Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — Berlin

14. The Ten Commandments

Today we shall be concerned with an important document of humanity which, although it may seem remote and outside the scope of our previous series of observations, is nevertheless connected with them. These are the Ten Commandments, which we would like to examine from a Theosophical point of view for the reason that Theosophy may be able to shed the right light on this document of humanity at the present time.

It is often claimed by scholars that these ten commandments agree with some laws and commandments of other peoples and actually represent nothing special, at most only insofar as they are a compilation of what can be found scattered in the various tablets of the law of other peoples.

What has occupied us in the contemplation of the development of mankind in the post-Atlantean period, and what we allowed to affect us there, will now also be a guide to understanding the great and mighty things that struck mankind when the Ten Commandments were given on Mount Sinai.

Let us remember what we encountered when we looked at the development of humanity in the post-Atlantean period. We have seen that the five cultural epochs - the Indian, Persian, Chaldean-Egyptian, Greco-Roman and our own - signified the gradual conquest of the physical plan. Now, at the end of the third and the beginning of the fourth epoch, we are confronted with what we can call “the mission of Moses”. What does this mission consist of?

Let us take a closer look at what the inspirations of the initiates actually were in the successive periods of time.

We have often spoken of the rishis. It has been said of them that in ordinary life they were, so to speak, simple men, but that at certain times they were the mouthpiece for higher beings. This fact was particularly prominent in the times of ancient Indianism. They spoke of higher spiritual truths, these greatest teachers of post-Atlantean culture.

Let us ask ourselves into which regions of the spirit these ancient rishis placed themselves when they were supposed to be inwardly pervaded and permeated by the higher beings who spoke through them.

These Rishis, while the higher powers lived in them, rose not only to the astral or lower Devachan plan, but up to the upper Devachan, so that their teachings originally emanated from the upper Devachan. In those ancient times, shortly after the Atlantean epoch, this was still possible because the old Indian bodies still offered people the possibility of coming out of them and entering into relationship with the beings of higher worlds.

Now the cultural epochs are progressing. In the cultural epoch of Zarathustra - Persian - the highest initiates still know how to speak of the highest spiritual beings, but their elevation cannot so easily reach the upper parts of the Devachan; they can only rise to the lower Devachan. Nevertheless, they can be taught about the higher [Devachan worlds], because these high beings of the lower Devachan plan also know about the higher plans.

In the world in which the Egyptian initiates were mainly at home, one usually rose to the astral plan; and it was by no means only a small circle that could still rise to this astral plan in ancient Egypt. There was still a relatively large number of people who knew from their own observation what could happen on the astral plane. At least in certain intermediate states of life between sleeping and waking. For example, many experienced communion with those beings who do not come down to the physical plane, but who are still at home on the astral plane. So that those who went in and out of the astral plan - the ancient Egyptian initiates - still found it easy to proclaim the things that were going on in the higher worlds.

As we approach the later cultural epochs, the curtain on the spiritual world is being drawn more and more. There are fewer and fewer people who are still able to make observations in the spiritual worlds, and as a result a special kind of proclamation by the initiates became necessary towards the fourth epoch.

One of those initiates who was experienced in all the occult arts of the Egyptians was Moses. It was precisely his people who were destined to receive a certain revelation that was capable of being something to people even when they could no longer look up into the higher worlds. There were always initiates, although their number had become fewer and fewer, who could know directly or indirectly of the higher worlds because they lived consciously outside their bodies; but the greater part of the people had to remain on the physical plane. The task that had to be fulfilled towards humanity - at the time when the mission of Moses began - was this: to give those who were dependent on the physical plan a revelation of the spiritual. How did this mission first have to be organized? First of all, the people had to be made aware that what is outside around you, what you can see and feel, is the physical plan. There is nothing spiritual anywhere, you don't have to see it as something that could somehow represent the spiritual to you. Rather, you must realize that the spiritual must be sought in the spiritual and that there is only one place where you can seek the spiritual.

In ancient Indian times, when the holy rishis spoke from the upper parts of the devachan, images could also be given which symbolized and comparatively indicated what was spoken from the upper devachan as an external solid image. Pictures and images could be given, and it was relatively easy to make people understand: We do indeed give you images, but since you see the outer world as an illusion after all, these images will be no more to you than images of a world of the supernatural.

