The Rudolf Steiner Archive

There are three terms we want to consider. We have to imagine that every spirit in the universe consists of three principles, as does the human being. We need not know the three principles for the other spirits, but they definitely exist:

1. conscious awareness
2. life
3. form.

When we consider the entities that exist on our Earth we find that all of them take their form from the mineral world, as we call it. There is no other form principle for the human being within the Earthly world. This form of the mineral world can only be taken to a higher level by giving it life. A life form can only gain a centre by life coming to conscious awareness. Form, life and conscious awareness are therefore the three principles which every entity has. The human being thus consists of body, soul and spirit. We know that the soul extends into the body, creating the soul body. This is filled, as it were, with sentient soul. The higher principle always integrates itself into the lower. The soul has conscious awareness because the spirit integrates itself into the spiritual (or consciousness) soul. Because of this, the human being has threefold nature—form, life and conscious awareness.

Bringing the different spirits in the world before the mind’s eye, we can divide them into three kinds by using this definition:

1. those where form predominates over the other two, life and awareness
2. awareness may prevail over life and form
3. all three may be in equilibrium.

For the present cycle we refer to

1. Spirits where awareness is predominant—‘dhyani’. They have a powerful conscious mind.
2. Spirits where conscious awareness, life and form are in equilibrium—called ‘substances’ in esoteric terms.
3. Spirits where form is prevalent—the ‘elementals’. ⁵⁵

For the ‘substances’, some connection exists between dhyani and elementals. Human beings were in the substance state when they emerged from the elemental spirit state and combined with the soul. They were merely models, or forms, at that time. Human beings were beautifully luminous orbs at that time, with their souls floating around them. They were ‘substance’ in the middle of the Lemurian age. Today they have gone beyond the level of being at mere ‘substance’ level. They are in the process of dhyanic evolution. In esoteric terms the principle which was ready to take possession of those bodies in Lemurian times is called 'human'.

We now ask: What are these three kinds of spirits able to do? Firstly let us consider the entities where conscious awareness predominates. Their conscious awareness is more all-encompassing than their own life and their own form. They are therefore able to have power over other life and other forms. In Christian esoteric terms such spirits are called angels of the orbital periods. What makes a planet able to orbit the Sun? The fact that it has an angel of orbital period which is able to make it move in orbit. These are the planetary dhyani or spirits. The Earth thus has its own angel of orbital period, its Earth dhyan. Let me remind you of the ‘Earth spirit’ in Goethe's Faust . Its body is the whole astral matter of the Earth.⁵⁶

The human being is in the process of becoming a planetary spirit. At present he is image of the godhead only in mineral terms, for he must still develop his astral, rupa-mental and arupa-mental nature. Then, at the end of the seventh round, he can become an angel of orbital period. The highest of the dhyan chohans will then say to him: ‘All animals and plants are given into your care.’ This will thus happen on the 7th day of creation. The human being will then be a dhyan chohan, a dhyanic cosmic spirit (chohan = cosmic spirit).

Secondly the spirits in whom form, life and conscious awareness are in equilibrium have power over form and are themselves guided by their conscious awareness. Spirits of this kind, which we know, are human beings who are at a certain level. They continue to develop and free themselves more and more of being under the control of their form, their lower nature. They seek to achieve something higher, which is awareness.

Thirdly, in the elemental spirits, form is mightier than life and conscious awareness, and their form thus needs to be controlled by conscious awareness and by life. They are the exact opposite of the dhyanic spirits. These can control more than just their form and life. In the elemental spirits form is more all-encompassing than life and conscious awareness. They therefore need a different life and a different conscious awareness to control their form. This means that elemental spirits have to lodge themselves in another kind of life and another kind of conscious awareness so that they may use it for themselves. They therefore retard the life and conscious awareness of others. The elementals are thus the spirits which hold evolution back. All parasitic life forms are governed by such elemental spirits. For us humans these life forms had already come to completion according to their kind in the lunar period, which is why form is predominant in them. They are now in decline, with their evolution in descent.

Animals with external skeletons, for example, have gone beyond evolution. Their inner development has dissolved, and they surround themselves with a horny layer on the outside (beetles, insects). They are preparing to subside into the eighth sphere. The ancient Moon also had an eighth sphere, a satellite Moon. Those life forms reached completion then, going beyond their evolution, and are now like overripe fruit. Spiders belong to the eighth sphere, for instance, and among plants, the mistletoe. Goethe therefore attributed the world of spiders and flies to Mephistopheles.⁵⁷ Anything parasitic is an outer reflection of elemental spirits living on the astral plane.

Before that the human being was also an elemental spirit. Not everything that is physical in him is destined to be redeemed. A cinder remains. This cinder, which remains there, is always present in the human being; because of it, the human being is under the influence of those astral elementals; the elemental nature which goes with it clings to him. Because of this, the human being is always connected with the principle which is inimical to his development, inhibiting and disrupting it. The spirits that cling to the human being are called 'Alben' in German mythology [elves, sprites, goblins, old English mære;—translator]. They appear vaguely in what are called 'nightmares', dreams where one thinks a spirit is sitting on one's chest. When you gain astral visions, you first of all see these spirits. (The 'dweller on the threshold' in Bulwer Lytton's Zanoni.)⁵⁸ It is a reflection of the human being’s astral knowledge of his mare, trying to fend off the enemy, a projection of an astral spirit in ourselves. It is the [lesser] guardian of the threshold. Someone unable to overcome his fear of the enemy within will usually turn back at the gate of initiation.

In the higher region of the astral plane, the [image of the] sphinx needs to be cast into the abyss before you are able to move ahead. The human being, who must develop, moves towards this moment. This is a developmental stage which people do not need to go through in the same way. It is possible for an individual to be guided through it with his eyes blindfold, as it were. If you are able to take moral nature to a higher level first, before you gain astral vision, the guardian of the threshold will appear less fearsome.

In the Atlantean race, it was above all the Turanians who gave themselves up to black magic and gained the greatest familiarity with the world of the elementals. Occult schools now put the main emphasis on practising the virtue of devotion, of selflessness and on moral development to equip people more effectively for the struggle. All occultists who continue to be ambitious, vain or self-seeking, get to know these retarding powers in evolution in a truly dreadful way, with these powers influencing them all the more strongly. We must love the teaching, be modest, humble and dedicated if we want to be sure of winning through. Evolution is retarded, held back by the elemental spirits, whereas it is accelerated by the dhyanic spirits.

• 55. See note 13. In the lecture given in Berlin on 27 October 1905 (Foundations of Esotericism, note 13), the terms ‘planets (states of consciousness), rounds or elemental worlds (life), globes (conditions of form)’ are equated with the Christian terms ‘power, kingdom and glory’.
• 56. Spirits of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd elemental worlds. See Note 6.
• 57. Goethe’s Faust I, ‘god of flies’, ‘lord of flies’.
• 58. Edward George Bulwer, Earl of Lytton (1803–1873). Zanoni; The Dweller of the Threshold, Book 4.

Conscious awareness on the first planet was at deep trance level. It had the widest horizon, yet it was also the dimmest. The human being had an overview of the whole planetary system in this state. On the second planet, conscious awareness was at the dreamless sleep level—somewhat brighter but also narrower. On the third planet, dream-filled sleep level awareness was distinctly brighter and narrower. At the dreamless sleep level, human beings were able to perceive life, at the dream-filled sleep level also the inner feelings. Conscious awareness on the fourth planet is daytime consciousness, narrowed down to the greatest degree but also destined to perceive the conscious self in another individual. This is the clearest state of conscious awareness. The psychic level of awareness on the fifth planet will be far brighter than our present one. It will extend across the whole astral sphere. On the sixth planet, conscious awareness will be at the hyperpsychic stage. The lower thought world will be openly apparent to human beings. On the seventh planet humanity will reach the spiritual stage of conscious awareness. Then the higher mental world will open up before them. Every developmental phase within such a level of conscious awareness is called a ‘planet’ or a ‘planetary evolution’. This covers the evolution of conscious awareness.

A review of the evolution of life follows. Every stage of awareness has to go through seven life stages, these being the first, second and third elemental worlds, the mineral, plant, animal and human worlds. Each phase of passing through a life stage is called a ‘round’. We thus have 7 rounds on each planet, and on the 7 planets together 49 metamorphoses of life.

The stages of form.

Every life stage has to go through seven form stages, the forms of the

1. arupic
2. rupic
3. astral
4. physical
5. plastic (physically mobile—life governs form)
6. intellectual (not only mobile, but can be penetrated by thought)
7. archetypal (the whole I lies exposed to the outside world)

These form stages are called 'globes'. Every stage has a special function. Let us consider these functions in the case of human beings.

Human beings first of all go through the seven worlds in the seven form stages in deep trance awareness. On every planet, the densest stage is the middle one (No. 25 in the table below). We thus have the first elemental world in the arupic, rupic, astral, physical, plastic, intellectual and archetypal stages; then the second elemental world in the same seven stages, and likewise the third elemental world. We also have the mineral world in the stage states. These realms were only at the seed stage, however; in reality there was only one world. Number 49 is the human world in the archetypal stage, as the last globe in the last round—form, life, spiritual awareness.

The characteristic physical form is gone through in the middle of the 49 stages. The human being entered into evolution as a universal spirit which then became a separate spirit. First of all an individual orb separated off from a general orb. Those individual human orbs went through the different transformation stages. One of the later transformation processes yielded the ‘ether double body’. This stage of first separation from the universal is called ‘conscious awareness going down into the abyss’.⁶⁰ It is reached in the physical stage of the first planet. 24 stages went before, with another 24 to follow. The middle stage, the 25th, is the densest. The physical potential for the human being arose as a dense physical orb. At that time the Earth was like the ether or like the consistency of light on our present Earth. When awareness had fallen into the abyss it had a form rather like a mulberry.

On the second planet, in the deep sleep state of awareness (dreamless sleep), the human being became immersed in number. The orbs developed on the first planet were acting in a certain regular harmony. A relict from that second state is that chemical elements do not combine in any random numbers. Colours and sounds are in an order determined by their wave lengths. On the second planet we thus find order based on measure, number and weight.

Only one world existed at the first stage (Saturn); at the second stage (Sun), when the human being had become immersed in number, it was possible to separate into two worlds. One world arose which remained a continuum all the way to the human being, and another containing everything that was not suitable for developing as far as the human being. This became a separate second world (potential for animal and plant worlds, the lower forms of life). Law: It is not possible to have higher development unless something is separated out and left behind at a lower level. The degree of development was specific and given in that potential of the first planet. From it followed the law of life. It is the law of unequal but full development—no taking without giving. The first obligation of the esoteric student is to give something back.

On the third planet a third element developed—the law of elective affinities. People develop sympathy and antipathy for one another. This law applies in all worlds, in chemistry, for example, and in the mineral world. This also made it possible for a new world to develop. The animal, plant and mineral worlds developed. The human being as we see him today did not yet exist at that time. He was still a kind of animal then, at the kamic level. The spirit had not yet entered into the body.

