The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Our time is characterized by reform. Reform movements and reform efforts are everywhere. Dissatisfied with the existing, the traditional and unsatisfied with the experiences they have made, people are seeking to shape and develop something new and to seek their salvation in something different. And that is how it should be; because everything in the universe, the big picture, all cultures, the individual human being, everything is in the process of becoming, of developing, there is no standstill.

How great and powerful the ideas of the individual reformers often are, but how distorted and taken to extremes they are by the masses. Let us take one of our most outstanding reform movements. There is a movement that has not yet been noticed in any cultural epoch, [which seems very strange to some:] it is the “women's movement”.

The urge to take part in the great tasks of culture and social life drives women to struggle for recognition and equality with men. The times also force women to do so. They no longer want to rule in a smaller circle, tied to unsatisfactory circumstances or standing alone in the world, without a supportive job, without a life's work. No, she wants to work in the cultural life, standing on her own two feet, with the same rights as men. The wonderful ideal of a housewife, which Schiller so beautifully shows us in his “Glocke”: “And within reigns the chaste housewife,” is no longer an ideal for the vast majority of our female world.

But how misunderstood and extreme this urge for independence and freedom is. Because women have not yet grasped that it is not only self-confidence in professional life that makes women free and independent, or that arbitrary action falls within the sphere of freedom, but that above all we must become independent and free within ourselves, that only the thorough working through of our entire psychological life, the ennoblement and purification of our character, makes women independent and free beings. Then external circumstances may be as they may, they will have little influence. The attainment of inner independence gives a woman the right to external freedom and independence; and only then can she become a man's equal, but not his rival. Only spiritual science can show us the way to this true inner independence; all other striving for freedom leads nowhere.

Let us turn to another area, that of naturopathy. It has been found that many of today's illnesses can be traced back to our current cultural life. The struggle for existence hardly allows people to rest, much less to recover. It is believed that because our ancestors lived so completely in nature, in the fresh air, unencumbered by clothing, [and with a simple diet], this was the decisive factor for their health. And because medical science can no longer find the right solution in some cases, people believe that a “back to nature”, a life with nature, would be the healthiest thing. They take earth, water, air and warmth and apply them wherever they can, in all conceivable cases.

But they do not consider that man is an individual being who no longer has a relationship with all elements. For some, sunbathing is not at all appropriate, while for others, water cures can be extremely harmful. If, from a secret scientific point of view, people are to become healthy, then an individual approach will have to be taken. Each person will receive the cure that is beneficial to their innermost nature, their temperament, their entire character, their spiritual makeup.

However, the human being is always in the closest connection with the eternal laws and only according to these can a complete healing of the same, a complete harmony of the human being with his physical and psychological organism be established. There is no “back to nature” for the human being in the sense that he believes he sees the highest in nature, but only a “through nature to the spirit”.

Vegetarianism usually goes hand in hand with natural healing methods. It is believed that animal food contains something that is not beneficial to health, and it is believed that it would be more beneficial for humans to enjoy plant-based food. This view goes so far as to consider that even milk, and the cheese and similar products made from it, are not suitable for nutrition. Everywhere, people are turning to plant products to get the right variety and a complete substitute for meat. This way of life is indeed very beneficial, but whether everyone can do it for a long time is another question. Because a vegetarian diet without spiritual pursuit inevitably leads to illness. It is said that [vegetarianism was known in Greece centuries before Christ, and] that the great sage of antiquity, Pythagoras, was the founder of vegetarianism. But this begs the question: Who was Pythagoras and why did he live as a vegetarian? And this brings us to the realm of secret schools, the mysteries.

From time immemorial, secret schools have existed all over the world, whose members endeavored to penetrate into the hidden being of the world, to see behind the veil of the ephemeral, through strict self-discipline, diligent study, and meditation. In Greece, it was especially Pythagoras, one of the great initiates, who worked in this sense. He had gathered students around him, whom he introduced to the mysteries through rigorous trials. At the same time, he also issued strict dietary regulations. Intoxicating drinks were completely frowned upon. Likewise, the consumption of meat and legumes was strictly forbidden. Even in later times, all secret schools gave instructions for the students' way of life. For the student should learn to choose food according to the principles of spiritual knowledge. He must know that in what he takes in as nourishment lies the power of certain entities. And if man wants to become the ruler of his organism, he must consciously choose his food.

When one first understands which entities are attracted by this or that food, one also recognizes the importance of nutrition. In the past, even in the great religious communities, for example in Judaism and Catholicism, the effects of food were known. Non-compliance with the regulations was punished with expulsion from the community.

In Brahmanism, too, the time between Christmas and Easter was dedicated to Vishnu. Those who called themselves his servants celebrated this time by abstaining from all legumes, oil, meat, salt and intoxicating drinks, for example. In those days, there still existed a living sense of the connection between the microcosm and the macrocosm, and every adult member of the community was required to make himself more receptive to certain spiritual forces at very specific times, so that he might celebrate a rebirth and resurrection with all of nature. These were the times before Christmas and before Easter.

Now let us consider what nourishment actually is. Almost no other area attracts as much interest as nutrition; because the demands that today's world places on the individual's ability to perform, necessitate good [and strong] nutrition. We see that we need nourishment to sustain our body. Through nourishment we supply our body with building and sustaining forces. From an external scientific point of view, food is a supply of energy. But esoteric science says: the trinity manifests itself in all of nature. Every thing consists of form, life and consciousness.

Everything in nature is animated and spiritualized. We take our nourishment from the animal and plant kingdoms. The animal has its physical body, its etheric body and its astral body in the physical world; the group ego of animals is on the astral plane. When the animal is dead, the effect of the animal nature is not yet eliminated, because the principle of the animal continues to work after the animal's death.

