Activate Your Earthly and Cosmic Nutrition Streams

EARTHLY AND COSMIC NUTRITION STREAMS

By Tyla Gabriel, ND

OurSpirit.com 

“Turn inward, and there you will find the footprints of the mystery of being.”

Joseph Campbell, Goddesses

The functions of the pineal and pituitary glands have evolved over time throughout the incarnations of the Earth. There have been several incarnations, known as:

• Saturn
• Sun
• Moon
• Earth (current incarnation)

There will be three more “incarnations of the Earth”:

• Jupiter
• Venus
• Vulcan 

All of these incarnations represent great spans of time that the human intellect can hardly imagine. In between these were “rest periods” wherein the entire manifestation of that incarnation is rarified, remixed, and recreated with the substances from past developments.  These vast periods of time and rest periods are rhythmic, natural, and consistent with known laws of nature and other “as yet to be discovered” laws.

   During the ancient Saturn incarnation of the Earth, substances were laid down that, after two more incarnations, became minerals.

   These minerals were the living materials of warmth that were “sacrificed” for the sake of building a world where humans could find physicality and separation from the spirit.  Ancient Saturn became the ground upon which we now walk, but in those days Saturn consisted of balls of warmth that did not shine.  Through the pineal gland, nutrition arose as sense perception and movement. As Steiner describes:

      Rudolf Steiner, Austrian philosopher, 1861-1925

The human being who swam about in this primordial ocean had as yet no eyes and endowed with sight such as we have to-day: man, indeed, received the foundation of sight upon Saturn, but in this primordial ocean he did not need to see; he had to orientate himself in other ways. The ocean contained all the food which he required for his life and also animals, some benevolently disposed towards him; and some not. At that time man still possessed an organ which now exists in the head, it is the size of a cherry and is called the pineal gland (in reality it is not a gland). Once upon a time, this organ was of immense size; it enabled man to orientate himself in the ocean and it protruded from his head like a lantern. Man moved about, by using this lantern-like organ in front; it was a sensitive organ, not an organ of sight. He used it when swimming about. Later on, he no longer needed it and so it shriveled.  Theosophy and Rosicrucianism: Lecture XI: Progressive Development through the Different Cycles of Culture.  Rudolf Steiner.  Translated by M. Cotterell & D. S. Osmond.

On Old Moon the head of the human being was still open. Were you to draw a line vertically downward from this soft area, you would meet the pineal gland.  Today it is stunted and withered but it was an important organ during the Old Moon embodiment.  It was a kind of sense organ that connected man’s physical and etheric bodies with his astral body.  Through this organ, which was a delicate, luminous body, man’s astral body radiated into the other bodies.  His consciousness was neither that of sleep nor of waking life.  He did not perceive outer objects. His consciousness might be compared with that of the dream today.  The pineal gland at that time was a kind of warmth organ, emitting powerful, luminous rays of warmth.  When on Old Moon man was moving about, the function of this organ was to show him the direction he must take.  Man’s perception on Old Moon consisted in something like a dream picture rising up within him.  There was as yet no seeing or perceiving objects but man felt an inner up-and-down surge of living pictures of which the dream pictures of today are only a feeble shadow.

On Old Moon man’s inner warmth was not yet constant.  Today, on the earth, this has been achieved.  On Old Moon man absorbed warmth from the warmth around him and emitted it again, just as he inhales and exhales air today.  The process became visible in his organ of warmth.  It gleamed and was luminous when he was absorbing warmth and darkened when he was exhaling it.  If you could have seen what was happening, the process would have suggested the image of a fire-breathing dragon.  All these happenings have a deep significance.  Figures such as the Archangel Michael with the fire-breathing dragon under his feet, or St. George fighting with the dragon, are pictures reminiscent of those conditions.  The fire breather of Old Moon, the ancient Dragon, is a figure that once actually existed.  It portrays a stage that would have to be surmounted. Rosicrucian Esotericism: Lecture VII: Evolutionary Stages of our Earth before the Lemurian Epoch.  Rudolf Steiner.  Translated by D. S. Osmond.