On the fourth planet, in waking consciousness, a new potential developed for some entities so that they were not subject to the law of elective affinity. A life form that went further had to come. This was birth and death, which did not exist before. This form of life could only come because entities no longer existed in isolation but were held together by a supersensible thread of life. Individual incarnations were as if threaded on some cotton. The entity became manifold in time through birth and death. Before, human beings were manifold only in space. On the third planet (Moon), multiplication happened by tying off and division, and all lived in sympathy and antipathy with one another. Everything which multiplies by division is therefore immortal in material terms. Because of this the lowest animals, monads, are immortal (according to Weismann).⁶² Death is only possible when insemination exists as well as division. The price for birth and death was that entities continued to be split off, with the human being developing at the cost of other entities. Because of this, birth and death was also imposed on all other entities, which have no individual karma. The human being had to push each of the worlds which were below him down by one level.

Birth and death are connected with human karma. On the next planet, the human being, having gained a higher level of awareness, will be aware not only of the workings of karma but will have conscious awareness in karma itself. His inner strength will have grown to such an extent that he will have the will to be his karma. He will bear it in his figure and physiognomy. His physiognomy will reveal what lies in his astral and mental body. It will then happen that someone who is good will also be truly seen to be good from the outside, and someone who is evil as evil. Such evil people will then be found only among those who trained in black magic. The great judgement will come, dividing good from evil. This will happen on the fifth planet. From the fifth planet onwards we can only speak of the evolution of goodness.

On the sixth planet everything that is meaningless will be eliminated as evolution continues—anything that shows itself to be senseless and illogical on the lower mental plane. This sixth planet is the planet of the Logos, the word, for it is the word which gives meaning.

On the seventh planet, a wholly purified condition will prevail. The planets that went before will have performed their functions, and the fruits of this will be gathered. This is the state of being in complete harmony with God.

The spirit was present all the time when the human body was evolving and going through all these stages. Initially it floated above the body, and then, in the middle of the Lemurian age, it united with the body. The spirit is meant to gather experience on the lower planes through the body. In Greek esoteric teaching, the human soul was compared to a bee gathering honey from the planetary evolutions, from the fall into the abyss on the first planet to the state of complete harmony with God on the seventh planet. Redemption is thus happening all the time. What is held under a spell in matter is released and redeemed. Human beings only gathered experiences from the time when they inhabited the body. Before that they were the architect who built the whole of it in order to inhabit it.

The human being thus goes through the following process of evolution.

The 25th level, the middle one, is always the deepest and densest. We are now on the fourth planet and at the 25th level, which means in the densest state. On the seventh planet, in the seventh world, the human world, and the seventh form, which is archetypal, human evolution will reach its greatest perfection. The human being will then have his archetypal form, be truly godlike and human, with an all-embracing, spiritual conscious awareness.

• 60. See notebook page ‘777 incarnations’ and Special Note, both in this volume. In a lecture given in Paris on 9 June 1906 (An Esoteric Cosmology, in GA 94; Spring Valley: St George Publications 1978), we read that the number 7-7-7 signifies the esoteric cipher of the three Logoi and the exoteric number is the multiplication of these three sevenhoods in the evolutional plan, i.e. 343.
• 62. August Weismann (1834–1914), zoologist. Rudolf Steiner wrote about him in his essay ‘Haeckel und seine Gegner’ [in German] in GA 30.

In the middle of the Lemurian race, building the house for the human being had progressed as far as having the potential for thinking. The dhyanic spirits had gained the level of perfection which enabled them to endow the physical body with the power of thought. With the physical body now having this power, single-gender nature changed to two-gender nature. Before, an entity was able to produce offspring without involving another entity. The power of physical productivity was therefore twice as great in those entities than it is in individual human beings today. In the middle of the Lemurian age, therefore, the human power of productivity was divided in two, with the second half used to develop the ability to think. Until then humanity had evolved at the cost of other worlds which were eliminated by it. Now human beings had to divide in two themselves—into a lower and a higher productive power (power of thought). The latter developed at the cost of the former. Our physical power of rational understanding is thus former regenerative power transformed.

Up to that time only cold-blooded life forms existed on Earth. No life form had as yet the kind of blood that develops fire from within through kama. All of them, including the human being, were cold-blooded at the time. All the cold-blooded life forms we have today are atrophied forms descended from the cold-blooded life forms of that time. Every kind of warm-blooded life form we have today was still part of the human being then, only separating off gradually.

Step by step the human being would always leave behind anything that was less good in order to gain higher development. Reptiles, birds and mammals separated off first, the apes fairly late. Warm-blooded life forms are also earlier stages that have been left behind, with the human being casting them off just as he did the mineral, plant and cold-blooded animal worlds before. The fact that no warm-blooded life forms had existed until then, really means that a further world was created. In esoteric thinking, one does indeed speak of mineral world, plant world, cold-blooded animals, warm-blooded animals.

The warm-blooded animals were only separated off within the Lemurian age because kama entered into the bodies, taking hold of the lower part of that halved productivity. The kama acting from within brought about the warmth in warm-blooded life forms.

The dhyanic spirits were then able to create a human form where half the productive power was converted into powers of rational understanding. The Moon pitris then proceeded step by step to take possession of the human bodies thus created.

Dhyanic spirits may also lag behind in evolution. Some from the class of spirits who had created the human being on the Moon had thus remained behind. They had not managed to get so far as to take part in creating two-gender nature. But they had gained the ability to develop the kama body, configuring it with great wisdom. They were able to take the kamic principle in the human being to its highest peak. This was the work these spirits were still doing in the Lemurian age. However, on the Moon the kama body had not yet had gender, which means that these spirits were unable to take part in developing the kama in the sexual sphere.

Whilst the dhyani, which had gone ahead of them, had taken the human body so far that the spirit was able to enter into the bodies of two different genders, the single aim of these retarded spirits was to use their most sublime wisdom to create a human race that would develop what had been aimed for on the Moon, though this excluded sexuality. They furthermore found the wisdom in man to be akin to their own essential nature. They took hold of the human being and wanted to bring him into a form that would exclude all the lower kamic element; they wanted to bring him to perfection directly, without first going through sexuality. They wanted to make a human being full of wisdom, leaving aside what he must go through in his physical nature. These are the spirits which refused to take part in the creative work in physical nature.

If the human being had developed only in accord with the first dhyani's intentions, his lower kamic nature would not have developed, and he would have been under dhyani thought guidance. Who would then have been thinking in the human being? Divine thoughts had entered into him. Human beings would have been under God’s guidance. God would have been thinking in them, and never they themselves. They would then have been true children of God, but they could never have become like God themselves. They would have been thinking automatons, never able to grasp the inner spark of wisdom as their own; it would always have been an alien light.

Then those retarded spirits came and they were at exactly the right stage to come in and help at this point. They had developed the wisdom-filled kama body on the Moon, and they knew how to penetrate kama with wisdom. They were the spirits to whom the human being owed his freedom. He had to be tied in with kama so that the spark of spirit might be his own. They thus learned to love the light of the other dhyanic spirits. In esoteric terms they are called the great ascetics or kumaras. For at first they refused to be creative; they did not understand the two-gender state. They were insubordinate. They became guiding spirits for the human being at the point where kama was taken up towards wisdom.

The elohim, and especially the Jahveh elohim, had created the human being but did not want him to be 'like one of us’. Now, following the intervention of the retarded dhyani, they wanted at least to prevent human beings from becoming spiritual and leave aside everything low. Lucifer's original aim had been to let sexuality die away and let the human being merge wholly into the spiritual. Jehovah on the other hand tends to put the emphasis on physical life.⁶³ He does not want the human being to grow spiritual too soon, but wants to make him go through the phases of Earth evolution. Together the two bring about the free human being.

The rebellion of the lower dhyani was the work of Lucifer, the intervention of the spirits who free the human being is known as ‘Lucifer’s secret’. In all esoteric schools, Lucifer was venerated as much as all the other dhyanic spirits. Lucifer was called on whenever people needed guidance to find the way to the spirit in full clarity of perceptive understanding. In the early Christian mystery centres, Lucifer's Mystery was still understood and also put down in writing in those early days. This book is most carefully guarded in the Roman Catholic Church, for good reason, for the Church has declared Lucifer to be the enemy of humanity, though the truth is that he made the automated human being into a free spirit. The book is kept at the Vatican; the Count of St Germain has a copy.⁶⁴

We have now been considering the way heavenly spirits (dhyani), Earthly spirits (the human being in his Earthly body and the lunar soul principle of the pitris) and the luciferic spirits worked together in Lemurian times. Let us now consider a specific line of human evolution.

A cycle will always be descending and then ascending: evolution - involution. This is also how it has been with the evolution of our senses. We did not always have the same senses. The human being of the Polarian age was enveloped in a form of matter that was highly tenuous and indeed shadow-like. He had been developed according to the pitris—etheric. These ether human beings really looked oval, like an egg, and moved in a wholly etheric element. Our present-day senses would have been useless at that time. A sense to give orientation within the etheric matter was sufficient, and that was the sense of hearing. They had only this one sense, to perceive the movement of the ether matter, just as later on, in the 6th root-race, the human being will hear the ‘trumpets’ (Book of Revelation), that is, the sounds of the spheres.

As matter condensed, a principle we must call temperature differences developed within matter. Movements were no longer regular, and this created denser and warmer areas. The Hyperboreans were made of air matter. They were able to detect differences in temperature by means of a sense of feeling. Further condensation of the Earth made bodies more solid at first, and finally incandescent. Outwardly this could look like a flame. The sense of sight developed, and this happened in such a way that the temperature organ of the head, which projected like an lantern from the top of the head, changed into an organ of vision. This was later going to be the pineal body, atrophied today, but incandescent and projecting in earlier times—the single eye of the Cyclops. Further condensation of the Earth caused this eye to go through involution, with two eyes taking the place of the one, though they only developed fully in Atlantean times.

Up to the third sub-race of the Atlantean age there would always still be people who had developed their one eye (the eye of Cyclops) and were using it for clairvoyant vision. Then a new ability developed, and this involved a sense by which the condensed matter could be perceived—the sense of taste (tongue). Matter had to be concentrated to such a degree that it came to be salt-like. The sense of smell developed last of all; it was to gain its real significance only in the rounds that followed.

Evolution continues, and in this round we are called on to develop two new senses. We have already begun to start the cycle actively where before we started it passively. What was passive before, is now becoming active for us. The potential developed in the Atlanteans. Before that, human beings had no speech; this only began to develop with the Atlanteans. In speech, human beings utter what they have heard with their ears. The evolution was an involution before. Talking is the opposite pole to hearing. It must continue to develop. It will gain significance and become a sense when mystic evolution will have refined the human being from inside to such effect that it will be able to take the spiritual element in directly. When the spiritual unites with the larynx, the human being will at last be able to speak in a higher sense (in the presence of the masters).

