Fire, Page Seven

What happens to corporeality, however, when carried through the melting and boiling points? Fundamentally, solid bodies possess form, liquids require a container in order to form their own surface, and gases must be completely enclosed by pressure on all sides. What is active in the liquid surface (called gravity) that is within solids to give form? Recall that upon evaporation the liquid surface ceases, and that all gases have the same coefficient of expansion as material emancipated from the Earth—thus lacking individuality.¹⁷

Solids have somehow taken up gravity for their form-building, but when falling freely portray what underlies the surface tendencies of liquids. We here on Earth can thus say that we perceive what is surface-forming in water and call it gravity. If we lived on a fluid cosmic body (as the Earth once was), it would have to be above the surface, thus having the same relationship to the gaseous as we now have to fluids, meaning that we would not perceive gravity. Gravity can only be perceived by beings living on a solid planet. (This was illustrated by his discussion of Archimedes' principle and the brain.) And beings who lived on a gaseous planet would regard as normal something the opposite of gravity, a striving in all directions from the center—negative in respect to gravity—having passed thereto through what Steiner calls a kind of "nullpoint."¹⁸

And we've seen that applying heat to a gas raises its diffusing tendency, so this warmth being does the same thing that a negative gravity would do. It manifests like negative gravity.

But earthly form is dissolved in passing from solid to fluid such that the form is imposed by the general influence of the Earth—it becomes a liquid surface. But when divided into small particles, form is thus spherical—the synthesis of all polyhedral¹⁹ (crystal) shapes. Thus the passage from solid to gas goes through the sphere. If a tetrahedron (four-sided solid)²⁰ becomes a gas, it is as though a glove were turned inside out, passing through the sphere so that what was positive or solid before becomes negative. Within the filled space outside, there is a hollow tetrahedral hole—a negative tetrahedron. Every polyhedral body goes over into its negative only by passing through the sphere like through a null-point—a null sphere. The fluid is intermediate between the formed and the formless.

What happens to our Earth under the warmth being of our solar system, the Sun? During the time we are not exposed to the Sun, when the Earth is left to itself, it strives toward form, whereas under the influence of the Sun there is a continual dissolving, a Will to overcome form. We thus, both daily and seasonally, vacillate in the cosmos between two conditions. Contemplate the significance of the fact that the Sun is both a creative and a destructive force to our earthly existence. It creates life, then destroys it.²¹ Is there meaning in this simple observation? Is it a giant agent of even higher powers that both create and crucify, in purposeful, rhythmic evolution toward an ever moving goal?

This thought leads to another. While science has observed astronomical phenomena enough to see that at least in a certain sense cosmic creation takes place out of fiery circumstances, Steiner has shown us clearly how our solar system came into being during the Old Saturn Condition of Consciousness through an original state of fire, an immense sphere, composed only of etheric heat. One can see this from the "Overview," in connection with I-27, in The Burning Bush. Understandably the Bible collapses the more remote aspects of our materiality, telling us that physically we both came from "dust" and shall return thereto (Gen 2,7; Eccles 3,20 and 12,7), but in its broader spectrum that we came from fire (Gen 1,2; Ezek 1,4-5; Jn 1,1-3) and physically shall again return through it (2 Pet 3,1-13 and Rev). In fact the Bible, science and Steiner all tell us this. Long before these "science lectures" that Steiner gave (1919-1921), and in the very middle of the time that he was concentrating on the Bible (1908-1914), in a single lecture in Berlin (March 16, 1911) entitled What Has Astronomy to Say about the Origin of the World? (WHA), he made these remarks:

Within natural scientific thinking, research and experimenting it is clearly shown how it is correct in general to say that we can change nature forces into one another, that we can, for instance, change heat into work, or, if we have done a certain work, change this back into heat. But it is only correct with a very important limitation. . . . Some heat is always lost, so in all processes of nature where heat-energy is transformed into movement, we have to reckon with a loss of heat, as is certainly the case with a steam-engine. . . . But as in the transformation a remnant of heat always remains, it is not hard to see that ultimately the final condition of our evolution-material evolution-is the transformation of the total movement-energy, and of all other kinds of nature processes, into heat. That is the final condition which must come about. Everything else in nature-processes must finally be transformed into heat because always a remnant of heat remains over. . . . Thus the resulting heat will become greater and greater, till the final result must be that all movement will be transformed into heat. Then we should have universal chaos consisting only of heat which can no longer be transformed back again. . . . Everything that streams to us from the sun tends eventually to "pass over into a universal death by heat." That is the famous "Claudius' death by heat". . . . And here, for anyone who understands cognition, a piece of knowledge is given which is quite incontrovertible, and against which physically no objection can be brought. Our material universe is striving towards this heat-death in which everything in nature will some day be burned.

The Claudius Steiner mentioned lived from A.D. 129 to 199, and is also known as Galen of Pergamum.²² His "heat death" still retains validity to this day based upon the principle of entropy.²³

But here science has a problem, for its conclusion is that there will be a "heat death" since it is impossible in a closed system to transform all heat into mechanical energy. The very solidification process is nature's attempt to attain a closed system, but the closed system never fully arises because the system is not left to itself, but is worked upon by its whole environment. There is always a tendency at various points for a closed system to arise, but a counter tendency appears at once. This alters the abstract thinking of physics. A closed system is always striving to arise, but the constitution of the cosmos prevents it.

Here science falls by the wayside, while both the Bible and Steiner confirm that a new state arises for humanity. Ecclesiastes says that while the dust returns to Earth as it was, "the spirit returns to God who gave it" (Eccles 12,7), and both 2 Peter and John's Apocalypse tell us that "a new heavens and a new earth" come into being after the elements have been dissolved by fire (2 Pet 3,13; Rev 21). The etheric and astral states are entered.

With these thoughts in mind, let us return to where we said that each state of aggregation gives a picture of its neighbor, in solids the image of the fluid, in fluids the image of the gaseous, and in gases the image of fire. Today we speak of two forms of energy, mechanical (solid bodies) and acoustical (sound waves). They can be placed in their respective spheres and tabulated as follows:

Just as fluid was left out in moving from solid to gaseous, so also warmth is left out to arrive at X. We must find something lying on the far side of the warmth being just as the sound world lies this side of it.

Sound manifests in gases through waves (condensations and rarefactions). But gases themselves condense and rarefy with temperature change. If we pass over fluids and seek to find in gases what corresponds to form in solids, we must look for it in condensation and rarefaction. If we then pass over warmth to postulate the region next above it, we have the following tabulation:

By analogy, I must look in X for something corresponding to but beyond condensation and rarefaction, passing over heat just as fluid was passed over below it. So long as condensation and rarefaction are present, so is matter. But if we rarefy enough, we finally pass entirely out of the material realm, becoming spiritual. Thus, we are obliged to think of X as a realm of materiality and non-materiality if we are to be consistent in our extension from the realms below it.

Heat thus leads to a condition where matter itself ceases to be. It stands between two strongly contrasted regions, essentially different from each other, the spiritual and the material. This is completely in accord with the Bible's use of fire when there is communication from one world to the other, the spiritual to the earthly.

Here the reader might find it worthwhile to meditate on the meaning of the allegorical story of the three noble creatures thrown by Nebuchadnezzar into the fiery furnace in the third chapter of Daniel. See its discussion in "Three Bodies" in The Burning Bush, p. 432. Of special significance is the appearance of the fourth who emerged from the fire (Dan 3,24-25). It is the same "I AM" that Moses saw in The Burning Bush (Ex 3,1-6,13-14).