The Eighth Sphere by Option 3
"The metaverse is the next version of the internet. But instead of static webpages, it will thrust you into an immersive game-like world. Think of the metaverse like a massive virtual world where you can go to work, learn, create art, shop, watch concerts, hang out with friends, and do dozens of other real-life activities." – Forbes Welcome To The 'Metaverse'
"New worlds are in the making, Calvin's world is in the making, Tamara's world is in the making, Sam and Joe's world is in the making and your invited." – Meta (Facebook) Horizon
*Notice how the avatars do not have legs! The limbs and in particular the legs are connected with the will forces within the human being. Meta (Facebook) are not the only company to depict avatars in virtual reality without legs.
If we take a moment to observe the world around us, many people walk around with their heads in another world. Their legs still walk the earth but their attention is elsewhere. The screen of their mobile phone is a portal to another place, a world in which their virtual self, a carefully crafted version of who they wish to be for other online perceivers, takes on ever more characteristics chosen by the creator of the avatar.
"Everything will be digitalised which can be digitalised." Klaus Schwab- Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum
Eric Schmidt's roll as Google CEO is well known, his and Google's connections to the intelligence agencies and military are less well known about.
"What we're really doing is building an augmented version of reality." Eric Schmidt–TechCrunch Disrupt 2010
Zultan Istvan is one of the world's most prominent Transhumanists, having spoken at the World Economic Forum, the World Bank as well as being a contributor to major publications such as The New York Times, Wired, The Huffington Post, TechCrunch and Newsweek. In a recent interview he said the following:
"The world will be run by 'Ai' networks and networks of quantum intelligence. Nations will have ceased to exist as independent physical entities because they will be online and have all merged as one. Humans may exist, but they will be off the 'Ai' grid, and contributing very little to progress and what is happening to the world." Zultan Istvan- When asked what the world would be like in 50 years.
Rudolf Steiner explains that the ultimate goal of the adversarial powers is to draw as much of humanity into the Eighth Sphere as is possible. If you imagine a future where people's minds are permanently connected through entanglement* to a quantum internet, controlling all aspects of life both real and virtual; the virtual made up from countless imaginative universes almost indistinguishable from physical reality, then you will have some idea of how the human "I" will be controlled and over time destroyed as the human being is INCORPORATED into that sphere of being, or you could say not being.
* Quantum entanglement is the phenomenon that occurs when a group of particles are generated, interact, or share spatial proximity in a way such that the quantum state of each particle of the group cannot be described independently of the state of the others, including when the particles are separated by a large distance.
An entangled system is defined to be one whose quantum state cannot be factored as a product of states of its local constituents; that is to say, they are not individual particles but are an inseparable whole. In entanglement, one constituent cannot be fully described without considering the other(s). The state of a composite system is always expressible as a sum, or superposition, of products of states of local constituents; it is entangled if this sum cannot be written as a single product term.