There was no danger that idolatry could be practiced with these images. How could this have been the case with a people who regarded everything sensual as maya, as illusion! This people could never have practiced idolatry. That only came much later. (However, it was precisely in Oriental culture that the idol took the place of the symbol). It was therefore easy for the holy Rishis to make it clear to the entire Indian people: That which we have to proclaim to you comes from the higher parts of the Devachan, and the visible are symbols for that which is so high!

But the disciples of Zarathustra could not proceed in the same way during the Persian culture. They could only establish a kind of connection between their people and the lower parts of the Devachan plan, therefore they were only able to speak in images - but in spiritual images - of the supersensible

to speak. They did not use a sensual image. So above all of the actual spiritual being, which they called Aura Mazdao; the being that has its outer physicality in the sun and with which man connects himself to Ahriman.

This was placed before people as a sensual, supersensible image, so to speak. People were to imagine this spiritual being in a picture, but not a finished image, they were not to receive it in effigy. At best they could imagine this divine aura Mazdao in a process, for example in fire, but not in an external sensual image. Everything that is a sensual image comes from a later time. The ancient Persian culture had images that were supposed to express the Devachan, the supersensible, that was the progression.

Now we come to the third cultural stage, which we encounter in Egyptianism. There, as we know, the figure of Osiris was at the center of religious thought and feeling. You will easily understand what is now to be said once again: What kind of being is Osiris primarily in his divine form?

Remember that the Egyptian cultural leaders told the people: If you carry out your task here in the physical world correctly, if you do everything that makes you a worthy human being in relation to your soul, then you will be united with Osiris after death!

On the other hand, it was said: Osiris only had a short life on earth, then he was overcome by his brother Seth and has lived in the worlds above the earth ever since. His lowest region is the astral plan, he does not descend any further, it is not possible for Osiris to enter the physical plan. Therefore man cannot meet Osiris in earthly life. But after death, if he has made himself worthy of him, he will be united with him, because then man enters the higher worlds. Man must therefore meet Osiris either when he dies or when he enters the astral plan as an initiate. Therefore, the confessor of the Osiris religion was made clear: The supersensible, with which you yourself are still in contact, you should not imagine other than under the image of your own soul, a soul as we imagine it under the concept of the astral body. He was presented with an ideal human form that has all kinds of virtues. And since virtues, drives and so on are in the astral body, an astral entity was, so to speak, presented as the entity of Osiris.

For the people who had passed through the school of Egyptianism, so to speak, and who were to prepare that great event through which the spiritual descended into the physical world - not like Osiris only as far as the astral plan, but like Christ who came to the physical plan -, For this people no God was allowed to live in parable, in symbol, as was the case with the ancient Indians, nor were they allowed to worship a God in a sensual-supersensible image as in the Persian culture, nor in the image of an astral body, but only under the supersensible image of the ego! All images that were originally given to the ancient Indians to imagine the spiritual were images borrowed from the physical world, the mineral kingdom, symbols that had a physical-mineral form.

The figures under which the initiates of Persian culture made the supersensible clear to their people were taken from the human etheric body, for Aura Mazdao had also become visible by assuming an etheric body and showing himself in form. Osiris had been presented under an astral form. The deity who announced himself to the Jewish people was to have no characteristics other than those of the ego, the fourth member of the human being. By the “I”, man understands something that can only say “I” to itself.

But there was something else connected with this. Man was now to pour the mission of Moses into himself; he was to imagine the Godhead in the image of the “I”: Just as your I lives in you and is ruler over all the members of human nature, so you should imagine the being that rules and reigns in the world, no sensual, no etheric and no astral image, merely under the form of the I, solely under this name you should imagine the supreme being - “I am the I Am”. In the “I” itself, every human being should really see an image of the Godhead.

That was the mission, the mission of Moses: look within yourself, then you will find a real image of the pure Godhead. - Therefore, all the effects of humanity should only go from self to self. That should be prepared.

Let's go back to the Egyptian culture. There was a lot of effect there, but it did not go from I to I, but from astral body to astral body. - What does that mean? Think of how a gigantic pyramid was built. It took a great army of people to build such a pyramid. The workers on a pyramid followed the orders of those who were the builders, and these were the temple priests, the spiritual leaders of the culture.

Don't think that these orders were given as they are today from ego to ego. That was not the case. The easiest way for you to understand what was going on back then is to use the word “suggestion”. Forces of a psychic nature were used. The Egyptian priests were highly proficient in such powers. They did not work on the ego by saying “Do this” or “Do that!”, but they controlled the crowds like the one who controls the psychic powers, so that people followed without will, bypassing the ego.

