The Rudolf Steiner Archive

13. The First, Second, and Third Logos

[ 1 ] [The beginning of the text is missing.]

[ 2 ] When the selfless current returns to its point of origin in two cyclical outflows and matter dissolves once more, nothing has happened except that it returns to its source, enriched. Only by absorbing and overcoming the self-centered current will the selfless current unfold such a powerfully resonating force that it must resonate beyond itself—that is, beyond the cosmic circle formed by the first meeting of the two currents. In the outflow of selflessness, something new will be born, brought forth from it, a new region: Paranirvana, the negative matter, because, in contrast to matter that is held within the cosmic circle by attraction, it spreads outward. One can understand the process by imagining the swing of a pendulum. The pendulum swinging forward will immediately swing back, and unless it is stopped by obstacles along its path, it must swing with such force that it goes beyond its starting point—just as a rolling cart cannot stop suddenly but must continue rolling for a short distance.

[ 3 ] With this preparation and gradual development of matter, the material components necessary for planetary formation would now have been created, but planetary life itself could not yet arise. Thus, the Logos could not remain in Paranirvana; he had to return, and on this return journey he formed the Maha-Paranirvana region. From here, the Logos had to make the sacrifice and begin the cycle through matter once more, so that other life—separate from him, yet arising from him—could emerge.

[ 4 ] All life in its manifold forms has emerged from the One, the single Logos. In it, all diversity still lies hidden, undivided and undifferentiated. As it becomes recognizable, perceiving itself as the Self, it steps out of the Absolute, out of the undifferentiated, and creates the non-Self, its mirror image, the second Logos. It animates and enlivens this mirror image; it is its third aspect, the third Logos.

[ 5 ] Thus, the first Logos—in which life and form rest undifferentiated—should be regarded as the Father. With his existence, time begins; he separates his reflection from himself—the form, the feminine, which he fills with his life—the second Logos; and from this animation emerges the third Logos as the Son, as animated form. Thus, all religions have conceived of their God in a triune form, as Father, Mother, and Son. Thus Uranus and Gaia, the maternal Earth; and Cronus, Time, emerged from her womb as the Son; Osiris, Isis, and Horus, and so on.

[ 6 ] The sacrifice of the Logos is: The Spirit descends into matter, animates its reflection, and thereby the world of animated forms is given its existence; all of these forms lead their own distinct lives and undergo the cycle of evolution in order to become, as highly developed individualities, one again with the Logos, who through them receives the wealth of experience. Had it not poured itself out to animate all these forms, there would be no independent growth and becoming. All movement, all emergence would have no life of its own; it would merely stir and move under the direction of God.

[ 7 ] Just as human beings are interested only in what is unknown and unique about other people, and remain indifferent to everything they can calculate and understand, so too can the Logos find joy only in life that develops independently—life that springs from it, for which it sacrifices itself and gives itself over.

[ 8 ] The process of the development of matter begins, in which the qualities of the Being are reflected and take effect, until these reflections, as separate forms, begin their own activity and thus increasingly spiritualize and animate matter, until it becomes one again with the Being—Atma, Budhi, Manas ... [gap]

[ 9 ] First, the cosmic foundation was created through the convergence of the two qualities—selfhood and selflessness—of the First Logos. Through the second current of the same, guided by harmony, the atomistic essence took shape. This essence enveloped itself with the already existing mother substance, and atomic formation came into being. These atoms, with their shells of varying degrees of density, now gradually formed the matter that could serve as a medium for the second Logos—who is the mirror image of the first—to project his own mirror image of it. The second Logos now flows into this matter, which, at its first stage—the Nirvana stage—is of such a fine nature that he can flow through it unhindered and unchanged. He now enters the Budhi region; here he is held back, and although selflessness in this region is so strong that it does not wish to hold the Logos within its realm, it nevertheless claims him for its entire cosmos. Here now begins the sacrifice of the Logos; the voice, the sound, emanates from him: he wishes to animate matter with his spirit, so that his thoughts may have their existence as independent forms. Here, where the divine thought becomes sound and voice, in the Budhi sphere, lies the divine realm for the Middle Ages. Enveloped in Budhi, the Logos now flows into the mental region, which is divided into the Arupa and Rupa stages; into this the divine world of thought now pours forth, the archetypal ideas surging together. What will later become a separate being and still rests enclosed within the Logos in the Budhi sphere is called into existence here as an archetypal idea. This Arupa stage of the mental sphere is Plato’s world of ideas, the rational world of the Middle Ages. On the Arupa stage, these ideas take on their first forms. As divine genii, they begin their separate existence and float in confusion; they still interpenetrate one another as spiritual beings of the same kind. It is the heavenly kingdom of the Middle Ages.