–Wikipedia
"In truth, therefore, our Earth —the Fourth Sphere — is simply not what it appears outwardly to be. Were it really to consist of atoms, all these atoms would still be impregnated by formations belonging to the Eighth Sphere — which are perceptible only to visionary clairvoyance. These formations are present everywhere; so too is the spectre-like content of the Eighth Sphere which can therefore be perceived just as actual spectres are perceived. All earthly being and existence are involved here. Lucifer and Ahriman strive unceasingly to draw from the Earth's substances whatever they can snatch, in order to form their Eighth Sphere which then, when it is sufficiently advanced, will be detached from the Earth and go its own way in the Cosmos together with Lucifer and Ahriman. Needless to say, the Earth would then pass over to Jupiter as a mere torso." – Rudolf Steiner The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century, Lecture Five
"How was it that the expression "Eighth Sphere" came to be used? — You know that human evolution takes its course through the seven spheres of Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan.* We will conceive that besides these seven spheres there is still something else which lies outside them and yet is in some way related to the Earth. Here, then, we have a sphere, visible only to visionary-imaginative clairvoyance, which stands there as an Eighth Sphere over and above the seven which constitute the domain of the ordered and regular evolution of mankind. All such sketches are, of course, purely diagrammatic; one is obliged to draw separately spheres which can only be observed each within the others. For you will certainly have realised from our studies that as long as a man is within the material world, makes his observations through the senses and thinks with the intellect, he is standing in the Fourth Sphere, the Earth Sphere. If he develops his faculties of soul sufficiently to be able to see the Third Sphere, the Moon Sphere, then he takes a far flight—but not in the spatial sense. He observes, not from another place, but physically speaking, spatially speaking, from the same place. These seven spheres ought therefore in reality to be drawn within one another. They are successive stages and states of evolution and, fundamentally, such a diagram is of no other value than as if one were to say: human beings develop from birth to the seventh year in a first stage, from the seventh to the fourteenth year in a second stage, and so on. The being who has developed from the first to the seventh year cannot be thought of as separate from the being who is developing from the seventh until the fourteenth year. Neither is it correct to think of the seven successive spheres or stages of the Earth's evolution as separate from each other.
This will give you an inkling that the Eighth Sphere is to be observed within the Earth Sphere. It cannot properly be drawn either above or below; to depict the reality it would have to be sketched into the Earth Sphere. I have often given a crude example to express what is here meant. Just as the physical air is around us, so is the Spiritual around us; we have to look for the Spiritual within what is actually physical in our environment. Hence it must be presumed that just as the spiritual is round about us, so we must also look for the Eighth Sphere in our environment. This means that an organ enabling man to perceive the Eighth Sphere would have to be developed, just as his physical senses enable him to perceive the material Earth. He could then experience the Eighth Sphere quite consciously; but unconsciously he is always within it just as we are always within the air, even if we are not aware of it. And if we have developed an organ for experiencing the Eighth Sphere, we are conscious of it around us. So that if the Eighth Sphere is to be described, it must obviously be described as a realm in which we are living all the time.
Now, as I said, all that I can do in these introductory studies is to give some general information—the rest will emerge as we proceed. First of all, you can understand that what is around us as the Eighth Sphere is accessible to Imaginative-visionary clairvoyance. To develop Imaginative clairvoyance without perceiving something of the Eighth Sphere is impossible. The reason why it is so difficult to speak of matters such as the Eighth Sphere is because really clear and discriminative clairvoyance is possessed by so very few. In the Eighth Sphere we have to do with Imaginations, and what constitutes the essential nature of Earth-evolution — that is to say, the Fourth Sphere — is not present in the Eighth Sphere. The essential nature of the Fourth Sphere is constituted, as I indicated yesterday, by the mineral impregnation of this world-body. That we are able to live on the Earth is due to the fact that this Fourth Sphere has been mineralised: we live in a mineralised environment; what is perceived through the physical senses can be co-ordinated by the intellect. But we must conceive that the mineral element is totally absent from the Eighth Sphere.
When we eliminate the mineral element in thought, all that remains is a later stage of the Old Moon evolution, for whence could anything else originate? But evolution proceeds; something that is perceptible through Imaginative, visionary clairvoyance but could be nothing else than a residue of the Old Moon—that would be no Eighth Sphere. All that could be said would be that something has been left behind by the Third Sphere.
In order to have some inkling of facts relating to the Eighth Sphere, let us keep the following in mind. In the course of its regular evolution, the Third Sphere became the Fourth Sphere; that is to say, a transition of the third elemental kingdom — for that is what we must call it — to the mineral kingdom took place. The mineral element was added. Otherwise we should have to conceive of the Old Moon as a sum-total of substantiality, imaginatively perceptible! It must therefore be assumed that the regular progression from the Old Moon to the Earth, from the Third Sphere to the Fourth Sphere, consists in what was formerly only imaginatively perceptible becoming materially perceptible, that is to say becoming mineralised. As the Eighth Sphere there remains, to begin with, the Old Moon element, but owing to a particular happening this Old Moon element undergoes a change. What took place in order that the Fourth Sphere might be able to arise from the Third is clearly described in the book Occult Science, where it is said that to the activities of the Spirits of Movement are added those of the Spirits of Form under whose guidance the whole process of the transformation takes place. We can therefore say that the Fourth Sphere arises out of the Third through the fact that the Spirits of Form add their activities to those of the Spirits of Movement.
