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Module 2: What key unlocks meaning in every aspect of life?
Looking in this first module at Unlocking the Open Secret – The Basics … through the earth sciences and the historical land formations of our earth
Participants in module 2
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Plate techtonics - triple junctions
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Report on Module 2 of 2020 of the AFRICA SEMINARY
What key unlocks meaning in every aspect of life?
Looking in this second module at Unlocking the Open Secret, The Basics …. Through the earth sciences and the historical land formations of our earth
by John-Peter Gernaat
by John-Peter Gernaat
Goethe asks us to look at the natural world and to see what is there in nature. This one element of the work of Goethe was completely neglected after his death. It was not until Rudolf Steiner brought it back into focus that anyone paid it any attention. Goethe had described nature as ‘the open secret’. If we develop the appropriate way to look at nature and so penetrate it with our perspective then the secret held in nature for us to behold is revealed.
The Seminary theme this year began by considering the silicates.
“In a crystal we have clear evidence of a formative life principle, and though we cannot understand the life of a crystal, it is nonetheless a living being.” (Nikola Tesla, 1900)
The crystals are physical and appear lifeless, but they are connected to living beings. In a sense they are the cast-off physicality of living beings. In the human being we see the full living being reflected. We have a physical body, a formative life-force, a soul expression and an “I”-organisation or Divine principle incorporated in our constitution. (Our “I”-organisation has since Golgotha been incorporated into our constitution, whereas before we might consider it to have been experienced as a companion on our way.) We do not see this full constitution anywhere else in nature. In nature some component of the constitution is still in the spiritual world. When we behold the natural world, we can arrive at a sense of the process of these beings that is not yet manifested on the earth. What may appear as a dead world is connected to a living process. We can arrive at a sense for a structure that allows us to ask: “What is the significance to us?”
Our historical gaze went back to the ancient Babylonians (before their culture became corrupted). In their early maps the Babylonians included their religious beliefs. Rivers and mountains (physical features) were not only represented but also features that were not physical: doorways, so to say, to the spiritual world. For them the cosmic script was written in the fixed and mobile stars. They did not see the stars as we do, looking up at the night sky. They had the ability to imagine the stars as seen from outside of the Milky Way looking in towards the earth. They saw majestic divine powers in the mobile stars (see module 1) that blessed the earth with metals, and they placed the mobile stars as the names of the seven days of the week. They recognised twelve months in a year and four seasons. They recognised 60 as the lowest, most divisible number that has whole numbers as the answer. (60÷60=1; 60÷30=2; 60÷20=3; 60÷15=4; 60÷12=5; 60÷10=6; 60÷6=10; 60÷5=12; 60÷4=15; 60÷3=20; 60÷2=30; 60÷1=60) The number 60 had a very special significance for the ancient Babylonians in their desire to categorise everything and to find connections between everything. For them 60 was the right number to divide into a circle giving us 360° to a full circle. It also divided an hour into minutes and a minute into seconds. The relationship between the circle and time gives us minutes and seconds when dividing up a circle into the smaller parts of 360°s.
The emperor Napoleon Bonaparte introduced the metric system of measurements (distances, volumes and weights) to replace old measurements such as a foot, throughout Western Europe. This metrification introduced the decimal (divisions and multiplications of 10). But he could not metricise time or the circle. These still remain connected to the number 60, or multiples of 60.
According to the ancient Babylonians, the mobile stars gifted the earth with the seven metals while the fixed stars, all the constellations gifted us with the grains of sand on the shores of the oceans – i.e. the silicates. The one is the gift of the other. From the perspective of the Babylonians, viewing the stars and the earth from beyond the Milky Way, the fixed stars gifted the earth with its crust while the mobile stars, further away from their vantage point, gifted the metals deep within the earth.
