of his eternal fall into the terrestrial in many regards would need to remain in the minds of men when blessings and curses or the chaos- the unexplainable would fall upon them —for Moses successor would see the coming into being of man as a dynamic cyclic movement and would understand that in time it would not be so apparent so obvious a fact – this fall or decent- from a position when men were more attuned to his world his earth and its soul and spirit.  And what was natural for the Old Testament genealogy of centuries upon centuries of spans of life for this or that person is really a sign of that old ancestral memory, where men could walk with their fathers and grandfathers and mothers and great grandmothers because they had that ability to be at one with the dimension that knows no decay. This clairvoyance – this kind of perceiving and cognition would have no rupture in whatever would sprout as a personal, individual life—not at least until God said he must end it by no longer striving with men for  they would learn to be and think on their own.  Job would encounter the Lord out of this whirlwind, and Enoch would not taste death – ( this verb does not so much share the etymology of returning or a cycle of the whirlwind but definitely supplies a supernatural movement or  a coming together in principles of form –  especially when the primitive root is uncovered and then visualized by aid from its unique pictograph ie.) -of – Laqach = Lamed (ל) + Qoph (ק) + Chet (ח).)  but was taken up into heaven.  And when these plights of biblical characters we so at times erroneously think are probes of the same contours we think in but instead are to be taken more as wisdom teachings presented as allegories about the coming into being of consciousness, pictures of the soul’s never-ending evolution. Job or Enoch become more than individual characters—they are found to represent not only people, but states of consciousness and periods of the growing up of humanity.  These initiates of old were striving to impart what was behind  the circle of stones—or its archetype in heaven, the zodiac circle of our former anamistic qualities pushed out through millions of years. This circle is the key to deciphering the riddle of the human being and a truer image of the samsara of Eastern traditions. ³

One can only use the symbol as a point of departure, and one is left to themselves to trace this converging vortex or whirlwind. But ultimately reality must be traced back to the inner whirlwind of converging energies,  the streams of spirit that flow in and out of us—our lotus flowers or chakras, in which the initial turning of the spheres – the multitude of little gilgals, or vortices, that all occur in various places within the  breadth, depth, and width of reality—in the astral and etheric substance that gives rise to matter and all phenomena— this first cause or spirit that was experienced as the portal to the gods.  It was that Ancient Indian epoch—the first post-Atlantean epoch—which was under Cancer (the vernal equinox Sun in Cancer), where those first seven Rishis experienced the fruits of development since a cosmic rest, a kind of night of Brahma. The last shall be first, and the first shall be last—and it was through the sign of Cancer, the “Gate of Man,” that the soul descends upon Earth, which is a kind of spiritual death- an inner experience that these forerunners had to form-  had to stretch out man’s inner bodies to be able to house such a vibrant soul and spirit and through pain progress would be instilled-  evolution would continue. This knowledge has persisted into the time of the Gnostics, and the sign of Cancer still acknowledges this convergence of the old and the new —this convergence of forces.  So from prehistoric spirals to Egyptian cycles, one finds not the sign itself, but the same gesture: a movement that turns back upon itself, in order to reveal through its rotation what cannot be directly seen.

We now focus on man’s inner life – the landscape in which psychology has taken over, and in many respects may have monopolized the way in which we express the nuances and capacities of the soul.  In light of this, so that we might not have to remain nebulous as before—making statements such as the “rhythms of the cosmos” or interjecting a poetical or metaphorical language which uses imagery that can convey things like the “voice of God” – but instead we can infuse those images brought for by popular psychology with language that does not curve out of sight – or summon the symbol prematurely but can do much to lead the spirit in man and women to the spirit in the cosmos. The way back is often through one’s inherited cosmology.  The writer is of average knowledge, and much less experienced in the practice of treating a person seeking a path of a healthy soul life,  but does believe he understands some of what occurs in the mission of the therapist if we can for moment leave most of the extreme pathology cases aside and other no less significant details like dietary factors etc,  but for our purpose we take the person who might be in that stuck position where depression anxiety – the loss of ambition plague him.  We can approach this process with our mental picture of hidden forces converging –  swirling in order to perceive itself, and realize that the therapist is trying to cure—or at least help—the one in whom the past streams forth with all its acquired mental concepts, often in chaos, intruding from the depths of the soul, being mashed up in subconscious desires, wrapped tighter in surges of love and hate.  What the doctor of soul is then able to free up in the patient in order for them to take hold more forcefully which are these concepts that rise from the depths of memory – the stream of consciousness coming forth from the past- this inner faculty of memory is then seen to carry a lot of weight in man’s ability to draw sustenance from life itself. This inner faculty is placed in its clearest light with the aid of the Anthroposophical idea of the etheric body, the bearer of what rises up from the past’s many traumas.  In many ways this subtle body is the only defense against that opposing stream that comes from the future—the astral – the patient’s seat of consciousness, the hidden tentacles of soul that extend outward that allow him to grasp what is to meet him – where the fear unknown inches closer.  The doctor tries the best they can to give the patient the space to move one’s ego into a position where it can confront and master that content created in the vortex of these converging streams, the overlap of past and future, which is the present  the ever occurring moments we inwardly experience in these converging weaving swirling forces and impulses – in other words within the process of what is consciousness is itself.⁴  One must be able to make appropriate judgments by use of another faculty – one that involves the I or Ego, this other hidden body must be healed in order for one to quell the chaos  which is administered by a healthy sense of judging(implies a maturing) – which is simply the evolution of one’s ideation the enlargement of one’s mental life, the strengthening of the ego in its mastery over its other bodies, that of the astral and etheric. 