The same applies to plants. The plant has its physical and etheric body on the physical plane, its astral body in the astral world, and the plant's I is in Devachan. The principle at work in the plant will also be effective after the preparation of the plant. But the nutritional effect extends not only to the physical and life body, but also to the other parts of the human being.

And now let us speak about nutrition in connection with our spiritual striving. Meditation and concentration exercises will be the main thing, [but how the striving person nourishes himself will not be as unimportant] when the work on the astral body begins.

Above all, it is important to avoid alcohol in any form; even alcohol-filled sweets can be very harmful. Alcohol and spiritual exercises lead to the worst paths! From a scientific point of view, the bad influence on brain function has already been proven; how much more should a person who directs all his striving towards the spiritual abstain from a pleasure that completely excludes the recognition of the spiritual.

The consumption of meat and fish is not advisable. In meat, man enjoys all the animal passion, and in fish, he enjoys the entire world Kama [...] with.

Mushrooms are extremely harmful. They contain inhibiting lunar energy, and everything that originated on the moon signifies rigidity. Legumes are also not very advisable because of their high nitrogen content. Nitrogen pollutes the ether body.

Let us single out some of the coarsest lower qualities and relate them to the various nutrients. If a person is very independent and tends to be very selfish, they should eat little concentrated sugar; because sugar promotes independence. On the other hand, if someone has no inner or outer support and always believes they need to lean on and be supported, they should eat plenty of sugar to become more independent. If someone is very much dominated by [anger], they should eat a lot of spices, especially salt and pepper, in their food. If someone is very inclined towards laziness and indolence, they should especially avoid nitrogenous food and choose fruit and vegetables as their food.

If someone wants to tackle the difficult problem of mastering the sexual passion – the passion that, when acted out in a base manner, degrades man below the animal, but when transformed brings him closest to his divinity – he should consume as little protein-rich food as possible. Excessive consumption of proteins causes the reproductive substances to become overabundant, and this makes it very difficult to control one's sexual passion.

If someone tends towards envy, resentment and deceit, cucumbers, gourds and all the tendril plants are not beneficial for them. You also have to be a little careful when enjoying fruit. People who are very prone to emotional enthusiasm should not enjoy melons. The sweet, intoxicating scent [of this fruit] obscures clear consciousness. Even very abundant apple consumption is not beneficial for everyone. In certain people, it increases the desire for power and often leads to rudeness and brutality. Cherries and strawberries are not digestible for everyone because of their high iron content. Bananas, dates and figs are more beneficial.

You can also make a certain selection when it comes to nuts. If someone wants to undergo a course of intellectual training, then above all they need a well-built, healthy brain. Rarely do parents in this day and age give their children such a well-built brain, and so it needs a supplement to strengthen the brain, and it is above all the hazelnut that provides the substance to build the brain. All other types of nuts are less valuable. Peanuts should be avoided altogether.

As for fats, we should give preference to butter made from milk. Hazelnut butter would also be advisable.

Now we come to the luxury foods: coffee and tea. Drinking coffee aids logical thinking. But drinking coffee alone will not make us logical thinkers, for there is more to it than that. In people who do not have a thinking mind, as is often the case with women, drinking too much coffee can lead to hysteria. Drinking tea produces good ideas. But one can also get good ideas through special exercises.

During the time of spiritual striving, it is especially necessary for a person to live in moderation! “Temperance purifies the feelings, awakens the ability, cheers the mind and strengthens the memory. Through temperance, the soul is almost freed from its earthly burden and thus enjoys a higher freedom,” says an old sage.

If a person were to eat a lot and often, they would not be able to produce any fruitful thoughts. This is because if digestion takes up a lot of energy, there is no strength left for thinking. Precisely those people who filled the world with the products of their minds lived on a very meager diet. Schiller, Shakespeare and many other poets, to whom we owe magnificent works, worked their way through severe privation. The mind is never as clear as after a long fast. Also in the history of religious orders and in the biographies of the saints, one finds numerous examples of the effects of an abstemious life. The greatest saints lived only on fruits, bread and water, and no miracle-working saint would be known to have shown divine powers in action at an opulent meal. Also, all the great sages of antiquity were known for their temperance.

When the human being goes further in his spiritual striving, when the laws of truth and good flow more and more into the I, when the rays of the great spiritual sun flood and illuminate the I more and more, then the conscious working through of the life or etheric body begins.

The eternal essence of man, that which goes from embodiment to embodiment, lives itself out in each new embodiment in such a way that it causes a certain interaction of the four limbs (physical, etheric, astral body and I) of human nature, and from the way these [four] limbs interact, the temperament of the human being arises. Depending on which of these elements is particularly prominent, a person will approach us with this or that temperament. Whether the forces of one or the other prevail and predominate over the others, the peculiar coloring of human nature depends on this, which we call the peculiar coloring of temperament. There are four main temperaments: the choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic, and melancholic temperaments. These are mixed in the most diverse ways in the individual human being, so that one can only speak of the fact that this or that predominates in a person. When a person works on himself, he brings harmony, order, and balance to these temperaments. Although spiritual exercises will be the main thing in working with the temperaments, how a person nourishes himself will also be important.

If the physical principle predominates in a person, this often becomes a kind of obstacle in development. But man must be master of his physical body if he wants to use it. Man is not able to use his instrument completely, so that the other principles experience an obstruction and disharmony arises between the physical body and the other limbs.

When the melancholic person works on himself, he should only eat food that grows very close to the sun. Food that grows far away from the earth, that has ripened under the full power of the sun, would be fruit food. Just as the spiritual sun glows and illuminates a person through spiritual exercises, so too should the solidifying and congealing tendencies in the melancholic be permeated and interwoven in the physical through the solar forces contained in fruit nutrition.