The earth itself is divided into three parts: the core, the mantle and the crust. The earth’s mantle is divided into three layers: the upper mantle which extends to 410km, a transition zone that extends to about 670km and the lower mantle that extends to the boundary with the core at about 2900km. The earth’s crust consists of continental crust, which is thicker and lighter because of its mineralogy and the oceanic crust, which is thinner and denser because it is much newer, made up of denser silicates, originating from volcanic action along rifts on the ocean floor – see tectonic plates a little further down. The core of the earth is divided into two layers with the outer layer being molten due to the high temperatures and the inner core being solid due to the high pressure. The earth’s crust plus a thin layer of the upper mantle form the lithosphere, down to about 100km. Below the lithosphere the upper mantle is partially molten. What this means is that the lithosphere drifts on the partially molten aesthenosphere below. The partially molten aesthenosphere is in motion because of the heat rising from within the earth. This motion translates to the crust above which has broken up into separate plates. These plates move about on the surface of the earth. We call this plate tectonics.
How do we know so much about the interior of the earth? Seismic waves from earthquakes travel through the earth from the place of the earthquake to the other side of the earth. These waves move through the different layers of the earth at different velocities based on the state of the material (molten or solid) and they are bent at the interface between the layers – just like light is bent when it moves from air to water or to glass (we do the experiments in school). When the seismic waves are measured on the opposite side of the earth to an earthquake, they tell us a lot about the layers of the earth through which they have passed. We also know a little about the upper mantle from kimberlites and diamonds. Diamonds are formed below 120km depth in the earth. They are ‘passengers’ in the kimberlite volcanoes that erupted very rapidly. Bits of the mantle are also caught up in kimberlite and can be found as mantle nodules. Both mantle nodules and diamonds are extensively studied by a specialised branch of geologists to understand the mantle of the earth.
Plate tectonics was introduced into the school curricula in the 1960’s. There are seven major plates that move about the earth’s surface in relation to each other. They move in three ways:
The rocks in the crust of the earth are divided into three types:
Granite
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Sedimentary rock layers
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Metamorphic gneiss
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Returning to plate tectonics, of particular interest is where three plates meet. These places on the earth’s crust are called ‘triple junctions’. Rudolf Steiner had identified some of these points, calling them “cracks in the earth”, before they had been identified by scientists. There are three types of formations where plates meet: ridges, trenches and transform faults. A triple junction is identified by the three formations that meet. One could be a ridge, the other a trench and the third a transform fault. In the region of Afar in Ethiopia three failed divergent plates meet in a ridge-ridge-ridge (RRR) triple junction. Off-shore of Japan three convergent plates meet in a trench-trench-trench (TTT) triple junction known as the Boso Triple Junction. These are the Pacific Plate, the North American Plate (represented by the Okhotsk Plate) and the Philippine Sea Plate. And very near to the Boso Triple Junction is a second triple junction in the Banda Sea where the North American Plate and the Philippine Sea Plate meet the Eurasian Plate at the Banda Sea Triple Plate.
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Rudolf Steiner pointed to three “cracks in the earth” and said they were connected. These are the Afar Triple Junction, the Boso Triple Junction and the NACC Triple Junction (North American-Caribbean-Cocos) off the coast of Honduras. When viewed on a globe of the earth they are about 120° apart forming a triangle. This triangle in the northern hemisphere is ‘anchored’ by the south pole forming a tetrahedron.
As we have learned more about plate tectonics and identified the many junctions between plates, three triple junctions beneath the oceans of the southern hemisphere have stood out. These are situated near the island of Rodriguez in the Indian Ocean, in the mid-Atlantic and near the Galapagos Islands. These too are about 120° apart and form a triangle anchored to the north pole, thus also forming a tetrahedron. Within the earth there are therefore two interpenetrating tetrahedra.
As we have learned more about plate tectonics and identified the many junctions between plates, three triple junctions beneath the oceans of the southern hemisphere have stood out. These are situated near the island of Rodriguez in the Indian Ocean, in the mid-Atlantic and near the Galapagos Islands. These too are about 120° apart and form a triangle anchored to the north pole, thus also forming a tetrahedron. Within the earth there are therefore two interpenetrating tetrahedra.