   Old Moon was another of the incarnations of the Earth that came after the Saturn and Sun incarnations. During the Moon incarnation of the Earth, the pineal gland was central to the task of connecting the human physical and etheric body with the astral body. It radiated light into the other bodies and was used to create the images that help find food. Through the process of breathing and gaining nutrition, the pineal gland gleamed, emitted light, and glowed. This ancient view of the pineal gland’s functions highlights the amazing metamorphosis that this gland has undergone during human development.

Our cerebellum is a remnant of the Moon stage of evolution; it sits there as a sign of the battles that the Gods fought for us.  The cerebellum arose from what was thought on old Moon.  There were no errors in our thoughts then, for divine powers thought for us and guided our thoughts.  Man had no freedom yet; divine beings directed him.  Now that he’s become independent he must be responsible for what he thinks.  There are also remnants of old Moon in the cerebrum’s pineal and pituitary glands; on old Moon they were what the lung and heart are in man today.  And what a man does now will form his cerebrum on Jupiter.  What he thinks in connection with his cerebrum now will form his cerebellum on Jupiter.  A man must bear the consequences of his thinking now that he’s become free, and the cerebellum sits in the back of his head like a judge, for it will take the effects of everything that he thought on earth over to Jupiter. The Contents of Esoteric Lessons - Part III: Norrkoping. Rudolf Steiner.  Translator unknown.

   In the process of evolution, warmth and light have taken on new tasks and processes that again connect the human to the outside world through nutrition and sense perception. Warmth is now processed by the heart as digestion. At the same time, the pituitary gland helps manage inner warmth; this is called metabolism in today’s language.

Man’s activity is to be sought in what streams out from him as inner warmth.  Out of what proceeds from warmth: passions, impulses, instincts, desires, wishes and so on, Karma arises.  Just as the parallel organ to the ear is the organ of speech, so the parallel organ to the warmth of the heart is the pituitary gland, the hypophysis.  The heart takes up the warmth from outside, as the ear does sound. Thereby it perceives world warmth.  The corresponding organ which we must have, in order to be able to produce warmth consciously, is the pituitary gland in the head, which at the present time is only at the beginning of its development.  Just as one perceives with the ear and produces with the larynx, so one takes up the warmth of the world in the heart and lets it stream forth again through the pituitary gland in the brain.  Once this capacity has been achieved, the heart will have become the organ it was intended to be.

Somewhat deeper in evolution than the warmth organ stands the organ of sight.  In the course of evolution the organs of hearing, warmth and sight, follow in sequence; the organ of sight is only at the stage of receiving, but the ear already perceives, for instance in the sound of a bell, its innermost being.  Warmth must flow from the being itself. The eye has only an image, the ear has the perception of innermost reality.  The perception of warmth is the receiving of something that rays outwards.  There is an organ which will also become the active organ of vision.  This is today germinally present in the pineal gland, the Epiphysis, the organ which will give reality to the images which today are produced by the eye.  These two organs, the pineal gland and the pituitary gland as active organs, must develop into the organ of vision (eye) and the organ of warmth (heart).  Today fantasy is the preliminary stage leading to a later power of creation.  Now man has at most imagination.  Later he will have magical power.  This is the Kriya-shakti power.  It develops in proportion to the physical development of the pineal gland. Foundations of Esotericism: Lecture V.  Rudolf Steiner.  Translated by Vera and Judith Compton-Burnett.

The astonishing truth about “brain sand”

   The pineal gland develops the process whereby light is taken in by the eyes and digested.  The eyes now function as the lantern did in the past. The human heart processes the warmth in our environment, sending it in sequence to the head, then the pineal and pituitary glands.  Here is where the transformation or spiritual digestion takes place. The streams of warmth and light emanating from the blood as it etherizes creates the stream of etherization and, subsequently, colors that dance around the glands. The pineal gland secretes brand sand, as Steiner describes:

