The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Ultimately, all knowledge serves to prepare our future. Other beings are guided; the law of crystallization is prescribed for the crystal; it does not need to be prefigured. This is how it is with plants and animals. Only in the middle of the Lemurian period did man begin to set goals for himself. Effective knowledge of the future is only possible if one knows the past. Thus, all human knowledge is destined to preserve the ideal for the future.

To understand how the earlier and the present round went, one must understand that the highest realm, the mineral realm, has reached its highest perfection, which is why it ends at the end of the fourth round. We must not confuse the mineral with the physical realm. If we could look ahead to the fifth round, we would see that there is no longer a mineral realm. This does not exclude the physical. Imagine intertwined plants, with man in the midst of them; everything in the lower world will have been transformed into plants. At the end of the fourth round, man will have reached the highest perfection of his mineral foundation. In the fifth, he will no longer have it, he will not produce anything mineral from himself.

He cannot enter this plant life immediately, but must go through three previous stages. His astral-mental body would not fit this plant body. Therefore, he must prepare himself and go through the three stages, which are called globes. Then they fit into the new physical stage. What has ceased is only what is connected with the mineral kingdom.

Birth and death are the same; they only come about in the fourth round because two different things, higher individuality and lower nature of man, come into contact with each other.

When you think of your individuality, it comes from much higher realms, while the body is made up of air, water and earth. Only a part of what the individuality is capable of can be expressed in the body. It is like a tent that is outlasted by the human being. He must change again and again because he is more. During the fifth round, we are dealing with the emergence of ever new human beings from the others.

Nothing dies, it is always all life. What arises in a certain respect from the shadow side is that the astral human being will have reached his actual organization. Today he is unorganized, not yet a bearer of the image of God; only the physical will become the image of God at the end of the fourth round. In the fifth round, man will have astral organs of action and sense. The sense organs will be the so-called chakras – five. They are named according to their form:

- the six-petalled lotus flower, in the center of the body, indicated in certain people, rotating in clairvoyants,
- a little further on is a ten-petalled organ,
- in the heart a twelve-petalled one,
- sixteen-petalled at the throat,
- between the eyebrows eighteen-petalled.

The outer body will form itself according to these organs. This has a specific consequence. Now the outer body is given by the outer nature, by the animal kingdom. Now it comes from what flows from the astral body; it is constructed from the astral realm and is therefore a reflection of what lives in the astral nature of the individual in question. So that Christian esotericism expressed it in such a way that it made it clear to the priests that <«Cain's» and «Abel's» will be the outward signs in people.

During the sixth round, the plant kingdom will have been completed and only the animal kingdom will exist, brought to its highest peak; only sentient life will exist. The whole earth will be sensation and movement. While in the fifth round the astral expressed itself as an outer body, in the sixth round thought will express itself in the animal body, in which the whole body moves rhythmically. That which lives in the soul will be expression, thought will be expression, a world communicating itself in sound. This is why Christian esotericism says: in the sixth round, all is sounding word.

Man's thinking life becomes direct expression. The previous proclamation of the walking word was the Word made flesh. The reference to this in the fourth round was Christ.

In the seventh round, the entire inner being of man will be turned outwards. Man can only stammer about that which lives on the Arupa plane. Then the “I am” will flow out. It is not confined in a body that separates it from the other “I”; all “I's” will be tones in a great symphony. In Christian esotericism, this is called “divinity”. This is what man must achieve in order to pass over to Mercury, just as he came from the moon before. To do this, we must have placed all our powers at the service of our ego in such a way that we are just as willing to receive as to give. This blessedness also means resting in oneself. For all previous states are striving; here there is a looking back on all that has been gathered.

In this image of God there will be no further work; the Godhead rests, looks back and rejoices in its works. “Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all the host of them...”

Holy – is absolutely healthy, as
blessed – is completely imbued with soul.

The connection of the individual with the whole development is now becoming clearer. We now distinguish:

1. the course of life between birth and death
2. the stay in Kamaloka
3. the stay in Devachan – with a) rupic, that is, lower mental and b) arupic.

Every human being, even an undeveloped one, enters Arupa for a short time. So we have four states. These correspond exactly to the four states of the planetary body, both when descending and when returning.

While the whole development of humanity before it became physical went through three states, we can say: All beings that came into consideration were

1. in the higher Devachan,
2. alternately on the upper and lower,
3. on the earth in four states.

Since in the next round there will no longer be a mineral kingdom, everything will be alive, and there will be no alternation between birth and death. There will be continuous life. The alternation of birth and death will no longer occur, and in its place there will only be alternation between good and evil. There may still be an alternation between the higher states; what is Kamaloka will be the lowest state. Differentiation of today, that now is only Kamaloka; but in the fifth round still physical.

Just as every person in the Kamaloka is formed plastically in the astral, with vices and virtues, so will he be on earth. So that during the fifth round the Kamaloka will be completely earthly. There will still be change, although not birth and death, but change between the astral and the mental. It will be possible for a person to withdraw from the mental every now and then, when the measure of his evil is so full that he can enter this higher state. As a rule, once someone has worked off everything, he no longer needs to return. So we pass into the devachanic state by ourselves, and only those who have brought so much evil with them that they have not found the opportunity to redeem it are eliminated in the fifth round.

Those who go along will come to the sixth round, where everything that is mental is acted out. There is then no possibility of doing evil, the highest animal nature lives itself out.