One begins to grasp what this or that science may do with its findings in physiology or psychology and after some patience and discipline one can then isolate what these ideas bring to the inner life and with this ability of heightened thinking and feeling further gauge that inner temperature of contentment when truth assimilates itself into actual stamina in life.  One need not fret, for there are ideas that do not leave the soul so dry—ideas that resist the notion that we exist isolated on a planet among planets whirling in empty space, or that heaven must be conceived as an unending worship service or a land of uniformity—how dreadful.  So even though physiologists and psychotherapists may not dare attribute the heart’s mechanization to an astral entity or some vital force, the time is coming when it will no longer be permitted to place one’s hands in the occult sciences without paying homage to these weavers of the ethers of the cosmos – the Angels and Pitris – if one does not wish to suffer impairments in thinking, feeling, and willing. Until then, the knowledge we gain need not remain abstract, for even the very names given to parts of the body through which the blood passes—its arteries and veins—share semantic links to the stars: Mars/arteries, Venus/veins. Thus we see the chasm, the abyss, is not too large to bridge and even the science of today has already begun to mend – the iron planet and the blood of Adam Kadmon, pointing toward a nature that is of the spirit, and not merely of chemical processes. Medical science has found many links in what we mentioned between memory and its relation to the etheric body —a connection that the ancients already perceived, though it was arrived at in a very different way than the modern man does. In this modern time, when memory is known to be such a key faculty in spiritual perceiving, why do we remain satisfied with limiting the faculty of memory – keeping it isolated in the brain, thinking that it is only influenced by systemic factors like inflammation and vascular health? A fuller picture will not reveal itself until physical causes are linked to the spirit, and this can be done through the findings of spiritual science. One of the first things that must be grasped, if our cosmology is to take on a more spiritual coloring, is the nature of the etheric body. This body that not only is responsible for one’s inner life in regards to memory but also is what allows life itself to culminate terrestrially. This etheric body must be approached from many angles, but we will offer one analogy—drawn from the form and purpose of the plant.

Memory—the ability to perceive time—occurs in the same sphere in which the plant brings its highest body to culmination. The plant has its highest member as the etheric body, a body of forces existing within time itself. The animal and the human being rise above the vegetative life in that they possess higher members than the etheric—the astral body and the ego.  We mentioned that it might be useful to learn from Eastern cosmologies: the coming into and passing out of life, and qualities of existence that are not so directly measured by the principles that drive material progress.  Our mode of perception must be eased of its hardened images—those shaped by geology or Darwinism —which still live in the hearts and minds of humanity, at least in their more limiting forms.  With all the work that has been done in the study of our planet, the signs are numerous that point to the Earth existing in a very different condition than it does now.  What we see spread out before us has been on a long path toward dissolution and the authority of modern science itself suggests that the Earth will one day die out completely—the sun swelling until light itself disappears. This notion does not necessarily contradict what older esoteric philosophies have said regarding cycles, polar shifts, and transformations; But in order to grasp what we are pointing toward, we must go back further than any conventional historical narrative—and even beyond the long ages spoken of by the learned men of Egypt concerning the origin of humanity. ⁵

We must come to see that although the physical form may perish, the spirit does not.  It continues, transforming this elemental substance through cyclical symphonies of becoming. To truly perceive this, a different form of consciousness is required —one that can see how reality itself is composed, and how matter is condensed spirit existing in only one of its many conditions. The theories of heat and motion are valid, but they belong to a much larger picture—one that includes the beings, the spirits of movement, who participate in the creation of the very field upon which physics conducts its investigations.  We must take to heart that humanity has not always been as fixed, as hardened in body as it is now. Just as the atmosphere of the early Earth is thought to have been vastly different in various states since the primeval nebular condition, so too humanity has borne a different constitution- carried within them those same ancient atoms.