The first time a human manu, who will be a human ‘master’, will arise will be by the end of the fifth root-race. In the sixth root-race he will be a brother to the human race. Those who will have taken their mystic evolution of the astral so far that they will be able to recognize the master, will have achieved this by developing this sense. ‘Before the voice can speak in the presence of the masters it must have lost the power to wound.’⁶⁵

A seventh sense also needs to be developed in our cycle. Just as the sense of hearing will emerge actively, in speech that no longer wounds, so the sense of feeling will go through a reversal. The individual will no longer consider only the things which come from the outside to be feeling, but will also know how to direct them to the outside. He will be able to let his heart unfold freely for the outside and let his deepest feelings enwrap other human beings. The spiritual soul principle, which lives in the heart today, will then flow out. The individual will lay his soul openly at the feet of others. We will not be able to develop this sense unless we consciously endeavour to meet others and the whole world openly: ‘Before the soul can stand in the presence of the masters its feet must be washed in the blood of the heart.’

The astral body organizes these senses when the human being lives in the spirit of these two rules.

• 63. See lecture given in Berlin on 25 October 1905, in GA 93a, Foundations of Esotericism (see note 13).
• 64. See lecture given in Berlin on 23 May 1905, in GA 93, The Temple Legend (see note 22).
• 65. Mabel Collins, Light on the Way, London 1888. See Rudolf Steiner’s commentaries on this [in German] in GA 264, and in GA 266/1.

We are going to have an example of how the world evolved, concentrating on the point where evolution went through the middle of the Lemurian age, and looking at some of the time that went before and came after. The aim is to show how the sense of the eye developed at that time.

If we were able to look at the world as it was at the time of the first, the Polarian race, we would find it to be an ether orb. Soon, meaning several millions years later—which can mean ‘soon’ in world evolution—matter condensed. We see the beginnings of what we call ‘air’. In the air itself, the first beginnings evolved of what we call ‘fire’ and ‘water’. At the time, however, the water in the air was a fiery mist. At that time, in the beginning of the Lemurian age, the Earth was a dense, smoky, fiery mist. Real water as we know it today only developed later as the Earth cooled down; solid matter came even later.

We have to realize that human beings were involved in some form or other at every one of these developmental stages. Human evolution is always dependent on the surroundings.

Let us now look at the human being as he began to evolve at the time when those fiery mists were developing. He had his sense of hearing at the time, and a sense of feeling for temperature differences; he was a highly differentiated, mobile creature flying around in the fiery mist. He needed an organ for feeling if conditions were favourable, not too hot nor too cold. The Cyclops-like organ developed at this time, which had initially served as an organ for feeling the ambient temperature, to tell him if he might enter into it or not.

Then the whole mass in which he was moving started to grow fiery. Before, this element we now call ‘flame’ was not present; the level of the temperature was much higher than the temperature of fire today. The feeling organ sensed that the state of heat was turning into flame and thus gradually condensed into an organ of vision. We see, therefore, that this feeling organ evolved from the inside, arising initially from an inner need of the human being; it was to tell him if he felt well or not. Initially, the organ therefore existed for the sake of the human being himself, so that he might evolve as a life form in conditions that would allow this. At the same time—initially as an attendant phenomenon—the organ developed the ability to perceive the flame which had grown cold, which was light. The organ was at the top of the human head, like a glowing lantern. As matter condensed further it changed from an organ of feeling into an organ of vision.

The mobile human body was getting progressively denser. The result was that this feeling eye lost significance in the encounter with denser objects with external boundaries. Now the attendant phenomenon of being able to see the cold flame came into its own. The organ grew able, as matter was growing denser, to see the object with its boundaries; it was thus given a new role, as it were, as the surroundings changed. The original function has remained and will come into its own at a later stage.⁶⁶

The new quality had thus entered into the entity from the outside, to be given its function later on. Every entity first absorbs from the surroundings what it will later need for its conditions for life. Human beings would never have been able to perceive things through their eyes if these had not been created into them out of the surroundings. Organs need to be created out of the surroundings first, so that these surroundings may then be perceived. Through the organs which the surrounding world has created in him, he can in turn bring influence to bear in the surroundings.

Human beings can never give anything to the world unless the world has first created the conditions for it. Thus interaction between human being and world created the eyes, and through them human beings will later be able again to influence the world. We always have the same process; the human being first absorbs something from the outside which he will then later give out again. Everything in us has resulted from an activity. There is nothing in existence that has not originally been activity. All existence is the result of activity. This applies in all areas of existence, on all planes.

If we consider the dhyanic spirits in their revelatory activity, this is the outcome of an activity they had previously absorbed. This is the law of karma in its most comprehensive sense. All that is results from activity. To be a fortunate individual, you must have created your good fortune yourself in an earlier existence. The good fortune someone enjoys is the outcome of some activity on that individual’s part that had proved a blessing.

Consideration given to the karma of eye development differs from other [studies of karma] in that the individual remains perfectly calm and objective in giving his consideration. Emotions come into it when he considers the karma of his essential nature—idea of just and unjust. In the Vedantic and Pythagorean schools it was therefore the custom to discuss karma by choosing objects that would not arouse emotions. This first of all purified the thoughts, so that nothing by way of passions and feelings would enter into them. This was ‘study’, the aim being to get to know the laws of the world in a way that did not involve emotions. It was called ‘catharsis’, leaving aside anything personal. After this the individual concerned could become a mystic. For as long as human beings have reflected on the destiny of their souls, they have been very interested to know if it is mortal or immortal. They therefore had to go through catharsis in those times before they could study the soul’s destiny without emotion. Calm, emotionless study would free them from fear and self pity, above all egotistical compassion. Aristotle therefore defined drama as a cleansing through fear and compassion.⁶⁷

We can see, therefore, that evolution involves a sequence of stages. At one level an entity will absorb something, then to be active on the outside at another. To begin with, the entity comes face to face with the outside world; then interaction develops. This would continue if circumstances did not change. When condensation occurs, the activity is struck back and the entity is transformed from inside.

In the development of the eyes, we have first of all the feeling eye in direct contact with the surrounding world. Then the eye was delimited by the denser matter which formed a layer in between. This physical layer separated the fire of the inner eye from the fire outside. Denser layers form in the following way. If there is a uniform orb to begin with, a spherical shell will first of all develop and this separates from the inner sphere because a layer forms in between. This is how the original atom arose.⁶⁸ Initially, therefore, we have equally subtle matter inside and out, separated by a fine membrane of denser matter. Imagine that the process continues. Imagine the membrane of denser matter divides again in a similar way, as if it developed a more recent, denser membrane around itself. A separate entity thus develops, surrounding itself with progressively denser membranes, like the way an atom develops. We therefore have to think of the way atoms form—part of an existing form of matter being separated off by matter that grows progressively denser.

A difference then exists between inner and outer. This will have to show itself in some way. Consider sensation, as we call it. It may be caused by a pin prick, for example. But there has to be something which causes the sensation and something which has it—something active and something passive. Everything in the world comes into existence like this. All that is results from activity. All activity depends on there being something that is passive. These are the two poles we must look for with any activity. Even with the smallest atom we have something active and something passive. In the case of the atom, the forces acting from outside invert the membrane which encloses it. It grows concave from the outside, and convex, the opposite, from the inside.

In relation to the world we are the passive part, for we receive and feel impressions all the time. These continuous impressions are sensed by the astral body. We have to distinguish between activity and passivity in the astral world. Every sensation has to be produced, or rather caused. Nothing can be caused in the world of sentience without having an effect in that world. You have to visualize the whole of sentient space. If there were only a single astral body, we would never be able to ascribe sensations to the activities of other entities. Yet the ability to sense things could not have developed in us if we had not differentiated it out from a whole astral world in this way. Astral existence presupposes astral activity. In the same way mental existence presupposes thought activity, and physical existence physical activity.

Having understood this, we also understand something else. The human being thinks. This is his existence. Cogito ergo sum (Descartes).⁶⁹ Our passive thinking about things presupposes active thinking, presupposes that the things have first been created through the thought. Our human passive thinking presupposes one that is active. For every passive thought there must have been an active and creative thought before. Every feeling, every sensation, all passive experience in the astral body presupposes that this astral experience has been actively brought about. Anything which appears in the world all around us presupposes that the phenomena were first called into existence. Light would not exist if light had not been brought about; existence would not exist if it had not been brought about; sensory perception presupposes that the phenomenon is first revealed.

Everywhere in the world we find these three:

Active and passive thinking
Active and passive life
Active and passive existence.

Everything which is passive existence for the human being, is called the physical plane; it is the essence of all passive existence.

The essence of all passive life is called the astral plane.

The essence of all passive thinking is called the rupa mental plane.

The essence of all active thinking is called the arupa mental plane.

The essence of all active life is called the budhi plane.

The essence of all active existence is called the nirvana plane.

These are the five [six] planes known to us. Activity is most intensive in the nirvana plane, for existence itself is created there.

If we consider the human being in terms of these planes, we see that every thought which a human being thinks is followed by another active thought on the corresponding plane, which is the reaction. If you have a thought on the lower mental plane, this causes a counter image on the higher mental plane. If you have a feeling, this produces a counter image on the budhi plane. If you are active in the physical plane, this produces a counter image on the nirvana plane. Just as earlier an active thought created our passive thinking, so does an active thought creative its passive counter image on the higher mental plane, and so on. We thus cannot take a single thought but that this has its counter image, and the same holds true for a feeling or action.

The sum of all those counter thoughts, counter experiences and counter actions is called the akashic record. It is therefore possible to read every human thought on the higher mental plane, all feelings and experiences on the budhi plane, and all actions in the nirvana plane. The spirits which regulate the relationship between those counter images and human beings play an important role. Human beings live out their thoughts on the mental plane. What they deal with in their thoughts, all happens on the mental plane. When they are there, in the devachan, between death and rebirth, they build the character of their thought body for the next life. That is where the counter images of their former thoughts are. The individual draws them to his mental body, which has been freed from anything physical or astral, and thus creates his future mental body according to the thought images he has created. However, he would not be able to connect the counter images of his experiences and actions with himself on his own. This needs spirits who regulate things from the outside, the lords of karma, the lipikas. They connect the counter images of the human being’s feelings and actions with him when he is on the budhi and nirvana planes—with kamic and other elements already enveloping him—to provide for the incarnations that will follow.

• 66. See lecture given on 30 September 1905, in GA 93a, Foundations of Esotericism (see note 13).
• 67. Aristotle (384–322 BC), in Poetics, 6th section. See also Rudolf Steiner’s essay ‘Aristoteles ueber das Mysteriendrama’ in Lucifer-Gnosis, GA 34.
• 68. See the lectures given in Berlin on 16 & 23 Dec. 1904 and 21 Oct. 1905, in The Temple Legend (see note 22).
• 69. René Descartes (1596–1650), French philosopher and mathematician. Principia Philosophiae Part 1, paragraph 7.