When we follow the course of Earth-evolution – warmth-condition, air-condition, water-condition, mineral-earthly condition – the human head has participated in all these metamorphoses, the mineral metamorphosis being the first to work outwards in the disintegrating skeleton of the head – though it still retains certain vitality.  But this human head has participated in the earthly-mineral metamorphosis in a way which is even more apparent.  In the center of the human head within the structure of the brain there is an organ shaped like a pyramid, the pineal gland.  This pineal gland, situated in the vicinity of the corpus quadrigemina and the optic thalamus secretes out of itself the so-called brain sand, minute lemon-yellow stones which lie in little heaps at one end of the pineal gland, and which are in fact the mineral element in the human head.  If they do not lie there, if man does not bear this brain-sand, this mineral element, within him, he becomes an idiot or a cretin.  In the case of normal people the pineal gland is comparatively large.  In cretins pineal glands have been found which are actually no larger than hemp seeds; these cannot secrete the brain-sand. Man as Symphony of the Creative Word.  Rudolf Steiner.  Translated by H. Collison.

   These remarks about brain sand may come as a shock to some who do not know of the conclusive scientific data that supports Dr. Steiner’s statements. In fact, these bio-mineralized calcite crystals have been found in the pineal gland in direct proportion to human intelligence.  It was once thought that the pineal gland received only a limited supply of these calcite crystals at birth. Now, it has been discovered that new “brain-sand” is being deposited throughout life and directly impacts intelligence. Therefore, IQ is not limited by the brain-sand in the pineal gland at birth, but can be enhanced throughout life.

   In the selections below, we shall read one of the best descriptions of the mechanics of the blood’s response to sense impressions and the resultant factor of memory being impressed in the etheric body of the human. 

   The blood’s natural tendency is to “etherize” itself into a stream of energy flowing from heart to head, affecting particularly the pineal and pituitary glands. Steiner describes it as electric in nature.  Modern research has shown the “brain-sand” in the pineal gland (calcite crystals) to be piezoelectric and radiate energy. 

   Steiner’s illustration of the forces of the “electric” heart is the same found now by mapping the electrical and magnetic fields around the heart. The completed form of this drawing would be a “torus,” or donut-shaped field of force, like the Van Allen Belts around the Earth. The torus made between the action of the pineal and pituitary glands in the brain is clearly illustrated by Steiner’s description.  Steiner was the first to point this out and speak of it so clearly.  Of course, he had the benefit of being clairvoyant, both naturally and scientifically trained.  Also included in this description is a powerful indication that the heart torus and the brain torus must be working together coherently to create a permanent memory.

   The description of “bright etheric light currents streaming out” from the pineal to the pituitary gland and from there to all aspects of the etheric body is consistent with descriptions by Manly P. Hall from the ancients.  The same phenomena are simply being described in different terms. 

   This rainbow of etheric light dancing from the pineal gland to the pituitary gland is of utmost importance in understanding how matter turns into spirit.  This physical transformation of matter to spirit or etherization of the blood is the foundation for spiritual development, the key to understanding how Sophia works directly with the aspirant to spiritually advance.

ETERNAL TRUTH:  THE ETHERIZATION OF THE BLOOD IS THE FOUNDATION FOR SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT

Here, in the “gap” between the pineal gland and the pituitary gland, exists a shared region where the earthly and cosmic nutrition streams join.  In this “gap,” humans can “create out of nothingness.”  This is the essence of reciprocity.  This female-to-male gap initiates the process of giving spirit the food it needs from our work.  Spirit reciprocates by giving us the cosmic food we need to feed the etheric body. 

   In this gap, sense impressions are digested and memories created.  The results impress themselves upon the blood, where those forces originated as perceptions.

   This gap is the threshold of creation and destruction, and the hope for rebirth.  It is one of the most powerful spaces in our body. We feed the gods nectar and ambrosia from our gifts of love gleaned from transforming our faculties of soul into spirit.  Then, each night, in response to our efforts, the gods feed us the elixir of immortality. Sophia herself guides this reciprocation as the individual soul engages in the process of spiritual marriage with the higher self.