If the Spirits of Form had achieved everything that their own nature desires and moreover is able to achieve, when the mission of Sphere Three was fulfilled in the Cosmos, Sphere Four would have arisen quite naturally from Sphere Three. That is obvious. But we know that Luciferic and Ahrimanic spirits are at work — and they hold back for themselves something of the Old Moon substantiality, wrest it away, as it were, from the Spirits of Form. The fact that Lucifer and Ahriman do so is indicative of their essential nature. Thus as Sphere Three is advancing to a further stage, something is wrested from the Spirits of Form by Lucifer and Ahriman; into this part that is wrested away, Lucifer and Ahriman penetrate, instead of the Spirits of Form. The activities of Lucifer and Ahriman are added to those of the Spirits of Movement and, as a result, Eight arises out of Three. (Note by translator: The Eighth Sphere out of the Third Sphere.)
Something else, then, must be there, not merely the Old Moon, and this "something else" which comes into being as well as Sphere Four is constituted by the fact that mineral substantiality, as it comes into being, is wrested away at the moment of the birth of the Fourth Sphere. Thus when the mineral comes into existence out of the Imaginative substantiality, it is snatched by Lucifer and Ahriman and made into Imagination. – Rudolf Steiner The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century, Lecture Five
"This is the dimension of imagination…This is going to be fun." – Meta advert
"Instead of an Earth arising from the remaining Old Moon substantiality, a cosmic body takes shape whose birth is due to the fact that the substantiality wrested from the Earth is made into what has come over from the Old Moon.
Now recall how I have described the conditions pertaining to the Old Moon, in the book Occult Science. In the Old Moon there was as yet nothing mineral. Had mineral substance been present, that world-body would have been an Earth, not Moon. Sphere Four comes into being through the birth of the mineral element. In that Lucifer and Ahriman approach, snatch mineral substantiality out of Sphere Four and infuse it into Sphere Three, the Old Moon is recapitulated, but now with materiality that belongs properly to the Earth.
Mark this well: instead of pure Imaginations being there, the Imaginations are densified by the infusion of a mineral element that has been wrested from the Earth. Densified Imaginations are thus created. We are therefore drawn into a world of densified Imaginations which are not lunar in character because they have been densified by materiality belonging to the Earth. They are ghosts, spectres — that is to say, behind our world there is a world of spectres created by Lucifer and Ahriman." – Rudolf Steiner The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century, Lecture Five
Within spiritual science Rudolf Steiner used the names Lucifer and Ahriman to designate two adversarial opposing forces – cosmic principles if you like, which can be envisaged as beings that we encounter in order to develop freedom. The degree to which they are held in balance by the central principle, which we refer to in its individualised manifestation when we say "I"Am, being in many ways the extent to which we are free.
"Steiner describes unseen beings who tempt and waylay us in two very different directions. On one side there are the servants of Lucifer, the fallen angel of light. They are beings who have brought humanity great gifts, but who would abandon the goals of the highest hierarchies and create a blissful kingdom of spiritual light and delight for themselves. On the other side, there are immensely powerful beings who strive to blind us to the spirit, powers for whom it is self-evident that the universe is a machine and that what can be measured, weighed, and quantified is the only reality. These spirits of materialism belong to the dark power that ancient wisdom called Ahriman, or Angra Mainyu." – Henry Barnes A Life for the Spirit: Rudolf Steiner in the Crosscurrents of Our Time, Anthroposophic Press 1997, p. 131
Rudolf Steiner and other supersensible researchers explain how the workings of Lucifer and Ahriman are connected with the forces of man-made electricity and magnetism, the polarities that information processing technologies are based upon. It is not as simple as Lucifer solely being connected with electricity and Ahriman magnetism, more research is required on this subject. Thinking of electricity as infinitely compressed light and magnetism as infinitely compressed sound is however helpful.