The task of the sixth round is to shape everything that is organized in the mind in a harmonious way. Everything is separated from each other, what is logical and what is illogical. So that only what is absolutely logical comes into the seventh round. An incorrect thought sounds like an incorrect rhythm, like an incorrect shape, and is destroyed by itself. That is why the occultist says: anything that is brought over into the sixth round as a lie, as untruth, means the being's suicide. Here already wrong action is self-destruction, in the sixth round wrong thinking is self-destruction. And so it follows that the earth winnows out everything that is untrue and brings only truth into the seventh round.

In the fourth round, karmic accounts have been settled. In the fifth, something remains and is separated into the eighth sphere. At most, only the untrue can be taken over, and it destroys itself. Thus, the seventh state becomes bliss, which goes over as a seed to the new planet.

You see that we are dealing with continuous purification in the second half of the earth's development. The only thing that remains is what cannot be affected by the four things just mentioned, that which goes over to the next development: the degree of development. One being may have lived a little richer and more substantial a life and have little in karma, another abundantly. The degree cannot be changed. Those who had accumulated much that was ugly had to create balance through great plastic power. The beings come over with different degrees of perfection, just as the Pitris came here. Nothing that is fulfilled in the moon has come over to us, but only what has gone through its degrees of development.

Every religion must deal with the question of the origin of evil. Where does evil, imperfection come from? This is a question that the teachers of all major religions have repeatedly dealt with and answered. It must be asked because one imagines that the divine origin must be the perfect one. If the world emerges from the divine, the question naturally arises: how can something good give rise to something evil? Why does the perfect allow something imperfect?

One must grasp the essence of evil in the right way and then pour out the necessity. A picture: piano workshops, in which there is a perfect piano maker who not only has the highest technical skill but also works with love in making the pianos. We will not find anything imperfect within the workshop. When we bring a piano to the concert hall and a virtuoso sits down at it, something perfect will come again. Each in his own place performs perfectly. But if, let us say, the piano-maker were too enthusiastic and hammered away while the virtuoso was playing, this activity, performed in the wrong place, would produce something imperfect. We shall find that this image can be applied everywhere if we go a little deeper.

Let us imagine the task on the moon as similar to, but different from, earthly development. The faculty of imagination was not present, nor were any of the mental faculties that develop in human beings. Dream consciousness was present, but its task was to build the animal organs of man. The animal body was formed and developed into semen. But they were predisposed on the moon and developed as they must be if they are not the bearers of a spinal cord and a brain. Therein lay the difference in the formation of the organs. A bone structure can be different if it does not need to taper to a spinal cord and skull capsule. In order for all this to be developed in seven rounds, each with seven globes, the dream consciousness had to be the regulator of all animal organs. If it was to fulfill its task completely, it had to take special care to carry out the formation that lay below the sphere of brain formation. Great wisdom was needed, but no bright consciousness, generic wisdom. This tremendous wisdom had to take great care with the plastic formation of each organ. Everything that had been achieved at that time had been achieved and also overcome. But how differently was the Pitris formed?

Let us imagine a retarded Pitri now transferred to the earthly career. He has the tendency to catch up on what was neglected at that time and would take great care to apply everything to the satisfaction of lower organs. Such Pitri natures are partly in the human organism, partly as seducers in the astral, they want to hold back the human organs. They have not found the right connection, they cannot slip into the earthly shell and buzz around people, seducing them, wanting to keep them in the lower service, which was higher service on the moon. This backward activity contradicts earthly activity; and evil has arisen from this perfection being placed in the wrong place.

The development proceeds in such a way that lessons must be learned, that one cannot be automatically pushed into the path; this can lead to peculiarity. Because world development proceeds in space and time, the displaced perfection gives rise to imperfection.

If we follow the great stream of the development of consciousness, it is clear and perfect; but now it must live out in space and time and is now intertwined in particularity, that is, different developmental currents push into each other and then stand next to each other at different levels of development; in this way, things interact that would be perfect in the right place, and yet, when they interact, they create an imperfection.

Therefore, no being in space and time can claim perfection, only the divine origin is perfect.

Christian esotericism calls this perfect origin of all beings the “Father”. “Call me not good, for no one is good except the Father.” Be perfect, as your Father is perfect, strive to seek your ideal in the Father, that is, in the spaceless and timeless.

But is it not contradictory to the concept of the Godhead to allow evil despite space and time? If we think that all other beings are there for our sake, that we have separated the realms from us, we will say: Actually, it only depends on the development of the human being, because they are there for our sake. We have to accept

Evil in the sense we know it only exists in earthly development. To what extent is it justified in the divine primordial law? Could the human world be without evil? The question arises as to how the guiding entity relates to the human being. It could give him the bound route for life, in which case the deity would be omnipotent but the creatures powerless. This is impossible if the deity wanted creatures that are its image. If the deity wanted to divest itself, it had to create mirror images, give the creatures the possibility to develop out of themselves. The freedom of their being / gap in the transcript] In the love of God lies the complete divestment of God.

First we have the guiding deity, then the mirror images and the life within them – sat; still in abundance, not yet divested; devotion – ananda – and merging with the creature – chit. This is the relationship of the divine essence to the creatures.

Without freedom, beings in God's image are not possible; but with freedom, the necessity arises that beings can also err.