There  have been periods in which the human being existed more like a “plant-man”—participating in a world that would be revealed if one could penetrate into a state that perceived life itself minus it’s physical corporeality – a condition that was present when man was bereft of his physical expression. This is where the greatest difficulty arises for modern thought: to imagine a human condition that was not yet divided into sexes, a being that was androgynous – reflected in myth as the bearded Venus.  This need not be dismissed as mere poetic imagination; it points to an actual condition of early humanity. Echoes of this remain in religious imagery as well as folklore – the plant-like coverings of Adam and Eve, painted upon them by the Yad of Yahweh who was a formative, shaping force or being that once worked more directly into the human being. These are remnants of a time when what now lives inwardly as memory was outwardly expressed in form- when man still bore within himself the life of the plant, not yet fully separated from it.  In this sense, what stands at the heart of life itself is not lost but transformed. The human being sheds what is no longer necessary for development, and only then comes to stand as an earthly being —bearing within him the memory — only if provoked in soul –  of those earlier, more fluid states of existence.

A man who has done much to retrieve this ancient medical view, and to imbue it with the spirituality needed to reform the findings of modern science and medicine, is Rudolf Steiner. This is what he had to say about the fashioning of the human heart in primeval history by the divine architects of the human structure:

“The human heart as it came into being was akin to what had taken place outside. The moment one sinks oneself into the heart, one creates for oneself the surroundings as they were when in the Lemurian Age the heart came into existence. If one concentrates on the activity of the heart, one can conjure up the entire environment of the Lemurian Age when the heart was formed. The Lemurian landscape rises up within us. Whoever concentrates on the heart sees the genesis of the human species.  This is the way in which Paracelsus found his remedies and achieved his cures. He knew that digitalis purpurea came into being at the same time as the human heart.” ⁶

The human heart actually has digitalis-like receptors, which function like locks. Digoxin is produced in our adrenal glands; it enters the bloodstream and works like a key upon these locks in the heart. This chemical is otherwise produced in nature only by the foxglove plant, Digitalis purpurea,  is well known in conventional medicine for treating heart conditions such as atrial fibrillation and heart failure. The ancients may have possessed the missing links which our minds are now coming to realize in our modern articulations. In this way, we can return to them, because the thinning of the curtain between heaven and the consciousness of humanity is preparing for another turning point. There was a time when one could only see the human being as a biological entity, even going so far as to attribute the coming about of self-consciousness to the eating of meat —as though consciousness were merely a product of material intake.  As one grows in knowledge, this does not satisfy the seeker.  One must continue searching or things dry out, become old, and when we take into account what spiritual science has to offer—its ability to sense the rhythmic breathing of spiritual beings—we begin to see that this higher life must have had an impact on man’s consciousness. This alteration of these higher beings to that of man results in man at a time living more in the blood, more within his etheric body, and because of this his understanding of human anatomy and physiology would have been altogether different.  Where men today live more in the nerve-sense system, in their thoughts, thus have the ability to grasp the human complex with shattering cleverness, all of this stemming from the etheric body and because when higher beings have their moments of transformation – these impulses then shoot into our outer and inner worlds – and thus man’s etheric body was in past ages not so tightly connected to the physical. This renders their consciousness more attuned to the budding life of the cosmos—to the spirit—a notion that the oldest yoga traditions point toward.  This also supports the poetic beginnings of language —its musicality.  Many attribute the origin of language to metrical poetry, to a consciousness that lived in pictures. This more musical, poetic mode can still be used as a tool for attuning the inner life.  Samuel Taylor Coleridge found words to express what so many Romantic writers sought —to reconnect matter with spirit. Here we see what lived in his imagination: the archetypal plant.

“Lo!—with the rising sun it commences its outward life and enters into open communion with all the elements, at once assimilating them to itself and to each other. At the same moment it strikes its roots and unfolds its leaves, absorbs and respires, steams forth its cooling vapour and finer fragrance, and breathes a repairing spirit, at once the food and tone of the atmosphere, into the atmosphere that feeds it. Lo!—at the touch of light how it returns an air akin to light, and yet with the same pulse effectuates its own secret growth, still contracting to fix what expanding it had refined. Lo!—how upholding the ceaseless plastic motion of the parts in the profoundest rest of the whole, it becomes the visible organismus of the whole silent or elementary life of nature and therefore, incorporating the one extreme becomes the symbol of the other; the natural symbol of that higher life of reason, in which the whole series (thus emancipated) is contained according to its essence, and yet the whole series is emancipated from its essence in the form of the whole.” ⁷

