I of Minerals

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The I of minerals, their group spirit, resides in the Higher Devachan as an essential spiritual reality. Their astral body, on the other hand, lives in the Lower Devachan and their etheric body in the astral world. Only their physical body is naturally in the physical world. The group-I's of the minerals stream their effects in radially from all sides from outside the solar system from the zodiacal region; an outward sign of this are the meteors and comets. The group-I's of the minerals are descended from the Spirits of the Will (Thrones) and their descendants, who created the basis for the physical body of man on Old Saturn.

„By way of indication, I should at least like to say that the comet is indeed something that comes in from the outside, but which in a certain sense attaches itself to the mineral. And the consequence can be that, as the comet rushes through the planetary system, mineral matter attaches itself to it, which is then attracted by the Earth and falls down. This, of course, is not the comet; it is rather the case that it announces itself in some way on the Earth through meteoric ejections.“ (Lit.:GA 136, p. 199)

„If one wanted to ask: Where is the I of the rock-world? - one would no longer be able to find such a being forming a centre in the spiritual world. Spread everywhere as the power of the whole cosmos, the I of the minerals is to be found in the super-spiritual world, theosophically called the higher Devachan world. In the Christian Secret Doctrine, the world in which the I of the animals is found, the astral world, is called the world of the Holy Spirit; the world in which the I of the plants is found, the spiritual or devachanic world, is called the world of the Son. When the seer begins to feel in this world, the "Word", the Logos, speaks to him. The world of the mineral I, the super-spiritual world, is called in the Secret Doctrine the world of the Father-Spirit.“ (Lit.:GA 100, p. 205f)

„In the Upper Devachan, above the fourth stage - it is called Arupa [= formless] - , where this antimatter begins, which is called the Akasha, there the consciousness of the minerals has its seat.“ (Lit.:GA 94, p. 94)

When stones, when minerals are smashed, their group soul feels a great sense of well-being.

„In the case of the mineral, it is easy to see that in the physical world we only have the physical body. This is precisely why the mineral appears to us as the inorganic, the inanimate. In the mineral, on the other hand, we have the etheric body of the minerals in the same world in which the group-I's of the animals and the astral bodies of the plants are. But as yet we find nothing of the mineral being showing anything of sensation. Nevertheless, the mineral also proves to be something alive. We learn the long-lasting life of minerals, the growth, the development, let us say, of ores or the like, in short, we learn the manifold mineral life of our planet on the astral plane. We learn to recognise, when a single mineral confronts us, that it is not much different from our own mineral-like bones, which are nevertheless connected with our life. In the same way, everything mineral is connected with a living thing, only this living thing is only to be found on the astral plane. Thus the etheric body of the mineral world is to be found on the astral plan. If we now dwell occultly, so to speak, in the same world in which the group-I's of the plants are, then we notice that the mineral world is also connected with something to which sensation is possible, with something astral. When stones are knocked in a quarry, one does not notice on the astral plane that there is any sensation, but on the Devachan plane one notices at once that when one knocks the stones, when parts break off, something like a feeling of well-being appears, like a kind of pleasure. That is also a sensation; it is just the opposite of the sensation that animals and human beings have in such a case. If you were to pound them, they would feel pain. With minerals the opposite is the case: if you beat them, they feel good. If you have dissolved table salt in a glass of water and you follow, with your gaze fixed on the Devachanic world, how the table salt reassembles itself into crystals, then you see how this happens in pain; then you feel pain in the places concerned. This is how it is everywhere in mineral life, where a solid is formed out of the watery through crystallisation. It was basically the same with our Earth, which was once in a softer and more liquid state. The solid has only gradually developed out of the liquid, and now we walk around on the solid Earth and lead our plough over the Earth. In this way, however, we are not hurting the Earth, it is doing it a great deal of good. But this was not good for the beings which are connected with the Earth and which belong to the planet as an astral kingdom, so that they had to clump together compactly in order to make human life possible on the planet. Then the beings who stand behind the stones as astral bodies had to endure pain upon pain. In the mineral kingdom the being, the creature, suffers with the progress of the earthly process. It makes one feel quite strange when one recognises this from occult investigation and then once again comes across the famous passage by an initiate: "All creatures sigh and suffer in pain, waiting for redemption, waiting to be adopted in the place of a child". Such things are overlooked in the writings based on the occult view. But when one confronts these writings with the occult eye, then only does one know: they give much to the simplest mind, but still more to one who can perceive all that lies in them, or at least much of it. The sighing and groaning of the mineral kingdom, which must be there because the cultural process of our Earth needs solid ground under its feet, is represented by Paul when he speaks of the sighing of the creature.

All this goes on in those beings which underlie the mineral kingdom as the astral body and which we find in the Devachanic world. The real I, the real group-I of the mineral kingdom, is to be sought in a higher world, which we will call the higher Devachanic world. Only here do the group-I's of the mineral kingdom find themselves. You must free yourself completely from the idea of identifying that which we call the astral body of a being with the astral world. In the case of minerals, the astral body is to be sought on the Devachan plan, the etheric body of minerals on the other hand in the astral world, the group ego of animals on the astral plan, the astral body of animals on the physical plan. As the world confronts us, we must say: we must not identify what we find in the beings as the individual members with the corresponding worlds, but we must precisely get used to presupposing differentiations in the various beings.“ (Lit.:GA 136, p. 157ff)

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.
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