In the phlegmatic person, where the etheric body predominates, which keeps the individual functions in balance, where the inner life, which is limited in itself, generates inner comfort, and the person lives in this inner comfort preferentially, so that he feels so good when everything is in order in his organism, and is not at all inclined to turn his inner interest outward or even to develop a strong will: such a person should eat food that does not grow under the earth. Especially not foods that often take two years to flourish before they come to the surface; for example, a phlegmatic person should not eat black salsify. The seed of this plant takes so long to open up to external forces, and a phlegmatic person also needs a lot of work before they take an active interest in the outside world. The principle of this plant would only increase their inner complacency.

For sanguine persons, where the astral body predominates, where a person takes an interest in an object but soon lets it go, where a quick arousal and a rapid transition to another object is evident, even root vegetables should be chosen as food. One could almost say that a sanguine person must even be tied to the physical through food, otherwise his ease of movement could take him too far. So here, vegetables that thrive underground are even recommended.

When the ego is predominant, when the ego works with its powers in a particular way, and dominates the other elements of human nature, then the choleric temperament arises. The choleric person must above all beware of heating and exciting foods. Anything that is irritating and strongly spiced is extremely harmful to him.

One would assume that with higher development, temperament no longer plays a major role and that diet no longer has any influence. At the mastery level, this is indeed the case, because the master needs no solid food, nor will temperament influence or control him anymore. But he will use the temperaments to be effective in the physical world. He will use the choleric temperament to perform his magical acts; he will let the events and occurrences of the physical world pass by like a sanguine; he will behave like a phlegmatic in the enjoyment of life; and he will brood over his spiritual insights like a melancholic. But it will be a little while before we get there!

We should try to harmonize our whole life with our spiritual aspirations. Not just a small part of the day should be lived according to our ideals, but we should organize our occupations accordingly, choose our tasks with this in mind, and even regulate our nutrition in this way, striving to become a harmonious and established person, in order to then be able to engage in life to the best of our abilities. Life gives us nothing, everything must be achieved.

Goethe's beautiful saying belongs here:

“A serious will,
A persistent striving,
Is the only thing that leads you to your goal.
The purpose is no mere accident,
And life gives back only
What you gave to it.”

There is a beautiful saying of Hegel's: The deepest thought is connected with the figure of Christ, the historical and external one. And the great thing about the Christian religion is that it is there for every level of education. It can grasp the most naive consciousness and at the same time it is an invitation to the deepest wisdom.

That the Christian religion is comprehensible for every level of consciousness has already been taught by the history of its development. To show that it calls for penetration into the deepest wisdom teachings of humanity in general must be the task of the theosophical school of thought - or of spiritual science in general, if it understands its task. Theosophy is not a religion, but a tool for understanding religions. It relates to religious documents in the same way that mathematical teaching relates to documents that have appeared as mathematical textbooks.

You can understand mathematics through your own mental powers, you can see the laws of space without regard to that old book. But once you have seen them and absorbed the geometric teachings, you will appreciate all the more this old book, which was the first to present these laws to the human mind. This is the case with Theosophy. Its sources [are not in the records, are not based on tradition. Its sources] are in the real spiritual worlds; there one has to find them and grasp them by developing one's own spiritual powers, as one grasps mathematics by seeking to develop the powers of one's intellect.

Our intellect, which serves us to grasp the laws of the sensory world, is carried by an organ, the brain. To grasp the laws of spiritual worlds, we also need appropriate organs. How have our physical organs developed? Through the agency of external forces: the forces of the sun, the forces of sound. Thus the eye came into being, and so did the ear - from neutral dull organs that initially did not allow the penetration of the sensory world and only opened slowly. In the same way, our spiritual organs will open when the right forces work on them.

What, then, are the forces that are now assailing our still dull spiritual organs? During the day, such forces penetrate the astral body of modern man that work against his development, that even kill those organs that he had before the bright consciousness of day had not yet opened up to him. In the past, man perceived astral impressions directly. The world around him spoke to him through images, through the expression of the astral world. Vivid, structured images, colors floated freely in space as expressions of pleasure and displeasure, sympathy and antipathy. Then these colors enveloped the surface of things, as it were, and the objects took on firm contours. That was when man's physical body became more and more solid and structured.

When his eyes opened fully to physical light, when the veil of Maya lay over the spiritual world, the astral body of the human being received impressions of the environment through the physical and etheric bodies, and then transmitted them to the ego, from where they entered the consciousness of the person. He was thus constantly occupied, constantly active. But what worked on him in this way were not plastic, malleable forces, corresponding to his own nature. They were forces that consumed him, killed him, in order to awaken his sense of self.

Only at night, when he immersed himself in the homogeneous, rhythmic spiritual world, did he regain his strength and was he able to restore strength to his physical and etheric bodies. From the conflict of impressions, from the death of the astral organs that used to work unconsciously in man, the life of the individual ego, the ego consciousness, had emerged. From life to death, from death to life. The serpent's circle was closed. Now, out of this awakened self-awareness, the forces had to come that rekindled life in the dead remains of earlier astral organs, forming them plastically.

It is towards this goal that humanity is moving, and it is being guided towards it by its teachers, its leaders, the great initiates, whose symbol is also the serpent. It is an education towards freedom, therefore a slow and difficult one. The great initiates could, so to speak, make the task easier for themselves and for people if they worked on the astral body at night, when it is free, so that they could imprint the astral organs on it, working on it from the outside. But that would then be an influence within the dream consciousness of the person, an intervention in his sphere of freedom. The highest principle of man, the will, would never come to fruition.