If this is not satisfying—if one cannot spiritualize the heart by thinking of it as a plant, as a body existing in time, and not wanting to drift off into the poetic or merely figurative—then one may try to enter the minds of the ancient Egyptians. Not through their hieroglyphs themselves, for we can no longer sense their magic as it once was, but by living into what they convey. The signs that were composed are the decadence that resulted when men no longer lived the realities those hieroglyphs represent. They once lived more in what is now considered the afterlife than in their life on earth. In that time, the heart could still be perceived as a cosmic organ, not at all as its present physical manifestation. Thus we see in ancient Egyptian art, in the scarab, that these images were not formed by dividing the organ and analyzing its movement in space, but were perceived as the seat of consciousness itself. The scarab beetle, in forming spherical receptacles for its eggs and through its retrograde motion, imitates the movement of the sun and according to their beliefs, this insect had no female.  What have been called heart scarabs were used in the afterlife, presented before the judgment of Osiris.  The physical or terrestrial was at the same time a moral sphere.  This is the condition we must aim toward once again. These ancients were not without knowledge of the afterlife; like many cultures, they understood rebirth and the transmigration of the soul, even if its form is not easily recognized by us now. We must not approach these inscriptions like we do modern language. We must pierce the veil through imagination and return to a time when cognition lived in moving pictures of cosmic realities—when memory itself was vision, vast and unbounded.

O my heart which I received from my mother,
my heart which I received from my mother,
my heart of my different ages,
do not stand up against me as a witness!
Do not create opposition against me among the assessors!
Do not tip the scales against me
in the presence of the Keeper of the Balance!
You are my soul which is in my body,
the god Khnum who makes my limbs sound.
When you go forth to the Hereafter,
my name shall not stink to the courtiers
who create people on his behalf.
Do not tell lies about me
in the presence of the Great God! ⁸

This type of consciousness, which lived more in cosmic pictures—in mighty imaginations rather than in thoughts—still lingers on in what has been recorded in the writings attributed to Homer, with his various characters having their consciousness in the movements and actions of the inner organs. Achilles, for example, “pondered in his heart.” Or we can read in the Odyssey that Odysseus’s heart (kardia) growls like a dog as he restrains his rage.  Blood was considered much more than the abstract fluid investigated by medical science. The language that reaches us from the 8th century or so BCE is but a shell of what men’s perception was, or of the nature of their cognition — when it was directly experienced, as in these epics. A time when men lived more in their life body — in the rhythms of celestial bodies, which streamed into them and became the systems now known as the respiratory, circulatory, and digestive.

So what was eventually no longer the lived-out experience of these growth and development forces gets written in the poetic tongue—most naturally finding expression from the point of view of the inner organs—a kind of personification, or prosopopoeia.

For some it might not be entirely clear at this point, in regard to the image we are conveying—one might not be able to imagine with enough force such a conception of men and women living more intensely in processes tied to a body that lies unseen, yet is the mechanism responsible for cognition—a body that is both pragmatic in its giving of life and yet the most mysterious artist: this etheric body – the conveyer of aesthetic perception. Unfortunately, it would not be a simple study or explanation to go into the level of detail required to help someone grasp this invisible body and its role in man’s changing consciousness over time. What we have outlined is but one of many ways man has become what he is through a long and miraculous journey—from a condition resembling a “plant-like” consciousness into one that is fit for the steward of the earth through reason.  Even though this strikes some as absurd, because they must leave the neatly defined realm of science and move into higher spheres that include myth, religion, and the unconscious psyche, there are bridges that can connect religion and science—connect us to a truth that comes alive with time, as ideas and cognition morph, allowing one to see that these do not somehow work completely apart, that is, man’s inner life and the external tableau that he feels and sees enveloping him.  One way to approach this “plant-man,” or a consciousness that once moved more intuitively with the rhythms of nature, is through speech.  We may look at how sounds come together in older cultures—how phonetic streams of divine names were broken into syllables and lived through tone and pitch. In this way, one can begin to feel how spiritual impulses were once experienced as weaving directly into the senses and even the organs themselves. For example, one may take the sound “ah” in ancient Indian traditions and feel how such a sound carried within it something developmental, something formative.  As we move into more modern times, this principle becomes more inward—it comes alive more in the soul, separated from the cosmic weaving of the spheres. The ego point in man begins to take on a new sound as it matures: the “I.” In German, the older pronunciation of “Ich” carried a breath that was not yet hardened; only later did it develop its more defined consonantal edge. The English “I,” perhaps, leaves more room for inward imagination – less bound to articulation and more open to interiority.  One may also observe how certain peoples speak more from the chest, containing a rhythmic or musical quality, while others speak from the head, where consciousness becomes more intellectualized.  Earlier speech, rooted in breath and diaphragm, was felt as participating in growth itself—its phonetic gestures mirroring the breathing cosmos and its formative contours.  This reflects a shift in consciousness: from a world of living images to one of abstract thought or from a heart-based cognition to a brain-centered one.  We may take another example. In ancient Hebrew, the word to speak can be broken into phonetic elements h-m-r(amar). In such a phonetic or sybalic transliteration, one might see a movement: from that breath of the divine (h- ah), to that inward resonance/silence (m), then onto an outward expression or radiation in sound or light(r).  Such an approach allows one to feel language as a living process, not merely a system of signs.  One would then need to relate this to the development of cultures  and to their respected evolutions of speech and writing forms.  How would a rhythmic consciousness, attuned to cycles of decay and renewal, express itself compared to one formed in an age where the ties to nature and essentially the spirit have diminished, and cognition has become increasingly bound to the nervous system?