The priests, as initiates, were in high service; they could not be expected to abuse these powers. They put them at the service of the good. But it was inspiration, psychic inspiration, through which they worked. There was no question of freedom of the self in relation to the temple priest.

If you understand this, you will also understand that in ancient India the holy rishis used spiritual powers to an even greater extent. It was like this: when they appeared and made important proclamations, it was taken for granted that the whole people would follow them without a will. Just as in our country the hand follows the head, so the great masses of people followed their leader. This became less and less the further man descended to the physical plan. But in ancient Egypt there was still some of this psychic power. The mission of Moses was to tear people out of this kind of effect and to proclaim the preaching of the “I” in front of them. To seek the divine original source in everyone, to see the great world ego, the ego that surges and surges through space as the archetype of one's own ego, that was the great call that was linked to Moses' mission.

From this point of view we will understand how this great world ego had to proclaim itself through Moses. It is in this way that we must translate the announcement of the “I” commandment into today's language, so that we really have what was felt and sensed and thought when the first commandment was heard at that time. All lexicographical translations render the most inaccurate thing imaginable.

And now I would like to present to you the first commandment as it really needs to be translated in order to express what was in people's minds when they heard it. - First commandment:

I am the Eternal Divine that you feel within you. I have led you out of the land of Egypt, where you could not follow me within you. From now on, you shall not place other gods above me. You shall not recognize as higher gods what shows you an image of something that shines in the sky above, that works out of the earth or between heaven and earth. You shall not worship what is below the divine in you, for I am the eternal in you and I am a continuing divine. If you do not recognize me in you, I will disappear as your divine in children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and their bodies will become desolate; if you recognize me in you, I will live on as you to the thousandth generation, and the bodies of your people will flourish.

There we have the hint to recognize in the individual model of the ego, the afterimage of the divine original ego and at the same time the hint that the one who thus recognizes his ego as divine, that he becomes free from the way people in the ancient Egyptian land faced the leaders.

I have led you out of the land of Egypt, where you could not follow me in you.

The will of the temple priests was followed, they used psychic powers. The first dawn of that freedom, which then emerged as the freedom of grace in Christianity, can be seen in this reference:

I have brought you out of the land of Egypt. - From now on, you shall not place other gods above me.

For this very reason, so that the Jewish people could become the great preparatory people for the manifestation of Christianity, it had to be made clear that all other representations of the divine, the archetype of the self, had to fall away. That which is external form, be it through constellations or anything else, had to fall away. - The divine should not be represented by anything at all, for man, in order to become free, in order to find the source of everything that is within him, should feel everything that he can feel about the divine in his ego as the image of the great world ego:

You shall not recognize as higher gods what shows you an image of something that shines above in the sky, that works out of the earth or between heaven and earth.

An imageless divine, the only legitimate expression for this is the human ego:

I am, the I Am. - You shall not worship what is below the divine within you.

We have emphasized this: The image was taken from the physical body in ancient India, from the etheric body in the Persian culture, from the astral body among the Egyptians. All this is under the ego, so nothing should be taken in the image of the divine. We know that the physical body is taken from the mineral nature, that the etheric body is taken from the etheric nature, that the astral body is taken from the same realm from which the astral body of the animals is taken. Of all that is in the lower members of the human nature, of all that is taken out of the rest of nature, of all that is under the ego, nothing is to be taken for that which man worships.

For I am the Eternal in you and am a continuous Divine.

There you have an important sentence. There was given to the Jews as a law what was previously a fact.

We have already drawn attention to how in all peoples through whom common blood flowed, how a certain consciousness ran through the generations, how the son felt connected to the father and the grandfather through the blood. Common blood felt like a common I, the I lived through the generations. The God who first announced himself as I to the Jewish people had to announce himself by saying that it was he who continued to work as God through the generations.

If you grasp me correctly within you, then you will grasp what continues to work from generation to generation.

This has been translated as:

I am a zealous God,

yes even with

an angry God,

while the real meaning is:

I am a God who works from generation to generation. Never try to get an idea of me, keep the right thing in you as a mental image of me, then you will propagate health from generation to generation with the blood.