If we observe the blood – let us now imagine ourselves within the human ether-body – quite schematically as it courses through the heart, and think of it as the external physical expression of the human ego, we thereby see how this ego works, how it receives impressions corresponding with the outer world and condenses these to memory-pictures.  We see, furthermore, not only that our blood is active in this process, but also that, throughout its course, especially in the upward direction, somewhat less in the downward, it stirs up the ether-body, so that we see currents developing everywhere in the ether-body, taking a very definite course, as if they would join the blood flowing upward from the heart and go up to the head.  And in the head these currents come together, in about the same way, to use a comparison belonging to the external world, as do currents of electricity when they rush toward a point which is opposed by another point, so as to neutralize the positive and the negative.  When we observe with a soul trained in occult methods, we see at this point ether-forces compressed as if under a very powerful tension, those ether-forces which are called forth through the impressions that now desire to become definite concepts, memory-pictures, and to stamp themselves upon the ether-body.

We see here a very powerful tension which concentrates at one point, and announces: “I will now enter into the ether-body!” just as when positive and negative electricity are impelled to neutralize each other.  We then see how, in opposition to these, other currents flow from that portion of the ether-body which belongs to the rest of the bodily organization.  These currents go out for the most part from the lower part of the breast, but also from the lymph vessels and other organs, and come together in such a way that they oppose these other currents.  Thus we have in the brain, whenever a memory-picture wishes to form itself, two ether-currents, one coming from below and one from above, which oppose each other under the greatest possible tension, just as two electric currents oppose each other. If a balance is brought about between these two currents, then a concept has become a memory-picture and has incorporated itself in the ether-body.

Such supersensible currents in the human organism always express themselves by creating for themselves also a physical sense-organ, which we must first look upon as a sense-manifestation.  Thus we have within us an organ, situated in the center of the brain, which is the physical sense-expression for that which wishes to take the form of a memory-picture; and opposite to this is situated another organ in the brain.  These two organs in the human brain are the physical-sensible expression of the two currents in the human ether-body; they are, one might say, something like the ultimate indication of the fact that there are such currents in the ether-body.  These currents condense themselves with such force that they seize the human bodily substance and consolidate it into these organs.  We thus actually get an impression of bright etheric light-currents streaming across from the one to the other of these organs, and pouring themselves out over the human ether-body.  These organs are actually present in the human organism.  One of them is the pineal gland; the other, the so-called pituitary body: the “epiphysis” and the “hypophysis” respectively.  We have here, at a definite point in the human physical organism, the external physical expression of the co-operation of soul and body!  An Occult Physiology: Man’s Inner Cosmic System, Lecture 4.  Rudolf Steiner.  Translated by D. S. Osmond.

   The description above underscores the importance of sense impression’s effect upon the blood, thus its effect upon the etheric body. Here, Steiner refers to the blood as the “ego-instrument,” pointing out that the ego rides on this etheric stream from heart to head. 

   The polarity of pineal and pituitary are connected to the dynamic between the sympathetic and autonomic nervous systems. We also hear that in the gap between the pineal and the pituitary glands, “something results which we may call a ‘glimmering through from the one side to the other, a being disturbed on the one side by the other.’ This phrase indicates that human efforts on our side of this gap create the response from the other side.  In other words, the individual is responsible for the health of the etheric stream through his effort to digest the world, gleaning the life therein.

   The selection below is the penultimate description of the Etherization of the Blood, as the term is coined from this reference. It sets the backdrop for both the personalized and global etherization of the blood involving the appearance of Christ in the Earth’s etheric realm. The moral implication of the ether stream’s coloration is that spiritual development is necessary to achieve higher states of being. There is a clear similarity between the gap described previously and the Guardian of the Threshold of waking and sleeping. 

   The moral person passes the Guardian of the Threshold without fear, just as the moral person’s “rainbow of etheric light” passes over the gap between pineal and pituitary, indicating his moral development.

When a man stands in front of us today in his waking state and we observe him with the eye of clairvoyance, certain rays of light are seen streaming continually from the heart towards the head.  Within the head these rays play around the organ known in anatomy as the pineal gland.  These streamings arise because human blood, which is a physical substance, is perpetually resolving itself into etheric substance.  In the region of the heart there is a continual transformation of the blood into this delicate etheric substance which streams upwards towards the head and glimmers around the pineal gland.  This process – the etherization of the blood – can be perceived in the human being all the time during his waking life.  The occult observer is able to see a continual streaming from outside into the brain, and also in the reverse direction, from the brain to the heart.  Now these streams, which in sleeping man come from outside, from cosmic space, from the Macrocosm, and flow into the inner constitution of the physical body and etheric bodies lying in the bed, reveal something remarkable when they are investigated.  These rays vary greatly in different individuals.