We often talk about principles as if they were of the same kind and only differed in degree. Yet if we want to understand how things are connected, we need to get to know the principles themselves in their nature.

We need to distinguish three things in the world; three kinds of effects. Only things that take effect can be considered by a perceptive entity, and we therefore focus our attention on the effects. There are therefore three ways in which something may take effect—first, actually in the spirit; secondly in the soul, thirdly at the physical level. Effects in the spirit, anything that can in some way take effect in spirit, is called budhi; anything that can take effect at soul level is called kama; everything that can have a physical effect is called prana. Budhi, kama and prana are the three ways of taking effect. They are of the same kind but at different levels.

Now we have to realize that effects would always be fluid, indefinite, if they did not define themselves. If kama is to happen in a particular way, for instance, it must set itself limits. Budhi, kama and prana must therefore set themselves limits if they are to be defined influences or effects. In the theosophical literature these boundaries are called ‘sharira’, meaning ‘vessel, shell, sheath’. If budhi sets itself a boundary, this is called ‘karana sharira’; if kama does, it is ‘linga sharira’, and with prana it is ‘sthula sharira’. These sharira are thus the limits, the outer forms, which the three kinds of effects set for themselves. Now the following may happen (Fig. 10, starting from below).

First of all we have prana in action; then prana sets itself a limit on the outside—sthula sharira. Prana thus sets itself a boundary in one direction but remains billowing and open in the other. Prana is now joined by kama, setting itself a boundary here—linga sharira. Then prana is no longer billowing and open on this side either, for kama with its boundary has pushed its way in. Kama in turn remains open on the other side. Then budhi comes and limits itself off from kama, and you get karana sharira. The three principles thus have intermediate layers. If this is a spirit, a self-awareness must also live in these three principles and their interfaces—this is known as ‘atman’.

The human being consists of the three principles, the interfaces and self-awareness or atman. Each may have its own subdivisions. If we take it like this, we have the composition of the human being as such.

Here, in the human being (Fig. 10), the physical body is the outer shell, and atman rests inside. The arrangement can of course also be very different. [For the planetary spirit,] the situation is, for example, that prana shows itself initially as active, setting itself a limit, in an inward direction. (Fig. 11)

Prana is then limited on the inside by sthula sharira, kama by linga sharira, and budhi by karana sharira. We would thus have an entity where atman was on the outside, then budhi, then kama and last of all prana. Atman would then appear as wholly expanded in the periphery [an orb] and sthula sharira would be a point at the centre. (Fig. 12)

Such a spirit would be a dhyan chohan, a planetary spirit that must present in a way which is the reverse of the human way. In the human being, sthula sharira is on the outside, in dhyan chohans atman; then comes budhi, and so on.

We can get a clear idea of this if we take the following example. If we close our eyes, it is dark for the time being; once we open them again, we see the light. We only see the light, however, because we have an inner feeling for it and are therefore able to receive it. It must first be there, however, if we are to receive it. And just as we have to be there to sense the light, so there must be an entity out there which reveals light. We are light receivers; out there must be light givers, light revealers. And just as we are only able to sense light because we have kama, the astral body, in us, so a planetary spirit must have a kama that lets light shine out. Kama is thus active towards the centre here, and in the radius of the circle there. (Fig. 13)

The circle which is convex towards the top is for us, for our sentience, for the one which receives, the principle moving towards the giver. The circle which is convex towards the bottom is the kama of the dhyanic spirit. The kama of revelation thus acts downwards—karana sharira. Whereas the human being has a kama that seeks to move towards the centre, so the planetary spirit has a kama that seeks to move outwards, to the periphery, revealing light, whilst the kama of the human being receives light. Two kinds of spirits, natures that complement one another, always go together. A spirit must have the desire—receiving; another must be able to give—giving. Human desirous kama presupposes that there is a giving kama, the kama of love.

Human budhi mediates insight. Such insight as we gain into things comes through our budhi. The planetary spirit must thus be a giver of thoughts, and human budhi a receiver. The planetary spirit thus acts in entirely the opposite way, complementing the human spirit.

Every single thing in the world exists only in the context of the whole; it is part of the whole. As a part it belongs to the whole planetary Earth spirit. Thus this table here consists of matter, which makes it an object we encounter in space; secondly it has energy, for it offers resistance, otherwise it would not exist for us; thirdly this energy does not come to expression at random but according to specific laws (natural laws).

What is energy? What is it that makes life possible in us? It is an energy which takes things in, maintaining life. Human vital energy serves to hold together the matter which is in the human being. Because of this, the matter and its energy in the human being is directed inwards, building the human being up from inside. Without this, we could not be perceived as living human beings. The table on the other hand has matter which is directed outwards, and this functions according to law. Matter as such cannot be perceived, only its properties and qualities such as colours, sounds, and so on. Matter itself is completely beyond sensory perception. A prana in matter withdraws completely from sensory perception but gives itself in order to reveal itself. We also have insight into the law which lies in matter, and the thought which comes to expression in it.

Budhi comes to outer expression in the natural world. Every body which gives outward expression to the planetary spirit is continually radiating outwards; its budhi is thus directed outwards. It becomes light which the senses perceive. Budhi lies in the properties and qualities of things, in the aspect which is on the outside. The law must reveal itself through karana sharira. Manas revealed is law. In being luminous, a body sends us budhi. The thought, expressing spirit, through which it sends us budhi, is karana sharira. The planetary spirit keeps kama to itself, withdrawing it from sensory perception. Its matter ... [Marie Steiner-von Sivers’ notes indicate a gap here.] On the other hand it reveals the cosmic thoughts which human beings must fathom deep down inside. The principle which the planetary spirit revealed wholly on the surface is its budhi. In the Bible, it says that the planetary spirit first of all revealed itself as light. The spirit thus reveals budhi qualities (light) at the first level. Budhi qualities (light) are revealed by the spirit at the first level. These ancient sacred teachings of the polarity between human being and planetary spirit are brought out most beautifully in esoteric Christian teaching. In cabbalistic terms the budhi qualities which come to revelation are called ‘powers’. It is thus the powers of light and darkness which revealed themselves first. Once again we can take Genesis literally.

The spirit thus reveals budhi qualities on the first level. On the second it reveals its karana sharira; it orders things according to laws. Something which is convex in the macrocosm is thus concave in the microcosm. Something which the human being perceives last, comes first in the macrocosm; the microcosm finally comes to perceive and understand the sentient experience in the macrocosm.

The question arises if there is a transitional stage between the two—between human being and planetary spirit. Think of an entity with one conscious awareness. That is the human being. He has different parts, but these share a common awareness. (Struggle between patricians and plebeians.)⁷⁷ We might show it more or less like this (Fig. 14).

Individual parts all radiate towards the common awareness. If we take the latter to be energy, and the parts, too, we can say that the common awareness is predominant, influencing all the others. Now think of numerous entities functioning in this way (Fig. 15)

Each has its own existence. Through [the common ideal] it can connect its own with those of others. The different conscious minds create a common focus; they seek to gain a specific common ideal. This then lives in the different conscious minds as a common spiritual ideal. If they reach the point where their spiritual ideal is of greater value to them than they themselves, they will be drawn to it just as before they drew the parts of their conscious awareness to themselves. Where before they had been the focus or centre for those different spheres, the common ideal will then be the central focus for the large sphere. Individual entities then become parts of a common entity, giving up their separate existences and living in the common ideal. They cease to be centre and give themselves a common centre. A brotherhood lodge then develops from individual people. If the common ideal is so powerful that it draws all the individual conscious minds to it, these people make up a body that has a soul of a higher kind. A brotherhood lodge then develops with a perfectly communal spirit. This is a new entity. The soul could never have come down into the human being if he had not become a house for it with different parts. It is never possible for a higher principle to come down unless individual minds become vital parts, the form for a higher kind of house, so that the common awareness may come to expression in it.

This gives us the transition. Another centre is created. Human development is an inversion, the reversal of all principles. As human beings express themselves in seven ways, we get not one but seven centres. These will be the seven elohim, the pitris for the next planet.

Man thus progresses from a spirit which takes in the surrounding world to a spirit which reveals itself. The two completely opposite natures—human being and elohim or dhyan—are merely forms of one essential nature. At a future time, the human being will no longer be as he is now; he will be a dhyan chohanic spirit. In esoteric terms this is called the ‘secret of man becoming god’.

When individual conscious minds all turn to one centre, with everything outside becoming atman, there will be just a single core of sthula sharira inside, which is unity at its highest level.

Such oneness cannot be achieved on Earth; it needed seven sublime spirits to create it. This, then, is the Logos, with atman in the periphery. In the cabbala, the ‘realm’, union, crowns all. This is also the principle on which the Church is founded, with all human beings having part in one conscious awareness. The law of form is birth and death. The law of life is rebirth. The law of the spirit is karma. Life goes through birth and death, appearing in new forms all the time. Form is transient by nature, life repeats itself, the spirit does not perish, it is eternal.

• 77. Plebeians could not be priests or hold political office. From the 4th century BC onwards, the privileges of patricians grew less and less, and in 287 the plebeians were given equal rights politically.

Today we will try and get a clearer idea of the transition from the Logos to a new system, a new creation.

People usually ask first of all: How did it all come into existence? This is probably the hardest question, but one that is frequently asked. All one can do is to give an approximate idea. Above all we must be clear in our minds that it is our rational mind which asks how things came into existence, getting a more or less plausible notion of how one would have created the world if one had been the creator. The rational mind is, however, one of the things that originated in the Logos, and it is clear that the Logos has a far greater conscious awareness. We therefore cannot judge the Logos with our rational human minds and phrase the question like this: Why did the world have to arise out of the Logos? All we can ask is how the emergence of the world from the Logos proceeded, how things arose. We cannot ask why because why would imply compulsion. The process must be an act the Logos has done in freedom, not something done from necessity.

The creative principle of the Logos can only be given in image form.⁷⁸ We imagine an entity and its mirror image. We have to say to ourselves: The mirror image contains everything which is also to be found in this spirit. It looks exactly the same but is not alive; it does not include the principle of life. It will only be possible to understand how the mirror image can grow like the spirit if we consider that the spirit gives its life, its existence, to the mirror image. We have to consider, therefore, that a spirit gives its life to its mirror image. This is the idea of the first sacrifice. Giving up one’s own existence, transferring one’s own life to the mirror image—that is the original sacrifice.

This is exactly how it is with the Logos. The first Logos relates to the second as if we were standing in front of our mirror image and decided to give our own life to the mirror image. Giving one’s life is the original sacrifice made in freedom. It was the deed of the first Logos. The second Logos is exactly the same as the first Logos, except that it has been given existence through sacrifice. If we study the activity of the second Logos we find that its nature is such that it reflects the essential nature of the first Logos back to that first Logos. The second Logos is thus a reflection of the first Logos having been given the life that flowed from the first Logos.