"Electricity is light in the sub-material state. Light is there compressed to the utmost degree. An inward quality too must be ascribed to light; light is itself at every point in space. Warmth can expand in the three dimensions of space. In light there is a fourth; it is of fourfold extensions – it has the quality of inwardness as a fourth dimension." – Rudolf Steiner GA 92
At the centre of the United Nations headquarters meditation room in New York sits a massive magnetic alter made from magnetite iron ore. Mr Hammarskjöld, former UN secretary general described it as:
"..a meeting of the light, of the sky, and the earth… it is the altar to the God of all.."
"We have the physical world, the astral world, the lower devachan (low spiritual) and the higher devachan (high spiritual). If the body is thrust down lower even than the physical world, one comes into the sub physical world, the lower astral world (counter astral), the lower or evil lower devachan (counter low spiritual) and the lower or evil higher devachan (counter high spiritual). The evil astral world is the province of Lucifer, the evil lower devachan the province of Ahriman, and the evil higher devachan the province of the Asuras. When chemical action is driven down beneath the physical plane – into the evil devachanic world – magnetism arises. When light is thrust down into the submaterial – that is to say a stage lower than the material world – electricity arises. If what lives in the harmony of the spheres is thrust down farther still, into the province of the Asuras, an even more terrible force – which it will not be possible to keep hidden very much longer – is generated. It can only be hoped that when this force comes to be known – a force we must conceive as being far, far stronger than the most violent electrical discharge – it can only be hoped that before some inventor gives this forces into the hands of humankind, human beings will no longer have anything immoral left in them." – Rudolf Steiner GA 91
The Lucis trust, which has received significant funding from both Bill Gates and George Soros is very much involved with the United Nations and although they do not openly worship Lucifer (and Ahriman?) they are more open about their feelings towards electricity.
"Beneath the surface of the information and communications revolution, an arcane process is at work with tremendous implications for humanity's future. In the digital circuits on which the Internet, computers and cellular phones all rely, electricity is made to run through the circuitry pattern on a silicon chip performing an ordered, repetitive dance – the rudiments of ceremony and ritual. Electricity is the life-force of Divinity; and the harnessing and directing of electrical behaviour is all part of the Divine Plan."– Lucis Trust Technology and the Plan
Compare the perspective given by the Lucis Trust to that obtained through spiritual scientific research.
"There are very few as yet who even feel the greatness of the spiritual tasks approaching man in this direction. Electricity, for instance, celebrated since its discovery as the very soul of nature's existence, must be recognized in its true character – in its peculiar power of leading down from nature to sub-nature. Only man himself must beware lest he slide downward with it." – Rudolf Steiner March 1925, in Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts, trans. George and Mary Adams (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1973; GA 313), pp. 217-219.
David Spangler is said to have been director of the Planetary Initiative at the United Nations. There no longer seems to be any direct evidence for this, however, he was certainly connected with the organisation, EU documents show that he was a 'planetary citizen'.
"Lucifer comes to give to us the final gift of wholeness. If we accept it then he is free and we are free. This is the Luciferic initiation. It is one that many people now, and in the days ahead, will be facing, for it is an initiation in the New Age." – David Spangler Reflections on the Christ, 1978 ed, Chapter IV, p 44-45 (unchecked)
D-Wave made the world's first commercial quantum computers. (strictly speaking, quantum annealers running adiabatic quantum computing algorithms) They are used by Google, NASA, Amazon, Lockheed Martin and many others. Their latest computer has 5,000 qubits, which equates to the computational processing power of 2 to the power of 5,000. Geordie Rose, founder of D-Wave Systems, gave a most prescient explanation as to how quantum computers actually work.