Moral qualities are revealed distinctly in the particular coloring of the streams which flow into human beings during sleep; in an individual of lower moral principles, the streams are quite different from what is observable in an individual of noble principles. Endeavors to dissemble are useless.  In the face of the higher Cosmic Powers, no dissembling is possible.  In the case of a man who has only a slight inclination towards moral principles the rays streaming into him are a brownish red in color – various shades tending toward brownish red. In a man of high moral ideals the rays are lilac-violet in color.  At the moment of waking or of going off to sleep a kind of struggle takes place in the region of the pineal gland between what streams down from above and what streams upward from below.  When a man is awake the intellectual element streams upwards from below in the form of currents of light, and what is of moral-aesthetic nature streams downwards from above.  At the moment of waking or of going off to sleep, these two currents meet, and in the man of low morality a violent struggle between the two streams takes place in the region of the pineal gland.  In the man of high morality there is around the pineal gland as it were a little sea of light.  Moral nobility is revealed when a calm glow surrounds the pineal gland at these moments.  In this way a man’s moral disposition is reflected in him, and this calm glow of light often extends as far as the heart.  Two streams can therefore be perceived in man – the one Macrocosmic, the other, Microcosmic.

Just as in the region of the human heart the blood is continually being transformed into etheric substance, a similar process takes place in the Macrocosm.  We understand this when we turn our minds to the Mystery of Golgotha – to the moment when the blood flowed from the wounds of Jesus Christ.

This blood must not be regarded simply as chemical substance, but by reason of all that has been said concerning the nature of Jesus of Nazareth it must be recognized as something altogether unique.  When it flowed from His wounds, a substance was imparted to our Earth, which in uniting with it, constituted an Event of the greatest possible significance for all future ages of the Earth’s evolution – and it could take place only once. What came of this blood in the ages that followed?  Nothing different from what otherwise takes place in the heart of man.   In the course of Earth evolution this blood passes through a process of “etherization.”  And just as our human blood streams upwards from the heart as ether, so since the Mystery of Golgotha the etherized blood of Christ Jesus has been present in the ether of the Earth.  The etheric body of the Earth is permeated by the blood – now transformed – which flowed on Golgotha.  This is supremely important.  If what has thus come to pass through Christ Jesus had not taken place, man’s condition on the Earth could only have been as previously described. But since the Mystery of Golgotha it has always been possible for the etheric blood of Christ to flow together with the streamings from below upward, from heart to head.

Because the etherized blood of Jesus of Nazareth is present in the etheric body of the Earth, it accompanies the etherized human blood streaming upwards from the heart to the brain, so that not only those streams of which I spoke earlier meet in man, but the human blood-stream unites with the blood-stream of Christ Jesus.  A union of these two streams can, however, come about only if a person is able to unfold true understanding of what is contained in the Christ Impulse.  Otherwise there can be no union; the two streams then mutually repel each other, thrust each other away.

For we have now reached the point of time when the Etheric Christ enters into the life of the Earth and will become visible – at first to a small number of individuals through a form of natural clairvoyance.  Then in the course of the next three thousand years, He will become visible to greater and greater numbers of people.  This will inevitably come to pass in the natural course of development. The Etherization of the Blood.  Rudolf Steiner.  Unknown translator.

   In the selection above, Dr. Steiner tells us that the etherization of the blood is the threshold between inner, egoistic thoughts and desires and the capacity to know the outside world.  Without the etherized blood streaming rarified substances to the brain, humans would not be able to create clear thoughts and know the outside world. 

   To know, in this case, leads to the capacity for Intuition, a knowing of the world. This rarefaction of blood as a rising etherized substance indicates that humans are capable of rarifying the material world. Through sense impressions, they take in its substance, then digest them so thoroughly that nourishment is transformed into “etherized” or spiritual substance. 

   This etherized substance deposits brain-sand in the pineal gland, causing it to glow and emanate an electrical charge that crosses over to the pituitary gland. (This electrical charge is caused by the piezoelectric nature of the calcite crystal brain-sand.)  In this case, a physical substance from the external world is rarified and crystallized. The pineal gland is bathed by an etherized, earthly nutrition stream. The brain-sand becomes the lens through which outside impressions are distilled from soul activities.  

