Etherisation of Lymph and Blood and its Significance in the Creation and Birth of the New Etheric Body

In this blog I wish to bring to your attention a deeper aspect of the Grail Mysteries indicated in my book, Cognitive Yoga, that answers some of the most difficult esoteric riddles related to the spiritualization of the reproductive and sexual forces of the present and future human being.

After the etherization process of thinking and sense perception in the nerves-senses and rhythmic systems is complete, it can penetrate deeper into the body and work with the forces of the metabolic-limb system. The new etheric body in its entirety is conceived when the etherized forces of the lymph join with the etherized forces of the blood. This union complete the creation process of the etheric body as a whole, from head to foot, and allows us also to use the freed and spiritualized forces of reproduction to fire and augment our creative spiritual scientific work.

Rudolf Steiner describes this mystery in these words:

"We see in lymph everything that has not yet become blood; we see in it also the living-weaving of developing karma. In the lymph process new karma is forming... Fructification consists of nothing else than that the sun forces are drawn down to where the moon forces are active in the lymph...For this to happen, sun forces combine with moon forces in the lymph system of the human organism... When the moon forces ... draw down the sun forces...The spirit of the universe is giving birth to a spiritual embryo... Then we have the true explanation of the human being's relation to the universe".

Rudolf Steiner lectures of14-15 September 1924, GA 318

 The spiritual side of the same process is illuminated when the connection is made between the white forces of the lymph and the soul being of the white Lily, Blancheflor, and the red forces of the blood with the spiritual being of the red rose, Flor. What was described above from a physiological occult point of view is described below as the union of the soul and spirit in the self-conscious human “I”:

  "Flor symbolised the human soul who has received the impulse of the Ego, of personality, who lets the Spiritual work out of his individuality, who has brought the Ego-force down into the red blood. But the lily was the symbol of the soul who can only remain spiritual when the Ego remains outside... Flor and Blancheflor symbolise the finding of the World-Soul, the World-Ego, by the human soul and the human Ego. The event recorded in the legend of the Holy Grail is also described in the legend of Flor and Blancheflor... The union of the lily-soul with the rose-spirit was taken to express that principle in man which can link him with the Mystery of Golgotha".

Rudolf Steiner lecture of 6th May 1909, GA 57

When this marriage of the human soul and cosmic spirit is consummated, the Christ child is born in the heart of the self-conscious human self. And this newborn higher self, is also the essence of spiritual cognition, because this cognition is in itself a productive, creative power:

"This human being who gives birth in man to the higher man, to a man who represents a little world in the great world, who out of his purified soul brings forth the true higher man — what is he? He cannot be otherwise described than by the word clairvoyant. If we try to make a picture of the soul that gives birth to the higher man out of himself, out of the spiritual universe, we need only call to mind the picture of the Sistine Madonna, the Madonna with the wonderful Child in her arms.

Thus in the Sistine Madonnawe have a picture of the human soul born of the spiritual universe, and springing from this soul the highest that a human being can bring forth — man's own spiritual birth, what within him is a new begetting of cosmic creative activity".

Rudolf Steiner, lecture of 29th April, 1909, GA 57 

If we experience inwardly what Rudolf Steiner described above, we can read Cognitive Yoga again with deeper understanding. In chapter 7, Birth of a New Etheric Body, I describe how the connection between the etherized blood and lymph is connected to the birth process of the new etheric body. Their spiritual union brings about the spiritualization of the forces of fructification and birth, that harbor the new etheric body. This is also the connection to the new Grail mysteries, because this etheric body, that we have to create today independently, is also the new Grail chalice, into which the etheric Christ can pour his new life forces. This new etheric body is the result of the fully conscious activity of the spiritualization of cognition. Therefore, it’s not a mystical, symbolic or visionary picture, nor a mere anthroposophical representation of known theoretical knowledge, but the result of a freshly produced, vibrant, radiant, actual spiritual creation. This chalice is the life-giving fountain of the new human stream of individualized, Christ given, life forces. It is the result of the creative esoteric work of humanity, that in the 21stcentury begins to redeem and heal the horrors of our time.

The passage posted below, as the book as a whole, of course, is written for the creative co-creators of future anthroposophy, who strive today to find a way to create the new etheric body of humanity and the earth, as the living foundation of our future work together.

Cognitive Yoga: Making Yourself a New Etheric Body and Individuality

From Chapter 7: Birth of a New Etheric Body

The previous etherization process in the blood flowed from the heart to the brain and then back to the heart as cognitive processes via the larynx. This is an etherization of the red blood, in which iron, the earthly metallic substance, is already incorporated. The deeper and enhanced etherization begins before the intake of iron, where the blood tissue itself originates. Indeed, these forces originate in the metabolic processes where the white lymph is produced, before it joins the red blood, and in the bone marrow, before the red blood cells are formed, activating humanity's long protected, purest childhood formative forces, showing how deep this etherization penetration goes into the physical body itself. This etherization produces life forces different from the forces produced by the etherization of the already formed blood in the heart that flows to the brain as we demonstrated above. Now we co-create with the whole world, by bringing together the subtle etheric productive world forces and the forces of our threefold etheric body and focus their synergetic effects in these earliest and purest bodily depths. As a result, we witness how out of their union a new, third, united human-world stream is produced. This mutual exchange and merger is repeated and intensified as etheric breathing from the very first beginnings of the cognitive yoga practice, from the head to the larynx and heart and now in the abdomen and limbs. At this stage it reaches a certain culmination.

By means of this intensified mutual exchange we experience the fullness of the human-world, world-human, etheric merger with the cosmos, and now we become aware-with holy awe- how it awakens and stimulates the pristine forces of our bodies, and how the whole cosmos most purely unites with them to bring forth a new emergent etheric stream of becoming to expression. Thus, a new third stream is conceived through the merger of the world formative forces and the bodily potential life and resurrection forces, and this stream is endowed with unique productive potential. This process also helps us to answer some of the most difficult esoteric riddles related to the reproduction and sexual life of the present human being.

Read on in chapter 7: Birth of a new Etheric Body