When the positive and negative factors of the warmth (red) and chemical (violet) bands are considered, it is easy to see that the color circle with the peach-blossom above cannot be thought of as being closed up in a circle in one plane. We here begin to see the development of the spiral. Steiner was able, in answer to a question posed by one of his hearers, to relate this discussion of spirals to what he called, even in his day, superimaginary (hypercomplex) numbers.³¹ We shall explore the immense significance of the spiral in understanding fire later in this essay. Steiner went on to suggest the following correspondences between the fourfold human being and mathematics:

Physical = Positive numbers (+)

Etheric = Negative numbers (-)

Astral = Imaginary numbers

Ego = Superimaginary numbers ( also called hypercomplex )

One who has the organ to perceive these things finds something highly remarkable here. The same sort of difficulty that meets one in considering superimaginary numbers also meets one when the attempt is made to apply the science of the inorganic to the phenomena of life. It cannot be done with these concepts of the inorganic. It is necessary for us to recognize how the purely mathematical leads up to the problem of life. With the facilities at hand today we can handle the phenomena of light, heat and chemical action, but we cannot handle what is evidently connected with these, namely, the closing off of the spectrum, which cannot be expressed by the same kind of formulae. The matter requires that we see as the most essential aspect not the quantitative mechanical change from one energy to another, but rather a truly qualitative transformation (cf. 1 Cor 15, esp. vs. 51, "we shall all be changed"). Such things as characterizing heat as a bombardment or collision between molecules and atoms or between these and the walls of a vessel would not have arisen if it had been seen that, even when we calculate, we must take into account the qualitative differences between various forms of energy. Otherwise, we have but a one-sided mathematics in physics.

Thus, it seems fairly certain that a relationship must exist between heat, light and chemical effects, on the one hand, and the X, Y and Z realms, on the other.

Gas manifests in its material configuration what heat is doing. From this interplay, we should also be able to conceive of the difference between the X realm and the gaseous. Consider that light does not relate in the same way to gas as does heat. Temperature changes in air space when heat passes through, but not when light passes through.

As we've seen, fluidity stands between gas and solid, heat between X and gas. Also the solid realm gives a picture of the fluid, fluid a picture of the gaseous, and gaseous a picture of heat. We can thus say that the X realm can be a picture of heat, while heat is itself pictured in the gaseous. So in the gaseous realm we have, as it were, pictures of pictures of the X realm. These pictures of pictures are really present when light passes through air. We are not dealing with a direct picturing but rather the light has an independent status in the air. Look at the diagram:

If we extend this train of thought we can identify Y with chemical effects and Z with life effects (see I-22). Just as there is a certain independence between the light realm and the gaseous, so also would such independence exist in the interplay between chemical and fluid. Indeed, in order to call forth chemical action, solutions are always necessary; and in these solutions chemical action is related to the fluid as light is to air. We then would expect to find the Z realm associated with the solid. Formerly, we knew solid bodies only as forms, but now we can come to conceive of things that are very real in our lives:

X in gas is simply light-filled gas,

Y in fluid is fluidity in which chemical processes are going on, and

Z in solid matter is life effects acting in solids.

But there is no such thing as life effects in solid bodies. We know that under earthly conditions a certain degree of fluidity is necessary for life. However misdirected their programs might otherwise be, our scientists hope to find fluid conditions on other heavenly bodies so that life might exist there. Under earthly conditions life effects are not present in the purely solid state. But these earthly conditions force us to establish the hypothesis that such a condition is not beyond the realm of possibility, for the order in which we have been able to think of these things necessarily leads to this.

This leads us to see that in the earthly domain, solids, fluids and gases in their supplementary relations to light, chemical action, and life phenomena represent something that has died out. Heat stands as if set off by itself in a certain way (i.e., it is the one etheric condition still intertwined with its material manifestation, as depicted in I-22). The other relationships above are not directly expressed under earthly conditions. This might help us to live with the circumstance, which we shall encounter in the next essay, that science has not yet been able to connect light directly with any material character. Sound is produced under earthly conditions by waves in the material gas. But not so with light. So-called light waves are only a faulty hypothesis that has some utility in practice, but conclusively fails in other experiments.

The relationships that can exist in the earthly domain point to something that was once there but is there no longer. They force us to bring time concepts into the picture. A human corpse forces us to this. The form of the human body would never have arisen without the soul-spiritual element.³² The corpse forces us to say that what is there has been abandoned by something. This is no different from saying that the earthly solid has been abandoned by life, the earthly fluid by the emanations of the chemical effects, the earthly gaseous by the emanations of the light effects. And just as we look back from the corpse to life, so we look from the solid bodies of the Earth back to a former physical condition, when the solid was bound up with the living.³³

At that time the Earth was not solid as we now understand the solid condition, no more than the corpse of today was a corpse five days ago. Solids were not found in an independent state anywhere on the Earth and only occurred bound to the living. Fluid existed only bound to chemical effects, and gases only bound to light effects. Earlier we saw these separations ("fissions") taking place in the etheric world in the "creations" of Gen 1. So we are forced by physics to admit a previous period of time when realms now torn apart on the Earth existed together. The realms of the gaseous, fluid and solid are now found on one side (of the "tree of life"; Gen 3,22-24; I-22), and on the other are the realms of light, chemical effects and life. Earlier they were within each other.

Heat (fire) had an intermediate position, not sharing such kinship of material and more etheric natures, but participating in both the material and the etheric, and being the condition of equilibrium between the two—ether and matter at the same time. By its dual nature we find everywhere in heat a difference in level, an observation without which we cannot understand or arrive at anything in the realm of heat phenomena. But this fact alone points up the significance of fire in scripture as the only medium in which the spiritual and material worlds can meet—and the reason why Christ came to cast it upon the Earth, for humanity (and all creation; Rom 8,19-23) must pass through that sphere in its eventual transformation back into spiritual being. This is what the book of Revelation is disclosing, and the reason it is still not comprehended to this day.

Here we come to something much more fundamental and important than the so-called "second law of thermodynamics,"³⁴ for the latter really tears a certain realm of phenomena out of its proper connection, a realm that is bound up with other phenomena and essentially and profoundly modified by them. If you will only see that the gas/light, fluid/chemical and solid/life relationships were once one, then you can also come to think of the two polarically opposed portions of the heat realm, namely, ether and ponderable matter, as originally united. Heat was then completely different from heat as we think of it now (e.g., Old Saturn, or its primal earthly recapitulation in Gen 1,2). We can come to see that physical phenomena today are limited in their meaning by time; physics is not eternal, something Bible students, of all people, should grasp.

Inasmuch as not all heat can be converted into mechanical work—some heat always remains as heat in the conversion—all energy must finally change into heat and the Earth come to a heat death (as we have seen, with the Bible in accord). But the same principle applies also at higher levels. For we can show likewise that when we produce light from heat not all of the heat reappears as light. Some gas (e.g., smoke, etc.) results. It is similar with the relationship between light and chemical phenomena. But this leads us to imagine the whole cosmic spectrum as bent around into a circle. It runs down here on this side, but then runs back up on the other. Thus even if the heat death actually occurs on one side, on the other side something occurs to reestablish the equilibrium, and that something opposes the world's death with universal creation, as in the case of "a new heaven and a new earth" (2 Pet 3,13; Rev 21,1; Is 65,17 and 66,22).