Man is led step by step. There has been an initiation in wisdom, one in mind, one in will. Genuine Christianity is the sum of all stages of initiation. The initiation of antiquity was the prediction, the preparation. Slowly and gradually, the newer man emancipated himself from his initiator, his guru. The initiation took place first in full trance consciousness, but equipped with the means to imprint into the physical body the memory of what had happened outside the physical body. Therefore, there was the necessity to also release the etheric body, the carrier of memory, together with the astral. Both plunged into the sea of wisdom, into Mahadeva, into the light of Osiris. This initiation took place in the deepest secret, in complete seclusion. No breath of the outside world was allowed to intrude. The human being was as dead to the outer life, the delicate germs were cultivated away from the blinding light of day.

Then the initiation emerged from the darkness of the mysteries into the brightest light of day. In a great, powerful personality, the bearer of the highest unifying principle, the word that expresses the hidden Father, that is His manifestation, that, by taking human form, therefore became the Son of Man and could represent all humanity, [a] unifying bond of all “I”s: In Christ, the Spirit of Life, the Eternal Unifier, the initiation of all humanity took place historically - at the same time symbolically - at the level of feeling, of the mind. This event was so powerful that it was able to have an effect on each individual who experienced it, even physically, to the extent of the appearance of the stigmata, to the point of causing intense pain. And all the depths of feeling were shaken up. An intensity of feeling arose that has never before flooded the world in such mighty waves.

In the initiation on the cross of divine love, the sacrifice of the self for all had taken place. The physical expression of the self, the blood, had flowed in love for humanity and worked in such a way that thousands pushed themselves to this initiation, to this death and let their blood flow in love, in enthusiasm for humanity. How much blood has been poured out in this way has never been emphasized enough, and people no longer realize it, not even in theosophical circles. But the waves of enthusiasm that flowed down in this pouring out of blood and rose up have done their work. They have become powerful sources of inspiration. They have matured man for the initiation of the will.

And this is the legacy of the Christ.

Theorem: Light seen through dark, appears yellow. Dark seen through light, appears blue. At the boundary between light and dark, colors appear.

1. If you look at a black circle on a white field through a convex-cut glass, the circle enlarges, and around it you see a yellow border.

Also when the dark spreads into the light, yellow appears.

2. If you magnify a white circle on a dark field through a convex ground glass, you see a blue edge (Figure 2)

3. If you look at a white circle on a black field through a concave-cut glass, you see a reduced circle surrounded by a yellow rim.

4. If you look at a black circle on a white background through a concave cut glass, you see it surrounded by a blue border, because as the white spreads into the dark, blue appears.

White and black are the two poles of light. Yellow and blue are the two poles of color. Green is the mixture of yellow and blue. (Gray is the mixture of white and black.) All other colors are shades.

Color is created by light and dark interacting at their boundaries without mixing. When they mix, white-gray or a hazy color is created.

If one looks at a black circle through a prism, the shape elongates and becomes an ellipse. Two edges are formed, one yellow and one blue; where it is narrow, the yellow edge is formed, where it is wide, the blue edge. In the other case the analogous event happens.

A white stripe, viewed through the prism, is shifted so that on one side light is passed over dark, on the other dark is passed over light; thus in the first case a blue edge stripe is formed, in the second a yellow one is formed.

If I take a wider prism, a red stripe joins the yellow one, and a violet one joins the blue one on the outside.

If the prism is still wider, orange still emerges in between on one side and indigo on the other.

If the prism is of a width such that the two poles of color mix, the result is green.

All colors seen in such a way through a prism are subjective.

Now let's move on to objective colors—in a darkroom.

By letting the rays of light pass through a prism, we deflect the white circle formed on the screen, draw it out, and it acquires colored edges.

What was seen subjectively earlier emerges precisely in objective colors on the screen.

When the Sun's rays are refracted by a prism and caught on an opposite wall, the circle of the Sun's disk is stretched in length, yielding at its edges all the colors of the solar spectrum from red to violet. This spectrum exerts a threefold effect: as heat, light and chemical effect. And it does so in such a way that red emits the most heat, which gradually decreases towards yellow. In the middle between yellow and green is the light band (the part with the strongest light effect). The blue shades, with purple being the strongest, produce chemical effects.

If rays pass through a glass sphere containing an alum solution, the spot of light obtained at the other end will probably shine, but will not give off heat, because the alum solution has absorbed it and let the light through.

Iodine dissolved in carbon disulfide would make the light spot appear as a dark spot, but one that contains heat and can ignite substances. Thus, this solution would have retained the light and given off the heat. This proves that matter is an entity endowed with determinate properties and freely attracts and repels.

A prism with rock salt solution or made of rock salt would show that the strongest heat emission still goes beyond the red, thus providing evidence that there are still other rays that we cannot perceive with our eyes. These invisible warmth rays are the infrared ones. Beyond the purple, the chemical effects still reveal invisible ultraviolet rays.

So a spectrum would be composed of these three different fields of forces. From one side, the warmth line, which decreases toward the center; and from there, the rise of the chemical force line, which is strongest in the ultraviolet. Into the center of both projects the line of light.

The eye perceives colors because it is constructed to produce colors. If the eye perceives a red object on a white background and now looks away, the same object will appear as the illusion of green on a white background. The eye that has seen red demands green. Yellow demands indigo, yellow-green demands violet. These colors that demand to be complemented are called complementary colors. They are colors that together make white—they demand each other.

An eye that cannot produce blue colors would see the forest as yellow, and violet would appear red to it.

Every color demands its counterpart, and complementary colors exert an aesthetic effect.