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There is a crystalline form in the relationship between the triple junctions of the earth’s tectonic plates. The tetrahedron is a crystalline idea. The earth is a spherical idea. When we work a sphere into a tetrahedron we get a curved tetrahedron.
Throughout this talk Michaël brought an awareness to the many natural features of the earth that occur in sets of three.
Rev. Reingard Knausenberger added a perspective to the crystals of the earth. The spiritual forces that connect the crystals and hold the elements that give the crystals their various colours: these same forces were active in developing our human senses. The human eye has a crystal clear aspect in the lens and fluids of eye. In a lecture to the workers of the first Goetheanum, Rudolf Steiner points out that the crystals of the earth provide the possibility for the angelic realms to look into the depths of the earth.
Rev. Reingard Knausenberger added a perspective to the crystals of the earth. The spiritual forces that connect the crystals and hold the elements that give the crystals their various colours: these same forces were active in developing our human senses. The human eye has a crystal clear aspect in the lens and fluids of eye. In a lecture to the workers of the first Goetheanum, Rudolf Steiner points out that the crystals of the earth provide the possibility for the angelic realms to look into the depths of the earth.
The experiential aspects of this module
The seminarists performed three activities that gave insight into the processes of the earth. Referring to the poem by W. H. Auden introduced in Module 1, the aim was to deepen an understanding of the earth’s process.
We performed the activity and then reflected on the activity, describing the process, the result and the feeling related to both.
The first process was candle dipping. Using three colours of wax we created a candle layer upon layer in a slow process of aggregation, sticking to one colour for a period of time and then switching colour. The result, when seen in cross-section, was a candle of spherical layers of three colours, within each could be seen the layers of wax that made up the individual colour layer.
The first process was candle dipping. Using three colours of wax we created a candle layer upon layer in a slow process of aggregation, sticking to one colour for a period of time and then switching colour. The result, when seen in cross-section, was a candle of spherical layers of three colours, within each could be seen the layers of wax that made up the individual colour layer.
The second process was wax pouring. Hot, clear liquid wax was poured in iced water. The process forms instant and almost explosive shapes. The resultant shapes were random, fluid, beautiful and uniform inside.
The third process was shaping a lump of clay into a sphere and then exerting pressure and warmth from the hands onto the sphere by cupping each hand to form a right-angle. By rotating the clay in a specific way regularly, the pressure is applied evenly on all sides and the result is a tetrahedron.
Adding external forces of pressure and heat to a sphere of clay
To form tetrahedra.
The three processes were an experiential representation of the rock forming processes within the earth.
The slow process of aggregating one layer of wax on top of another to form a candle represented the formation of sedimentary rocks.
The rapid process of adding hot wax to cold water represented to formation of igneous rocks from molten magma penetrating a cold earth crust.
The process of adding external pressure and warmth to a sphere of clay to form a tetrahedron represented the formation of metamorphic rocks.
During the discussions on the tetrahedra we viewed the process of transformation of two shapes.
The slow process of aggregating one layer of wax on top of another to form a candle represented the formation of sedimentary rocks.
The rapid process of adding hot wax to cold water represented to formation of igneous rocks from molten magma penetrating a cold earth crust.
The process of adding external pressure and warmth to a sphere of clay to form a tetrahedron represented the formation of metamorphic rocks.
During the discussions on the tetrahedra we viewed the process of transformation of two shapes.
We see the right-hand image on the chasuble at St. Johns-tide. It speaks to what is yet to unfold.
Allow yourself to imagine looking from outside of the Milky Way, through the constellations of stars, to the earth and find a connection to the process of forming the tetrahedra and view the tetrahedra within the earth.
We all considered which of the processes we had experienced and thought through what could be related to which aspect of the Trinity.
We considered the
Out of the experiences we had, we try to find a reality. In this way the earth becomes a school where we can learn. The earth was created as a lesson in love. We can learn this when we listen to the Sunday Service for the Children. The earth’s formative processes are in the past, but we are still living within these processes and can experience them.
