The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The First, Second, and Third Logos

[The beginning of the explanation is missing.]

[ 1 ] When the selfless stream returns to its starting point in two cyclical outflows and matter dissolves again, nothing has happened except that it returns enriched to its origin. Only by absorbing and overcoming the selfish stream will the selfless stream develop such a powerful vibrational force that it must swing beyond itself, that is, beyond the cosmic circle that forms the first meeting of the two streams. In the flowing apart of selflessness, something new will be born, brought forth from it, a new region: Paranirvana, the negative matter, because, in contrast to matter, which is held within the cosmic circle by attraction, it spreads outwards. 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 in its path, it will swing so strongly that it will go beyond its starting point—just as a car rolling forward cannot stop suddenly, but must continue rolling for a distance.

[ 2 ] With this preparation and gradual development of matter, the material components for planetary formation would now have been created, but planetary life itself cannot yet arise. Thus, the Logos could not remain in Paranirvana; it had to return, and on this return journey it formed the Mahaparanirvana region. From here, the Logos had to make the sacrifice and begin the cycle through matter again so that other life, besides itself, but arising from it, could come into being.

[ 3 ] All life in manifold forms has arisen from the unity, the one Logos. In it, all diversity still rests undivided, undifferentiated, hidden. As it becomes recognizable, perceiving itself as self, it emerges from the Absolute, from 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.

[ 4 ] Thus, the first Logos would be the undifferentiated, in which life and form rest undifferentiated, to be regarded as the Father. With his existence, time begins; he separates his mirror image from himself, the form, the feminine, which he fills with his life, the second Logos; and from this animation, the third Logos emerges as the Son, as the animated form. Thus, all religions have conceived of their God in threefold 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.

[ 5 ] The sacrifice of the Logos is: the spirit descends into matter, animates its reflection, and thus also gives existence to the world of animated forms, all of which lead their own special existence and go through the cycle of evolution in order to become one again with the Logos as highly developed individualities, who through them receives a wealth of experience. Had he not poured himself out to animate all these forms, there would be no independent growth and becoming. All movement, all creation would have no life of its own; it would only stir and move according to the direction of God.

[ 6 ] Just as humans are only interested in the unknown, the individual in humans, and are indifferent to everything they can calculate and understand, so too can the Logos only take pleasure in independently developing life that emerges from it, for which it sacrifices and gives itself.

[ 7 ] The process of development of matter begins, in which the qualities of the being are reflected and effective, until these reflections themselves begin their activity as separate forms and thus increasingly spiritualize and animate matter, until it becomes one again with the being Atma, Budhi, Manas ... [gap]

[ 8 ] First, the cosmic foundation was created by the convergence of the two qualities of selfhood and selflessness of the first Logos. Through the second current of the same, guided by harmony, the atomistic essence was formed. This enveloped itself with the already existing mother substance, and atomic formation came about. 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, which is the mirror image of the first, to reflect its image of the same. The second Logos now flows into this matter, which, at its first stage, the Nirvana stage, is of such a fine nature that it can flow through it unhindered and unchanged. It now reaches the Budhi region; here it is held back, and even though the selflessness in this region is so strong that it does not want to hold the Logos for its realm, it nevertheless claims it for its entire cosmos. Here begins the sacrifice of the Logos; the voice, the sound, emanates from him: he wants to enliven matter with his spirit, so that his thoughts may exist as independent forms. Here, where the divine thought becomes sound and voice, in the Budhi sphere, is 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 Rupaspheres; here the divine world of thought pours forth, the exemplary ideas surging together. What later becomes a special being and still rests enclosed in the Logos in the Budhi sphere is called into existence here as an exemplary idea. This Arupa stage of the mental sphere is Plato's world of ideas, the world of reason of the Middle Ages. At the Arupa stage, these ideas take on their first forms. As divine geniuses, they begin their special existence and float around, still interpenetrating each other as similar spirit beings. It is the heavenly realm of the Middle Ages.