In earthly development, beings are thus given one of the highest powers, that of love. A being that has a predetermined path could not do good out of itself, freely out of love. A free being does it out of love. Thus God created beings in self-sacrificing love and gave them the opportunity to return life in free love. That is why the cosmos of the earth, in contrast to all others, is called that of love. Acting out of love is its task.

What the original state of what is called “ancient wisdom” was and how it came to earth is today's topic.

There are two kinds of knowledge and realization. Let us imagine the inventor of a clock: he makes one, two, three clocks according to the plan that was originally present in his mind. First there was the thought, then the actual reality. This is one way of knowing something.

To get to know the other way, let us imagine that the watchmaker has died; the watches are there and someone else studies them, figures out the plan and makes other watches. He has the same knowledge but has obtained it in a different way; for him, the sensory perception was first, then the idea; for the other man, the idea was first.

These two ways of acquiring knowledge also exist in the great universe. Such a thought, which corresponds to the laws of reality and is there before the sensory object, is called “intuitive thought”. It is born of the spirit itself, a child of the mental world. The other is a child of the sensory world, it is called “inductive thought.

Now let us see how the difference between the above and the disciples would manifest itself. The inventor will be able to communicate his thoughts because he is the shaper, the creator, because he was there when the sensual arose from the mental. The one who has imitated will also / gap in the transcript /

The same difference is between the first teachers of humanity and all later ones. For the first teachers of humanity were involved in creation, were among those who formed, they participated when the world was still a cosmic thought. They [gap in the transcript]

The first Arhat or Maha were involved in the creation of the world. In the middle of the third root race, when the human kingdom came into being, A also embodied himself.

They brought knowledge from the workshop with them, and that is “ancient wisdom”; they brought with them what they had experienced.

The knowledge that one gains afterwards is the same as that which the original great spirits have from the laws of creation themselves. [Gap in the transcript] If you really know something, then you also have the laws by which the world is created. Manas and Mahat are therefore the same in content. Only Manas is in us: I. And Mahat is spread out as a tableau over the whole world. Only the way they are is different, the content is the same. The more we increase in knowledge, the more /gap in the transcript]

What was taught at that time from the creative activity of the sculptors was the first wisdom, and it is therefore more than all science can acquire. This occult sentence, that the world has its origin in cosmic thoughts and that knowledge culminates in human thought formation.

The I enters into the formation of the world; outside of the I - Mahat. The I, the creator, encompasses Mahat. The development consists in the I expanding its sphere over the whole of Mahat, and in the end Mahat itself is within the I. What is the difference? Beginning: Mahat is outside of the I, end: Mahat is in the I.

The only difference between the beginning and the end is that the ego sacrificed itself as a special being and, as a result of this sacrifice, acquired Mahat as its content.

The process of world formation consists in the fact that the I, which was previously excluded from Mahat, afterwards has Mahat as its content. Not Mahat, but the I has undergone a development. Meaningful sentence: The world is enclosed in cosmic thought formation [gap in the transcript], the I is outside.

This is only partly true, because in reality the ego is a part of Mahat. With us, every thought is a part of Mahat; let us try to symbolize one as content. Let us take the sentence: Evolution consists in the fact that each part of Mahat grows to such an extent that it becomes identical with the whole Mahat. The assimilation of all individuals to the whole Mahat takes place. The great sacrifice takes place. The whole Mahat gives its essence to all parts, that is development. The purpose of the world is that the whole gives its essence to each of its parts. It is certain that the whole was perfect at the beginning; but if it had no parts, it would remain as it is. Since it has them, it has given each of the parts its whole being, so that its own perfection is ultimately contained in each of its parts.

Beginning: Mahat is outside the “I”

End: Mahat is in the “I”

The only difference between the beginning and the end is that the “I” sacrificed itself as a separate being and, as the result of this sacrifice, received Mahat as its content.

Evolution consists of each part of Mahat growing to such an extent that it becomes identical with the whole Mahat. The “great sacrifice” takes place: the whole Mahat gives its essence to all its parts. This is development.

We must distinguish between the essence as such and between the perceptions and actions of the essence. These depend not only on the essence, but also on the world in which it is placed. The human being is in different worlds at different times, going through planets and globes. We have become acquainted with four of the three worlds. If he is to perceive and be active, he must form organs out of the world in question. In order to be able to work on the physical earth, he must form organs of perception out of the earth's materials. Thus we must distinguish between the being, which belongs to the world of the eternal, and the organs that it has formed out of the materials of the worlds it passes through.

If we did not have a physical hand, we would not be able to move an object, but would pass through matter. The hand must be impenetrable. [Gap in the transcript] It is the same with the sense organs. [Gap in the transcript] eyes. These organs are called Indriyas, and a distinction is made between Indriyas of the senses or perception and Indriyas of action. Every being forms organs of action and sense from the materials of the world through which it passes. Man belongs to the eternal world with his being, but with his organs to the world through which he passes. When he has traversed these worlds, he takes something from the worlds through his organs, which remains his possession. You had eyes when you emerged from the bosom of the Eternal, but they had no [gap in the transcript]

What you perceived remains. The eyes as organs of the physical world fade.

We see from this that people are wrong about what they call real. What appears as the effect of the processes is precisely what is real, lasting. Thus, through its organs, which it receives from time to time, the being draws the fruits from the different worlds, which it then takes with it. That is why the Greeks had beautiful symbols in the mysteries: They called the soul bees because the soul gathers the honey from the worlds and lays it down at the altar of the Eternal.