The second spiritual event—other than man’s rounds of evolutionary change in an ontological sense — is one that presents itself initially in the course of human development more inward in its sphere of dominance and is known to have begun in the spirit. (He came from heaven to earth).⁹   An event that can lead one to a concrete cosmosophy — the study of not only tangible physical man and his universe coming into being, but also continuing to leave room for the spirit to share its participatory effort within progress itself.  A cosmosophy could sprout that would include the grand spiritual events that projected themselves onto the stage of the world, like one such event—the most significant one to ever take place—the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus. Some have sought to pull more from the event that changed the world—trying to intuitively assess the efficacious results that this being had upon the earth.but not enough attention gets brought to how this event allowed the full expression of egohood in the individual person to come about . This being brought with him, when he entered the body that was prepared for him, and when he had his blood poured out, true and real evolutionary impulses- new forces were brought to earth—allowing each man and woman to work out their salvation, their coming to know the universe, to possess self-consciousness to its fullest intensity as a spiritual being among billions of others.  One can see how this has impacted the unraveling of the centuries that followed and continues on into the present—humanity gaining their footholds on this world stage, making names for themselves. This heightening of man’s perception of himself and the world about him was not a divisive moment or in a twinkling of an eye when things changed, but rather, just as the ancients perceived this spirit of Christ long before there was anything known as a Christian, prior when his presence was an experienceable impulse that was ever appearing to touch the earth in the centuries before the turn of the era— was perceived as a sort new stimulation for consciousness that would grant humanity the ability to descend with full egohood in the terrestrial. This was accomplished in its full manner on Golgotha, but its seed can be seen centuries earlier. This is when men began to perceive more with their nervous systems, specifically the brain, rather than the etheric body or the consciousness that is left when one disconnects from all sensory perception. Aristotle still had knowledge of this etheric body—still operated from this second brain.  If one looks at the intellectual life at the time leading up to this moment, especially with Aristotle, one can see this change brought about by the spirit of Christ entering the astral and thus the etheric, the spirit and the soul of the organism known as the planet earth.  Men’s hearts and minds would now form themselves with a spiritual leaven that was enlivened through a new agent—the Christ impulse.  Because of his older form of consciousness that still lived in him, Aristotle in fact taught that the heart is the first organ to develop in the embryo and the source of motion and blood.  When Aristotle then says that “the nervous system originated in the heart,” we miss what he intended because we miss the change in consciousness, for he did not share the modern way of thinking about man and his world.  We can only understand Aristotle and not fall victim, like so many after him even his adorers—is to grasp that he lived at the end of a period much like that of Joshua: a significant transition period, but much later in the cycles of existence, where there was another swirling of those cosmic consciousness producing impulses — where the ancient consciousness was again dying out and destined for a new type of cognition. So when his writings seem to lack the dynamic images, the Platonic mystical aspect, it is because he had that spiritual view quite naturally, and his mission was venturing into the most esoteric realm of them all—the most complicated in some ways—the physical, elemental, terrestrial plane of existence that would need appropriate categories to understand this complex universe. When Aristotle speaks of the nervous system, he means the etheric body of man. ¹⁰

Even though Hippocrates lived earlier and had already been doing much for the change in the center of nerves—from the heart to the brain—the point of departure for men’s understanding of himself had already pivoted before the work of Aristotle. This shows that the change is not so dramatic or sudden, but appears rather slowly over time — there is a battle that remains for long periods between an old and a new view. We find in the works of Hippocrates thoughts like: “Men ought to know that from the brain, and from the brain only, arise our pleasures, joys…”  This conflicting view displays how hard it is to come to a credible view of what these men thought of his universe — when ways of perceiving would begin from the other side of reality, where the earth itself was to be investigated, leaving the higher spheres—which often have met us in myth and fairy tales— swapped for empirical analysis.  

We could then enter the centuries that followed the Christ impulse entering the earth and see a figure such as Philo of Alexandria, who, though working within a framework that often appears to proceed from sensory observation, still preserves a view of the human being in which the more essential aspects are not reduced to the merely physical. He speaks in terms that can be followed outwardly, yet they continually point beyond themselves.