   Here, then is where the soul activities of thinking, feeling and willing aspire and rise to become the spiritual capacities of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. 

   The activity of Christ in the etheric realm of the earth is the great Mystery of our time and the second greatest event in human history. His blood has re-enlivened the earth’s ether body for all times to come. His victory over death makes Him the Lord of Karma, the ruler of death and resurrection. His eminent appearance as a human being bringing comfort to the oppressed is the vision of a New Golden Age, a moral-etheric-atmosphere of flowing light and nourishment that can be found in the human etheric body and the etheric body of the earth. 

If you see clairvoyantly the blood pulsating through the human body, then you also see how this blood becomes rarefied again in the heart, how in its finest elements-not in its coarser, but in its finer parts – it is dissolved and returns to the etheric form. Just as the blood has gradually been formed in the ether, so in the human body of the present day we have the reverse process.  The blood becomes etherized, and streams of ether flow continuously from the heart towards the head, so that we see the etheric body built up in an opposite direction by way of the blood.  Thus what crystallized out from the etheric during the early part of Lemuria to form the human blood circulation and the heart we now see returning to the etheric form and streaming in the human etheric body towards the brain.  And unless these streams of ether were to flow continuously from the heart towards the head, however much we tried to think about the world and to know about it, we should be quite unable to make use of our brain as the instrument for thought.  As an instrument for knowledge the brain would be completely useless if it were only to function as physical brain.  But currents of a fine etheric substance coming from the heart stream continuously through the brain.  These etheric currents are indirectly related to a delicate and important part of the human brain called the pineal gland.  They continuously lave the pineal gland, which becomes luminous and its movements as physical brain-organ respond in harmony with these etheric currents emanating from the heart.  Thereby these etheric currents are brought again into connection with the physical brain and give it an impress which enables us to know, in addition to egotistic knowledge, something of the outside world, something that is not ourselves.  Thus by way of the pineal gland our etherized blood reacts upon our brain. Wonders of the World. Lecture 8. Rudolf Steiner.  Translated by Dorothy Lenn and Owen Barfield.   

   Our etheric bodies originally reflected the pure activity of blood circulation and brain functions. They have solidified, however, due to the introduction of impure aspects of personal desire and lower appetites. This underscores the necessity to purify the astral body of desires.  Doing so will help rarify the etheric body, which has now become over solidified by selfishness. 

   If the human looks only to the inside, then personal desire and lower appetites cannot be conquered. To rarify the ether body instead of solidifying it, we need to add the “other” into our perception. 

   Dr. Steiner describes how we have the opportunity with each perception to bind spirit again to matter or to release it. He calls it “enchanting” or “disenchanting” matter through our perception. 

   If we free the spirits behind matter through conscious perception, we disenchant them from the spell of time and space. As we liberate these spiritual beings and forces, we actually receive nutrition from them. We etherize these perceptions and bathe the pineal gland with this nourishment that is offered back to the gods. We then receive the energy that the pineal gland and the pituitary gland create as cosmic nutrition. 

ETERNAL TRUTH:  WE FEED THE GODS AND THE GODS FEED US.

In his normal consciousness today, man knows nothing of the marvelous play of forces in his ether body; he knows nothing of this communication between heart and brain.  Anyone who is made aware of it through occult development becomes aware of something peculiar about these etheric currents, and here self-knowledge yields something very striking, something of the highest significance.  One comes to know how these forces stream upwards from the heart to the brain, to form the brain in such a way that the human being may be able to make use of it as the instrument of his soul-life.  But at the same time one learns that these forces have not passed through the human organization unscathed, that they do not leave the heart in the same state in which they entered it.  All that man has meanwhile developed out of the unconscious by way of lower instincts and appetites, all his natural propensities, are carried along in the etheric stream which is borne upwards from the heart.  Thus we received this current in ancient Lemuria as a pure etheric stream which had no other craving, no other will so to say, than to condense to form the wondrous structure of our heart.  Since that time we have gone on living as physical men with this heart and this blood circulation, we have passed through a number of incarnations without knowing anything of this solidification of our original ether bodies into the physical parts of heart and blood circulation.  An Occult Physiology: The Systems of Supersensible Forces.  Rudolf Steiner.  Translated by D. S. Osmond.