Rev. Reingard Knausenberger asked that we study the map of the world and observe. We noted:
When we consider that the earth represents an Idea, we can see its structure to be like the head of a human being, like the countenance: In the northern hemisphere broad land masses are a skull-like ‘brain-region’ and the Middle East-Mediterranean Sea-Central American band the fluid ‘sense-region’ of eyes, nose and mouth, whereas the will is expressed in the triangular shape of the continents, especially in the southern hemisphere, like the teeth-chin area of the face. Then the Americas would form the right side of the face and Asia, Australia-New Zealand the left side.
We have been clearly told that the human being was created in the “image of God”. The development of the earth is closely connected with our own development. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to consider that the earth is a reflection of the human being.
The Pacific Ocean would represent the back of our skull – the open place of our past development and space of new becoming. The movement of the continental plates as a result of the movement within the mantle are metabolic movements. New substance is created at the mid-oceanic ridges where the openings occur.
The Maori peoples see Scorpio as the Great Fishhook. Their belief was that God used this fishhook to raise New Zeeland out of the ocean. This is an imagination for a geological process.
Looking down on the globe at the north pole we notice mountain ranges snaking northward into the Arctic Ocean. There are twelve chains of folded mountain ranges, of which five are old and seven newer. We have twelve cranial nerves, five directed forwards to our senses and seven backwards into the brain. The Arctic Ocean is like the fontanelle of the skull, above which sparkles the north pole star. Opposite to this in the south is the landmass of the Antarctic, over which the southern cross points to a night sky which is empty of stars. In this void is where the celestial south pole is.
When we look at the earth we can see a cross. The African Great Rift Valley is the most significant scar on the earth’s surface. One can imagine that the gods needed to ‘practice’ how to create the human being. We can see this in the morphology of the earth. When the gods wanted to practice creating a place suitable for the Christ to incarnate, they practiced in Zimbabwe and filled in the scar that was created with minerals. The place where Christ eventually incarnated sits in the place between the eyebrows, so to say, on the face of the earth. This is where the feet of one human being walking the earth brought the “I am” consciousness into the earthly human being. As we have heard in other talks, every part of the earth has a representation in Palestine. In each part of the body, the whole speaks. This we know e.g. through reflexology and kinesiology. The earth is getting old and is beginning to slowly crumble. We, humanity, are the new seed for the future.
We returned to the table that was presented in Module 1 and discussed what is implied in what this table contains: The intellectual soul is shifting. We must become more aware of what in our experience is held in the intellectual soul. This wants an answer. The development of the consciousness soul is through the experience of processes. This can frustrate the intellectual soul because the processes do not hold clear answers. We take in something through an artistic experience that can bring an understanding between what we know and our understanding. We can extract something from the process which is individual for ourselves.
University students have the experience that a new subject is extremely interesting at first as they learn the new material, but then becomes tedious because the only thing that is added is more information. Only when the subject matter is experienced in a different light does it become interesting again. We need to live with the questions and see what is added over time as we digest the information.
Finally, we returned to the story of Elijah undertaking a 40-day journey to Mount Horeb (1 Kings 19:8-15) where he meets Yahweh. When Elijah enters the cave and awakens for the first time, he is physically awake but not spiritually awake and he knows that it is time to veil his face. It is not for him to remove the veil. There was a 40-day period of preparation (a journey) for this event. When he hears Yahweh in the ‘slender silence’ his awakening is a calling forth as from the tomb.
This calling forth from the tomb of an initiation sleep is repeated when Lazarus is called forth by Christ. He was the last human being to be initiated in this old way. He also became the first person to be initiated in the new way. We read about this initiation in Revelation chapter 1 and 4. In the new initiation John is spiritually awake (ch1). He is asked to look and describe what he sees (ch4). His seeing starts from the centre and slowly he notices more and more as looks outward from the centre.
