Holding Our Breath
Last week the New York Times reported that a team of researchers had convened in Liverpool in late July to unveil a single number related to the behavior of the muon, a subatomic particle they believed “might open a portal to a new physics of our universe.” While the Liverpool physicists – joined by dozens of others watching worldwide via remote feeds – waited, someone typed a secret code to release the results. At the appearance of the number – exactly matching what physicists had calculated two years before – “there was a collective exhale across multiple continents,” the Times declared.
I happened to read this report just as I was translating Chapter 47 – “The different interaction forces in the sound powers; The titanic fight” – of Volume 1 of Judith von Halle’s Das Wort. Along with the previous 7 chapters, it details a new Christian–Rosicrucian breathing exercise, whereby, by consciously holding one’s breath upon exhalation, one is freed from all Ahrimanic and Luciferic activity which can enter the inner being of man through the earthly breathing process:
The strong desire to draw in the air is . . . the inexorable result of the drive of the Ahrimanic spirits inside man, which man (also unconsciously) wants to comply with. He is driven by these spirits to complete the process of inhalation, since from those Ahrimanic spirits which have united with him from the moment of his incarnation, the insatiable desire is kindled in him to take in ever new and ever more beings of their kind. With the process of inhalation he is to take into himself more and more Ahrimanic thought-beings swarming in from the material parts of the air and finally to become a being who - held in the unconscious - completely subordinates his entire nature of being to the impulses of these spirits. The more such Ahrimanic thought spirits flow into the inner being of man through the process of inhalation, the more tremendous also becomes the power of Ahriman over a certain area of the human spiritual nature, namely, Ahriman's power, which extends over man out of the sense-bound thought life and covers his spiritual bodily members, which become mobile through freedom, like a leaden mantle.
By way of this simple cognitive breathing exercise, Judith promises the reader that the oxygen–enriched sounds flowing out of him will begin to have a quality of nourishment “for the creatures still standing under him - as the venerable hierarchical sound forces once did for him.”
What an astonishing and inspiring picture! The human being now stands at a point in spiritual development where his own breathing process potentially becomes life–giving. However, as Judith elaborates in Volume II’s exposition of the Microcosm, the greatest obstacle to this divine destiny lies in our illusory thoughts about Matter, as spectacularly demonstrated by the field of quantum physics.
“A proud product of public school education” whose philosophy holds that “science should be accessible to all,” the NYT reporter (and recent University of Chicago physics PhD) Katrina Miller can be counted on to write many “breathlessly” admiring pieces about the discoveries of quantum physicists. As Christian–Rosicrucian students, we can “hold our breath” in a white magical deed to replace Ahriman’s power with the new Christ–imparted life ether, borne on our very breath.