All subjective regularity of our organs corresponds to the objective one from which it is extracted.

Sea animals, in which the eye is not yet developed, nevertheless sense light and darkness. They have light sensation through a nerve node; only gradually does the optic nerve develop, carrying the light sensation to the brain, whereby it is perceived as color.

Our astral ancestors did not yet have developed organs of sight, they had only an astral organ of perception with which they directly felt the color, they were still one with what they perceived, and lived with the color they felt.

All development is differentiation. At first, the eye and the color red, for example, are in undifferentiated unity. Then life separates itself into perception and being. Man cannot objectively perceive what he cannot subjectively produce again as illusion out of himself. Everything that is outside is also in the human being. He is only a separated part of the outside world, which draws into himself what is outside.

Our astral ancestors of the first rounds were there perceiving. We humans of the fourth round perceive where we are.

All development is differentiation. First, the eye and the color red are in an undivided unity.

Living in the red separates into:

1. The perception of red (by the optic nerve)
2. The being of the red itself

All subjective regularity of our organs corresponds to the objective laws of nature from which it is extracted.

Until the nineteenth century, the substance theory or emission hypothesis—emission of a light substance—was valid for the explanation of light phenomena, because it was not possible to refute this theory physically by experiments. The correctness of the substance theory depends on the fact that light added to light gives greater brightness.

In the nineteenth century Fresnel proved by experiment that light is a motion, a vibration. Light is vibrating motion. The proof lies in the fact that light brought to light can result in darkness.

The law of reflection is: a ray of light is reflected back from a reflecting wall in such a way that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection.

This law is found as follows: We place a light in front of a mirror and receive the reflected beam in our eye. Between the lines of the Sun's outgoing rays and its reflected ones we draw a perpendicular line and in this way we get two acute angles. We call the first angle (angle A) angle of incidence, the second one (angle B) angle of reflection (subjective experiment).

The same law applies to the objective experiment: we let a ray of light enter through an aperture onto a mirror in a darkroom; we get the Sun's light reflected onto the opposite screen: at the point of intersection, the perpendicularly drawn line gives the two equal acute angles: angle of incidence and angle of reflection.

If we now set up two mirrors with angles inclined to one another, from the two mirrors the received light image is reflected back in such a way that one Sun disk coincides with the other.—We can then have either light or dark. Light added to light can give darkness.

From this it follows with irrefutable force of proof that light is not matter (for then matter added to matter would give more light) but motion. In motion, vibrating particles can be accelerated by a new impulse in the same direction, that is, amplified, or inhibited and brought to a standstill when they collide. Light is vibrating motion.

If we let the light rays fall on the mirror through a grating, the reflection on the screen gives light and dark side by side.

Motion presupposes a substance which is set in vibration. This is the ether. The Sun's rays vibrate in four different types of ether. They yield heat, light and chemical effects; in their finest state they are the substance of life—prana (life ether). Thus, in our physical matter we have solid, liquid, gas, and four etheric types. We find them in the plant:

1. The plant takes in matter and transforms it (chemical/formative ether).
2. The plant shows its parts colored (light ether).
3. The plant needs warmth for its activity (warmth ether).

The various effects of light rays on matter can be isolated. One can remove heat from luminosity by using an alum solution; and conversely, by using carbon disulfide, heat acts without the production of light. Certain rays of light separated from others can excite dormant faculties in a substance to activity or entirely annul them. For example, the rays that normally produce chemical effects, such as violet and ultraviolet ones, have the ability to make sulfur-calcium (a mixture of sulfur and the white metal calcium) luminous. However, if these rays are first allowed to pass through an aesculin solution, this effect will be cancelled, and the mixture will lose its ability of luminosity altogether. The ability to make sulfur-calcium luminous is possessed only by those types of rays that also produce chemical effects.

The red warmth rays have a slower vibration than the violet rays that produce chemical effects. The red ones have 400 trillion vibrations per second, the blue-violet ones 760 trillion, and even more so the ultraviolet ones; the light rays, bright in the middle, have an intermediate speed.

It is not that the vibration of the red warmth rays is slower, but rather the dark matter through which the bright rays shine and produce red makes the red rays more inert and passive. Thus the dark matter obscures the light and slows down the speed capability of the bright rays.

The violet rays cause the dark matter to take on a lighter coloring. That is, the dark matter itself undergoes a change, and therefore does not to disturb the vibrations of the light, but lets them pass. The dark matter changes the bright light rays by darkening them. On the contrary, the dark rays illuminate the dark matter and act on it, making it move and change.

When the light rays are caught by an object, darkness is created behind the illuminated object, and it will then cast its shadow on an opposite screen.

We can perceive an object's color due to the fact that, for example, a red flower vibrates the ether of light between itself and our eye 400 trillion times a second; that the light ether in our eye, set in the same vibrations, reaches the red cone in our retina; and through the optic nerve the image of the red flower which is reflected on the retina is telegraphed to the brain, whereby the reflection is then consciously perceived.

The astral can only perceive directly by empathizing with things. By being separated from things, man lost this ability of immediate perception; he places himself outside of things. He produces organs out of himself so that he may use them to produce images out of things; this enables him to perceive these images, and thereby perceive the things indirectly.

The light ether is now the medium, and the eye has developed as an organ of perception. The eye consists of the round eyeball, which is lined by the retina inside, which consists of rods and cones and is enclosed by an outer cornea. Facing externally is the open pupil and behind it the ciliary muscle, which holds a transparent lens. The ability to adjust causes the light aperture (the pupil) to widen in the dark and to shrink in the light so that not too much light enters, and to collect the light rays in a focal point; to let them fall into the "darkroom" of the retina, where the mirror image is produced and telegraphed to the brain by the nerve to which the eye is attached. Light and color are produced by vibrations in the ether. 400 trillion vibrations red, to 760 trillion and above in a second blue-violet.