“And some of those who have devoted themselves to the investigation of nature (οἱ φυσιολόγοι) have said that the heart is the first principle of the whole body, and that from it, as from a fountain, all the veins and arteries proceed, and that it is the seat of life and of the ruling faculty.  But others have assigned the supremacy to the head, thinking that the brain is the dominant part, as being the most fitted for sensation and intelligence.  But Moses, being instructed by God, has not attributed the ruling power to the heart, nor yet to the brain alone, but has distributed the faculties in a manner corresponding to the nature of each; assigning the reasoning power to the head, as to a king in his palace, but the passions to the region about the heart.” ¹¹

Philo is not simply repeating the claims of the natural philosophers, nor is he concerned primarily with embryological priority in a biological sense. Rather, he is engaging competing views—those that locate the ruling principle in the heart and those that place it in the brain—and reordering them within a framework in which the faculties of the soul are distributed according to their nature.  So as not to misunderstand him, he does not lack familiarity with the learning of his time; he is clearly aware of the physiological arguments being made. But he does not reduce the human being to them. Instead, he preserves a distinction between the rational and the passionate aspects of the soul, assigning each a region of expression in the body without collapsing one into the other.  What begins to emerge is not a strict separation between the physical and the spiritual, but a correspondence. The more essential elements do not appear as abstractions detached from the body; rather, they show themselves through it, taking on form in ways that can be outwardly observed while still pointing beyond what is merely visible. In this sense, what is primary does not always appear first in a temporal or developmental sequence, but reveals itself through the role it plays within the whole. It is not that Aristotle or Philo are wrong scientifically, or somehow taking a less desirable spiritual view, but when one starts with an open mind that these men thought differently then one learns to appreciate all forms of truth because one realizes that truth is multi leveled and is contained within a many sided organism.

This change in men’s perception lasted for centuries and this view of man’s nerves originating in the brain began to cement itself in place over time.  Galen (Claudius Galenus), 129 CE to c. 216 CE— also pushed the view that the brain is the origin of the nerves.  His work made the brain-origin view the dominant medical doctrine for the next 1,400 years, solidifying it with experiment, especially with the recurrent laryngeal nerve experiment. He would open a live pig’s neck while it was squealing, then tie or cut the recurrent laryngeal nerve (which originates in the brain, loops down toward the chest, and returns to the larynx). The squealing stopped instantly, then resumed when the nerve was released. This demonstrated that the brain controls the voice—and by extension, that nerves originate in the brain rather than the heart or chest. ¹²  Even though we find the general position of men to  consider the role of blood, or any of the inner process of man, his heart itself, or what is now known as his nervous system as something that can only be understood by natural science, we always have remnants throughout time, even in the present,  those who have striven to weave higher impulses into our materialist notions of the heart and its connection to circulation, to heaven and earth.  Individuals that sought to let the various realms of science inform one another, and one of the last vestiges of this methodology was the man Paracelsus.  One that still naturally was able to experience content from that moral sphere (the higher worlds) that was not so separate from the natural.

“The art of medicine has its roots in the heart. If your heart is false, then also the doctor in you is false. If it is fair, then also the doctor is fair.” ¹³

Paracelsus used a beautiful comparison to demonstrate this connection of the human being with nature. The Aqua vitae—the water of life—the macrocosm was potentially contained in this spirit, a nerve fluid —not entirely the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) we might be thinking of. We still must keep our current medical frameworks separate from these alchemical physicians, but Paracelsus assumed the existence of this substance’s metaphysical or spiritual form or the Archaeus as the foundation for the activity of the organic “humours” in man.  He assumed this life force to be present in all as we today speak of the “etheric” body of man and other forms of life including the earth.  He still felt the creative wisdom of the Sephiroth—that Kabbalistic wisdom from the ancients—the Tree of Life that is acting as the final decider on all things scientific. There have always been those that do not submit to traditional theories that have taken hold but instead approach life in more of a balancing manner trying to unite the scientific and the aesthetic.  Souls like Frank Chester, who are not afraid to return to  a childlike life of soul when all is new.   Frank is a British sculptor and geometric researcher best known for discovering a geometric form he called the Chestahedron, going above and beyond the Platonic solids by introducing irregularity—the heart-shaped box — a seven-sided form within a cube-like structure.¹⁴ In addition to the artist we have physicians like Dr. Thomas S. Cowan and his 2016 book Human Heart, Cosmic Heart, which challenges the mainstream medical understanding of the heart, arguing that the heart is not a pump driving blood flow in the body, and that conventional explanations for heart disease are fundamentally mistaken.  He promotes alternative models of circulation and broader ideas about disease causation and treatment that differ sharply from standard cardiology.  In the future what we call the emerging etheric heart of man will no longer remain a passive organ, bound entirely to unconscious bodily rhythms, but will begin to take on a more active role — one that, through a deepening of karmic insight, can participate in the healing and ordering of the social sphere. For the heart, no less than the larynx, stands only at the beginning of its development, even if it appears to ordinary observation as something already complete. If we look more closely at the physical organ, we are met with something that does not fully align with modern physiological expectations. The heart presents a kind of enigma. It’s fibers are diagonally striated, resembling those found in voluntary muscles, and yet it does not submit to the will in the way those muscles do. Why should an organ that remains largely beyond conscious control bear within it the structure of something that elsewhere is governed by the will? This question cannot be answered by looking only at its present function, but must also be approached in terms of what the organ is tending toward. ¹⁵