[ 10 ] These spiritual beings now enter the astral sphere; here, enveloped in a denser substance, sensation awakens through contact; only now do they perceive themselves as distinct beings; they feel the separation. This is the elemental realm, the world of the elementals. Descending into the etheric sphere, this sensation is pushed outward from within; it swells, expands, and grows through the etheric vegetative force, only to be enclosed and crystallized by physical matter, for here the egoic still strives with full force toward limitation. Thus the sensation is enclosed in the mineral kingdom, and the divine ideas slumber in sublime peace within the chaste rock. The stone—a frozen thought of God: “The stones are silent. I have placed and hidden the eternal creative word within them; chaste and modest, they keep it locked within themselves.” So goes an ancient Druidic saying, a prayer formula. The etheric and physical realms, or the mineral kingdom, were called the microcosm or the small realm in the Middle Ages.

[ 11 ] As it flowed in, the Logos surrounded itself with increasingly dense shells until, within the rock, it learned to define its boundaries firmly. The stones, however, are mute; they cannot reveal the eternal Word of the Creator. The rigid physical shell must be cast off once more; it remains behind in its realm, while the crystalline forms, now within their soft etheric sheath, expand, grow from within—that is, are able to live, for life is growth; the stone becomes a plant. And ascending further, the Logos sheds this etheric sheath as well and enters the astral sphere of sensation. Here, through the interaction of contact and perception, activity unfolds; from sensation and will, the sentient animal existence takes shape. Thus, as external stimuli act inward as sensations, it gradually develops its organs of perception. The types take form. Passing into the mental realm, this sensation perceives itself, and with ego-consciousness, the human stage is reached.

[ 12 ] From a cosmic perspective, the Logos’s entry into the mineral kingdom marked its deepest descent into matter, and the shedding of its first shell signaled the beginning of the Logos’s ascent. From the human perspective, however, in the anthropocentric sense adopted by the ancient Druid priests, among others, the spirit’s repose within the chaste rock would represent a sublime stage of existence. Untouched by selfish will, the stone obeys solely the laws of causality. For humans on the lower mental level, where we now stand, the rock would be a symbol of higher development. Through lower kamic passions and errors, we develop into an ethereal plant existence, living and growing from within in selfless naturalness, so that later we may live in our causal body, untouched by anything external, resting as pure spirit within ourselves, just as the crystallized spirit rests enclosed within the rock.

[ 13 ] The second Logos, as the mover and animator of the matter in which it is enclosed, has reached only as far as the lower mental sphere. The sentient animal has reached the human stage of existence through self-consciousness. It is able to relate the external world to its own personality; it perceives itself. Nature has led and guided it this far; here it leaves it alone and free. The further development of the human being now depends solely on his will. He must make himself into a vessel, shed the outer shell of the lower mental sphere, so that he may now receive the inflow of the First Logos, just as the seed opens and awaits fertilization, without which it cannot grow and bear fruit.

[ 14 ] The first Logos is the Eternal One in the universe, the unchanging law by which the celestial bodies move in their orbits, the foundation of all things. Individual forms are subject to destruction and change. With our sensory perception, we perceive colors that may appear differently to another form of perception. The external, solid object, held together by its parts in a specific form, can vanish at a certain temperature; its parts can dissolve, but the law by which it came into being remains and is eternal. Thus the entire universe moves according to eternal laws; the First Logos flows outspread within it. Man must rise to it with his will. He must develop within himself the selfless lower soul-knowledge (Antahkarana). Through pure contemplation, he must perceive this eternal, unchanging law within the transitory; he must learn to distinguish between what is merely a temporary appearance in a specific form and what is his essential core; he must take in and preserve what he has seen as a thought within himself. Thus he gradually comes to know the unreality of the phenomenal world; the thought becomes the real to him; he gradually ascends to the arupa stage; he lives in the pure world of thought. The manifold dissolves for him and is subsumed into unity; he feels himself one with the All. Thus he has risen so high that he can receive the inflow from the First Logos directly as intuition. But such an individual soul does not flow into every single person; no, it is the Universal Soul, it is the soul of Plato and others, in which he shares, with whom he becomes one in thought. Step by step, the higher human being develops from the kamic.

[ 15 ] At this turning point, when he must strive upward of his own free will, he needs a teacher; and that is why, in the third race of the fourth round—the Lemurian epoch—the Sons of Manas descended and incarnated to serve as guides. Mental development began with simple counting and an understanding of numbers, distinguishing the thinking human from the animal that perceives only through the senses.