Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 19 March 1906, Berlin

4. Authority and Conviction

Accusation: The Theosophical Society pays homage to the belief in authority, belief in great authorities. Those who do not yet have clairvoyant qualities must believe others. What is one's attitude towards what the Theosophical Society wants?

Humanity has also undergone a long development with regard to these things. The truth has also undergone a process of development, humanity has changed its views on it.

We want to let our gaze wander from the realms of India until now. We must realize that even then mysticism was already present in our regions, though very different from that of India. In the prehistoric times of Europe, people lived here who had a spiritual view of things, an astral view of things. What is that? Those who then moved from east to west (from west to east) under the leadership of Manu founded a great empire in Asia.

The dream makes it clear: [The dream] symbolically visualizes the surroundings. Today, when man abandons himself to sleep, the brightness, the world of our senses, sinks into darkness; [then the] soul is as if in a dark abyss. It lives of course - it is in the astral world - it can only not perceive there because it has no senses to do so.

The Germanic tribes had no organs either, but higher beings lent them their sensory organs. Today's human eye will become independent. Man sees through his eye, not the eye sees. If man could provide his eye with an ego, it would become independent. [The intermediate state between the ability to impart vision to the ego and independent vision would be a sinking into darkness. Humanity has passed through this state.

So it was with our ancestors, the gods saw through humans. Now the gods have handed over astral vision to humans, in return for the state of darkness. This is wonderfully depicted in the legend of Baldur, who is cast down into darkness. In the legends of the gods, this is the image of astral vision. Initiates have guided this astral vision.

While our ancestors still had this astral vision, our culture spread. Christianity flooded over it. - Everyone who inhabited Europe had natural vision at that time. Especially among the uneducated people there were many echoes; the scholar does not know on what deep ground they rest.

Then came the time when this astral vision was completely concealed. (Man) conquered his mind-seeing, his everyday consciousness.

If we go further back, (we come to) times when everything lay open before mankind. Now veiled, it must be artificially brought forth through occult training. At that time, when the ocean did not flow between America and Europe, but a great continent lay with those people with the prominent forehead, little developed intellect, but astral vision - we call this race the fourth, we are the fifth. We call this: Seeing in the astral light. This has been lost to the fifth root race and can only be achieved through yoga or occult training.

The first way in which man developed this artificially: Indian (culture) [gap in the transcript] came over from Atlantis; there: fog, Niflheim, no rainbow yet. Took decades of thousands of years as the Atlantic Ocean flooded over it. Distribution of water and land. Rain and so on in the fifth root race different. That Noah saw the first rainbow is a cosmological fact. Within the ancient mass of mist, man illuminated (and saw) objects by his own astral light. Through adaptation to this external outside world, what we call the mind came into being.

Man of today:

1. physical body,
2. etheric body, life principle, separated from it
3. sensory body, carrier of the
4. sensory soul, stuck in the sensory body like the sword in the scabbard,
5. mind soul, where artistic creation, especially among the Greeks, is higher,
6. consciousness soul, therein power of the
7. manas, the I,
8. buddhi, for most only as a disposition,
9. atma, core of being, also only as an attachment; actually only 9 reduced to 7, since 3 and 4 are one, and 6 and 7.

This (applies) preferably to the human being of the fifth root race. Atlantians: different classification. Gradually the limbs have developed and twisted. With the Indians everything was still contained in the etheric body, and with them the highest powers could develop through the solar plexus in the lower abdomen. In the Near East the sensory body was particularly developed. Among the Egyptians, Jews, Babylonians and Assyrians the sentient soul was particularly developed; then among the Greeks and Romans the intellectual soul; and among us in the fifth race the consciousness soul, the personality built upon itself. The sixth [root race] will absorb the spirit soul; in a seventh it will absorb the buddhi, and so on.

First: Even as an embryo, the soul forms its body. The etheric body is the body that forms the solar plexus. The ancient Indian race was therefore to receive its occult training [gap in transcript] by cultivating the lower body, the solar plexus. Through the somnambulistic consciousness control of thought is not there. This is the basic idea of ancient Indian culture: a seeing of the solar plexus brought out through yoga training. Therefore, our culture begins with the uncontrollable authority. The yogis sat at the feet of the rishis. Today in the race doom; it is in the twilight of its culture.

Secondly: Near Eastern culture, which has developed the sentient body. Man feels the impulse to reshape the world. Two powers: an ideal one and the [opposing power] - Ormuzd and Ahriman. Now, for the first time, the divine arises in the physical. The Indian longed for the astral vision; now, with the farming people: different. From this arose the service of light and fire. A god lives in the sun, in fire.

Thirdly, culture was built on direct truth. The sentient soul developed, brought order into it, looks out into the starry space and perceives the gods. Soul was S/gap in the transcript] and distinguished [gap in the transcript] saw in the various planets works of the gods - from this star service. In Persia magician doctrine. Sentient body = subtle ether, acts as a natural force, develops magical powers. Then language studied; art of prophecy; yoga expresses itself in prophethood.

Fourthly: Then culture (goes) on to the outer parts. With the Greeks imagination, art, the art of form, as it impresses the soul (into the material). Goethe's delight when he saw what [gap in transcript] And now in the Greek soul science also develops for the first time. 600 years before Christ Thales.

Before that, something else that has been prepared in a small excerpt. In ancient Judaism, that which [had] lain for so long in the whole cosmos was applied to a people. In this way, preparations were made for the divine to move completely into the interior. The wave that emanated from this culture now fertilized the independently developing culture in the north.

Fifth race: The spiritual had lost its form, so the material was formed. Only wanted to believe in realities. Thus the deep rift between science and faith. Science becoming more and more realistic. The ancient Indians developed the solar plexus, the Persians the magical and so on, then only the religion of mere faith, which allows science to limit itself to matter. So today: the personality found the divine within itself; it must absorb the spiritual. We now have the predominance of the consciousness soul, of judgment, of criticism.

The future consists of the personality absorbing the spirit again. The old culture was built on authority and instruction, the present one on brotherhood; forced knowledge was the old one, free knowledge is the present one. Faith will develop into reverence for man. If we gain love for the individuality of man, we will regard the other who hurries ahead faster - or who lags behind - as a brother, because the same divine spirit lives in him. No new authority in place of the old, but love for the masters, complete freedom. They do not tell us the “what”, but the “how”, how they did it, how we should do it too. The master is not a dogmatist, but a counselor. Theosophical teaching is an education in freedom. We recognize God in the developing human being, in the human brother; and the highest is the Master. Theosophy is the freest, the most dogma-free that there can be. No compulsion, but a future guidance in love and freedom, because love is a plant that thrives in freedom.

Today's human being consists of:

1. physical body
2. etheric body = life principle (developed by the Indians) separated from it
3. sensory body within it & 4th sensory soul => one like a sword in a sheath (among Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians) 5th mind soul (with Greeks, Romans) 6th consciousness soul (with us)
4. manas - I
5. buddhi
6. atma