He first quotes David Deutsch, a pioneer in the field of quantum physics.
"Quantum computation …will be the first technology that allows useful tasks to be performed in collaboration between parallel universes." David Deutsch @ Ted 2005
and then goes on to say:
"Science has reached the point now where we can build machines that can exploit those other worlds. […] The shadows of these parallel worlds overlap with ours and if we are smart enough, we can dive into them and grab their resources and pull them back into ours, to make an effect in our world […] what I am telling you is absolutely correct and in line with the way these things actually work." Geordie Rose- Founder D-Wave Systems
When standing next to to the black cube of a the D-Wave Quantum Computer he said that:
"It feels like an altar to an alien God".
The large hydron collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, is another device that according to the project's scientists could be accessing other dimensions. It could be seen in some ways as a single giant qubit.
"Out of this door might come something, or we might send something through it" – Sergio Bertolucci Director for Research and Scientific Computing at CERN
In 'From Gondhishapur To Silicon Valley book 2' Paul Emberson explains in great detail that quantum computers work by exploiting certain characteristics of the Eighth Sphere.
Imagine a future time when the internet is a quantum internet and much of our technology uses quantum-based processors. As strange as it may sound, the processing will not be taking place within the physical hardware but, rather, the physical hardware will create a condition where the processors can access and utilise the parallel, non-physical dimension of our reality system known as the Eighth Sphere.
"If everything were to run without a hitch for Lucifer and Ahriman, if they were everywhere able to wrest as much as they wrest from the organ of the head, Earth-evolution would soon reach a point where Lucifer and Ahriman could succeed in destroying our Earth and in leading over all evolution of worlds into the Eighth Sphere, so that Earth-evolution as a whole would take a different course. Hence Lucifer endeavours to unfold his greatest strength of all at the place where man is the most vulnerable, namely, in his head." Rudolf Steiner- The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century, Lecture Five
Steiner's words at the time must have sounded like lurid science fiction but when seen in the light of current and future technological developments, they stand as a prescient warning of a terrible future that awaits humanity if we continue blindly along our current course of technological development and continue to deny any reality beyond the senses.
The Eighth sphere is not something new, it already exists, interpenetrating and being connected to physical reality. Its effect on and its role in evolution however is emerging and becoming ever more apparent.
"if the Eighth Sphere is to be described, it must obviously be described as a realm in which we are living all the time." – Rudolf Steiner The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century, Lecture 5
Is the enforced social distancing a further progression and physical manifestation of the social distancing we have been practising for many years through our technology? We are moving and being pushed into a world where human-to-human contact is being replaced with interaction through technology. Has the widespread use of the internet and binary technology over the past years had a detrimental effect on the finer non-physical bodies of the human being? If so, how would that damage and future damage manifest?
"The pictures of the external world made inward through the brain are absorbed by the blood and transformed into vital formative forces. These are the forces that build up the human body; in other words, blood is the substance that builds the body. We are dealing with a process that brings the blood into contact with the outer world; it enables it to take from it the most perfect substance, oxygen. Oxygen continually renews the blood, endowing it with new life." – Rudolf Steiner Supersensible Knowledge, Lecture 2, Blood is a very Special Fluid
What vital formative forces are absorbed by the blood if the pictures we are exposed to are increasingly electronically produced digitised pictures; and is blood that is damaged by mRNA/DNA injections still able to transform the pictures from the external world into vital formative forces in the right/same way?
We have already given over a great deal of our thinking ability to the internet.