The vibrations of air produce sound that are trillions of times slower than light waves.

The perception of air vibration as sound is between 16.5 and over 40000 vibrations per second. Below 16.5 and above 40000 vibrations are no longer perceived as sound.

Between 40 and 40000 vibrations per second musical tone is perceived.

For the measurement of the sound vibration of the air we make use of a rotating disc provided with holes—the siren. If the disk is rotated and vibrates under sixteen and a half times—that is, the air is driven through less than sixteen holes per second while rotating—we will hear only impact noise, not tone. The tone scale can be determined firmly by measuring the air vibrations in numbers. If we compare the prime C with the higher C, one C would relate to the other as 1 : 2, and within the octave we could determine the vibration ratios of the other notes.

Let's assume that the vibrations of the tone scale in the second were as follows:

so we get the following relationship:

The prime to the octave = 1 : 2 = 1st prime
The prime to the second = 8 : 9 = 9/8 second
The prime to the third = 4 : 5 = 5/4 third
The prime to the fourth = 3 : 4 = 4/3 fourth
The prime to the fifth = 2 : 3 = 3/2 fifth
The prime to the sixth = 3 : 5 = 5/3 sixth
The prime to the seventh = 8 : 15 = 15/8 seventh
The prime to the prime = 2 octave

The shades of color behave within the color scale as the pitches behave within the tone scale; the ratio is the same, only the light ether vibrates trillions of times faster.

400 trillion vibrations red
450 trillion vibrations orange
500 trillion vibrations yellow
532 trillion vibrations green
600 trillion vibrations blue-green
665 trillion vibrations blue indigo
750 trillion vibrations indigo
760 trillion vibrations violet
700 trillion vibrations ultraviolet

An ultraviolet would be about the octave of prime = red. Our violet, at 760 trillion vibrations, corresponds in the tone scale to a tone slightly above the seventh.

There is a certain amount of time required for light to propagate through space. The speed of light is approximately 300,000 kilometers per second. This has been calculated both astronomically and terrestrially, and the results of the calculation have given the same result. The cosmic calculation has been made by Olaf Romer, based on the following observation: One has calculated the time, which the four moons need, in order to orbit around Jupiter, and waited with the telescope, until the two moons, which stepped into the shadow behind the Jupiter, appear again. This has produced the irregularity that the moons have sometimes been delayed—and up to 996 seconds longer than they were expected to be. The cause of the delay has been sought, and in the process the discovery of the laws of the propagation of light has been made.

The circumference of the ellipse that the Earth circumscribes around the Sun is 299 million kilometers. A much larger circumference is drawn by the ellipse of Jupiter around the Sun. It has now been observed that the moons always emerge from the shadow at exactly the right time, when the Earth is in a straight line between the Sun and Jupiter.

Now one waited for the time when the Earth arrived at the opposite point, crossed the whole width of its ellipse and puts the Sun between itself and Jupiter. Here the difference of 996 seconds has been observed; consequently the delay has been caused by the space which the earth has covered in the meantime. So the light needs 996 seconds to propagate through a space of 299 million kilometers. In one second it would need the 996th part of 299 million kilometers for it. 299,000,000 / 996 = 300,200. So roughly 300,000 kilometers per second.

The same calculation has been made by Fizeau with a gear. If one has a light behind oneself and a very distant mirror reflecting it back to the eye, and then brings a gear wheel between the eye and mirror and sets it in fast rotation by a crank, then one will see the light through the tooth gaps of the wheel until it has covered the distance back and forth; then the obstacle, the darkening occurs through the opaque gear-tooth. Now, if you measure the distance from the eye to the mirror twice and calculate the time, i.e. how long the wheel has to turn until the light gets from the gap to the tooth, you can also calculate how long it takes the light to propagate through space and return. This calculation agrees exactly with the astronomical one.

The speed of propagation is always the same, whether light or candlelight. Light is nothing other than ether vibrations which propagate in space.

With kerosene or a candle it is always the gas which burns; the liquid or the solid body is transformed by the heat ether into vapor or gas and then begins to shine.

If you make a solid or liquid body glow and deflect its rays with a prism through the opening of a darkroom, you get the continuous spectrum. If, instead of the glowing solid or liquid sphere, you pass a particular gas flame through a spectroscope, you get only a single-color line spectrum through the prism—a discontinuous spectrum—and exactly of the color of the gas in question.

Now if one tried to bring into the rays of the liquid body a glowing vapor, for example sodium vapor, there one found in the spectrum instead of yellow, a black line; the yellow was extinguished, absorbed. On this occasion, in 1859, Kirchhoff and Bunsen discovered the law of absorption: every glowing vapor extinguishes that kind of light which it itself produces, and allows all others to pass through it unimpeded.

Now that every substance has its own color which it emits as a gas and replaces it again by absorbing it from other rays of light, it is now possible to analyze every substance through the spectroscope and even discover unknown substances—for example, argon in the air.

This is also how one came to discover the dark lines found in the solar spectrum—the so-called Fraunhofer lines. One could thus analyze the material world of the Sun and state that it is of the same nature as ours. The glowing ball of fire is surrounded with an atmosphere produced by evaporation of the glowing masses of matter, and the rays of the liquid masses pass through the gas rays, which absorb their colors and give dark lines in the spectrum.

But these dark lines give a luminous band of colors as soon as a solar eclipse occurs and the moon covers the fiery ball of the Sun.

