Cosmos
The cosmos (Greek: κόσμος kósmos "world [order]", also "jewellery" or "decency") is the external revelation of the spiritual world order that develops in the course of time. It not only follows the laws of nature, but also has a moral dimension at the same time. The cosmos thus becomes the epitome of order. The opposite concept is chaos, in which the spirit withdraws from the outer appearance. Largely synonymous with the term cosmos is the terms universe (from Latin: universus "total", from unus and versus "turned into one") , as the total of all created things; the nuance of meaning here, however, lies more on the spatial aspects and less on the inner order and beauty of the cosmos. In the most external sense, the cosmos is then also called space.
Cosmology (Greek: κοσμολογία kosmologia "doctrine of the cosmos", in spiritual science more properly called cosmosophy (from Greek κόσμος kósmos "world[-order]", also "adornment", "propriety" and σοφία sophίa "wisdom"), is concerned with the origin, nature, structure and development of the cosmos.
The deeper meaning of all cosmic evolution is that beings progress in many ways from taking to giving, i.e. from being a creature to being a creator.
Man is built according to the thoughts of the cosmos
„Man is built according to the thoughts of the cosmos. The cosmos is the great thinker who engraves our form in us down to the last fingernail, just as our little thought-work makes the little engravings in the brain during everyday life. Just as our brain - that is, only in relation to the small parts where engravings can happen - is under the influence of thought-work, so our whole human being is under the influence of cosmic thought-work [...].
We are thought out of the cosmos. The cosmos thinks us. And just as we make small engravings in our brain in our little everyday thought-work and then the ideas of lion, dog, table, rose, book, up, down, left, right come to our consciousness as the reflections of what we prepare beforehand in the brain - that is, In the same way that we finally perceive lion, dog, table, rose, book, up, down, write, read, through the processing of the brain, the beings of the world hierarchies work in such a way that they carry out the great activity of thinking, which engraves something more significant in the world than we do with our everyday activity of thinking. Thus it comes about that not only the small tiny engravings arise which are then reflected individually as our thoughts, but that it is we ourselves in our whole being which again appears to the beings of the higher hierarchies as their thoughts. Just as our little brain processes mirror our little thoughts, so we, by being engraved in the world, mirror the thoughts of the cosmos. By thinking, the hierarchies of the cosmos think us human beings, for example. As from our little brain particles come our little thoughts, so from what the hierarchies do and to which we ourselves belong come their thoughts. Just as the parts of our brain are the reflecting apparatuses for us, which we first process for our thoughts, so we, we little beings, are what the hierarchies of the cosmos prepare for their thoughts. So in a certain respect we can say: we can feel towards the cosmos as a small part of our brain could feel towards ourselves. But as little as we are spiritually-soulfully what our brain is, so little, of course, are the beings of the spiritual hierarchies "we". Therefore we are independent in relation to the entities of the higher hierarchies. And we can say: in a certain way we serve them, so that they can think through us; but we are at the same time independent entities which have their own being in themselves, just as even in a certain way the particles of our brain have their own life.
Thus we find the connection between the human and the cosmic thought. The human thought is the regent of the brain; the cosmic thought is such a regent that to what it has to perform we ourselves belong with our whole being.“ (Lit.:GA 151, p. 76f)
Literature
- Rudolf Steiner: Der menschliche und der kosmische Gedanke, GA 151 (1990), ISBN 3-7274-1510-X English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
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References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
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