Why do the initiates use such images for the people? Does it have any value? Everything that is a myth is an outer garment for deeply inner truths.

How will we work on the statues more easily? Will we first work on the rough image in the block of stone or start with the finest execution? I think the first. The priests of different times acted according to this principle. They said [gap in transcript]

I instill in this soul a figurative idea that people do not understand at all. But it prepares his mind so that he can perceive the pure truth later. This had value as long as the priests were so imbued with reincarnation.

Back to the main idea: the beings take from the worlds what they need for their organs. For us: the physical, soul and spiritual worlds, of which we are composed. Man lives in these three worlds, the physical, astral and mental, and is therefore a threefold being.

Above the spiritual and below the physical, there are other worlds in which humans do not live directly, but other beings do. Let us imagine that these beings, which are only soul and spirit, are two-tiered for us. Such beings are called devas, who are not incarnated in the physical world, whose lowest form of existence is the astral. Myths have treated the knowledge of such beings allegorically, either by making them appear in fiery clouds. But we also find in myths that they appear in the form of animals - Zeus.

The animal often represents an astral being because it expresses the passionate more clearly than the human. This therefore corresponds to an astral reality, but is not to be thought of in the physical sense in the ordinary sense; rather, the people to whom it appeared were in a trance for the moment.

Besides these, there are other entities that are only physical-spiritual, lacking the spiritual. They are not animals, because with their generic character they belong to the spiritual; their generic soul belongs to the devachan. There are such entities that have no spiritual expression at all. It is only possible to reach them if you are not dependent on spiritual expression. I would have to be clairvoyant in the astral plane to perceive their astral essence. The earth is much more populated than one would think. A being lives in every rock and tree, but they do not express themselves because they have no spiritual expression. They are called elemental beings.

Man only perceives their effects when they manifest themselves to him, as it seems, by chance.

There are devas that have natures that are above the spiritual, and elemental beings that are below the physical. But they are none of our concern. These have organs that belong to the same worlds as we do. The devas do not perform acts that directly belong to the sensual world, so we do not perceive them; the elementary beings have no organs that can express themselves spiritually, so they are not there for humans.

It is only through Pasteur that science is able to prove that living things can never arise from non-living things: the air alone is full of life germs; if you let them go through embers, no more life will arise. “All life originates from the living,” says modern science. However, it still believes that spiritual things can arise from corporeal ones. Through theosophy, we know that in the living, soul-like qualities never arise without the addition of the soul germ.

In the stream of development, the inanimate gives rise to the inanimate; if the animate is to arise, a new stream with life-germs must arise. But if the soul is to arise, a new stream with a soul-germ must arise. The inanimate is therefore the soil and the arena within which the animate realizes itself; never its cause. The living is always only the scene within which the soul realizes itself, never its cause. This is what leads us to the great law of reincarnation; we must seek the causes for everything we find in the soul in the soul self.

The species is born where the external conditions correspond to the species. If they do not, the individual being perishes; the species survives. So it is with the soul, which, after all its past life in a raw way of life, immediately thrives. The soul is emotionally connected to its surroundings; among those who are the same, the soul retains the tendency to return to its former habits.

The physical, kamic and mental bodies are composed of matter with corresponding laws. The same law returns after the matter has fallen away and it has unfolded in devachan, but draws to itself a related law in its new accumulation of matter. That is the law of karma: every past life remains as a cause for the following lives, and indeed the mental properties of the following lives will be based on the mental ones of the past, the kamic ones on the kamic ones of the past and the physical ones on the physical properties of the past.

The greatest difficulty begins with the incarnation in the physical body. Only in life can there be an interaction of the three bodies; the physical must become an instrument. We know that the virtues that strive up and down in human life interact. The “struggle for existence” leads to the lowest level of Kamaloka. “Selfishness, ‘lack of direction’ and ‘deception’ bring people to the second, third and fourth sections of Kamaloka.

The purification in the three upper stages consists in those who form the negation of the three higher qualities: mistaking the symbol for the thing; reading the B [illegible] word in the Bible instead of the spirit; literalism and symbol worship find their purification in the fifth region of Kamaloka.

Genuine piety is devotion to the spiritual. It can be directed towards the temporal or the eternal in the spirit. Revelers in the realm of the spirit, who pursue beautiful spirituality as a pleasure, purify themselves in the sixth department. In the seventh department are the idealists who seek God in nature, the theoretical materialists. The vices are nothing more than the shadow images of the Kama world in our physical world.

Justice, which draws Kama-Manas to Manas, still has to be purified, but in Devachan it leads to unity. The sense of extending justice beyond the boundaries of the immediate environment is awakened in the first region of Devachan. The virtue of abstinence from the worldly, devotion to the spirit is formed in the second stage of Devachan. The devout in the ordinary sense. - The active interest in life, the outward expression of fortitude, is purified in the third realm of devachan. People who take the initiative, who don't let themselves go.

Wisdom - anyone who can control the physical world from within - leads to the fourth level. Leaders and guides of humanity in external culture - musicians, educators.

[Those who] incline towards the eternal, [to them] it becomes a symbol. Increase of abstinence: true beauty. - When man allows himself to be determined by the eternal instead of by the transitory, we have piety, life in spiritual steadfastness. Wisdom is the height of wisdom. The seventh virtue of Manas is [a gap in the transcript].