The first Logos produces a reflection, and then gives its life to the mirror image. In the first Logos everything is directed towards the outside, with its existence an influence on the outside. The second Logos has 1) the existence it has received, and 2) the ability to let its content shine back on to the first Logos. We thus have duality in the second Logos. Its life and content are two things. The content is the same as for the first Logos, but its life is somewhat different from the first Logos (Fig. 17).

The line down the middle of the second circle indicates that in the second Logos life and content are two things, that they have been divided. Yet when it comes to content, image and mirror image are the same in either case, whilst life is two things.

This could not yet as such give a cosmic system, for all one would have, would be the relationship of one Logos to the other; there would be no multiplicity. This could only come with a further sacrifice. A further mirroring process had to come in which the relationship of the two was also reflected.

First, the first Logos was reflected once again, then the mirroring was mirrored. This created the third Logos as a reflection of the other two Logoi. The third Logos thus contains:

1. the mirror image of the first Logos
2. the mirror image of what the first Logos brought about in the second, which is its life
3. the mirror image of the content which the second Logos reflects back to the first.

Let us now visualize this (Fig. 18). The first Logos is reflected in a). If the first Logos is creative activity directed to the outside, its mirror image in the third Logos is the exact opposite of the action of the first Logos. In the first Logos, a) is the most sublime light of the world; in the third Logos it is the most extreme spiritual darkness.

b) in the second Logos is the life which the second Logos received from the first. It is not the life which gives itself in sacrifice but the life which has been accepted. The life which sacrifices itself in the first Logos is love. The opposite of this in the third Logos is absolute desire, longing, striving for Logos. In the third Logos, b) is thus absolute desire.

c) in the second Logos is the mirror image of the first Logos reflected by the second Logos.

In our own mirror image we distinguish

1. the image which shone out and comes back out of the darkness
2. what we have given returns as desire
3. the image itself, which we ourselves are

This corresponds to the three parts in the third Logos:

1. spiritual darkness = tamas
2. absolute desire = rajas
3. the simple mirror image of the first Logo = sattwa.

Tamas, rajas and sattwa are the three gunas, the three parts of the third Logos.⁷⁹

First there are a), b) and c). a) on its own is tamas. If a)—spiritual darkness or tamas—combines with b)—rajas, absolute desire—darkness combines with desire and we have a striving for the first Logos. If a) and c)—tamas and sattwa—are combined, we have the image of the first Logos, created out of the darkness. We can also combine b) and c). Each may occur on its own or be combined with one of the others. All three in combination are what the first Logos itself is. We have seven possible combinations of the three gunas (Fig. 19).

These are the seven different guna combinations. Think of these seven possible combinations as the next world-creative principle which may arise from the three gunas. These seven spirits do exist. They are the ‘seven creative spirits before the throne’, the seven creative powers that come after the three Logoi (Fig. 20).

These seven creative powers give rise to what we call the ‘prajapatis’. As each is able to repeat this exactly at subordinate levels of conscious awareness, life and form, we always have three: three times a, three times b, three times c, three times ab, three times ac, three times be, three times abc, making together three times seven = 21 prajapatis. Each of them acts like an original Logos. This gives us the 21 creators of a specific solar system.

The first concept we meet, therefore, is that of sacrifice made in perfect freedom. Once we have it, the question as to why ceases to have significance. Human progress consists in no longer asking this question but moving on to the concept of the creative Logos.

With a mechanical instrument, a watch, for instance, or a machine, we can predict how it will behave. This is somewhat less the case with natural processes, though to a degree it applies. Thus the time of a solar eclipse can be calculated. We may speak of ‘necessity’ in this case. With a plant it will also still be possible to say what it will do under specific conditions. However, the higher we go in the natural world, the more does it become impossible to say what an entity will do in a given situation. The higher a person is with regard to gifts and content, the less will it be possible to predict his actions, for we cannot grasp his reasons and motives. In that case all we can do is wait and see what he will do in a given situation.

In the same way we have to accept the creation of the world as an act done by the Logos in freedom. Progress consist in knowing that when it comes to the universe we do not ask as to the why, and that the question as to the ground or reason is not justifiable. All of those who understood this never spoke of a ground or reason. Jakob Boehme spoke of a ‘source and origin’ of the world.⁸⁰ To progress to insight into the world-creative power, we can only go to the point where we know that our own evolution must have been the goal, for that is where the creator must once have stood. The creator must have everything we possess, but in reverse. Atman is the lowest point within us. The creator has atman as numerous points in his periphery. When the solar system was in its inception, the world-creative Logos had the qualities we have found to be the goal of our evolution—atman, budhi, karana sharira or manas, kama, linga sharira, prana, sthula sharira—all as part of its essential nature.

We need to be clear in our minds as to where the activity of this creative Logos may lie. So we first of all investigate where the different metamorphoses take us. One form metamorphoses is physical, two are astral, two mental and two arupic, making a total of seven. When we have reached the height of the mental plane, we have become karana sharira from outside; we then become budhi and finally atman (Fig. 21, left). When the Earth has reached its goal we will be active on the higher mental plane. The transition then begins which takes us to the next planet. For this, we must have atman on the outside. This means that karana sharira and budhi must also vanish to the outside (Fig. 21, right).

The consequence is that we should not think that nothing happens in the transition to a new planet—pralaya is not inactivity and sleep—but karana sharira and budhi are shed. We must shed karana sharira on the budhi plane and budhi itself on the nirvana plane.

Evolution therefore becomes this (Fig. 22).

Pralaya is a very different kind of activity from that which occurs during a manvantara. To configure a new planetary chain, the spirit must have gone through the budhi and nirvana planes on the other side. The significance of these planes is that on them the spirits go through exactly the same process between planets as human beings do in devachan. There are also great pralayas—maha pralayas. If we follow the metamorphoses of conscious awareness from one planet to another, we get daytime conscious awareness on Earth, dream consciousness on Moon, and so on (Fig. 23).

It is necessary to go through the nirvana plane between one kind of conscious awareness and another. When the highest state of conscious awareness has been reached and atman has shed all vestments, having become truly all-embracing, it will be capable of creating a new solar system. For this, it must first go through two further planes of conscious awareness. By then it has gained a kind of all-vision, it will then be able to have a view of the whole cosmic system.

Our present daytime conscious awareness can have an overview of the mineral world, psychic consciousness can overview life, intellectual conscious awareness sentience, and spiritual conscious awareness of all that is. Atman has then reached its highest level. Atman is all-awareness.

If atman is to shine out, it must first develop the ability to give everything; it must be creative. It does so by vesting itself in budhi and manas. It can then start a new cosmic system on the arupa plane. When conscious awareness will have reached the final level, therefore, it will still have to go through two other planes. The first plane is the one where it does not peel off budhi but adds it; this is called the ‘para nirvana’ plane. The plane on which the entity descends again so that it may be active on the arupa plane, is called ‘mahapara nirvana plane’. Two planes that are in opposite positions correspond. The lowest is the physical, its opposite nirvana. (Fig. 24)

On the astral plane, desire rules, on the para nirvana plane love, budhi. On the mental plane, perception rules, taking in the thought; on the mahapara nirvana plane the creative thought rules. The budhi plane is absolute, loving dedication to the divine. Its opposite is a state of having completely turned away from all that is divine. Where the budhi plane is beatific, its opposite has absolute wretchedness. That is the eighth plane, the eighth sphere.

Imagine a particular entity has turned its back on evolution on some plane or other, going its own way. It would fall into the eighth sphere and would have to wait there until the whole of evolution has gone round. It could only be taken along again, as lowermost entity, in the next evolution. This cosmic ‘compass rose’ (Fig. 24) shows the opposites very well.

When we have arrived on the nirvana plane, the entity will have reached the point where its atman is completely on the outside. We are then dealing with the kind of Logos which we have called ‘the seven’. These are the seven creative spirits, which is also why we have seven different races [the ‘root races’, with seven sub-races each].

The seven different spirits belong to the nirvana plane. Going through the para nirvana plane and the manapara nirvana plane then, we come to the first and second Logos itself. The second arises on the para nirvana plane, the first on the mahapara nirvana plane. On the nirvana plane the cosmic system is brought to completion by the 7 times 3 = 21 prajapatis. The last of these is abc, the third Logos itself. Only the first Logos is able to take up again anything which has fallen into the eighth sphere. It takes it along with the cosmic dust. To be cast out from evolution is to link one’s life to something which inexorably remains behind, without fail, and to wait until evolution once again coincides with the state in question. A native of an uncilivilized wild place with the soul of such a native is relatively happy; but imagine a more highly developed spirit in the body of such a native or even a dog—that is banishment indeed. The higher soul has taken the road to a lower manifestation. To ‘go into the eighth sphere’ does indeed mean to be no longer progressing in accord with evolution, to be unable to participate in the evolution of the others, but to be cast back to a lower level.

Conscious awareness is perception up to the nirvana plane. From then on it is no longer mere perception but inner activity. On the para nirvana plane it is activity directed to the outside. On the mahapara nirvana plane it is the creative conscious mind of the Logos. This moves on from there through the eighth sphere and on to the physical plane, where it becomes the creative powers of nature. In reality these give expression to divine thoughts which appear to us as powers or forces because we do not have the overview.

• 78. See also part 2 in this volume. Also lecture given in Karlsruhe on 4 February 1907; The Structure of the Lord’s Prayer from GA 97; tr. A. H. Parker; London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1971; also in The Christian Mystery, Hudson: Anthroposophic Press 1998.
• 79. The teaching of the three gunas tamas, rajas and sattva is the foundation of the sankhya philosophy in the Vedanta system. See Rudolf Steiner’s lecture of 18 December 1912, in The Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of Paul, GA 142; tr. L. D. Monges, D. M. Bugbey; New York: Anthroposophic Press 1971.
• 80. In ‘Aurora oder Morgenroete im Aufgang’, 23. Kapitel, Verse 1-6, in Sämtliche Werke, herausgegeben von K. W. Schibler, 6 Bde, Leipzig 1831–1846, Bd 2, S. 268.

In the previous session¹⁰⁴ I spoke on the evolution of the fifth root-race. In my absence you will have opportunity to hear about the Atlantean root-race which went before.

‘Occult teaching’, as it is called, has always put what it had to say in specific images and symbols, for some truths are difficult to put into words in our ordinary language. It is wrong to think that it has always been possible to express truths clearly, for the truth is much older than our language. Speech only evolved in the main age preceding our time, in Atlantis. The Atlanteans lived on a continent which no longer exists and under completely different circumstances than those we know today. Climatic conditions, air and water were very different then. The first beginnings of speech may be found in the period which preceded the Atlantean age, which was the Lemurian age. It was not speech then, but just a way of letting individual sounds emerge.

