Humanity's Conscious Mastery: Intelligence, Morality, and the White Lodge

GA 266I — 10 November 1905, Munich

Esoteric Lesson

The necessity for esotericists to understand the plan that humanity is unconsciously working out under the guidance of the White Lodge.

The humanity of Earth is its center, that which matters in this world. On many other worlds, other beings are at work, and the people of those worlds are like our higher animals. The people of Earth received the planet from the gods and are, in a sense, reshaping it. First, their development takes place on the plane of the senses—in the broadest sense of the word. To this end, it was necessary to develop their intelligence so that logical thinking could unite people into one humanity.

The Atlanteans were not yet capable of thinking; they were guided by the gods. The Aryans must become masters of their world through their own efforts. Intellectually, the unity that excludes different views has already been achieved. There are no different views on the construction of a steam engine or the like. Science and its products, the harnessing of natural forces, and means of transportation have united the different races and nations into a single entity. Five thousand years ago, what a difference there was, for example, between the products of the Chinese and European peoples. Today, a certain bridge has been built even between these dying peoples and the West. A bishop of Bremen writes about the customs in the Mark in the 11th and 12th centuries, how animals were slaughtered and horse blood was drunk in religious cults. This was in eastern Germany, while in the west, cities were already flourishing. Such contrasts side by side would be impossible today.

However, humanity has only just begun to harness the forces of nature. This will change completely in the near future and into the next millennia. People will extract the forces in flowing water and make them useful to themselves; they will capture the powerful forces contained in the sun's rays using powerful mirrors and learn to use them; they will learn to control the forces within the earth, which are now released through volcanic eruptions and originate from a powerful spirit being within the earth; The most wonderful machines will be devised by humans to put all these unleashed forces at the service of humanity. Indeed, they will gain control over the magnetic force of the entire Earth, for the Earth is only a large magnet whose south pole is at the north pole and whose north pole is at the south pole. Now they are only able to steer their ships by means of this force. When changes to the Earth were necessary in ancient times, the forces of the gods tilted the Earth's axis; in times to come, humanity will be able to rotate the axis. The development of humanity's intelligence and logic is thus progressing more and more and bringing about the unity of humanity in the sensory realm.

The development of morality was first made possible by the gods through the ethical teachings of all great religions. However, a time must come when people recognize the law of good as clearly as they recognize the laws of logic today. What is good and what is true in the spiritual realm can then no longer be a matter of opinion, as is still the case today, expressed through the various religions and the formation of parliaments to resolve this or that legal question. When people become aware that there is a good, a moral, that is as definite and clear as a mathematical theorem, then people will also unite in this realm into a humanity that has a completely different physiognomy than the humanity of today.

To lead humanity to this recognition of morality, to reveal its laws to humanity so that a group of people consciously working from within themselves might arise in this field, the fourth Master, Christian Rosenkreutz, founded the Rosicrucian Order. The different intellectual education of the West requires a different teaching. In the East, the spiritual teachings given to the Indians by the ancient Rishis had a strong influence on the people. Christian Rosenkreutz and his seven disciples laid the foundation for the recognition of the law of morality, so that it would not merely echo in people's minds as something given by religion, but so that the law, recognized as such, would awaken to individual life in every human being. The truth in the realms of morality, ethics, and goodness should arise in human beings as something recognized and felt.

It is the work of the esoteric schools to initiate this unity that binds human beings together into one humanity.