"Today people have lost the ability to think. For example we have machines today which add and subtract; everything is convenient. Now, in the Future you will not get a law passed which says you must not think. No. What will happen is that things will be done the effect of which will be to exclude all individual thinking. This is the other pole to which we are proceeding. This is connected with the development of the West." – Rudolf Steiner Things in Past and Present in the Spirit of Man Lecture IV
We face a pivotal moment in human history when binary technology starts to enter the body of human beings, changing the evolutionary path of those who accept it. Bio-integrated quantum technology would, 'if developed', directly entangle human beings with the Eighth Sphere.
Mastercard, working with Gavi to develop a 'Wellness Pass', in their latest advert explains perfectly the delusion of connectedness that is promised by the socially distanced world that is being forced upon humanity :
Does the online world really unite us and create a new sphere of freedom?
"Those virtual worlds of 2060, to which an untold number of human beings will sacrifice their soul forces, will not be made up of limited sets of alternative scenarios programmed by human software developers, as computer games are today. They will be programmed in real-time by the giant super-computers, which will continuously adapt the scenes and plots of the game to the individual player's thoughts and emotional responses. Each player will live in his own personal world. It will be the ultimate splitting up of humanity." – Paul Emberson Supersensible Researcher, 50 Years from Now, Anthro Tech Newsletter 2009
The new education system that is being introduced will prepare our children to accept this future.
"It's a very decentralised system so education is just like the individual at the centre, so everything you are hearing, personalised learning and individual education plans, it's like one big person and you're the centre of your own universe and around you there aren't teachers or schools, its many digital interfaces, devices and data gathering platforms…" – Alison McDowell The dangers of education reform.
"The difference between being offline and online will be much harder to delineate." –World Economic Forum What is the metaverse? And why we should care?
It is important to understand that the higher and lower aspects of the non-physical worlds are not above us and below us, they are in a sense aspects of our being, they are around us, inside of us, and interpenetrate us at all times. If you connect yourself to the metaverse you connect yourself to specific beings (conscious dynamic action potentials) which have certain qualities. The metaverse is a mechanism that will overtime rob you of the possibility of free independent action. As our children and subsequent generations pour their divinity into that sphere of activity, they will lose something.
Making our minds a component of the internet may for a time appear to give us incredible abilities, but in the process of assimilation we will not become the master of our minds, any abilities we receive will be given or bought. The mastery of our minds is the starting point for becoming the master of ourselves – which gives us the potential as we develop to increasingly partake, consciously, in the actual reality creation process.
The worlds within the Metaverse that we build may appear to be extremely free but the structure, upon which those worlds are built, is in actuality the antithesis of a world within which we can develop real freedom. Steiner explains that the only truly free deed that we can undertake in life is the act of meditation.
"When one begins to meditate, one accomplishes the only really free deed in this human life… we are completely free in this. Meditation is the archetypal free deed." – Rudolf Steiner (GA 214, 20.8.1922)
When we choose to meditate, especially a will strengthening meditation that requires effort, we do so completely out of ourselves, nothing compels us. Think of the myriad number of activities that we undertake every day, we eat because we are hungry, we do such and such because we feel like doing it, we work so we can eat or so we can do things that we would like etc. When we reach a point where we have mastery of the three elements of soul; thinking, feeling and willing, then these elements become quiet, so to speak, they cease to compel us in anyway. We become free to connect them as we choose, they do not in themselves exert any influence over us.
Freedom to experience and give ourselves up to every imaginable sense impression within virtual reality is a certain kind of freedom but it is not a mechanism by which we strengthen the central creative principle that we refer to when we say "I" Am. On the contrary, it is the very mechanism which, over time, will destroy that which is the centre of who we all are, the principle in us that is at the same time the most individual and yet universal. We all have the same name. We all call ourselves "I". If this is not the case then why do we hang our name upon our "I" so to speak? Why do we put it before our given name? We do not say Jane is "I" or John is "I". The "I" is the centre of who we are and we strengthen it by balancing and becoming the master of the external and internal pressures that seek to influence us every minute of every day. When we completely give ourselves up to any and every sense impression that we desire, we are not becoming the master of ourselves. That is not to say that we cannot enjoy sense impressions! Do you want to be the master of yourself or a slave to yourself? The battle for whether we live in a world of freedom or one of slavery is fought within every single human beings' heart. We can get feedback as to how well we are doing by looking at the external world! Those who have not had enough opportunities to grow and thus reach the point where they can then consciously choose their destiny, and at a certain point the white path, or those who reach the point of choosing, and consciously choose the black path will at a certain time not be able to exist within the higher energetic framework that follows the Earth phase of our evolution; a phase that will be inhabited by those souls who work towards the development of Spirit Self, Life Spirit and Spirit Man.