Truth, wisdom, existed before there was human speech. Being young, human speech cannot put the original and eternal truths, which created the world and are still doing creative work on the world, in words. The teaching of that wisdom was always secret. It was only told to pupils when they had learned the language of symbolic signs in which those secrets were presented.¹⁰⁵ It is difficult to translate these signs into our language. For some things we still have to use symbolic signs and images, for they are better expressed in images than in words.

It is very difficult to understand the transition from a human form which did not yet have two genders to the human form of today. The human body has changed a great deal in the long process of evolution. In Lemurian times the body was a kind of fiery mist, like a fiery cloud. Nor was there any solid earth then. The human body did have the same kind of matter as it has today, but it was still gaseous. It went quickly through a number of metamorphoses. His will determined the expression of his form. When he wanted something, he could not reach for it with his hand, since he did not have one; he shaped a hand for himself that would allow him to reach. This sounds unbelievable today.

What is our present history? We know only a few millennia on Earth. Nothing has been recorded in writing of the earliest times in Earth evolution because nothing had hardened to stone as yet, and so no impressions could be made in stone. The material which now makes up the things in the outside world and our own human body has changed utterly from those most ancient times. We cannot investigate those conditions physically. Only occult investigation makes it possible to learn something about them, and for this we have the akashic record. This contains everything which happens in the world of the spirit, and since the physical is an out-flowing of the spiritual, it contains everything which ever happened and is happening.

Human beings gather impressions throughout the day and digest them inwardly. The astral body contains all the echoes from the day, everything one has inwardly felt, willed and thought. This astral body lives in the astral space, and anything which happens in it is impressed in the astral world as a reflection, like waves, and stays alive. In this state, which is freed from the physical life of the day, the human being inscribes in the higher worlds what he has gone through, and this remains. In his sleep, the human being is thus working for eternity. When he is sleeping, his soul and spiritual bodies are outside the physical and ether bodies, but he is not aware of this. Only a clairvoyant can see how what has been inscribed in the akashic record has gone through a human soul.

The further we go back into the past, the more do we have to depend on the akashic record, and the further we go back, the purer does the record get. It is easiest to read it in Earth states that lie far, far back, before the Earth became physical. It is much harder to read it in the Atlantean age, and hardest of all in post-Atlantean times. For the reader must carefully erase anything he knows of those times from his soul, so that it will not adulterate the record. It is therefore easier to investigate something that goes very far back, when no sense-perceptible images existed as yet.

Great confusion will also arise if someone is not quite sure how to read those signs. If, for instance, someone has lived in Roman times—let us assume Virgil.¹⁰⁶ When we perceive Virgil in the akashic record, he is like a living image, like real life; it is like a recapitulation of life itself. You can see Virgil’s life take its course again; it is a true reproduction of what happened at the time. If you put a question to this image, it will answer the way Virgil might possibly have been able to answer. Swedenborg¹⁰⁷ talked with this akasha image of Virgil.¹⁰⁸ The Virgil individual himself has gone through a different further development of his own. Someone who is not able to make clear distinctions may confuse these things.

I would now like to speak of the allegories¹⁰⁹ which have always been used in occultism to refer to the period of transition from a two-gender to a one-gender human being, to the separation of the sexes in Lemurian times. Three symbols were used.¹¹⁰

The first symbol: man was given his original armour and a two-edged sword.
The second symbol are the seven trees.
The third symbol is the book of ten pages.

The armour referred to the original relationship between the solid parts of the Earth and the solid parts of our physical body. This body, which is connected with the solid part of the Earth is the first state or condition of human nature. It has not always been like this. The Earth was very different in earlier times. Today’s solid part was in a different state then, mingled with something of very different substance nature which has since been separated off. It would be referred to more or less like this: \(Ph\) + \(S\) = Physical body + Spirit. With this formula, people learned to look at the way in which the spirit has built up the body. We may indeed marvel to see the wonderful way in which the struts are positioned in the thigh bone. The wisest architect could not have found a better solution to the problem [of managing] with the smallest amount of matter [to have the whole body supported]. Or if we consider the anatomy of the heart, which functions for a whole life in such a wonderful way in spite of all the damage people cause from lack of sense, consuming poisons such as alcohol, coffee, and so on. If we think of this spirit as an effective, active power mixed into matter, we have the two states in which the body is able to exist. In the original vestment the spirit was still active by penetrating and configuring it directly and all the way. It then separated from this.

The second principle is something human beings have in common with plants—growth, reproductive powers, that is, vital energy. \(V_e + w =\) vital energy \(+\) water. As the physical principle is bound up with the spirit, so is vital energy bound up with water. The occultist sees water as life. All that lives is swelling and unthinkable without water. The third principle to arise in the human being was the ability to wish. Originally this was linked with fire as a spiritual power. Passion, kama, arose in human beings from that ability to wish. In kama, the human being was united with fire. \(P_w + f =\) power to wish \(+\) fire.

At an even earlier time, the human I was not yet bound to a single entity. It was a centre in the billowing sea of these elements which surrounded the human being. You can see a degenerated echo of the spirit creating form in the midst of materiality in the development of crystals. The physical body was crystalline and radiant at that time. It absorbed vital energy and left the water behind. After that, the human being absorbed the fire and became warm-blooded.

He was then given the two-edged sword, which was the I. It could act from the outside to the inside and from the inside to the outside. It had power over the elements of earth, water and fire which were subservient to it. When kama was bound up with fire, water with vital energy, matter with spirit, the human being developed his armour, he received his two-edged sword.

The seven trees are seven ways in which the human being can be himself. Here we have man’s past, present and future. First there is the physical vestment (sthula sarira), then the ether body (prana), with powers of reproduction, nutrition and growth active in it, thirdly the part of essential human nature in which drives and passions are active, the astral body. Only then comes the most central principle, the fourth, human self-awareness. The human being received his fourfold nature unconsciously, without contributing to this himself. As soon as he had gained self-awareness he began to work on himself and organize his astral body. He is now gradually shining through his astral body from the inside. This work will come to its conclusion at the end of our post-Atlantean period, when the astral body will be steeped in manas.

There are seven stages:

1. The tree of physical existence—the human being develops his physical body
2. The tree of growth
3. The tree of relationship—the human being develops sympathy for and antipathy to his surroundings
4. The tree of knowing good and evil—the human being closes himself off from the outside world
5. The tree of life—the human being begins to bring life into his astral body; transition from kama body to manas
6. The tree of the word—the human being is able to hear the ‘inner word’, gaining mystic insight
7. The tree of being in harmony with God—the human being rests in harmony with God in the universe.

The next time I will say something about the book of ten pages. The great teachers of humanity would read that book the way people spell words today.

• 104. Lecture given on 27 February 1905. The available notes are not adequate for publication.
• 105. Concerning work with the symbols, see lecture given in Dornach on 23 October 1915, [in German] in Die okkulte Bewegung im 19. Jahrhundert und ihre Beziehung zur Weltkultur GA 254.
• 106. Virgil, or Publius Vergilius Maro (70–19 BC). Roman poet.
• 107. Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). Swedish mystic, theologian and scientist. See also Community Life, Inner Development, Sexuality and the Spiritual Teacher GA 253, tr. C. E. Creeger, New York: Anthroposophic Press 1991.
• 108. The anecdote that Virgil visited Swedenborg in the spirit, probably came from Aberglaube und Zauberei von den aeltesten Zeiten an bis in die Gegenwart by Dr Alf. Lehmann, director of the psychic laboratory at Copenhagen University (German edition publ. in Stuttgart in 1898). This is in R. Steiner’s library. It says on page 219 that the well-known Prof. Porthan von Aebo visited Swedenborg in London but could not see him right away as he was seeing someone else.’ Porthan also heard Swedenborg in lively conversation with someone in the next room, though he was unable to catch a single word of what the other person was saying. Then the door opened and Swedenborg took someone who was not visible to Porthan to the door, continuing the conversation all the time until he said good-bye to that imaginary person in the most polite terms. He then turned to Porthan and told him he had just had a visit form Virgil, who had been most amicable and explained many interesting things to him.’ See also the lecture given in Berlin on 30 May 1904, from GA 52, in The History of Spiritism and the History of Hypnotism and Somnambulism, tr. F. E. Dawson, London: R. Steiner Publ. Co., 1943.
• 109. See note 102
• 110. Rudolf Steiner’s source for this clearly was the 18th century French philosopher Louis Claude Marquis de Saint-Martin (1743 - 1803). He publishes his first work Des erreurs et de la vérite ou les homines rappelés an principle universel de la science, par un ph... inc... [philosophe inconnu] in 1775, fictitious place of publication ‘Edimbourg’ (really Lyon). This earned him the epithet ‘Saint Martin, the unknown philosopher’. Rudolf Steiner would often refer to Saint-Martin as representative of a spirituality that had been lost and needed to be regained through the modern science of the spirit. He suggested that the Der Kommende Tag publishing house brought a new edition of the German translation by Matthias Claudius in 1925. The preface he had intended to write was not written because of his death. In the chapter on errors and truth, it says that in his original state, before the Fall, the human being had to fight all the time to overcome disorder and restore unity of all. This was potentially dangerous and so he was clothed in impenetrable armour and armed with a lance which would always strike in two places at once. The country where this human being was to fight his fight ‘was covered with a wood of seven trees, each of which had sixteen roots and 490 branches.’ At the end of the book the ‘book of man’ is described, saying that although it only had ten pages it nevertheless contained ‘all insights and knowledge of what has been, of what is and of what will be.’ See also note 111.

The last time we met I told you that we need to use allegory if we are to put things clearly in occultism.¹¹¹ The world we have around us has only been like this for a relatively short period of time. Our forebears lived under utterly different conditions in Atlantean and Lemurian times. Today people cannot have any idea of this. However, if we want to understand today’s world rightly, we must rise to the concepts and ideas... [gap in notes]. Speech and language is not very old; it only developed in Atlantean times. Our Lemurian forebears did not have speech, they had a kind of singing, producing sounds with great magical powers. They might perhaps sound unarticulated to people today, but went beyond anything we can find in the highest animals today as far as beauty and melodiousness were concerned. These sounds could make flowers grow faster, for instance, or set dead objects in motion. We cannot compare them with our ordinary speech today. We are therefore unable to speak in our language of something which is among the most sublime things.

In the occult schools people therefore always used an allegorical language and alphabet. Those allegorical signs are regular formulas which one must first learn to understand. One formula, for example, is the book of ten pages. What is this book of ten pages?

The book of ten pages is something very real. Its content is great, and the formulas only appear to be simple. It is something very real for the occult student, but it is read in a different way from other books, where the human being, with his ordinary understanding, must create a word from letters and a sentence from words. The occult investigator thinks differently. His thinking grasps wholes, getting a complete overview of major complexes; it is empirical living experience, a vision of higher realities. People develop a common idea on the basis of individual details. The occult investigator gains an intuitive idea all at once from inner experience and does not have to depend on learning many individual details. It is just the way someone being able to have the ‘lion idea’ once they have seen a lion, for instance.

