Report on the Africa Seminary Module

by John-Peter Gernaat

This module of the Africa Seminary ran from Friday 19 March to Monday 22 March 2021. The theme of the module was: What key unlocks meaning in every aspect of life? Unlocking the Open Secret – The Basics through the development of the human being in utero and what this reveals. The purpose of the module was to study a blueprint that exists in Creation that is revealed in the story presented in Genesis and is clearly evident in the development of a human embryo in the first stage of its development.

Rudolf Steiner gave the following verse to Ita Wegman and it formed a touchstone for the module:
   The human being is a bridge between the past and the future.
   The present is a moment – moment as bridge.
   Spirit grown to soul in matter’s husk comes from the past:
   soul growing to spirit as seed encased journeys towards the future.
   Grasp future things through past ones:
   Hope for evolving things through what has evolved.
   So grasp existence in evolving growth:
   So grasp what will be in what exists.

​The embryology of the human foetus is quite complex and available in biology and medical textbooks.

Reading Genesis 1 Adam is created once all the plants and animals are already created. The human being is the recapituliser of the evolutionary process. Genesis 2 seems to present a different picture. In Chapter 2 Adam is a seed of everything in the Cosmos. He must name the animals (he must recognise the animals for their essential nature) and he can do this because they are derived from him. In Genesis 1 the blueprint is presented while in Genesis 2 YHWH of the Elohim (one of the Elohim) becomes the builder of this blueprint. In Genesis 2 we learn that the human being is the core trunk from which all else is derived. The human being at the same time is the archetypal seed-form while the other beings of creation become fixed as they branch off from the trunk. Therefore, Adam can name the animals and say: “I see nothing that is not me, but nothing that is entirely me”. When Eve is created Adam does not name her because she is all of himself, not an aspect of him. It is only after the Fall that Eve is named as ‘mother’.

The Vedic tradition has a very similar picture of the creation. The entire universe was created as a Cosmic Human and then we were created as a microcosm of the Cosmic Human Being. We are mirrored in the forms that surround us. One could say that the human being is an upside-down plant comparing leaves to lungs, flowers to sexual organs and roots to the brain. This macrocosmic picture captured in the microcosmic way can be seen in the planets rotating around the sun mirrored in the electrons around the nucleus of the atom.

The human being is unique amongst the vertebrates in that we retain the characteristics of our juvenile form more than any other primates. This characteristic is called neoteny. It is as though we remain juveniles but grow only in size.

It is of interest to note the difference between the female and male human. The female is born with every egg she will need in her life already within her body. She will never produce another egg. The male is born without sperm and only begins sperm production at puberty and then never stops producing sperm. The production of sperm divides the chromosomes in two so that a sperm cell is no longer a part of the male. One formative sperm cell becomes four sperm. It has a purpose to go to a destination. The unmatured egg also matures and develops as four from which only one egg is retained and released. The egg is encouraged to leave the ovary and then waits for sperm, and then invites one sperm into itself.

The difference between a single-celled plant and a single-celled animal is that the animal cell will move towards food. This means the outer membrane is more flexible and can form something akin to a tail (a flagellate) with which it can propel itself. This ability is recapitulated in the human egg (the cell at rest) and the sperm with a tail that can propel it.
The development of the human embryo is described in other religious texts or commentaries. The Islamic Hadith describes the human embryo as created in four stages:

1. Like a seed
2. Like a clot of blood
3. Like a morsel of flesh
4. The angel blows spirit into the body

Rudolf Steiner describes that at conception the fertilised egg contains the spirit orb of the physical body. Between 17 and 21 days a second conception occurs at which time the etheric, astral and ego connect with the body in seed form. The etheric body becomes active at 7 weeks; the astral body becomes active at 7 months and the ego is activated at birth and provides the impulse for the baby to enter the birth canal. Our ego or “I” is divided into the part that connected with our earthly existence and our higher “I”. The higher “I” is fully connected to the placenta but at the birth of the baby the higher “I” is, in a way, birthed into the womb of the baby’s guardian angel. Before Christ entered into Jesus, the earthly “I” lived in the amnionic fluid in the womb and then also remained outside of the physical constitution of the human being during life, walking beside the person, in a sense.

There are seven steps in the first 24 days of embryological development. Although we spent time studying them it is not relevant to this report to include the details. What is relevant is to understand how these seven steps recapitulate the seven stages or days of Genesis. Understanding this reveals that there is only one pattern for development. Connected with this seven-stage process is a parallel process of the Father God coming to know Himself. This concept exists in the Kabbalistic tradition of Tsim-Tsum and was studied by Rudolf Steiner. The notebooks of Steiner in which his findings are annotated were published some two decades ago and are still little known. 