Through my inner activity I can be transported across the threshold through the open door to look at what is in the spirit. The door is as open in nature as it is in heaven. In this module we used geology to find threads to weave together.
In the pericope of Matthew 4 we heard how the Spirit led Jesus into the desert where it (the Spirit) could develop in a way that keeps the questions alive and not arrive at a quick answer (which the Tempter seeks to offer).
In the time before Elijah the religions could still look out into nature and experience that nature is infused with the Divine. Elijah’s initiation is already a step away from this experience – in the forces of nature he cannot find Yahweh, he finds him in the ‘slender silence’ within himself. There is the shift from outside to inside where God is experienced in the silence. He experiences the shift and is called across the threshold.
Our preparation for the open door to the spiritual world is described in Rev. 3:20 “I stand at the door and knock: if any person hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him”. There is a temptation to want the astral soul experience of the ah-ha, but we need to take our experience inward. When Lazarus comes forth from the tomb he sees the One who called him forth. We, too, need a cosmic picture of Christ that is bigger than our personal experience. We can look out and feel the invested power in nature. The same three-fold power that is invested in us is invested in nature. The Temptation of the Christ presents us with an image how for everything there must be an anthesis – a tension. When we experience problems in our lives, we are being called to shift and cross a threshold.
Everyone of us articulated what element of the key we are forging to the door to the open secret we uncovered this time.
Allow yourself to imagine looking from outside of the Milky Way, through the constellations of stars, to the earth and find a connection to the process of forming the tetrahedra and view the tetrahedra within the earth.
We all considered which of the processes we had experienced and thought through what could be related to which aspect of the Trinity.
We considered the
- Father process to be the sedimentary process
- Son process to be the transformative process
- Spirit process to be the fiery and spontaneous process
Out of the experiences we had, we try to find a reality. In this way the earth becomes a school where we can learn. The earth was created as a lesson in love. We can learn this when we listen to the Sunday Service for the Children. The earth’s formative processes are in the past, but we are still living within these processes and can experience them.
Rev. Reingard Knausenberger asked that we study the map of the world and observe. We noted:
- The majority of the lass mass exists in the northern hemisphere.
- The continents and some sub-continents have a bulging land in the northern part and taper towards a point towards the south.
- The western margins of many continents are flanked by mountain ranges.
- The eastern margin of many continents have a flat coastal plain and shallow dipping continental shelf with headlands and islands giving the impression these edges are breaking up.
- The civilisations that most influenced the development of humanity existed in an east-west band where continental land masses have collided.
When we consider that the earth represents an Idea, we can see its structure to be like the head of a human being, like the countenance: In the northern hemisphere broad land masses are a skull-like ‘brain-region’ and the Middle East-Mediterranean Sea-Central American band the fluid ‘sense-region’ of eyes, nose and mouth, whereas the will is expressed in the triangular shape of the continents, especially in the southern hemisphere, like the teeth-chin area of the face. Then the Americas would form the right side of the face and Asia, Australia-New Zealand the left side.
We have been clearly told that the human being was created in the “image of God”. The development of the earth is closely connected with our own development. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to consider that the earth is a reflection of the human being.
The Pacific Ocean would represent the back of our skull – the open place of our past development and space of new becoming. The movement of the continental plates as a result of the movement within the mantle are metabolic movements. New substance is created at the mid-oceanic ridges where the openings occur.
The Maori peoples see Scorpio as the Great Fishhook. Their belief was that God used this fishhook to raise New Zeeland out of the ocean. This is an imagination for a geological process.
Looking down on the globe at the north pole we notice mountain ranges snaking northward into the Arctic Ocean. There are twelve chains of folded mountain ranges, of which five are old and seven newer. We have twelve cranial nerves, five directed forwards to our senses and seven backwards into the brain. The Arctic Ocean is like the fontanelle of the skull, above which sparkles the north pole star. Opposite to this in the south is the landmass of the Antarctic, over which the southern cross points to a night sky which is empty of stars. In this void is where the celestial south pole is.