The occult investigator thus also gains the concept of astral and mental spirits in one go, for he sees these things together. There are archetypes for all things of the spirit. Just as a painter may have a particular intuitive image in his head and is able to paint a hundred pictures based on it, so there are archetypal images for all things on the higher planes, and clairvoyants see them. Reading the archetypes of things, in the spiritual ground and origin, is in occult terms called ‘reading in the book of ten pages’. People were able to read in this book of ten pages in every occult school; everyone was able to read in it even at the time when humanity did not yet have the vestment of a physical body.

Let us go back to Lemurian times when the human being vested himself in physical matter. He then lived in ideas that were all images. He did not see these outside but inside himself; he would feel a degree of warmth, or bright colour images arising in his soul as he approached another human being, for instance. It was like a lively dream, in images, but not conscious. Only the teachers and leaders of humanity had a real overview of the things which others only felt surging up and down in a twilit soul. Their vision was not limited, everything lay spread out before them as in a tableau; they only had to turn their attention to it. This is the idea of that all-encompassing oneness which presented itself to the initiate and the occult student. Today we cannot see everything at once because we use our senses as instruments of perception. People would have seen no difference between New York and Berlin at that time, for instance. Anyone who sees things outside his physical body, finds that spatial differences present themselves only through the senses. The whole of modem science consists of individual details which are put together. Anything that happens in the world of the spirit is not discovered bit by bit. Once a particular level of higher insight has been gained, it all lies open before one.

There are ten levels, and they are the ten pages of the book. Let me give you an idea of them.

What does it say on the first page? There is a lot there, but it has to be gained through living experience. Think of a flower. If we planted it this year, we’ll see that it has produced a root, and that stem, branches, leaves and flowers develop and finally the seed which we put in the soil again. We don’t see anything of the plant in the seed, but it is there inside it, contracted into a point. Look at a tulip, how it is contracted to a point and then spreads out again. We see essential tulip nature alternate between tremendous expansion and contraction into point-nature, as if squeezed together to make a nothing. This is something we can see everywhere in the world, in nature and in the human being. A whole solar system will also unfold, go through a sleep state, and then wake up again. In theosophy, we call the two states manvantara = expansion, and pralaya = shrink down to a point. There is no difference for external perception between seed of solar system and of flower; they do not exist in that case. Our present cosmic system will also contract to such a point one day; but the whole of life will be condensed in this, and it will well forth again from it. If we enter in our minds into this manifold life of the cosmos condensed to a point, we have an idea of the divine creative power which creates out of nothing. Anyone wishing to penetrate the secrets of the universe must learn to concentrate his thoughts in a point, not a dead but a living point which is nothing and everything at the same time. It is not easy to enter into this general dormant state of nature which is zero life and at the same time also all life; one must have felt, thought and willed it. One must have thought this through before one is able to read the remaining pages.

Reading the first page is to grasp this oneness of time, space and energy and immerse oneself in it. A truly wonderful description is given in a verse in the Dzyan book.¹¹²

The second page shows us the duality everywhere in the world. You find this wherever you go in the natural world—light and shade, positive and negative, male and female, left and right, straight and not straight, good and evil. Duality is deeply rooted in the nature of all evolution, and anyone who wishes to understand nature must be very clear in his mind about this duality. We only come to understand the world when we see the duality in our own lives. The occult student must make it an obligation for himself to learn to think in such dualities. He should never think of only the one, but always the two together. If he thinks of his relationship to the divine principle, for instance: ‘a divine I lives in me’, this is only one thing, and a second thing belongs to it: ‘and I live in the divine I.’ Both are true. The occult student must say to himself: ‘The human being is a sensual nature but he will be a spiritual entity; I was a spiritual entity once and had to become a sensual one.’

We can only perceive all truth if we make it an inner obligation never to think of just one but always of two. People who learn to think in such dualities are thinking in the right, objective way.

This is reading the second page in the book of ten pages. You will find this duality presented many times in the mythology of ancient Germanic gods and also in Gnostic works.¹¹³ Some crude ideas have ... [gap in notes], seeing above all the duality between the male and female principle and ascribing everything to it. In reality, however, the male and female principle is just a special case of a much higher duality. To make this special case the explanation for everything is to blindfold yourself, to shut out the spiritual reality and cling to the lowest aspect.

The third page presents the triad. Threefold ideas may be found anywhere. The human being is threefold, consisting of body, soul and spirit. Gnostics speak of Father, Word and Spirit. In Egyptian culture we have the three deities Osiris, Isis and Horus. The triad holds an important secret. Anyone who gets in the habit of translating duality into the triad gains something that leads to understanding the whole world. To think the world through in its threefold nature is to penetrate it with wisdom.

Fourth page. Pythagorean square. I perceive the human being as fourfold, consisting of body, soul and spirit, with the fourth principle, self-awareness, dwelling within them. Pythagoras therefore said ... [gap in notes]. Human nature which is at a lower level develops higher nature out of itself. This is the secret of the four evolving from the three. We find this fourfold nature in all entities. To the all-encompassing eye of the great initiate who surveys all periods of time, all entities are alike. The human being is a fourfold entity living on the physical plane. The lion does not live on the physical plane with its fourfold nature; here it has only its threefold nature—physical body, ether body and astral body; its I, as fourth principle, lives in the world of the spirit.

Higher nature only appears as sensual nature on a lower level. When human beings will be able to govern their physical bodies in every fibre, they will be atman; when they govern the ether body they will be budhi; when they govern the astral body, manas. That is fourfold nature: the three principles of lower nature which will one day be transformed into higher nature. Four-foldness is to be found in all entities existing in this world. To the eye of the great initiate who surveys all periods of time, all entities are alike, only different to [gap in notes]. How does a lion differ from a human being? To the human eye, a lion is lower than a human being, and this is because human beings have limited vision. They live on the physical plane today, whereas the lion has left its spirit in the mental and its soul in the astral sphere.

Plants and minerals also have fourfold nature. The plant has only its physical body and ether body on the physical plane. Plants and minerals have the other parts of their fourfold nature in the world of the spirit. But human beings, animals, plant and minerals all have fourfold nature. The student of occultism must always live this inwardly if he wants to read the fourth page. Fifth page.

On reading the fifth page, everything becomes manifest which the human being projects into the world like a shadow image. This is more than just four-foldness. He begins to venerate. It is called ‘idolatry’. The human being is able to think and form ideas. When he begins to reflect on things, he ascribes divine causes to them. Myths arise in which the human being relates the supersensible to the sensible. The world of myth and legend presents ancient cultures in many different ways. The whole process lies open before the initiate, and the moment comes when he begins to perceive the thread which runs through all myths.

The horse, for instance. What is its meaning? It is an entity which has remained behind on a particular level, whilst the physical human being has gone beyond this in his evolution. There was, however, a moment in Hyperborean times when the human being had first of all to develop the potential for intelligence. Potentials evolve a long time in advance. I have told you that all higher development has a price, and this is that something else remains behind. If one wants to rise, another has to go down. At that time, when the human being developed the potential for intelligence, this was only possible because human nature eliminated something which later developed the horse nature. The horse evolved in Atlantean times, and human beings instinctively knew that their evolution was connected with the horse. Later this instinct became a myth. The Atlanteans had instinctive awareness of their intelligence being related to the horse, and the horse was therefore venerated as a symbol of intelligence during the first post-Atlantean period. Intelligence had to evolve in the early post-Atlantean periods. In Revelation, horses appear therefore when the seven seals have been removed. Ulysses invented a wooden horse.

Three things are needed if we want to understand myths. Firstly the myth must be taken literally, secondly it must be taken in an allegorical sense—which happens in religions—and thirdly we have to take them literally again in a higher sense. When this marvellous connection presents itself to the intuitive eye it is called ‘reading the fifth page’.

Sixth page. This contains the secrets of what human beings perceive to be the supersensible and which they seek. The ideals human beings create out of their own nature appear on this sixth page, for instance the great ideals of freedom, equality and brotherhood. On this sixth page, human nature comes together with something which does not yet exist, something human beings must struggle to gain—going beyond themselves in their activity and active will. ‘I love someone who asks the impossible.’ One learns to look to future states of humanity, to see the seeds of the future in the present. An initiate can read the sixth page the way John described the future states of humanity in Revelation.

Seventh page. The student comes to understand the secret and significance of the figure seven. Things evolve in seven stages because the three, on which the seven is based, is repeated, and they themselves are the seventh. The human being must learn to say to himself: ‘I am threefold, from this three a higher three must arise; that is the six.’ Starting from the three, he returns to a higher three, which is the six. He himself is the seventh. To understand this process is to read the seventh page.

We will speak of the eighth, ninth and tenth pages the next time.¹¹⁴ The book of ten pages is an allegory, summing up in a few words what would otherwise need many words to describe. The principle of comprehensive life in abbreviation. Paracelsus said that a physician must read the whole of nature, he must pass nature’s examination, finding the word from the individual letters and not gain his wisdom only from books.¹¹⁵

In our time, the spiritual principle had to move into the background; this had to be so that the great conquests of the physical plane would be possible, and perfection could be achieved in controlling the world perceived through the senses. Now the time approaches when humanity needs to go more deeply into the spiritual again. At present human beings are rushing towards a stage on the physical plane that could not be borne if spiritual life did not develop again. An image of how necessary it is for humanity to deepen their spirituality: You know the tremendous advances made for example in the theory of electricity. A tremendous power lives in these energies, and this means there is a possibility that humanity will abuse them. Humanity will master terrible powers which will be put into effect on the physical plane, and this in the not too far distant future.¹¹⁶ They will be able, for instance, to cause detonations, explosions by remote control, with no one able to determine the originator. Humanity will have power. Woe, however, if they have not reached a high moral level and use those terrible powers for other than only good purposes! The masters who guide humanity foresaw that this time would come. It is the mission of theosophical teaching to prepare hearts and minds for what is coming, to warn them, and to show them the way and the goal.