How is this to be brought about — this gaining of conscious participatory powers within the heart, in order to consciously work with the spiritual impulses in the blood itself? Let us look more intensively at the occult significance of blood and how it is responsible for the guiding of humanity. The beings of the hierarchies, over the course of history, have faded from any acknowledged direct working in the processes that govern the circumstances of everyday life by manipulation of man’s environment and of his own bodily processes. One must carry an open mind into delicate matters, at least attempt to fathom what the actual nature of reality is — to take the mental images won by science and strike them with the correct bylines of their origin — instead of abstract theories and most of theology’s dogma, insert the conscious perception of higher beings who are the true authors of world content. When one begins to realize what is truly operating in this invisible sphere, which flows in an unending recurrence of life, paradigms indeed begin to change. Their activity can be witnessed in history — in the expression of humanity’s social ties and values so intrinsically based on blood bonds. The Archangels needed to take hold of a much higher part of man to guide the future course of world progress. This sphere in which the Archangels are at work, unperceivable to ordinary consciousness, trickles down into humanity’s own social sphere, and the social structure in which humanity operated much more closely in past ages was created via the blood, before intermarriage gained popularity. We will let Dr. Steiner illuminate us further.

“If we seek to find the indirect means by which the Archangeloi together with the Angeloi guided human beings during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, we can say: this was done through human blood. And it was through the detour via human blood that the social structure was brought about, which was linked to blood relationships, to blood ties.” ¹⁶

Both the Archangels and the Angels have had, and will continue to have, their dwelling place in the blood. The blood is not merely something to be analyzed for medical purposes; it is also the dwelling place of entities from higher worlds. And since 1413, the Angels will and have taken possession of more of the blood, while the Archangels have concerned themselves more with the nervous system. The Archangels are essentially more at work in the brain and the Angels in the heart. This experience of the esoteric view of the heart — a resurrection of its spiritual meaning — stands in closer relation to the activity of our own hearts, because the Angels, who are closest to us in the hierarchy, have a more direct way of coloring consciousness. ¹⁷

So when the author had complained in the opening in regard to his inability to think so directly upon his own beating heart and pulsing blood, he realized in the midst of his writing that he had just experienced, in his own way, the Angels of the 5th Post-Atlantean era — the ones just above us in rank. This last hierarchy to complete their human stage is responsible for the ability to have such an intense feeling bound up with one’s thought faculty — an occurrence that was not possible when men were constituted much differently, i.e., in the centuries prior to the 14th and 15th centuries — a time when the emotion or mind soul was being developed.  One’s personal experience, or what spiritual science calls the consciousness soul, was not so entrenched in its own world.  The ego was not as sensitive. ¹⁸

How do we better hear the Angels, these spiritual beings, when they do not relate to us like the professor at the front of the room?  We must make ourselves able to be worked upon by these beings — prepare ourselves for these encounters. There is something that can be practiced consistently over the course of years, whereby the soul is brought to experience a fuller measure of those motions involved in consciousness, to feel them in more ways than through the intellect alone. When reading a spiritual scientist describing the formation of the planets with verbs like whirling, weaving, or using a description such as “blending in vibratory essences,” the mind begins to live in details not previously penetrated.  There is a kind of grace uncovered in mastering language. When one becomes creative with one’s natural tongue — despite the language itself having lost a spiritual or musical quality — it can be resurrected by one who possesses a newly developed etheric body, trained to draw meanings together, much like poets have always done.  Words such as imitation, reflection, representation, counterfeiting, crouching, or even “feigning an image” all point toward the role of man as creator.  A unique movement can arise in the mind when the soul is made sensitive to the living spirit within words, allowing enjoyment of life to appear in the most diverse places.

