As a number of Masquerade readers wrote to me yesterday, asking for clarification about the breathing exercise described in Das Wort, I am posting Judith von Halle’s Chapter 38 (from Part VIII of Volume I, “Pre-exercise for Word Meditation”). I hope it will fully answer any questions.
A reader also asked about the illustration in yesterday’s “Holding Our Breath” post. It is a still frame from Speech: Invisible Creation in the Air, a video that dramatically visualizes Serge Mantier’s research (an extension of Johanna Zinke’s 1962 photographs, inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s call for experimental confirmation of the primal phenomenon embodied in the art of eurythmy as “visible speech”) into the central element of speech both within and immediately outside the body as it relates to audible sounds. Serge’s video and book are wonderful companions as one works through these indications of Judith’s in Das Wort.
NOTE: The italicized words are in the original German text; boldface sections are my emphasis.
Chapter 38 The Breathing Process
Our present breathing process was not only separated from the gods' thoughts, the gods' language and the gods' nourishment with the fall from Paradise, but it was also torn apart in itself, so that one can say: the divine breath has been split in the Luciferic thinking man into a duality of inhalation and exhalation. And to one of these two processes, namely to the process of exhalation, again the language of the earth man is chained.
The change of the breathing process as the first step on the way to the renewed union with the living Word is, however, pursued by the initiate of the Christian Rosicrucian training in a completely different way than in earlier times. In fact, it is almost the opposite of that which, for example, was brought about in the past by the so-called yoga exercises. Through the yoga exercises, the breathing process of the human being was influenced by breathing exercises, or more precisely, through the change, through the influence of the breathing processes, the state of consciousness of the human being was changed, expanded or extended.
The Rosicrucian initiate, however, proceeds in just the opposite way: He influences the breathing, which until then has been bound to the sense-bound thinking, by transforming his breathing through that thinking which he has recognized as the very own activity of his actual, namely spiritual being. This thinking, however, is just not that Luciferic thinking which man has developed more and more with the beginning of his earth incarnations, but it is a thinking raised into the sphere of consciousness of the higher human inner being, which reaches beyond the limits of the sense world. [296]
The Rosicrucian initiate begins to change his breathing process through the power of the inherent Word in the following manner:
First, a preliminary exercise is completed, which outwardly appears to be undertaken through a breathing exercise, but in reality is already itself an observation exercise, such as the actual thought exercise can only initiate.
First of all, one takes a breath in awareness of the mental-spiritual processes that take place during the breathing process due to the influence of the different entities of the spiritual world in man. So one performs the first part of the breathing process, the inhalation.
In doing so, one becomes aware that by taking a breath one is still bringing into one's mortal nature that part of the life-giving breath of the gods which can still come to us through the earth air and which supplies us with those forces of building up which can come to us from the old life ether stream by flowing through the unconscious soul element into mortal nature as through sluices which are opened without our doing anything. These forces are, as I said, a part of the formerly unified God-breath, which was broken after the fall of man, and which could become effective as a still unclouded revelation of the high sound forces for man. This part we get into our bodily organism with the inhalation process.
At the same time we may feel a great emotion, the sensation of gratitude towards the Godhead. Without this transformation of our earthly nature we would not have the possibility to take even the smallest step on our long way to complete self-responsibility. It is of the greatest importance at all in what [297] the exercises are carried out in the attitude of the soul. Sensations such as devotion, love, gratitude and reverence are the basic pillars of the soul mood of the Christian spiritual disciple, and their omnipresent and almost overflowing presence in his inner being is of such presupposing self-evidence that at the point of the soul-spiritual development of the human being to be discussed here there is no need to speak of them in more detail. What is described here as "breathing exercise" is actually only the conscious support of an inner need, which has already set in on his physical body like a delicate rhythmic change due to the higher spiritual training of the initiate.
Thus, through the process of inhalation, one first absorbs the life-giving forces of the deity, just as one can also absorb building forces through other parts of this originally one God–breath today, namely through the sounding of vowels or through the intake of earthly food.
That part of God's breath, which we take in through the process of inhalation, will, however, as already mentioned earlier, be dried up as a source of life for the mortal man in not too distant times. That this will come in such a way is connected with the fact that those forces of the construction can be replaced absolutely by another source which we can localize as Christian-Rosicrucian students of knowledge in the picture of the seventh apocalyptic seal situated in the center of the transparent cuboid of our sensual-supersensual beingness. From this source emanates that ray into the spiritual outer world, which within the sensory world can come to expression in various ways (for example, through language), but which in itself, as it springs from its source, can be recognized as the life ether stream of Christ.
