The Lost Word in Personality and Found again in Individuality

In today's world, words are "just words" to the non-esotericist. As long as humanity was in the condition of the Earthly Paradise, word was endowed with creative power, being united with the ether of life. Thanks to the Hierarchies using man as their organ, speech was able to create living forms, a magical creative power acting in the will.

This is the occult meaning of the sacred word "AOUM", indicating how in the beginning the Hierarchies, resonant in the vowels "AO", used man, resonant in the "UM", as a sounding board for creation.

"And Adam imposed convenient names upon all the animals, and upon all the fowls of the air, and upon all the beasts of the earth: but there was not to be found for Adam a helper, that was like unto him." - Genesis 2:20

But after the expulsion from the Earthly Paradise in the middle of the Lemur Age, up to the middle of Atlantis, the word gradually lost its creative capacity.

Indeed, the Luciferic spirits pervaded the human astral body with lust, so that speech was no longer capable of expressing the universal deeds of the Hierarchies, but only the inner states of the human soul. The word from creator became only "shaper", that is, only capable of shaping living forms, acting in feeling. The will of Lemurian man became so degenerate that the entire Earth was shattered by the Fire Catastrophe, brought on by meteors and volcanic eruptions.

From the middle of the Atlantean Age, however, even speech with its shaping power was used for selfish purposes by the black Turanian magicians. It was the Ahrimanic spirits that pervaded the human etheric body with power, so that the word also lost its magical forming power.

Then resounded the word "TAOU", the creative word of the worlds, which still resounded throughout the Nature of Atlantis, and which the human soul heard inwardly, learning the wise cosmic laws. It was the spirit-word of the Christ who had brought all creation into being. Gradually also the echo of the Tau in the human soul faded away. And so also did Atlantis perish in the Water Catastrophe or Universal Flood.

From after the Flood that destroyed Atlantis, epoch after epoch, the human word became a sound capable only of expressing the inner state, of "communication" and not of actual creation or formation.

Here, then, we understand how for an esotericist, through his work in the Esoteric School, words acquire greater weight than for others: the word slowly regains formative and creative qualities. This we learn in the Service, for by uttering the words of the ritual we engender a current of forces perceptible to the higher senses.

Consequently, if we really want to enter this current of forces, the words cannot remain "just words" but acquire weight for us, become "magical", create super-sensible realities. These words can also destroy and must therefore be used with the utmost discernment and moral understanding of the situation in which they are uttered.

The art of speech founded by Rudolf Steiner and Marie von Sievers, as brought into the Esoteric School in the mystery sense, is particularly useful in enabling speech to become a vehicle for fully conscious spiritual forces again.

Thus, words become objective forces and no longer just subjective sounds to express abstract concepts. In this sense, the more individuality permeates the word, the more objective it becomes. This is only possible through an occult development that by means of the six Fundamental Exercises, Imaginative Meditation and the recitation of Mantras makes it possible to "find the lost word", the Tau of Atlantis.

In fact, with the esoteric work and the consequent occult development of the Esoteric School, the esotericist takes the larynx and thus the word away from the personality, i.e. the embodied Ego, and places it under the aegis of the Higher Ego, which pours its forces from the solar sphere down into the depths of incarnation in the human physical body. In this process the earthly personality is profoundly transformed by becoming a conduit for the solar individuality. In this way the esotericist gradually recovers what was the formative word of Atlantis, the TAOU, and eventually he will also recover the creator word of Lemuria, the AOUM.

Furthermore, the relationship between personality and individuality in the esoteric path is an expression of the relationship between the Spirits of Time, the Archai, and the Spirits of Form, the Elohim. Personality is forged by the Archai in the passage of time, in order to allow the eternal individuality residing in the form of the Elohim, to enter into the experience of earthly space-time.

Just as the contingent personality is an expression of the shaping action of the Archai in man, so the archetypal human form is an expression of the creative action of the Elohim. Personality weaves in space-time and individuality in eternity. The same relationship existed between ancient Lemurian man and the creative word as an expression of the direct relationship with the Elohim, and ancient Atlantean man and the formative word as an expression of the direct relationship with the Archai.

After the expulsion from the Earthly Paradise, personality gradually prevailed in the relationship with the spiritual world. It was only with the incarnation of Christ in Jesus of Nazareth that the relationship between individuality and personality was re-established.

Through the action of the Christ, the cosmic spiritual life of Christ was able to overcome the death in the human physique of Jesus of Nazareth. This enabled the rebirth of the renewed spiritual life in the ego.

Christ, by incarnating in Jesus, in effect dissolves his astral, etheric and physical envelopes, so that the personality of Jesus, although already evolved, comes to share in eternity, dissolving and coming into being the Spiritual Self, the Vital Spirit and the Spirit-Man.

Therefore, let us always bear in mind that the more the personality is spiritually transformed, the more it recedes and can be brought into free initiative. We can also say the more the personality is sacrificed in biography, just like that of Jesus Nazareth on the cross, the more anthroposophy can be brought. The more one does not want to take an initiative for selfish reasons, but it is demanded by the world, by one's neighbour, the freer it will be and the more free it will be from elements of personality. One is then truly able to be an instrument of the spirit.