Just as the scales of the manas can tip, so too can those of desire and harder vices. Everything is related in Kama; those who are entangled in it no longer have a fight to fight; the entities that want it can approach them. — When the craving for pleasure is increased, then the person no longer lives within himself, but rather in the external world: devotion to pleasure – the fifth vice. Epidemics – lust... When a person is completely controlled by external forces, has absolutely lost his way, is absorbed in desire, then we come to the sixth vice, which almost brings him to the destruction of his own being: instability. When he gives himself up to any kind of deception, when he does not see through anything with cleverness, when deception loses itself in dullness, then we have the last vice.

The personality thus holds everything together, it is between life and death. When it falls away, the two sides remain, pushing up and down. The measure of vices leads him to Kamaloka - the others to Devachan. As long as the personality holds together the struggle for existence and justice, the human being oscillates – when it falls apart, it is drawn in both directions. In the personality there was balance. Without personality, the virtues or vices fall prey to their own realms and laws. Plant – salts – seed.

Now we must bear in mind that all the virtues in man have developed within the domain of desire. As long as a being lives in the lower realm, it clings to the lower; it cannot live in the higher. Everything that clings to a person from Kama must be handed over to Kamaloka; only then can he ascend to Devachan. As long as something physical clings to the plant, it must live in the physical realm. – Kamaloka is the place where what was desire in the human being must be satisfied; there the human being must live out his virtues, whereas in the sensual life the physical shell was able to hold them together. – Thanatos, Sisyphos.

There are seven sections in both realms because there must be a corresponding atonement for each vice or each virtue; there are the laws for stripping away the seven disharmonious qualities, and the seven sections of the devachan are there for developing the seven harmonious qualities. The three lower ones for stripping away the coarse lower ones, the three higher ones for purifying the struggle for existence – the highest for stripping away deception.

Everything that is acquired as virtue in life finds its training in Devachan, the cargo is taken up into Devachan. Everything that occurs in sensual life is the phenomenal, the appearance; it points us to the noumenal, what is behind things. We must see personality in this twofold aspect. Here also lies what we call free will, which is given to us to help us in this struggle. Let vice be purified by freedom - the school of incarnation. Ever new interactions.

Man's true home is Arupa in Devachan. He descends into rupa and fills himself with the thought-body. In the arupa region he sees what his own self is, he enjoys the direct contemplation of the eternal. Now he is to go through the school of existence. In Arupa he would never come into contact with the world of separation. He must now [transform] the seeing of the eternal into thinking about the separate.

First, the human being surrounds himself with thought-material so that he can think the Eternal in the temporal. This brings him into the world of being special according to Rupa.

Second, the human being surrounds himself with astral-material so that he can feel the Eternal in the temporal. - Kama or astral world.

Three: The human being envelops himself in physical matter so that he can want the eternal in the temporal. Now he is incarnated again and is subject to the laws of the physical world until he takes the upward path again.

This is what we call the pilgrimage of the soul, which passes through the three worlds. Then comes the higher world, which is the soul's actual home, the formless world.

All the thoughts that we peel out of things must lie in things. We call their specific characteristic content form; but nothing can be formed without having a thin matter. So what we visualize in thought-matter is present as an entity.

The three upper principles rest within, while the three lower ones form the outer shell. They are present objectively and subjectively. The first three are only subjective. We cannot observe them. In the 4 Prana-Kama-Manas, thoughts become; they appear as shadows. If Manas, the soul, harbors thoughts, these thoughts would confront Kama-Manas in such a way that they would be its realities. Depending on the level of consciousness of a being, he calls something a reality. When man loses his physicality, he loses the physical principle. But when a principle darkens, a new one enters.

It shines within the soul 8. When he loses Prana and Kamaloka, 9 enters; [when he loses] Kama-Manas, then 10 enters. What is it that becomes active there?

When he loses Kama-Rupa, a new being enters into the depths of his soul; it is related to Kama-Rupa, but has a different law. This draws him into the world of the spirit. It is called the spiritual fire in occultism. “There will come one who baptizes you with fire.” What enters for the physical is that which contains everything, which dominates the physical with perfect wisdom. We call it ‘Mahav’ or ‘cosmic wisdom.’ It shines forth as we shed the physical.

The substances disappear, the laws become a higher principle. What becomes tendency and power shines forth again as a higher principle. When it gives up Kama-Manas, which is actually our self in this world, our truest self emerges - through being this being, our self-awareness. Now we address Manas as our body, the cosmic fire of thought that we carry. We address Manas as our objective, as we did our physical body before. When our self-awareness awakens, we feel as a unified being, belonging to the whole. St. Augustine: “We see things because they are; things are because God sees them.

We are, seen from a higher plane, thoughts of the world spirit cast into form. In the soul life of the world spirit, all things are truly present. When we strip away the embodiment, we remain in the soul life. That which we commonly call reality arises only when the higher principles darken and emerge in the world of particularity.

As an individuality, the human being is subject to the laws that prevail in the six higher realms; as a personality, they are subject to those that prevail in the four lower realms. Therefore, the lower realms must always be renewed. Man must die and be re-embodied because he lives in a world that is subject to the laws of birth and death. It is not man who is subject to the law of birth and death, but the lower worlds, in which man embodies himself from time to time.