A correct medical idea is connected with this, because the one who gave this commandment connected it with the idea that - if man has a pure idea of the connection with the divine - then a healthy ego-image will flow through the blood and the people will remain healthy from generation to generation. We do not get a correct mental image of the vital idea of what Moses gave to the people when he proclaimed the laws if we merely think conceptually of what he says. No, it is said on the condition that the right thought is a reality: if you form a wrong mental image of the divine, it will be passed on from generation to generation, it will manifest itself as disease, as infirmity. Right thoughts bring about health, but wrong thoughts bring about illness. This is a theosophical or occult mental image in the true sense of the word. You have to bear all this in mind, otherwise you won't get the right concept, the right mental image of the first commandment. That is why the Jewish people are instructed: Do not imagine this God under a false image; if you kneel before the golden calf, a false mental image flows into you and the false image of God, by passing through the generations with the blood, produces the continuing sin, which then turns into disease.

If you do not recognize me in you, I will disappear as your divine in children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and their bodies will become desolate. - You will produce viable children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren if you take in the right mental image of the divine, but otherwise that which depends on blood will die out. By correctly recognizing me in your ego, it passes from generation to generation, for I am a continuing divine. I disappear from the bodies when I live in you in a false mental image."

This is again quite medically imaginable:

If you recognize me in you, I will live on into the thousandth generation and the bodies of your people will be purified.

In this way, the physical will flourish in a truly occult way when linked to the right mental image of the spiritual. Thus the breath of human freedom will enter into human development: Humanity is placed precisely on the pinnacle of the continuing ego, and then linked to the divine. This cannot be compared with any other legislation, and it is pure dilettantism to combine these ten commandments with other laws and explain them in a one-sided way because they are outwardly similar in words. The legislation of the ten commandments is unique and can only be explained by the unique mission of Moses. And so it is with all the other commandments as with this first one; if we translate them correctly, the whole spirit of Moses' mission becomes clear to us. - Second commandment:

You shall not speak of me in you in error, for any error about the I in you will destroy your body.

There you have directly established the necessity of the spiritually correct thought, which is the actual creator of the correct, healthy body. Error about the highest divine in oneself produces sickness in the body to the fullest extent. It is extremely important to realize that this is stated in the second commandment:

The error about the I in you will corrupt your body.

There is a later proverb: In a beautiful body dwells a beautiful soul. - Modern material humanity sometimes interprets it this way: So take good care of your body, then there is a beautiful soul in it. However, the meaning is that a soul that is powerful in itself is the true creator of the body and produces a healthy body. Not that the body makes the soul, just the opposite.

So we see that sometimes it doesn't depend on the exact wording. Each time has a different mental image of the same wording, depending on how the time feels or feels.

This does not always prove that you have the right wording, but only by penetrating the soul of the time. - Third commandment:

You shall separate the working day from the holiday, so that your existence may become the image of my existence, for what lives as I in you formed the world in six days and lived in itself on the seventh day. So your work and the work of your son and the work of your daughter and the work of your servants and the work of your livestock and the work of whoever else is with you shall only be turned outward for six days, but on the seventh day your eyes shall seek me within you.

This is the absolute translation of the third commandment. Not in external images, but in what one does, what the I does, it must become an image of the original I, and just as the original I created the work and rested in itself on the seventh day, so also man should separate workday and holiday, create six days and seek the divine with the help of the I [on the seventh] day. Thus we see in what a wonderful way the image of the original self in us is presented as leading to God.

In these first three commandments we have the indication of how man in this new time is to approach the divine, which reveals itself in a new way. In the fourth commandment we have an approach on the physical plane; the first three represent how man relates to the higher worlds in the right way. - The fourth commandment is:

Work forth in the ways of your father and mother, that there may remain to you as a possession the property which they have acquired through the power which I have formed in them.

Here we do not have the completely meaningless “Honor your father and mother, that it may go well with you and that you may live long on earth!” - It is about the fact that - after man has founded the divine within himself spiritually and, as we have been able to grasp, also medically, so to speak - he now really does outwardly what propagates the ego. It is even a practical commandment: as a descendant, look to your ancestors; if you as a descendant stand in opposition to them, a peaceful development can never take place.

Just as the ego is transmitted internally through the blood, so too that which is there externally as a possession will remain. The strong ego that has formed flows on the one hand through the blood down through the generations, but on the other hand, by making the ego strong, it should also have an effect on the outer world. What has established a strong ego should be preserved; development should not be continually interrupted: Continue to work so that outwardly what your father and mother have acquired remains together.

This is something that shows you how the external rules of conduct are now also given, so that what is given from within is not destroyed from without.

And now come the commandments, which contrast the self with the self of the other, which in this sense are intended to regulate the factual world, social life. [They actually only paraphrase the Bible verse] that Paul himself says: “See in the other person as much an I as in yourself!”