[ 9 ] These spirit beings now enter the astral sphere; here, enveloped in a denser substance, sensation awakens through contact; only now do they perceive themselves as separate beings, they feel the separation. This is the elemental realm, the world of the elementals. Descending into the etheric sphere, this sensation is pushed from within to without, it swells, expands, and grows through the etheric vegetative force, only to be enclosed and crystallized by physical matter, because here the ego still strives with full force for limitation. Thus, the sensation is enclosed in the mineral kingdom, and the divine ideas slumber in sublime tranquility in the chaste rock. The stone — a frozen thought of God: “The stones are mute. I have placed the eternal word of the Creator in them and hidden it; chaste and bashful, they keep it locked within themselves.” This is an old Druidic saying, a form of prayer. In the Middle Ages, the etheric and physical realms, or the mineral kingdom, were called the microcosm or the small realm.

[ 10 ] As it flowed in, the Logos surrounded itself with increasingly dense shells until it learned to limit itself firmly in rock. However, stones are mute; they cannot reveal the eternal word of the Creator. The rigid physical shell must be cast off again; it remains behind in its realm, while the crystalline forms in their soft etheric shell expand, grow from within, that is, are able to live, for life is growth; the stone becomes a plant. And ascending further, the Logos also sheds this etheric shell and reaches the astral sphere of sensation. Here, through the interaction of touch and perception, activity unfolds; the sentient animal existence takes shape from sensation and will. Thus, as the stimulus from outside acts inwardly as sensation, it gradually develops its organs of perception. Types are formed. Passing into the mental realm, this sensation perceives itself, and with the consciousness of the self, the human stage is reached.

[ 11 ] From a cosmic point of view, with the influx of the Logos into the mineral kingdom, its deepest descent into matter would have been reached, and with the shedding of the first shell, the upward ascent of the Logos would have begun. From the human point of view, however, in the anthropocentric sense, as assumed by the ancient Druid priests, among others, the resting of the spirit in chaste rock would be a sublime stage of existence. Untouched by selfish will, the stone obeys only the law of causality. For humans on the lower mental level where we now stand, the rock would be a symbol of higher development. Through lower chemical passions and errors, we develop into ethereal plant existence, living and growing from within in selfless naturalness, in order to later live in our causal body, untouched by everything external, resting as pure spirit within ourselves, like the crystallized spirit enclosed in rock.

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

[ 13 ] The first Logos is the eternal in the universe, the unchanging law according to which the stars move in their orbits, which underlies all things. Individual forms are subject to destruction and change. With our sensory vision, we perceive colors that may appear different to another form of vision. The external, solid object, held together by its parts in a specific form, can disappear at a certain temperature, its parts can dissolve, but the law according to which it came into being remains and is eternal. Thus, the entire universe moves according to eternal laws, the first Logos flowing out into it. Man must rise to it with his will. He must develop the selfless lower soul consciousness (Antahkarana) within himself. Through pure contemplation, he must perceive this eternal, unchanging law in the transitory; he must learn to distinguish between what is only a temporary appearance in a certain form and what is his essential core; he must take in and preserve what he has seen as a thought within himself. In this way, he gradually learns to recognize the unreality of the phenomenal world; the thought becomes real to him; he gradually ascends to the Arupa stage; he lives in the pure world of thought. The manifold dissolves and sinks into unity for him; he feels at one with the All. He has thus risen so high that he can receive the inflow from the first Logos directly as intuition. But it is not an individual soul that flows into each individual; no, it is the All-Soul, it is the soul of Plato and others, in which he participates, with whom he becomes one in thought. Gradually, the higher human being develops from the kamic.

[ 14 ] At this turning point, where he must strive upward in freedom through his own will, he needs a teacher, and that is why in the third race of the fourth round, the Lemurian period, the sons of Manas descended and incarnated to serve as guides. With simple counting, with the understanding of numbers, mental development began and separated thinking humans from animals, which only perceive through their senses.