• 111. Lecture of 27 March 1905 on symbols reflecting original wisdom.
• 112. Verse I, in H. P. Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine.
• 113. See G. R. S. Mead, note 81.
• 114Rudolf Steiner never spoke of the 8th, 9th and 10th pages as he then went on a lecture tour and had to give a public lecture in Hamburg the following Monday. Below is Saint-Martin’s description of the book of ten pages.
  ‘These unutterable benefits were connected with the possession and understanding of a most precious book, one of the gifts humanity had received as part of existence. Although this book had only ten pages, it held all insights and all knowledge of what has been, what is and what will be, and human beings were able at that time to read in all ten pages of the book at once, taking it all in with just one look.
  In his case, the book was still there for him, but he had lost the ability to read it easily, and could no longer get to know all its pages at once, but only one after the other. Yet he will never be wholly restored to his rights until he has studied them all; for although each of these ten pages contains specific knowledge belonging to that page only, they are nevertheless interrelated in such a way that it is impossible to have one of them perfectly in mind unless one has learned to know them all; and although I said that human beings could no longer read them except one after the other, each of their steps would lack certainty unless they had gone through them all in one, above all the fourth, which is the point of unification for them all.
  This is a truth to which people have paid little heed, and yet it would be infinitely necessary for them to take them to heart and understand them; for they are all born with the book in their hand; and since the study and understanding of this book is the mission they must fulfil, we can judge how important it is for them not to take a wrong step with this.
  However, they have been utterly remiss in this point; you find hardly any who may have noticed the essential connection between the ten pages of the book, so that they are inseparable in all ways. Some have stopped half-way, others on the third page, others on the first; hence atheists, materialists and deists have come forth; some had an inkling of the connection, but they did not understand the important distinction which had to be made between each of these pages, taking them to be all the same and of one kind, being pages of the one book.
  What has been the consequence of this? It is this. Those who limited themselves to the one part of the book beyond which they did not have the courage to go, nevertheless maintained that they spoke according to the book, thinking to themselves that they understood it; and led astray by this, they considered themselves infallible in their doctrine, doing everything possible to make the world believe this. But these isolated truths, cut off from all nourishment, soon wilted in the hands of those who had thus isolated them, and nothing remained for these ignorant people but a vain spectre of knowledge, something they could not pretend was something solid or the truth unless they resorted to deceit.
  This is indeed the source of all the errors we will have to examine in this treatise, and all the errors we have already touched on concerning the two opposite principles, the natural world, the laws of bodily entities, the different abilities of human beings, and the principles and origin of their religion and worship.
  It will also be apparent to which part of the book the errors mainly relate; however, before we come to this, let us first consider the idea we must have to this incomparable book in its fullness, and to this end refer fully to the different kinds of knowledge and the different qualities of which each of its pages holds the knowledge.
  The first had to do with the general principle, or the centre, from which all central points flow without cease.
  The second with the occasional cause of the universe; of the dual bodily law on which it is based; with the law which is understood in two ways and functions in time; with the dual nature of the human being; and altogether with everything made up and evolved from two actions.
  The third with the foundation of the body; with all the results and productions of all kinds; and here we have the number of the immaterial spirits that do not think.
  The fourth with everything which is active; with the principle of all languages, both in time and outside time; with religion and worship; and here we have the number of the immaterial spirits that do think.
  The fifth with idolatry and decay.
  The sixth with the laws of generation and development in the temporal world, and with the natural division of the circle by the radius.
  The seventh with the cause of the winds and with ebb and flood; with the geographical measure of man; with his true insight, and with the source spring of his intelligent or sensual productions.
  The eighth with the temporal number of the element which is the only support, the only strength and the only hope of man, that is with the real, physical entity that has two names and four numbers, in so far as it is both active and intelligent, and extends its action over the four worlds. It was also concerned with justice, and the whole of legislative power; which encompasses the rights of princes and the authority of generals and judges.
  The ninth with the evolution of the physical human being in the woman’s womb, and with the resolution of the general and specific triangle.
  The tenth finally was the way and the complement of the nine that went before. It was without doubt the most essential and really the page without which none of those that went before would be known; for if you arrange all ten in circumference, in their numerical order, you find the most relationship between it and the first, from which all flows; and if you want to judge its importance, you must know that the originator of things is invincible exactly because of this page, for it is a barricade of wagons around him which no entity can cross.
  Since this work therefore contains all knowledge which the human being may seek and the laws set for him, it is evident that he will never be able to gain any insight, nor ever fulfil his true mission unless he draws on this source; we also know now the hand which must guide him there, and that, if he is not able to walks the steps to this fruitful source by himself, he may nevertheless be certain to get there if he forgets his will and lets the will of the active and intelligent cause take effect, the cause which alone must act for him.’
• 115. See the lecture given in Berlin on 26 April 1906 [in German] in GA 54.
• 116. See also the lectures given in Berlin on 9, 16 and 23 December 1904, in The Temple Legend (note 22).

The texts presented in this volume go back to the years from 1903 to 1906. They represent Rudolf’s preliminary work on the history of human and world evolution which was to be published under the title Occult Science, an Outline in 1910. This had from the beginning been said to be a continuation of Theosophy. An introduction to Supersensible Determination of the World and the Understanding of Man, published in June 1904. Originally, that is, in 1903, when Theosophy was being written^a Rudolf Steiner had intended the cosmology to be the last chapter in this work. He referred to this in his preface to the 1925 edition of Occult Science, dated 10 January 1925. That original intention must soon have changed, however, as it was then planned to produce a separate volume. In the lecture given in Berlin on 9 June 1904 he said: ‘A second volume of my Theosophy, which is due to appear soon, will also be on cosmology.’ It may be assumed that he had already started to write it, for on 5 December 1904 he had a discussion with publisher Max Altmann from Leipzig. Mr Altmann then wrote on 9 December 1904, enclosing a publisher’s contract [in this volume] based on the discussion. The fragment of a manuscript, published for the first time in this volume, bears witness that the plan was to publish a volume on cosmology.

Independently of this, spiritual-scientific cosmology was published in a series of essays in the journal Luzifer-Gnosis from July 1904,^b continuing until the journal had to cease publication in 1908 when Rudolf Steiner had too much other work to do.^* The collected essays were available as special editions at the time, organized in chapters with headings, like those on Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. The Knowledge of the Higher Worlds essays were published in book form in 1909—the preface is dated Berlin, 12 October 1909—but not the Cosmic Memory essays. Evidently because work on the main volume on cosmology, Occult Science, which had been announced a long time before, had come to a conclusion. The preface to this was ‘Written in December 1909’.

Rudolf Steiner gave his reasons why the plan made in 1903/04 was not brought to realization at the time in the above-mentioned Preface to the 1925 edition, dated 10 January 1925:

At the time when Theosophy was written, the subject matter of the present volume could not be brought into an equally finished form. In my inner visions I perceived the spiritual nature of the individual human being, and I was able to put this in words. The cosmic evolution which is now presented in this volume was not then apparent to me at the same level. Individual details were available, but not the whole picture. I therefore decided to publish Theosophy, with the essential nature in the life of an individual which I had been able to perceive, and to continue my work on Occult Science at a steady pace in the immediate future.

It cannot have been so much the actual content which was the problem but rather the way in which the subject might be presented in a form he felt was right for publication. This is evident from the sentence which follows in the preface: ‘The way I felt at the time was that the contents of this book should be presented in thoughts which were a further development, suitable for referring to things of the spirit, of the thoughts used in natural science.’ Looking back to the writing of Theosophy in his autobiography,^c he wrote: ‘At every step I sought to stay firmly connected with the scientific way of thinking.^d

In spite of this, Rudolf Steiner also started to speak of cosmic evolution in his lectures from 1903 onwards. The question arises as to how the presentation given in the 1903/04 fragment and in the lectures given in those early years relates to that used in Occult Science. The answer is found if we distinguish between presentation in form of ideas and that in form of visions, seeing each image as a different aspect of a subject which is extremely difficult to present.

The idea aspect clearly applied in those early years. It is the ‘outline of cosmic evolution’ aspect of which he said on 27 June 1908 in the lectures on the Revelation of St John^e that it followed specific numerical relationships. This outline aspect is closely bound up with the ‘seven great secrets’, especially the second of them, the secret of numbers. This is clearly evident in the texts in this volume. The secret of numbers was always one of the most important in occult schools, for in original wisdom everything was based on number^f For the occultist’s investigations take him into the spirituality of the outside world. There one finds an infinite variety of entities and situations. It needs Ariadne’s clew to find one’s way back again. Number is this clew, the silver thread.^g The world has thus been ordered by number from time immemorial—number in terms of spiritual science also meaning category, archetypal ideas, cosmic thoughts.

It would thus be quite wrong to rate a presentation of cosmic evolution in categories less significant than one in images gained through vision. At the end of his work as a lecturer, Rudolf Steiner himself spoke of these categories as the alphabet of the cosmic script through which he gained his insights in spiritual research (see also Special Note in this volume).

Hella Wiesberger

• a. Two other cosmosophy texts were written in those years. See [in German]
• b. Cosmic Memory. Atlantis and Lemuria, GA 11, tr. K. E. Zimmer. New York: Rudolf Steiner Publications 1971.
• *. Two other cosmosophy texts were written in those years. See [in German] Zur Geschichte und aus den Inhalten der erkenntniskultischen Abteilung der Esoterischen Schule 1904–1914, GA 265, S. 250 ff und S. 372 ff.
• c. Rudolf Steiner, An Autobiography, GA 28, chapter 33; tr. R. Stebbing. New York: Rudolf Steiner Publications 1997.
• d. See also the lecture given in Torquay on 20 August 1924 in True and False Paths in Spiritual Investigation, GA 243; tr. A. H. Parker; London: Anthroposophical Publishing Co. 1927.
• e. Publ. as The Apocalypse of St John, GA 104; tr. J. Collis; London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1977
• f. See lectures given in Dornach on 21 November 1907, in GA 100 and on 15 Nov. 1919, in GA 191 [both in German].
• g. See lecture given in Copenhagen 4 June 1910 [in German] in GA 125.

On 9 June 1904, Rudolf Steiner announced to the Berlin Branch that his book Theosophy, which was due to appear in a few days’ time, would be followed by a second volume, on cosmology. This second volume was also discussed at a meeting with his publisher, Max Altmann from Leipzig. Altmann then send a draft contract. The title of the book is given there as ‘Die Geheimlehre’ (the secret doctrine). This was evidently a working title, for at that time theosophical and cosmological knowledge was identified with the main work of H. P. Blavatsky, the founder of the theosophical movement, which was entitled The Secret Doctrine (vol. 1: Cosmogenesis). Thus the French writer Edouard Schure, for example, asked Marie von Sivers, with whom he was acquainted, if the discussion of the Lemurian age in Steiner’s essays ‘From the akashic record’ (later published as Cosmic Memory) had been taken from Mme Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine, ‘which seems to me to be the case. At any rate, the matter has gained greatly in clarity as presented by Mr Steiner’s pen.’ Marie von Sivers reply on 16 June 1905 was:

I would also like to reply to a question you asked. Mr Steiner has no need to borrow from The Secret Doctrine in order to tell us about the akashic record. The living source which flows through him is much more abundant than anything available so far. [...] It is his destiny to help us gain clarity about the contents of The Secret Doctrine, add to it and take it further.

In November 1905, the new work was for the first time given its actual title in a notice: ‘Shortly to appear ‘Geheimwissenschaft’ {Occult Science). By Dr Rudolf Steiner (Leipzig, M. Altmann).’ Repeated many times, the notice read as follows from the summer of 1907: ‘The continuation of this book ‘Theosophy’ will very shortly appear under the title Occult Science. The long delay has merely been due to the author’s unceasing lecturing activities. Publication is now due, however, whatever the circumstances.’ (in GA 34). It was completed by the end of 1909 and appeared early in 1910.