In a real way, we have to transform into this plant-man. How can this be done when perhaps the written word itself is insufficient? How can one become again something that appears, at least literally, entirely absurd? A disclaimer must first be placed: the following path toward finer impulses of experience is only a fragment. Many other conditions must be applied to one’s inner life. One must consciously work at dissolving deeply ingrained habits of soul and develop the ability to follow converging moods on a daily basis. This serves only as a starting point. As spring begins to bloom in North America, one may pause and observe what comes to life from what once lay dormant through the winter months. The blooming of plants and flowers can be taken in while shutting out distractions, forming an inner picture of how an invisible substance manifests imaginatively in what is soon to appear. From this, something begins to emerge inwardly and presents itself to perception. At that moment of revealing, the past becomes accessible to a cognition that begins to perceive into the worlds of spirit. The etheric world in which plant life dwells slowly becomes perceptible. An inner organ forms, and with it an artistic sense, allowing one to connect moments in life and bring them into harmony — a prerequisite for higher sight. Not only must one attune to the rhythms of outer nature, but one must also turn inward through meditation and concentration. If sufficient time is spent focusing on an image or symbol created freely — not derived from sensory life — hidden organs that percieve the spirit appear.  By giving oneself over to a feeling that persists after they have consistently, fervently and consciously learned to  blot out this image – truly let it dissolve, then one gradually develops the ability to move beyond conditioned thinking and enter new forms, holding multiple perspectives without losing orientation.  Humanity in its long development had to learn to look at things with wholehearted devotion and then look away — to render consciousness empty so as not to subscribe to the temptations of the first idols. These demons, if one wishes to call a higher being such out of misunderstanding, would in a sense wish humans to remain fixed in a one-sided view, never developing anything like freedom in the mobility of thought. ¹⁹

After much of this soul work — after many periods of doubt, dryness, and also satisfaction — something like a turning can be sensed within, likened to the figurative abstract vortex brought to light earlier, and one may begin to perceive these converging forces of soul and spirit directly. One may in fact experience vortex-like movements or whirlwinds, or what traditions describe as chakras or lotus flowers beginning to rotate. It has been said that older consciousness — the ancient atavistic clairvoyance, the mode of perception of those living in times before Christ came to earth — belonged to a very different relationship to the higher worlds. This inner energy of converging forces was described as rotating counterclockwise. If one today possessed a sufficiently developed consciousness to perceive the motions of inner streams that come together at these particular points of the astral and etheric, the majority of people would appear as though resting — as if no rotation were present, as though a standstill had occurred, confined to three-dimensional perception.  Yet when such movement begins again, it would appear to that gifted observer to now turn in the opposite direction, and this reversal is attributed to Christ — a complete change in the direction of the revolving impulses governing an entire sphere or higher world that lies invisible to the senses. This is given expression in Christ’s reversal of a mighty prayer of the ancient mysteries:

“AUM, Amen!
The Evils hold sway,
Witness of Egoity becoming free,
Selfhood-Guilt through others incurred,
Experienced in the Daily Bread,
Wherein the Will of the Heavens does not rule,
In that Man severed himself from Your Kingdom,
And forgot Your Names,
Ye Fathers in the Heavens.”
²⁰

This was, in fact, an inverse of the Lord’s Prayer — Christ making a way for humanity to return to spritual cognition after the old clairvoyance had faded. By speaking this into the physical plane, it was an interjection of a self-fulfilling reality of what was occurring beneath the surface — a preparation for humanity to experience the renewed movement of these inner forces, or in other words, the gradual emergence of a new consciousness descending from above.  Just as one learns not to cling too rigidly to a belief through the study of anthroposophy or spiritual science, one must also avoid becoming fixed upon inner experiences — attempting to recreate fleeting glimpses of the spirit, which may in fact only reflect one’s own movements of soul.

Humanity must continue to draw from within the creative spark that allows continual striving toward new heights — forming ever more refined and artistic conceptions of how humanity has been shaped by intelligences that have long remained hidden. These beings, so to speak, withdrew their direct presence so that humanity could grow beyond dependence on ready-made content. In more recent years, even within conventional science, reflections of deeper structure begin to appear. In 1972, Francisco Torrent-Guasp, through his own method of anatomical investigation, described the myocardium as a continuous muscle band forming a double-spiral helix — a vortex-like structure rather than a simple mechanical pump. The heart, in this view, is organized as a single, continuous, coiled band that twists upon itself, allowing it to contract with a wringing motion, increasing efficiency. This description, while physiological, begins to echo deeper formative principles. Torrent-Guasp proposed that the heart is not a static mass but a dynamic, spiraling structure extending from the pulmonary artery to the aorta — a continuity that invites further contemplation beyond purely mechanical interpretation.

A science of the spirit, over time, can transform a cosmology into a cosmosophy — a path of knowledge that illuminates the coming into being of the anthropos and his dwelling place, allowing the heavens to imprint themselves within human concepts and ideas. A psychology could become a psychosophy, guiding the spiritual researcher not away from the soul but toward that delicate threshold between mind and the concealed spirit. A fuller study of spirit need not remain confined to traditional pneumatology — which has often become bound to dogma — but can evolve into a pneumatosophy, one that includes both scientific method and deeper sources of wisdom, the Sophia that lies at the core of all living reality.

Who can say where
And how long with the homunculus
And the mermaid who accompanies him,
The charred giant airship
In the iron laws,
In the vortex of matter and forces
On boundless paths
Chasing the ruling fate?
Sunday children still see
Sometimes on starry nights
That wreck as a dark wandering star
High in immeasurable distance,
And shuddering, they sense the fate
Of the eternally restless. ²¹