The Pierpont Morgan Library in New York houses a manuscript of illuminated miniatures of the Bible from Creation to King David. It is known variously as the Crusader Bible, Morgan Picture Bible, the Maciejowski Bible, and the Shah Abbas Bible and was created by monks in France in the 1240s for King Louis IX of France. We used Goethean observation to understand how the illuminated miniatures of the first six days of Creation hold the image of all of subsequent creation including the first seven stages of embryological development in the human being.

Illuminated miniatures of Creation days 1 to 4

Illuminated miniatures of Creation days 5 & 6 and the garden of Eden

The fourth step in Goethean observation is becoming one with the object being observed. We achieved this differently for the seven stages and in the process created three poetic verses and a wet-on-wet painting that became the backdrop for the combined verses. These creations were finally gifted to another participant as part of the experience of this creative module.

We were privileged to hear the story of Creation from Genesis translated in a more poetic form that also accompanied the Close of Day services.

The first day of Creation the Creative Beings separate light from darkness and name them day and night. This stage is referred to as All Might in which the Father reveals Himself to the Son (make a space wherein the Son can create).

The second day of Creation is the creation of a firmament called sky to separate the waters above from the waters below. This stage is referred to as All Wisdom in which the Son reveals Himself to the Spirit (the light of the Spirit can illuminate all that the Son has created).

The third day of Creation is the separation of the waters from the dry land and the land being fertile and all plants, including those that bear fruit that is good to eat, come into being. This stage is referred to as All Love in which the Spirit reveals Itself to the Father (The Spirit says: “I have filled the space”). The element of this stage is the sympathy and antipathy to all Creation. This is the element of being ‘one with’ and ‘apart from’.

The fourth day of Creation is the creation of the two great lights in the sky to illuminate day and night. This stage is referred to as All Justice in which the Father veiled in the Son reveals Himself to the Spirit. The element of this stage is karma and with karma comes birth and death. In this stage of embryological development, the full embryo resembles the sun, surrounded by a crown of stars and with the crescent moon below (the body stalk), reminiscent of the picture of the woman in Revelation 12. The embryo begins to prepare for feeding by forming the beginnings of a gut. This is the first organ to begin developing and we retain a gut reaction to much of what meets us in life. The seed of the etheric, astral and ego are implanted at this time.

The fifth day of Creation is when the birds of the air and fish of the sea are created. In a picture these are the animals that are not ‘inside of us’. This stage is referred to as All Redemption in which the Son veiled in the Spirit reveals Himself to the Father. This stage is known esoterically as Last Judgement. This is where we are currently in the evolution of the great Earth Cycle of time. The element of this stage is death and rebirth. It is the possibility of everything being renewed and connects us to the Source. In the embryo pulsating blood islands form outside the embryo that will later be incorporated into the embryo.

The sixth day of Creation is when the animals that walk on the land are created and then the human being is created. This stage is referred to as All Hallowing in which the Spirit veiled in the Father reveals Itself to the Son. The Spirit pours out at Whitsun and embeds in the human being, that is the substance of the Father, to be revealed to the Son. The element of this stage is making whole.

The seventh day of Creation is when the Creative Beings see that Creation is good. This state is referred to as All Harmony in which the Father veiled in the Son and the Spirit reveals Himself to Himself. This is the seed for the future. The element is the Creation of Good (Goodness becomes).

When we visualise an atom that consists of a nucleus in which there are neutrons and photons and electrons that spin on the periphery around the nucleus we would imagine the atom being as big in diameter as the entire church properties along Dover Street are wide. Then the nucleus would be the size of one grain of uncooked rise. In the vast empty space a photon of light is trapped. Ralph Waldo Emmerson refers to us as nothing more than thickened light. All of creation is a manifestation of the substance of the Divine. It is all light that is so “thick” that we can see and touch it. In this we have the process of the Trinity getting to know Itself in a new way as described above and known as Tsim-Tsum in the Kabbalistic tradition. This reflects the statement of Christ in John 8: “This is the Light in which there is Life”.

In the study of plants we know that carbon, the very substance that provides the massive structure of the plant, is derived not from the ground, but from the air through the process of photosynthesis that requires light. A plant appears because of light.

In the Sunday talk, open to everyone, Michaël shared the journey that leads to birth. This journey has been covered before, in November in a talk “Crossing the Threshold: The Experience after death” by Rev. Michaël Merle . Between death and a new birth we find ourselves in the heavenly spheres in a new relationship to the Cosmos. We reach what Rudolf Steiner describes as the “Midnight Hour”. At this point in our journey we become conscious that we are moving towards a physical birth. We leave the community of the spiritual world to begin an individual path. In a sense we excommunicate ourselves from the community of the spiritual world. We experience a death from the spiritual world as we take the path towards birth.