Through a spectroscope the state of evolution of the stars is also detected, and the character of the nebular patches, which may be doubtful through the inadequacy of the telescope, and which have often proved to be distant asterisms.

Only gaseous matter transmits any color and retains only its own color. Solids and liquids absorb all colors and reflect only the color which is their property, whether natural or artificially acquired.

What appears to us as color on a substance is only the reflection back of those rays of light which correspond to its color character, all others are absorbed.

Color is the property of a substance, the living expression of its acquired activity, its karma, and belongs to the karmic world, just as man is the product of his activity, his karma, for karma is life, is activity, is acquired.

Every substance or body is basically nothing but movement, it has its own mode of vibration and makes itself known only through the effects it exerts on other substances or suffers through them. Matter is always life and has a history; it changes through experiences, chooses and suffers. Any simple substance we perceive is in itself highly differentiated.

Light can be either primary—a self-luminous body—or polarized by reflection. In the former case, it has not yet lost its full vibratory capacity by contact with another body. If one puts two mirrors parallel to each other and brings them in contact with a candlelight, the light will be reflected twice in both mirrors. But if one places one mirror perpendicular to the other and brings it into relation with a candlelight, the reflection in the perpendicular one will be extinguished—it will not be present.

The cause is that the reflected light vibrates differently from the primary. It vibrates in all directions; now, as it is caught by a mirror image, this same light changes its mode of vibration, in that the mirror lets all other directions of vibration pass, absorbs, and lets only the parallel ones, which correspond to its mode of vibration, radiate back. This reflected light, which vibrates only in one direction, is reflected by the parallel mirror, but not by the perpendicular one. The first mirror is called the polarizer because it polarizes the light, and the perpendicular the analyzer because it shows the polarized light by extinguishing it. One can also use tourmaline tongs to investigate whether a luminous body emits its own light or only reflects light. Polarized light would be reflected only when the tourmaline is in a parallel position; when it is in a perpendicular position, there would be no reflected image; and when it is rotated obliquely, the light rays would partially vibrate with the tourmaline, and the different directions of the vibrations would form colored figures, similar to the Chladni-sound figures. In contrast, primary light would reflect at each position of the tourmaline tongs. In this way, planets and fixed stars can be recognized by their light.

If one brings a body between the two metal plates of the tongs, the darkened light will shine again, for the light vibrations are again regulated by the body's own movements.

If the rays of the Sun are caught unobstructed by a prism in a darkroom, a white disk with a darker perimeter will show up on the opposite wall, and this penumbra will contain the prismatic colors. The rays entering through the narrow aperture overlap and appear as colors at the boundary between light and dark; so, too, in mirror glass, colors are seen when the light is reflected.

Colors are the incarnation of light produced when the rays of light are stopped by matter and reflected back.

When the light rays of a candle are reflected back from an object, a dark shadow image is produced by the object on the surface. If one lets the Sun rays pass through the candle rays, the dark shadow turns blue, according to the law that the dark seen through light gives blue. Apparent colors come about according to the law that light and dark produce colors at their boundaries where they meet.

But the eye itself also produces colors where objectively there are none. One can make the experiment with a disk, whose different circles are colored for the most part black, so that black jags project into the half which remained white, whose semicircles are thereby of unequal length. If this disk is rotated very quickly, colors of various shades will appear. At great speed, the disk could produce all colors of the rainbow. The colors are perceived subjectively in the eye as color nuances by the fast collisions of light and dark. The eye holds color impressions for a while. It has just received white and does not react as fast to black as the turned wheel demands. It will soon see black through light in all nuances of blue, and soon through the black impression see white in all nuances of yellow. Thus the eye has color sensations that are not objectively present.

This is because what now appears to us legitimately as color was once really experienced countless periods of time ago. The colors we perceive in substances are only differentiations of matter; they are living karma, the result of work. Prana created them by taking from the rays of light all that it needed to process its substances; and those it could not use, it threw back, and these rays thrown back by the substance, which were not absorbed, became visible to us as the apparent color. For example, prana needed the heat, absorbed its red rays and its chemical rays for chemical purposes, and threw back the green ones as useless, and now we see the plant world as green. An object appears to us as white when it throws back all the rays, as black when it absorbs all the rays. That is why a white garment is perceived as cooler, and a black one as warmer.

When man lived only in the Kamic (astral) world countless ages ago, he could not yet consider things as separate from himself. He was in them; he connected himself with them. He felt the red directly; it flowed through him as warmth. And so, like a memory, the red color awakens the feeling of warmth; the blue and violet as a color antipode produces the feeling of cold. Involuntarily, now, when the eye perceives a color, it demands its contrasting color, its complementary color: red demands green, yellow demands indigo, and so on. These are the colors that dissolve into white, and only such colors are pleasing to the eye, all others are displeasing.

The aesthetic effect of colors is deeply rooted in human nature. What we perceive kamically as lawfully subjective is a memory of an objective law in external existence in which man participates, which he carries within himself from times when he himself was not yet a separate being, but one with the whole cosmos.

What appears to us now lawfully as color, was once really experienced innumerable ages ago. The colors we perceive in substances are only differentiations of matter; they are living kama, the result of work. Prana (life force) created them.

Matter is not dead, but something living in and of itself; and one will notice this living only when one sees it active, interacting with other matter. If one looks at a calcite crystal, one will recognize its actual nature just as little as that of a passing human being. Both must be judged in states where their innermost nature is revealed through their effects. Thus calcite placed between two flakes of tourmaline—one of which in parallel position oscillates with the light and reflects it, and the other in perpendicular position extinguishes it—will in turn influence the light oscillations by its own vibrations in such a way that regular figures in the most beautiful plays of colors are evoked in the calcite. This is based on the principle that light seen through dark appears yellow and dark seen through light appears blue. Now if light and dark alternately cover each other by vibrations in different directions and meet at their boundaries, the colors and figures come about which one has observed.

