The History of the Esoteric School 1904–1914, Volume Two

GA 265 — Hildesheim

The Hammer (TAO)

From a teaching session in Munich, December 12, 1906

The gong represents the primal sound of nature: Tao.

From a teaching session in Basel, September 1912

T is not the name of God, but it signifies the presence of God.

From lecture in Berlin, November 16, 1905

(...) If we look across to Asia, we find at first the still existing remains of an ancient religion, which in fact can no longer be understood as a religion in our present sense. We find this religion in the remarkable culture of the Chinese. I am not speaking of the religion of Confucius, nor of that which spread as Buddhism in India and China, but I would like to speak of the remains of the ancient Chinese religion, the Tao religion. This is the religion that refers man to Tao. Tao is translated as the goal or the way. But one does not get a clear mental image of the essence of this religion if one simply adheres to this translation. For a large part of humanity, the Tao expresses and has expressed for millennia the highest that human beings could aspire to, that they imagine the world, all of humanity, will one day arrive at: the highest that human beings carry within themselves and that will one day develop from the innermost human nature as a mature flower. Tao signifies a deep, hidden source of the soul and a lofty future at the same time. Not only is Tao uttered with shy reverence, but it is also thought of with reverence by those who know what it is about. The Tao religion is based on the principle of evolution, and it says: What is around me today is a stage that will be overcome. I must realize that this development in which I find myself has a goal, that I will develop towards a lofty goal and that a power lives in me that spurs me on to reach the great goal of Tao. When I feel this great power in me and I feel that all beings are heading towards this goal with me, then this power is the steering power that blows towards me from the wind, sounds from the stone, shines towards me from the lightning, and sounds from the thunder, and sends me its light from the sun. In plants, it appears as a growth force; in animals, as sensation and perception. It is the force that will bring forth form after form again and again, until that sublime goal is reached, through which I know myself to be one with all of nature, which flows out of me and into me with every breath, which is the symbol of the highest evolving spirit, which I perceive as life. I feel this power as Tao. - In this religion, there was no mention at first of a god in the hereafter; there was no mention of something outside the world, but of something through which one can find strength for the progress of mankind.

Tao was felt most strongly at that time, when man was still connected to the divine source, especially among the population of Atlantis. These our ancestors did not yet have such a highly developed mind, such intelligence as today's humanity. But instead, they had a more dream-like consciousness, a more instinctively arising imaginative life and a little calculating mental life. Imagine the dream life, but intensified so that it is meaningful and not chaotic, and think of a human race from whose soul arise images that announce the sensations that are in one's own soul, that reflect everything that is around us externally. We have to imagine the soul world of these prehistoric men quite differently from our own. Today, man strives to form thoughts and mental images of the world around him that are as precise as possible. Prehistoric man, on the other hand, formed symbolic, allegorical mental images that appeared full of life within him. When you meet a person today, you try above all to get an idea of whether he is a good or an evil person, a clever or a stupid person, and you try to get an idea that corresponds to the external person in as dry a way as possible. This was never the case with the primeval man of Atlantis. He had an image, not a concept. When he met an evil person, a dull and dark image arose. But the perception did not become a concept. Nevertheless, he judged and behaved according to this image. When he had a bright and beautiful image before him, which stood before his soul as a dream, then he knew that he could trust such a being. And he was afraid of an image when it arose in him in black, red or brown colors. The truths did not appear rationally or intellectually, but as inspiration. He felt as if the Deity working in these images were within himself. He spoke of the Deity that revealed Itself in the blowing of the wind, in the rustling of the forest, and also in the images of the inner life of the soul when he was impelled to look up to a lofty future for humanity. And that is what he called Tao.

Modern man, who has taken the place of this primeval humanity, relates to the spiritual powers in a different way. He has lost the power of direct vision, which in some respects is duller and dimmer than ours, but has gained the stage of development of intellectual and mental images, which in some respects is higher and in some respects lower. Thus, the modern man stands higher than the primitive man because he possesses a keen, penetrating mind; but he no longer feels the living connection with the divinely active Tao forces of the world. Thus he has the world as it reveals itself in his soul, and on the other hand the powers of the mind. The Atlantean felt the images that lived within him. Today's man hears and sees the outer world. These two things, outer and inner, stand opposite each other, and he no longer feels how a bond goes from one to the other. That is the great meaning of the development of mankind. Ever since the land masses rose again after the floods of the oceans had submerged the continents, mankind has longed to rediscover the bond between what it feels and perceives within and what presents itself to it outside in the sensory world. This is the origin of the word religare = religion. It means nothing other than to reconnect what was once connected and is now separated, to reconnect the world and the self. The various forms of religious belief are nothing more than the means, the ways taught by the great sages, to rediscover this connection. They are designed to be so diverse in order to be understood by people at every level of culture in this or that form. ...