Day and night change, but the law is eternal. We carry the law up, it shines in its beauty when we have shed the physical. Man carries the unified, the eternal, continually up into the higher realm. Man's task is to extract from the lower world as much of the higher world as is hidden in it. That is why he is esoterically compared to a bee. He has to raise the temporal in order to unite it with the eternal. Because he cannot do it all at once, he does it in successive embodiments. Since the world does not embody itself all at once, but in succession in epochs, man must also do the same. The reason for re-embodiment lies in the evolution of the world. We therefore not only redeem ourselves, but also the world, by developing ourselves, and fail in our task towards the Eternal if we do not further our development.

Let us first briefly repeat what has emerged from the consideration of the seven basic parts of man. Man is a citizen of three worlds: the physical, the soul and the spiritual. The physical world is a reflection of the spiritual world, as it were, its opposite pole. Just as we see a mountain landscape reflected in a mirror of water in such a way that the foot of the mountain is first visible in the water, but the summit is lowest down, so it is with the spiritual world. It experiences its inversion in the physical world - the deepest physical corresponds to the highest spiritual. Atma corresponds to the mineral, Budhi to the world of life, Manas to the animal world, whose outer expression is the animal kingdom.

The soul is what connects both worlds. Man is a summary of everything we encounter in the other worlds - the microcosm in the macrocosm. Abbreviated and compressed, we find everything that happens in the cosmos in him. We can follow how the three worlds create an expression in him, in order to look at themselves through him, as it were. Man is the eye that is opened to the cosmos, built by himself.

Let us first see how the mineral forces affect him: they compress the substance - through attraction and repulsion, through number and measure. This creates the physical basis of the human being. It would be rigid and lifeless in itself, like rock crystal, which is formed according to the same laws of material connection.

This is where the life force comes in, that which conditions growth and reproduction, elasticity and going beyond oneself, that which creates the species. This species-forming force is concentrated in the germ, finds its most striking expression in heredity and, through the law of form, dominates the substance, which is subject to dissolution in itself. The inherited form is that which is preserved. We also call this life body the etheric double body because it fills the entire physical body. It is clearly visible to anyone who has the relevant organ to see.

These two bodies are built by the forces of the outside world, which builds organs in them through which it makes itself perceptible. The physical world weaves the skin of the human being and inserts the sense organs into it. The eye is an invagination in the skin. Sensations arise through sensory perceptions. These already bring about something new. Something reacts inside the person. A source of activity opens up, which responds to the sensations with impressions. This is where the person's own life begins.

Here we have the transition to the soul. The soul in man is his most intrinsic, that which arises through the impressions and experiences within him, which is or can be different in each person, for no one can know whether the other 'ro' feels exactly the same way as he does himself. This new element we call 'sentient soul'; it extends beyond the physical body, visible to the one to whom the soul organs are opened. But it is dependent on the physical and life bodies, since it receives its impressions through them and is determined within its boundaries by their strength. We call this boundary the soul body. We are therefore dealing with a sentient soul body, that is, a unit with regard to the human being as a whole. If we consider the body as such, this soul body is its third limb; the sentient soul, on the other hand, is the first limb of the human soul; it is in the soul that the feelings of pleasure and pain, the drives and passions of human beings arise. Through these, it is subject to the body.

But now it comes into contact with the spirit, which has created a physical tool for itself in the organ of thought, the brain. Thought serves it in the first instance; man reflects on his perceptions and passions. In order to satisfy these, he seeks opportunities, acts - through this the power of thought places the soul in a higher conformity to law, to which it does not belong as a mere sentient soul; it grows beyond what it is in the animal or in quite undeveloped man. It becomes the intellectual soul. The clairvoyant beholds this as a special entity within the soul body, as a second link. Through the intellectual soul the human being is led beyond his own life. He opens himself more and more to the spirit. To the extent that he opens himself to the knowledge of truth and goodness, he takes in the eternal within himself, that which exists in itself and does not depend on impressions. That which shines forth as the eternal in the soul may be called the 'conscious soul'. The body has a limiting effect on it, the spirit expands it.

Berlin, undated transcript, 1904

During the Lemurian period something happened that has been among the most important events for many millions of years: the actual self of the human being took up residence in the human body. The human soul was further developed than the bodies that already existed at that time. Before the bodies were ready, the souls had a different development on other planets. Pitris: different degrees of development. Different level of consciousness. This consciousness, which we have now, has been gradually built up.

Through long periods of time, we have developed what is now on Earth on the Moon. Then it slept over. When man begins his Earth career, he is further than the Earth. He must build bodies in association with other high beings. “The Earth was desolate and confused.” The forms must be built from the material; this happens in the first three rounds. He builds forms as one builds a house. A kind of affinity with earthly matter brings this about. When he begins the fourth round, the bodies are so far ready that the entire physical system - bone, muscle, digestive, blood circulation system - is complete. The human brain is still in the design. The fourth round is for building this physical organ for consciousness.

Three main stages initially:

First: purely spiritual, arupa, formless; second: spiritual state of formation, rupa, astral state. At the end of the astral state, there is in the innermost part of the being:

1. an arupic being
2. enveloped by a thought body or rupa
3. by an astral body or sentient body.

He now begins the physical formation by first forming an impression of what he was astral in the finest matter, in ether. In earlier planetary development, man had a very different etheric body, which built up the one we now know, but in the fourth state of the fourth round, when the earth itself was etheric matter. It is the template of the physical body, roughly the color of peach blossom. During this time, the etheric body was the only human body. It was the first root race, subtle people floated in the etheric space and multiplied by one emerging from the other.