"If you do not use your own powers, others will come who will put them to use. Then a high supersensible world will incorporate all the fruit of the sensible realm, but the ground you stand on will be pulled out from under your feet. The purified world will develop over and beyond you. You will be excluded from it. If this is your choice, then yours is the black path. But those from whom you separate yourself tread the white path." – Rudolf Steiner Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its Attainment, The Great Guardian of the Threshold.
Here Steiner seems to be referring to those who have developed themselves to a certain level but choose a path of service to self. Those who's "I" manifestation is reduced and damaged over time through technological and other means are, as far as the author understands, in a slightly different category from those who choose the black path although both categories will be excluded as is indicated. Not through some kind of judgment but simply by the fact that they will not have developed a spirit body that is able to exist in higher energetic states of being.
There needs to be a mechanism by which coherent energetic structures are separated from the incoherent.
"The Eighth Sphere is not a physical place, it is a state of being, a condition, where the "I" is so destroyed that no free action of a person is possible." – Frank Burdich, supersensible researcher
Why do we need the forces of death and decay that the Eighth Sphere is a part of? If we imagine a physical example then it might be easier to envision the spiritual aspects. Imagine a world without death and decay, such a place would not be able to function for long. All that that has not reached a certain level of development will be pulled into the Eighth Sphere, only the spiritual fruits that come out of the physical Earth part of our evolution will go forward. That is not to say that those souls that do not go forward this time round will be completely lost. They will likely get another chance but will have to start at the beginning and rebuild themselves.
When trying to understand such a challenging subject as the Eighth Sphere and its relationship to the Metaverse, it is helpful to hold in mind the highest potentiality of what a human being can become. A possibility only made possible because of the consciousness structure that we find ourselves in, a structure that includes the Eighth Sphere, the forces of death and decay, and all those qualities that we call evil. If we called evil – learning structures that are out of place and balance, then we might not slip quite so easily into dualist fearful thinking.
"Man is today essentially a consciousness, or understanding being, whereas in many ways his will is limited. He understands the surrounding world as a totality — that is, to a certain degree — but has no real control over all that he penetrates with his knowledge. This control by his will is a development of the future, and it will become ever stronger until he attains that central goal of existence known to spiritual science as "the great sacrifice," signifying the power of will to sacrifice oneself completely, not merely in driblets of human sacrifice of the kind of which man is capable today with his puny present feelings and will power. In future time he will have developed the strength to sacrifice his whole being by letting it flow directly into material substance.
One may picture this "great sacrifice," the highest expression of will in divine nature, by imagining oneself before a mirror in which one's image is reflected. This image is, of course, an illusion, a semblance. Now carry over this image to the point of imagining yourself dying, sacrificing your existence, your feeling and thought, your very being, to inject life into that image. Spiritual science in all ages has called this phenomenon the "outpouring," "the emanation." If you could really make this sacrifice, it would be clear that you would no longer be here because you would have given up your whole being to this reflected image to imbue it with life and consciousness.
When the will has become capable of making the "great sacrifice," it actually creates a universe, great or small, whose mission is bestowed upon it by its creator. Such is the creative will in the Divine Being.
The second principle in the Godhead, life spirit, insofar as it has flowed into humanity, has already been indicated in the comparison that has been made with the mirror. This second principle is the reflected image itself.