The path of our journey to the earth is out of communion, through an offering – because substance begins to change from spirit to matter – to a proclamation, i.e.: ‘here I am standing on the earth’. This is the opposite to what we experience in the Act of Consecration of Man where we hear a proclamation, an offering, the transubstantiation and a communion. We are now again forming a community, but of free individuals who join this community in freedom.

The path from the Midnight Hour to birth, the path of excommunication, is one in which the individual has to work and will experience pain. Through pain we increase the capacity to learn and more and more learn to stand in our sense of isolation. Then the spiritual being will at some point connect to a physical manifestation. This physical being is made up of two parts that are not fully human that come together in conception to become fully human. We can think of conception also in the sense of an idea, that we conceive a picture that we hold of what is to come.

From that moment we need earthly nourishment, we need our Daily Bread. The word in the Lord’s Prayer in Greek is epiousios. ‘Epi’ means ‘on top of’, as in epidermis, the top layer of our skin. ‘Ousio’ means the substance of being. We are therefore speaking of the ‘fitting substance of being upon which we can rely’. We are speaking of the bread that suffices for this day in order for us the remain ‘bread’ or a physical being – matter – on the earth. We are nourished by many things, the ‘word’ of God or the very substance of God, and that which nourishes our soul.

On the journey from the Midnight Hour, conception is the morning star that lights the way for the dawn. Dawn would be birth. The process of embryology that was studied during this Africa Seminary Module occurs between the morning star and the dawning of the sun. Around the 17th day a very significant change happens in the embryo that can also be seen as a second conception. In this process we go from being two layers of cells to creating, in the space between, a third layer. We become three-fold. At this point there is the possibility of something new happening. This process is akin to an offering. One can say that it is when karma incarnates into cellular, metabolic activity. The potential for an etheric, astral and ego unfolding now becomes present.

It takes about three years from birth for the infant to come upright, to walk and to be able to say “I” of itself. This is the fourth step from the Midnight Hour, the step of proclamation. This completes the process of birth from the spiritual world to earthly life that began at the Midnight Hour. Our guardian angel cares for this process and needs guardians on earth to help. If our higher “I” remained connected we would learn nothing in an earthly incarnation. The higher “I” is held by the guardian angel. The higher “I” lives in the womb of our mother, connected with the placenta – it is the part that feeds the baby in all ways. At birth our guardian angel takes our higher “I” and carries it in a way that a mother does. The higher “I” learns all the earthly “I” experiences because it is not directly present. The essential spirit that leaves the community of spirit at the Midnight Hour gets to know itself in a new way through the experience of being on earth. This is the process of “Know Thyself”, getting to know ourselves.

The Act of Consecration of Man should remind us of this process and to feel our way into a reconnection with the spiritual. The proclamation of the Gospel is the “I” of Christ to which we all align. We hear in the Gospel: “I am the light”. The thickened light that is our earthly existence is the Christ light that gives us life. All the potential for Good lives in the “I” of the human being. We stand for the Gospel reading to witness the panorama of the “I” of Christ. It shows us how an “I” can work.

The Act of Consecration then proceeds to the offertory, the opportunity for us to bring ourselves with Christ. We have nothing to offer the Father, but we can bring ourselves and our new learning – the new experience of myself – to the Father. We can offer our pure thinking, our loving heart and our willing devotion. The offering of our soul, held by our “I”, we can align with Christ to offer to the Father.

In the transubstantiation the physical substances of earth become part of the spiritual world. We then take communion, not for ourselves, but for the whole world. We take it so that something can happen in us that is needed for the whole evolution of earthly existence. We are the only beings on earth who can take this into ourselves consciously – “take this into your thinking”. This is what we can take with us across the threshold back into the spiritual world. Between the transubstantiation and the communion is the Lord’s Prayer. In it we have the sense of the journey we have undertaken.

• Our Father in the Heavens, Hallowed be Your Name – that is where we were at the Midnight Hour.
  
• Your Kingdom come – as we journey.
  
• Your will be done as in Heaven so also on earth – the journey of the heavens becoming inscribed on the earth.
  
• Give us this day our bread that suffices – of the appropriate substance of life.
  
• Then we are in the experience of our karma – Forgive us our debts as we forgive those who are indebted to us.
  
• Then we come to the working of the “I” on the earth, aligned with our higher “I”, part of the Christ “I” – Lead us not into temptation – which is the bridge between our “I” and our karma. And now the real work of the “I” - Deliver us from the evil. I can align myself with the Good that the Good endure.

​In the Lord’s Prayer we have the incarnation process as a reminder that we stand in our “I”. This is not an easy thing to do. Our time is always the hardest time, right now. We are born to learn to stand and to say: “I am here”. Light in my expression from the source of light itself – Christ: light of the world, light in which there is light, light in which there is life.

The module on embryology was presented as an introduction to the theme of Holy Week which was The Birth of the Human Spirit.