Fire, Page Three

The Inadequate Understanding by Science

But "science" can claim no better understanding of this fire, for it is not identical to molecular activity nor confined thereto. Steiner was accomplished in both science and mathematics, I in neither. What he did was to express the scientific and mathematical in words and pictures that spoke to both those who were professionals and those who were lay persons in these fields. It is beyond the scope of these final essays in this volume to attempt a complete presentation of his illustrations. Rather I hope to look at a sufficient portion to let both professional and lay person see where science is going awry in its search for the path to higher knowledge. In its explorations, science hopes to find the answers to such things as life and where, if at all, it exists in other parts of our universe. In its search, it has limited itself to what can be observed by the physical senses, aided by instruments such as microscope or telescope, or predicated upon theories developed from these inspections of matter. Staggering amounts are spent in an effort to explore space, but what is found there is measured only in material earthly terms. Anthroposophy shows that answers to the deeper questions science seeks will not be found in these realms. Investigation must go beyond mineral-physical existence. The laboratories we have are not equipped for such an investigation.

Goetheanism

And yet, the Bible tells us, as does anthroposophy, that what we call creation does indeed reflect the higher realms (Ps 19; Rom 1,19-20), those beyond our senses, measuring instruments, or even our mathematics. Steiner saw in the works of Goethe an even higher perception than academia has ascribed to him. While Steiner knew that his own insights went beyond those of Goethe, he lauded the latter as one who had observed phenomena in a much more penetrating way than science to date has done; and Goethe was no mathematician, nor has history (aside from Steiner) accorded him much due for his scientific findings, which he himself felt were his most significant works. Steiner called the physical structure housing anthroposophy's world center, in Dornach, Switzerland, the Goetheanum, and often referred to his own method of observing phenomena as Goetheanism.

The difference between this Goetheanism and the methods secular science has applied comes down to the matter of two things: one, the proper observation of phenomena, and two, the willingness to defer formulating laws or principles from it until it has spoken fully. Science impatiently makes observations, from which it postulates rules, only to find out later that it either wrongly observed in the first place or wrongly formulated in the second.⁷ Consequently, in almost every field of secular science there has been a junking, time after time after time, of laws or formulations that had earlier been spoken of as "science." To the extent that any postulate is warranted, to have any validity it must first be a proper observation of all the phenomena on the subject that has been made available to our senses.

In what have been labeled his "scientific lectures," those upon which this essay and those following in this volume are based, Steiner limited his illustration to things that could be observed by his audiences with their senses. However, those who had been exposed to many aspects of his teachings knew, in their own minds and hearts, that he knew what he presented to be certain reality because of his ability to perceive with organs the rest of us have yet to develop in our own spiritual journey through the ages. Like Steiner, I will only use here those illustrations that can be observed by the reader's senses when properly applied to the phenomena.

The Biblical Meaning of "Fire" in the Light of Anthroposophy

With this, we turn our attention to what Steiner said about fire. It is to be found primarily in his cycle of fourteen lectures given to teachers in the original Waldorf School in Stuttgart, Germany, in March, 1920, called Warmth Course (WC).⁸ What we are about is to discover the real nature of heat, for only then can its biblical meaning be understood, and only from that understanding will science progress into an understanding, literally the science, of life.

Steiner often speaks of "the heat being," and it is well that we utilize this if we are to come to understand heat's nature. We grant to science the fact that this being manifests in the mineral-physical world through molecular activity. For science, the nature of heat begins and ends with that. But this assumption is no more valid than that you and I, in our essential nature, are no more than the chemicals that compose our mineral-physical bodies. On this point, surely the spiritual approach must prevail, and even "scientists" will generally admit this.

The Primordial Conditions of Fire

We must go back to the conditions that existed at the beginning of Earth evolution. Recall that three prior evolutions had come and gone, Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon. The spiritual beings in charge of Earth evolution, the Elohim of Gen 1 (see I-16), recalled the experience of these earlier conditions and recapitulated them at a new and different level closer to the material realm but not yet there. All was in an etheric condition. That is, what came to be known as the four ethers were combined in a massive spherical condition too subtle to yet constitute materiality, so as to be "void" and without form (Gen 1,2). We saw in the earlier essay "Creation and Apocalypse" ("the Creation essay") how in the first day the heat ether was separated from the light ether, creating "light"; in the second, the sound ether was separated from the light ether so that there was a division of the waters; and so on through the third day when the life ether appeared. All of this is portrayed by I-22, partially reproduced in the Creation essay. If we again inspect that chart, we will see that all three higher ethers have been divided between their etheric condition and their corresponding descendant condition, e.g., light ether was separated from air, sound (or chemical) ether from water, and life ether from the solid condition (earth). But we notice that one ether, the fire ether, has not been permanently separated from its material manifestation during Earth evolution. We then realize that in the three Conditions of Consciousness preceding Earth evolution (Old Saturn, Sun and Moon) similar conditions existed with respect to the higher ethers. The respective ethers came into existence with these successive prior Conditions or evolutions, but in such a way that what had been merely fire ether on Saturn becomes life ether/solids (or life and earth) during Earth evolution. And, during Saturn evolution, as in Earth's earliest stage, it was not divided. During Sun evolution, light ether came into being, but again, it was not divided into light ether and air.

Similarly on Old Moon, sound (chemical) ether arose, but was not divided into its etheric condition and water. In the "days" of creation, as given in Gen 1, these prior Conditions are brought back into existence at the inception of Earth evolution, but still only in their etheric form so that not only had no solids, fluids or gases been created, but neither had any molecules come into material form so as to have heat as our science describes it. Up through Gen 2,4a, no matter yet existed in Earth evolution in spite of the long spiritual activity that preceded it.

We said in the Creation essay that on the first day the Elohim separated the light ether from the fire ether so that there was "light." But there was yet no air (gas) separate and apart from its related ether. The same goes for the other ethers and their related elements. What this means is that in the most primeval period of Earth evolution, the nature of light, sound and life were different from the way they are now. They were like fire and fire ether are today in the sense that the spirit still dwelled within what was to become material upon later division. Fire is the only one of the four elements where spirit and matter remain in touch. This is why fire is nearly always present in the Bible when the earthly apprehends the heavenly. They can only meet at the state where the unmaterialized etheric condition of fire dwells. It can help to comprehend this if we look at what emerges wherever fire appears here on Earth. As a result of the high degree of molecular activity that generates combustion, we have emerging both light and air (gas, usually at least partially in the form of smoke). As we shall show in the "Light" essay, we cannot see the light, but we can see things when it falls upon them and we therefore indirectly perceive the etheric condition of light. Thus, looking at I-22, we see that in fact one moves from fire into a division of light and air.⁹ The spiritual beings dwell in the etheric light (and higher ethers), but they only touch the material realm at the point of fire—as "tongues of fire" (Acts 2,3) if you will; they do not enter the material element of molecular action. We saw in "The Four Elements" how their lower agents, the "elemental beings" of which Paul spoke, do enter the material realms (Gal 4,3,9; Col 2,8,20).