Now imagine the inner being of a Divinity that has in this way created a universe, with itself as the center. If, for example, you imagine yourself as the central point in this room, surrounded not by these six surfaces of walls, ceiling and floor, but by a hollow globe that reflects its content, you will see yourself, as the central point, reflected on all sides, everywhere. In like manner you can picture a Divinity as a central will, reflected on all sides, and the mirror is both image of Divinity and the universe. For what is a universe? Nothing but a mirror of the essential nature of Divinity.
The universe lives and moves because the Divinity is poured into it — the "outpouring" — when Divinity makes the "great sacrifice" and is reflected in the universe. The pouring of life and being into a reflected image is an exact picture of this divine creative process.
The divine will expresses itself in infinite diversity, animating thereby the entire universe. In spiritual science, this process of Divinity repeating itself in infinite differentiation, in multiplicity, is known as "the kingdom," distinguished from the will itself. The will is the central point; its reflection, the kingdom. The will is in this sense comparable with spirit man; the kingdom, or will's reflected image, with life spirit.
The kingdom, in turn, reproduces the being of the Divine in infinite variety. Observe it fully, at least to the extent to which it is our kingdom, our multiplicity, or universe. Observe its visible manifestations in minerals, plants, animals and human beings. The kingdom is manifested in each separate being of all these, a fact that even our language expresses in the terms "mineral kingdom," "vegetable kingdom," "animal kingdom" and all the great divisions of our universe. The kingdom is all these; each of these in turn, is a kingdom, and if we observe the mass of details involved, we find the nature of all to be divine. In all of them the divine being is reflected, just as the central being is reflected in a hollow globe.
So an observer, looking at the world in the sense of spiritual research, sees God reflected in every human being as an expression and image of the Divine. In a graded series of beings, in infinite diversity, the Godhead appears in the kingdom, and the separate entities are distinguished from one another in the sense of spiritual science by their names. An observer at a stage of existence sufficiently lofty to look upon all these separate entities as "emanations," or "outpourings," of the Divine is able to give these entities their names, to give each manifestation of the Divine its name.
Of all beings in the universe, only man thinks the name of each of the separate members of the great multiplicity of the kingdom, distinguishing each from all the others. The will, as we have noted is comparable with spirit man; the kingdom, or reflected image into which the will has been "outpoured," is comparable with life spirit. The third of the three highest human principles that emanate from the Divine, by which the separate members of the great multiplicity of the kingdom are distinguished from one another and separately named, is comparable with spirit self. The occult science of the different religions has thus simply taught what it was that emanated from the Godhead and flowed into a person to become his eternal image or archetype.Thus, if you could see yourselves in that condition to which you should finally rise — the condition of spirit man — you would recognize its will-like nature.
If you would rise in thought to a comprehension of the vehicle of will (spirit man) — in other words, to life spirit — you would see that it is the kingdom that represents it in the divine sphere.If you would rise to penetrate what the names, or conceptions or ideas of things really signify in spirit, you would see that it is the name that represents this wisdom in the divine sphere.
So does ancient teaching reveal that the emanation of Divinity, which has flowed into human nature to form its eternal part, consists of name, of kingdom, of will. Thus what is called the higher triad in man is recognizable as part of the Divine.
To complete this picture, think of the four lower principles of perishable human nature. The three higher principles may be thought of, we know, as principles of the Godhead. Similarly, the four lower principles may be considered as of the perishable world, as human principles." – Rudolf Steiner
Is our universe such a creation? Is the centre of who we are a part of the being who created our universe? Are we individuated manifestations within that creation who have awoken to self-consciousness that now in a sense look back at ourself and ask who we are?
Do we want to learn one day to pour our divinity out and actually create universes or play at making universes while we pour our divinity into the Metaverse, a process by which we sacrifice our divine essence to adversarial powers?
It's time to choose.
David O'Hagan
December 2021