In the present, man is in a transition between the still unconscious bringing in of the old building forces through his [298] usually not consciously undertaken process of inhalation of one in and the conscious inhalation of one of Christ's forces that will carry him into the future through a purified, i.e. conscious, life of thought and feeling. He is already able to supply his soul with divine life force in a new way. But this is only the smallest part of his supply in the present. He still gets his building forces mainly from the old life ether stream of the hierarchical, cosmic creative powers. To increase that share in the new kind of his supply by the etheric current of Christ ascending from below upward by constant exercises is the first intermediate goal of the Christian Rosicrucian initiation disciple on his way to the union with the Logos. He can (for example, through the exercises given here) work towards changing the relationship between these different sources, or the relationship of creation from these different sources, because he has recognized that it is neither permissible nor possible, even in the present and future, to continue to rely thoughtlessly on the old etheric current of life which has come to him since his descent from earth.
The preparation for the beginning of this change in favor of a strengthened absorption of the Christ-building forces by his consciousness he makes himself aware of the "old" spiritual-bodily processes which are going on during the supply of his earthly nature by the old life ether stream of the God-breath during the inhalation process. So he prepares himself by drawing in the air and raising his consciousness. He thereby realizes that by the absorption of that old current, which up to now poured into him through the sluices of his unconscious (or rather was not stopped by the closed gates of his consciousness), the building up of his earthly body, his [299] new Christ-life-ether-stream supports the "old Adam", while this earthly body begins to be dismantled in favor of its soul-spiritual development.
So what flows into us in the inhalation process through the old gods’ life forces and what thereby happens to the nature of man, the Rosicrucian student makes himself aware of in that preparatory exercise.
But there is something else that he has to bring to his consciousness with regard to the process of inhalation, and that, too, at that moment of his consciously executed inhalation: He has to become aware of the fact that in inhaling, with every breath he takes during his life, he again and again brings into himself a whole host of Ahrimanic thought-beings, namely, through the portion of the air that has become material. It is true that he receives his etheric building powers through the creative hierarchy world via the inhalation process, but it is equally true that today with every breath he also takes into his nature the spirits of Ahriman, which - via the earthly air components - have clung to this inhalation process.
Then the student should exhale and during this time develop an equally clear consciousness of the spiritual-bodily processes within him, which are connected with his exhalation process.
First of all, one should say to oneself: With my exhalation process I send out of me again all those Ahrimanic thought beings which I had to take in with me during the inhalation process when I permeated myself with the available remnants of the god-breath. I make myself aware that it is now important to carry out the exhalation process for a longer period of time than the inhalation process, in order to expel again completely from my nature that Ahrimanic host which has entered me with my breath. [300]
It is Ahriman's aim to cut off the exhalation process, so that he himself, once drawn into the human interior by the inhalation process, can dwell there eternally. This intention can be counteracted under the guidance of the higher consciousness by a long exhalation.
Among the spiritual processes connected with the process of exhalation, of which one has to become aware during this preliminary exercise in exhalation, however, is also the role of Lucifer, which he assumes during the breathing process in relation to the spiritual-bodily existence of man. One must be aware of the fact that in every exhalation of breath one also surrenders oneself to Lucifer, who - if one considers his intentions beyond the threshold - has connected himself with the exhalation process. It is true that, according to his will, in the inhalation process man is to take all air to himself, but his real aim is not to connect man with the air of this world, with the material particles of the air forever - as Ahriman strives to achieve. But Lucifer wants the human being to snatch the air to himself, so that the human being again completely spends his soul being together with the breath caught up before and flees from matter, flees to him, Lucifer, follows him alone into those vastnesses into which the human breath again spills. While Ahriman wants to hold the human being in the earthly conditions, Lucifer, on the other hand, uses the earthly conditions to pull up the human being into the periphery of the earth. Exemplarily the opposite approaches of the influence of Ahriman and Lucifer on the human nature can be observed.
Thus, the practitioner must also realize, when he exhales in his preliminary exercise, that he must thereby deliver himself to a certain extent to Lucifer. [301]