The diffraction phenomena of light are due to the same law. Light floods through space, and everything that we perceive in that space receives light and throws it back again. Only by this phenomena can we perceive individual objects. We see only that which reflects light back. Our eye receives these reflected rays which it in turn casts back upon the object which then casts its shadow, which often shows yellow and blue shades because the light from all sides outshines itself.

When the light falls through an opening into the darkroom, first a white disc appears on the opposite wall and rings of color appear all around in the penumbra. This is because at the two points of the opening the rays are intercepted and reflected back and over-radiation takes place. Onto the dark shadow environment bright light will fall and dark will shine through it as colored light. And likewise, where rays of light fall on other rays, the brighter light rays will shine through the darker polarized over-radiations and also produce colors.

Matter also has the property of changing light, and light interacting with matter produces colors. Calcite has the property of splitting the light that passes through it into double rays and changing these rays and polarizing them differently. One ray will oscillate perpendicularly to the parallel oscillations of the other, and a point seen through feldspar will appear double to the eye.

If the light passes through an object with parallel walls, no colors are produced. If it passes through an object with inclined walls, colors are produced. For example, a prism that tapers at the top will stop the rays for a shorter or longer time; and always proportionately according to the different widths of the prism, one ray will pass through earlier than the other. Due to the different time periods in the refraction, light will also alternate with dark and dark with light, and the alternation of blue and yellow in different shades will give the play of colors.

So again, for example, aniline has the property to make prismatic colors appear in a different order. This mutual influence of matter in its effects proves the living life in substance. The most diverse ether oscillations produce incessant movement in matter, and attraction and repulsion determine its behavior.

Seven states of consciousness develop one after the other. What develops and rises to higher degrees is the ego. What we study is what the I experiences. So that theosophy is: self-knowledge. We were there and participated in the life on all planets. On the first one was a peculiar state of consciousness, not spatially we have to think of the planets. They are states that emerge from each other, like the girl from the child - in between only pralaya states. Metamorphoses they are.

From distant states we come to the esoteric plan. Mars. - On it we lived and had a consciousness that was quite dull -, not yet dream consciousness - as it is today in the stones, mineral. - But it went into the vastness, an all-consciousness it was. Such a person knew /gap in transcript]

Now only to be artificially evoked in pathological states. There they begin to draw /unreadable] great world systems [...]. A dull trance consciousness, but extending over the earth with surrounding world bodies.

In each round it becomes brighter. Seven rounds, each in seven states. So that 7x7=49 states the consciousness has already gone through. - Materially, the planet dies, but all the plants pass over, like the lily from the seed.

On the second planet - Sun - a consciousness is formed which extends not so far, not over the dead, but over all living things, the consciousness which man has in dreams, where all vegetative functions continue to work; plant consciousness in 49 states. The planet is esoterically called the sun. Solarpitris, which here complete themselves high.

The third planet - Moon - develops a higher state of consciousness, dream trance, like the consciousness of the higher animals. Moon - again seven states: arupa, rupa, astral, physical, [illegible]

Fourth planet: earth. Now it comes over and becomes earth-development, which has to develop the bright day-consciousness.

Then passes over into the fifth state of consciousness - fifth planet: Mercury: psychic consciousness. To be distinguished by the fact that man will be brightly conscious not only in the physical but also in the astral. The desire nature of the other becomes transparent, his own he can direct like a force. Psychic consciousness.

On the sixth planet - Venus - more-than-psychic, super-psychic. Thought is conducted.

Seventh planet: On Jupiter spiritual consciousness; man will be all spirit.

343 states man thus undergoes. 7 x 7 on each planet. Thus we understand the seven principles that are in eternal formation. Four are formed in man, three in the plant. The earth is for man to be formed as he is now; because man is in the fourth round, he has also formed his fourth principle.

Important theosophical proposition that basically everything is one and we are connected with all beings - let us study.

In the great seed that arose as earth, as loud seeds were pitris that surrounded themselves with matter of various kinds, took bodies and lived out in seven principles. What happens on the earth is the means for man to reach his goal, to climb up the ladder. Man is the center and goal of the earthly development. There would be no /unreadable] if /gap in transcript]

The Pitris enter, find the earth quite undeveloped, must prepare the ground; form the mineral world. The human being has it in itself - bone structure is mineral -, even we have predisposed it, together with the formers. Not like today it was, a radiating system and germ of what should become. However, one had not been able to use everything, but had to separate out. From the rest dead bodies became, the nobler materials were taken away to living ones. So the human being came into being at the expense of the mineral kingdom. So that we can stand and develop further, we had to form it. Everything can be distributed only polar. If we climb up, we push the others down.

Now man got out of what he had already drawn to himself the vegetable and repels that which is useless for him.

During the third round, he does the same with the animal kingdom, but only as far as the fish-like creatures.

During the fourth round, the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms are there, and man first segregates what becomes amphibians, and also the birds. Within the animal kingdom he segregates the higher, so that he eliminates at their expense the very noblest parts to form himself. - Thus within the warm-blooded animals man arises.

Elohistic days - the rounds.

So the mineral kingdom arises in the first round, becomes properly finished in the fourth. The plant kingdom begins in the second, becomes finished in the fifth. The animal kingdom comes into being in the third, is completed in the sixth. Man comes into being in the fourth, and in the seventh becomes the image of God.

Fifth day: teeming [Mostly illegible and very fragmentary notes follow]

That man rules means that he has already sucked into himself.