This people have been given a special mission to pursue the divine into the self. That is why this people had to receive the commandments that not only prescribe the preservation of one's own self, but also respect for the self of others:

Fifth commandment: do not murder.
Sixth commandment: Do not commit adultery.
Seventh commandment: Do not steal.

As three facts set apart, the one fact: See an ego in your neighbor as well as in yourself.

Thus, the Jewish people were indeed spiritually led out of the land of Egypt, as the self was also to be recognized in the appreciation of the other self. For in the land of Egypt, people did not work by respecting the ego, but by suggestion. Not only should one not harm or impair the ego in its rights, one should not even belittle it with a word. One should not say anything untrue about another self. Whoever says something untrue about another self does not know that the other self is the same as his own self. - And therefore the eighth commandment is:

Do not lower the value of your fellow human being by saying untrue things about him.

This continues systematically. First the facts are stated, then that which can still express itself in a damaging way. - The deed intervenes directly in the sphere of the other ego; the word already more secretly.

But if you seriously want to acknowledge the ego of the other, then you must not intervene in the sphere of your neighbor through your lusts, your desires. Not only by stealing from him, but also by wanting something he has, you are encroaching on the other person's ego. You recognize the full equality of the other ego by not letting yourself lust after what your neighbour has. Hence the last two commandments. - Ninth commandment:

Do not grudgingly look upon what your fellow man possesses as property.

Tenth commandment:

Do not look grudgingly on the wife of your fellow man, nor on the helpmates and other beings through whom he finds his advancement.

Only in this way can we find a healthy relationship between man and man, that we do not begrudge [him] what is [his] own. Thus man is placed next to man. In every ego he should respect an image of the divine. This regulated the nature of the individual I's among themselves. That was one of the greatest impacts that came into humanity. What was to come through Christ, that everyone should find the Father in himself, had not yet been expressed. These laws still contained the common self, so to speak, which flowed through the generations. But it was the proclamation beforehand that the I is not just an image of the divine, but that God himself is a living entity in him: the I is identical in substance and essence with his Father.

I and the Father are one.

There we see the development of the world. It is easy to say that everything in the world is connected with cause and effect, but there is no sign of wise guidance. - But if you look into the development in this way, if you see how the right thing always happens at the right time, then - I would like to say - you have no choice but to recognize the wise guidance in the development of the world.

If one sees occultly how this proclamation happened at the end of the third cultural epoch into the fourth period, so that people were given time to prepare themselves for the Mystery of Golgotha, then one sees how precisely this belongs to the expressions of the greatest wisdom.

In the whole tone of the Ten Commandments, if we understand them correctly, we see how the Godhead reveals itself in the archetypal way in order to prepare for the moment when the Spirit of God really incarnates itself in a human being. In order for people to learn to comprehend God in the flesh, God incarnate, they first had to learn to comprehend the God in their deepest inner being according to his substance and essence. If we look at the Ten Commandments in this translation, we can see from the whole tone that the deity still speaks to man, that the speech is entirely in harmony with the ever-advancing emergence onto the physical plane.

It is always pointed out that the bodies thrive when the divine is correctly grasped. Instructions are given on how to eclipse the divine in such a way that the outer things on the physical plane flourish. It is pointed out in the right way that a straight, healthy development must take place so that the outer social connections can flourish.

Through the mission of Moses it is regulated that the divine is preserved, but that the human race carries out the conquest of the physical plan in the right way, in the sense of post-Atlantean development and in harmony with this divine.

The seven cultural epochs of the post-Atlantean period correspond to what the seven planets have given mankind in what the teachers of mankind have given them as religion. Thus:

I. Indertum = Saturn: Physical body Religion: Images from the physical, mineral realm.
II Persianism = Sun. Etheric body. Aura Mazdao. Religion: Sensual image of spiritual entity.
III. Egyptianism = Moon. Osiris. Up to the astral body.
IV. Greek-Roman period = Mars and Mercury. Earth development. I = Christ in the flesh.

After this we must continue

V. Jupiter - Manas
VI Venus - Buddhi
VII. Vulcan - Atma 1. Indian culture: The seven holy rishis were each initiated into the oracle of one of the seven planets. 2nd Persian culture: Zarathustra was initiated into the solar oracle itself.

3rd Egyptian culture: Hermes initiation went as far as the astral body - moon.

4th Greek-Latin culture: The initiation of Moses went as far as the etheric body, that is, the ego began to work in the etheric body - lower manas.

1. the Christ brought himself as full I-ness. Higher manas. Buddhi. Atma.