Becoming denser and denser, man goes through seven stages – racial – and now comes the second state, the air man. The ether attracts the air, permeates it, forms bodies. What we find in fairy tales is based on ancient memory. They are called Hyperboreans: “And the Lord made the winds his messengers.” Meaning: He formed a body of air for the spiritual beings. Hyperborea became more and more dense; air was very thick back then; yet the people were wonderfully beautiful. Etheric people were luminous fire figures. The astral earth would have been completely dark to a physical eye; during the etheric earth it would have begun to shine. The fiery figures are characterized as follows: “And God said, let there be light.

The Lemurians are so important because this important section was in the middle of it. Earlier catastrophes were not so violent because the earth was not yet so dense. Hyperboreans by rearranging the heat by moving the continent from the North Pole to the South.

Water-soaked, dense matter: the first Lemurians were formed from this; not as dense as lower jellyfish - they are called “egg-reproducing humans”, just like certain animals, amoebas, which first have indentations in which the nucleus is distributed, then it contracts. Thus man was materially immortal in those days, he divides but does not perish, so that man is materially immortal as such. In those days Pitri still hovered around the body; only in the middle of the Lemurian period could he take possession of it. He had everything, except the right brain. Now an approach to it was emerging. Fire mist had become protein-like, a brain approach was emerging and the soul could take possession. Only the very advanced Pitri could now form the body from within. So-called sons of the fire mist, Arhats, initiates, and indeed from the highest beings. Less strong Pitris would not yet have been able to form bodies. First representatives of wisdom. Other Pitris could have taken possession now, but then beings such as those that had emerged could not have come into being. Man would never have attained full freedom; he would have had a dull consciousness. Towards the end of the second Lemurian period, further Pitris began to incarnate.

Those bodies, however, that were not inhabited by Pitris at that time, developed into animality. If there were no brain in the body, no highly developed Pitri could work in it on our earthly plane. This development into animality is what all religions call the Fall of Man. At the expense of the brain, the rest of the human being has been pushed down into animality. By taking possession inwardly, the human being must develop senses in order to perceive. The Fall of Man creates the first karma.

Externally, physically, the first humans were much more perfect, but duller. At that time there were no apes; those bodies that were inhabited now developed into humans; the uninhabited ones decayed; they were soulless, amanasic ones. So during the second Lemurian period, a developed state of consciousness is achieved by sinking deeper into sensuality. The task of the eighth round, of all earthly development, is to achieve this state of consciousness.

On the moon he had a low one, and an even lower one earlier.

So through seven planets he develops seven states of consciousness. When they migrate from the moon, they had dream trance, before that plant trances, before that deep trances. Seven planets or states of consciousness. Seven kingdoms, seven races.

There must be something in man that meets every thing in the external world. There must be something in external things that corresponds to what is in us. We meet with things on a common scene. They meet us in three ways:

– mineral, man originated where the mineral power of God has condensed
– arousing pleasure and displeasure
– awakening thoughts.

In the manasic there must be something that produces the thoughts outside. That which receives the thoughts within us must be something that emerges from the thoughts. Everything is the same above as below. Man came down to meet the creative activity. The development was such that the creative met with the post-creative. The mineral kingdom is the setting for this encounter. Man has evolved into the mineral kingdom and must now evolve out of it.

Thus microcosm and macrocosm meet in the mineral kingdom. By evolving downwards, God encounters man through his relationship with the mineral kingdom.

All human development is in preparation for a future free confrontation with the Deity: Letter of Paul to the Romans Chapter 8, Verse 19: “For the fearful creature waits for adoption as a son.” All development is a yearning.

The Buddhist self-awareness will confront the Mahabuddha.

That is why there are attempts at development: the human being must develop the appropriate organs in the various spheres. He lives a double life in the physical plane in order to know everything that is native there, in the astral and in Devachan. He will be able to live in pure Devachan when he no longer has any inclination for the other worlds. Man can have an inclination downwards or upwards; he should have the desire for enthusiasm, make the down to the up, raise the temporal to the eternal. The mystery student has developed the amount of desire that lived in him towards the spiritual side; the desire becomes looking up.

The astral is an intermediate realm; if desire tends downwards, man's astral is kamic; if it tends upwards, it is purified and mental.

Man has a cosmic task: to develop the forces of the mineral kingdom upwards. Because he encounters the deity in the mineral kingdom, he must bring the forces he finds there to the deity. Hence the parable of the bee.

In the three kingdoms, he has to collect and unite with the deity. Through earthly life, we unite our dual task: to develop the sighing in disharmony into harmony. If we do not accomplish this task, we are missing something.

We are now at the boundary line where we have to reverse. It is the approach of two realms, it is the crossroads at the level of the mineral kingdom.

Theosophy is therefore a theory that must become life.

The human being brings into consciousness everything that the animal carries as unconscious memory. By developing thought through meditation, man brings back memories of past lives on earth. Christianity had the task of sanctifying the personality; therefore, the concept of individuality had to take a back seat for a time.

Development is the penetration of the later into the earlier; the firstlings of humanity are the forerunners of later development.