   This selection tells us that organs change over time. For instance, what was once part of the sex organ split off and became the organ of speech. Also, organs evolve over time and take on vastly different tasks. They are used as the organs of the gods (hierarchy) to perceive in this realm, where divine beings are not allowed to tread. 

   As humans solidified over vast amounts of time, the variety and functions of the organs responded and evolved along with the changing atmosphere. At one point, humans were surrounded by warmth, at another by water, and then later by air. 

   We now find solid ground beneath our feet. Seemingly, we have been placed far from the divine in a realm where we can be solitary and search for our spirit in the surrounding darkness of matter. 

   The aspirant’s task now is to find the path back to the spirit while at the same time transforming her organs into spiritual organs that can draw nourishment from the atmosphere. 

   The pineal and pituitary glands have transformed greatly over time. At this point of evolution, they are the key organs enabling us to “see” and “feel” into the realms of the spirit and, thereby, receive spiritual nutrition. 

   They are the spiritual organs whereby the gods see through our eyes and feel through our hearts. 

Future evolution must be prepared for what man already produces from himself, as preparation for the future human being, is the word, speech. What man speaks remains in the Akashic Record.  It is the germinal beginning for the future human being. Speech is one half of the former means of reproduction. Through speech man propagates himself spiritually.  The breaking of the male voice is connected with this.  One half of what is sexual has been carried over into speech.  The voice is the future organ of reproduction. In ancient Hebrew the same word was used for sex and speech.  Today man thinks and the thought passes outwards through the larynx.  The next stage will be that feeling, warmth, passes outwards.  Then the word will be the expression of the inner warmth of the body. This can happen when the pituitary gland (hypophysis) develops in the brain.  The stage following this appears when the pineal gland (epiphysis) is developed.  Then not only the warmth-imbued word will go forth, but the word will remain, will be given form through the will, which then lives within it.  Then when one utters the word it becomes an actual being.  Foundations of Esotericism: Lecture VII.  Rudolf Steiner.  Translated by Vera and Judith Compton-Burnett.

ETERNAL TRUTH:  HUMANS LIVE IN A SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP WITH THE HIERARCHY (GODS).

   Just as humans and plants live in a symbiotic relationship with carbon dioxide and oxygen, so do humans also live in a symbiotic relationship with the hierarchy (gods).  

   Carbon is the key element that helps transform and rarefy material substance. Right now, at this point in our evolution, plants do this for us. In the future, we will take on this function as we evolve the ability to reproduce without sex.

   As we learn to transform the atmosphere into direct nutrition, we will develop our speech into an organ of reproduction. We will live off of the atmosphere, transforming it into nourishment. 

   This is already happening today. Some humans proclaim, in advance of the rest of humanity, learned to live off of the atmosphere. For example, some saints have exhibited this characteristic. In extreme cases, autotrophs have stopped taking in nourishment from food, and have lived off of water, light, air, and other elements in the atmosphere. They are living proof that the etherization of the blood and the earthly and cosmic nutrition streams feed the human body, even though this stage of development for humanity is premature.  

   As the medieval prayer says: What feeds us in the bread is God’s eternal light, His life, and His Word.

Questions for Contemplation:

1. What is the process for the etherization of the blood? 
2. What is the moral implication of the different colors of ether in different individuals? 
3. How do the cosmic and earthly nutrition streams interact?
4. What happens within the gap between the pineal and pituitary glands?
5. How does the heart communicate with the brain?
6. How do we feed the gods?

********************

Tyla Gabriel is the author of The Gospel of Sophia series. She and Douglas Gabriel invite you to join them on a journey that will take you beyond time and space and will begin to open your organs of supersensible perception at www.ourspirit.com. For initiates who are ready to begin the ascension process, a spiritual alchemical process of the etherization of the blood, the Ascension Sacraments for the Cosmic and Earthly Nutrition Diet  is offered as a gift of love to all spiritual seekers.