When we look at the earth we can see a cross. The African Great Rift Valley is the most significant scar on the earth’s surface. One can imagine that the gods needed to ‘practice’ how to create the human being. We can see this in the morphology of the earth. When the gods wanted to practice creating a place suitable for the Christ to incarnate, they practiced in Zimbabwe and filled in the scar that was created with minerals. The place where Christ eventually incarnated sits in the place between the eyebrows, so to say, on the face of the earth. This is where the feet of one human being walking the earth brought the “I am” consciousness into the earthly human being. As we have heard in other talks, every part of the earth has a representation in Palestine. In each part of the body, the whole speaks. This we know e.g. through reflexology and kinesiology. The earth is getting old and is beginning to slowly crumble. We, humanity, are the new seed for the future.
We returned to the table that was presented in Module 1 and discussed what is implied in what this table contains: The intellectual soul is shifting. We must become more aware of what in our experience is held in the intellectual soul. This wants an answer. The development of the consciousness soul is through the experience of processes. This can frustrate the intellectual soul because the processes do not hold clear answers. We take in something through an artistic experience that can bring an understanding between what we know and our understanding. We can extract something from the process which is individual for ourselves.
University students have the experience that a new subject is extremely interesting at first as they learn the new material, but then becomes tedious because the only thing that is added is more information. Only when the subject matter is experienced in a different light does it become interesting again. We need to live with the questions and see what is added over time as we digest the information.
- Synthesis belongs somewhat to the intellectual soul
- Analysis is entirely an intellectual soul process
- Correlation is a consciousness soul process
Finally, we returned to the story of Elijah undertaking a 40-day journey to Mount Horeb (1 Kings 19:8-15) where he meets Yahweh. When Elijah enters the cave and awakens for the first time, he is physically awake but not spiritually awake and he knows that it is time to veil his face. It is not for him to remove the veil. There was a 40-day period of preparation (a journey) for this event. When he hears Yahweh in the ‘slender silence’ his awakening is a calling forth as from the tomb.
This calling forth from the tomb of an initiation sleep is repeated when Lazarus is called forth by Christ. He was the last human being to be initiated in this old way. He also became the first person to be initiated in the new way. We read about this initiation in Revelation chapter 1 and 4. In the new initiation John is spiritually awake (ch1). He is asked to look and describe what he sees (ch4). His seeing starts from the centre and slowly he notices more and more as looks outward from the centre.
- In the middle is the throne
- The throne is surrounded by 24 thrones
- Then he sees the flaming torches
- Then he sees the four living beings
- Then he sees the sea of glass
Through my inner activity I can be transported across the threshold through the open door to look at what is in the spirit. The door is as open in nature as it is in heaven. In this module we used geology to find threads to weave together.
In the pericope of Matthew 4 we heard how the Spirit led Jesus into the desert where it (the Spirit) could develop in a way that keeps the questions alive and not arrive at a quick answer (which the Tempter seeks to offer).
In the time before Elijah the religions could still look out into nature and experience that nature is infused with the Divine. Elijah’s initiation is already a step away from this experience – in the forces of nature he cannot find Yahweh, he finds him in the ‘slender silence’ within himself. There is the shift from outside to inside where God is experienced in the silence. He experiences the shift and is called across the threshold.
Our preparation for the open door to the spiritual world is described in Rev. 3:20 “I stand at the door and knock: if any person hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him”. There is a temptation to want the astral soul experience of the ah-ha, but we need to take our experience inward. When Lazarus comes forth from the tomb he sees the One who called him forth. We, too, need a cosmic picture of Christ that is bigger than our personal experience. We can look out and feel the invested power in nature. The same three-fold power that is invested in us is invested in nature. The Temptation of the Christ presents us with an image how for everything there must be an anthesis – a tension. When we experience problems in our lives, we are being called to shift and cross a threshold.
Everyone of us articulated what element of the key we are forging to the door to the open secret we uncovered this time.
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