In every church window, in every saga, in every folk building, in the ideas of everyday life in the Middle Ages, we can find the expression of deep truths. Poems that are not understood today are born out of the spirit of deepest wisdom. The material of “Heinrich von der Aue” was also taken from the circle of European initiates. The “Poor Henry”. Nowhere is it indicated that one is dealing with theosophical poetry; least of all did G. von H. know.

Heinrich von der Aue is a noble servant on the large estate of Aue in Swabia. He is an exceptionally capable knight in all worldly matters, but does not care much about things that go beyond the worldly. Therefore, he was punished with an illness called: Miselsucht - a leprosy that was considered incurable. All German doctors – and in those days they were doctors who healed with the help of spiritual powers – had given up on Heinrich von der Aue; only a master in Salerno had offered the prospect of salvation. A pure maiden must sacrifice her life. But he does not believe this; he realizes that it is the punishment for his worldly knighthood. He gives away his possessions and withdraws to a farm, where he is cared for by the daughter. She decides to sacrifice herself for him; he travels with her to Salerno. Then he realizes that it must not be, and would rather remain ill. But the sufficient sacrifice is not physical death, but the will, the joyful, spiritual will.

One principle was adopted by all poets. One should keep the measure, the harmony. 'Diumaasze'. A theosophical principle often expresses it: It does not depend on the external success, but on the right will. 'Who' - says the poet - 'in the mind strives for purity and nobility and wants the right, finds balance and honor.' – the bliss that emanates from the sixth principle. Through such words, Heinrich von der Aue implies that he has striven for something deeper. Everything he has written breathes the same spirit.

“Erek and Enita” describes how the search is on for moderation, how love arises from uniqueness and harmony from disharmony. Erek marries Enita. He is a bold knight who stipulates that his wife never warns him of danger. But harmony arises from the trials.

Iwein marries the daughter of a giant, but leaves her a year after the wedding because Gawain advises him not to 'get lost', not to become lazy and careless. He goes away for a year to pass tests, promises to come back, but does not, and loses the favor of his wife and his mind. He is saved by fighting lions and dragons. Seventeen years of wandering.

Only through spiritual knighthood can one attain the ability to exercise spiritual rule. In the legends, the higher, purer soul is always symbolized by a female soul; the higher consciousness is represented as the virgin feminine. Through his pure higher soul, which knows what love actually is, through the Master of Salerno, who points out to him how the higher spiritual connects with him through sacrifice.

What is misery for someone who knows what the spiritual and the physical actually are? We know that in earlier developments, man was a higher animal, only earthly development is there to put manas into kama. Basically, all beings in our development partake of this kama-manasic nature. In the animal, manas is not in the head, it is directed by manas. In the various kingdoms, the laws of wisdom come to light. This was not yet the case on the moon, which was only enveloped in an atmosphere of wisdom.

It would be an irregularity on earth if a new kama were grafted directly onto kama itself. If a being lived on kama, it would be the life relationship of the moon. There are such things on earth: they are parasites, insects that live on other creatures. And in the plant world there is mistletoe, a parasite that draws nourishment from already existing life. What the Kama root needs to live is what remained from the moon epoch. Mistletoe remained behind, only stunted, and must live parasitically to complete its development.

Hence the construction of insects, which are often in a horn shell, came into earthly development unfinished and [gap in the transcript]. Animals with an exoskeleton are those that are latecomers from the lunar epoch. It is therefore understandable that mistletoe plays such a role in ancient myths and legends. It is associated with those [...] and who are therefore still attached to the moon, to the Kamic, which was justified in the past.

In the saga, the beings that cause evil, connect their urges with the Kamic, are associated with mistletoe in the most spiritual way. [Baldur] is killed by mistletoe, which stems from an earlier epoch. If it extends into our epoch, it will bring about destruction. Earthly Kama must be ruled by Manas. Life on Earth is being destroyed by the lunar parasites. This is why the devil is called the lord of the flies.

If man himself abandons himself too much to Kama in earthly development, he grafts Kama onto Kama onto Kama and then becomes disharmonious within himself. This disharmony can be seen in the disease that breaks the measure. He is afflicted by the addiction that underlies this plant. Those who abandon themselves to the passions remain stuck in what belongs to the lunar. This damming up of the wave of life produces the disease of misery.

Those who do not strive for spiritual enlightenment experience a stagnation in their whole life. This cannot be understood by a physical doctor, only by someone who knows the connection between all planes. When the dammed up wave of life is lifted, when selfishness is truly sacrificed, then healing occurs.

Iwein is also a deeply symbolic piece of writing. Here again a female being represents the higher self. In this case it is the daughter of a giant, a race preceding humanity. The fusion of man with nature, as well as with [gap in transcript], was the gigantism. At the beginning of his development, Iwein is still close to this original development. He must now awaken Manas within himself. Manas was originally a gift of the gods, connected with the soul. Now he loses the higher gift in order to regain it as inner human intellect. When he reconciles with the higher self, he gains it, but by freeing the lion from the dragon, that is, from selfishness, from the wisdom that is directed towards the worldly.

It is wonderful when we consider the Mithras mysteries: their seven degrees. The fourth degree is the lion. When the fourth principle – lion – awakens in the higher sense, it strives towards the fifth and wants to be freed from the third, the dragon.

These poems arose from tremendous depths; it takes until the sixteenth century for them to surface. With the Copernican revolution, poetry becomes more secularized. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there is tremendous esoteric depth.