# The Three Logoi and the Sacred Sound AUM

## GA 266I — 18 December 1906, Berlin

### Esoteric Lesson

Today we want to try to understand a little better the nature of the three Logoi. Many theosophists talk about these things right at the beginning, when they know very little about theosophy. This can only lead to confusion and harm. Actually, no one in whom the higher consciousness has not awakened can form a mental image of the nature of the three Logoi. But by evoking the right images, one can prepare the soul for correct vision in the future. Everything spiritual is also expressed in the physical. So let us consider what corresponds to those high forces in the physical world.

In ordinary life, it is said that human beings have five senses. Occultism mentions only three, namely: smell (taste), sight (sense of warmth), and hearing. Taste and the sense of warmth lie between these. When I smell something, I take fine, fine particles of the substance in question into my nose. So when I smell, I perceive the matter itself. When I see with my eyes, however, I do not perceive the object itself, but only an image of the object that is brought about by a chemical process in the eye. Taste lies between smell and sight; it is an intermediate sense. When I taste, I take in parts of the object itself, but I do not perceive these parts directly as I do with smell; I must first undergo a chemical process with them in order to taste them. With hearing, I do not perceive objects, but vibrations in the air. I also perceive certain vibrations when I feel warmth, but then my whole body perceives them, whereas in hearing, the perception of vibrations takes place in an organ specially designed for this purpose.

The three Logoi are related to these three senses. The third Logos is so selfless that it allows its essence to resonate through the world. The second pours itself out in images. The first Logos, however, allows itself, its own body, to pour out. This means the highest degree of selflessness, when one can allow one's own essence to flow out. First Logos Second Logos Third Logos Smell Sight Hearing Substance Image (Imago) Movement ![266-16](images/266-16.webp) ![266-18](images/266-18.webp) ![266-19](images/266-19.webp) ![266-20](images/266-20.webp)

At the beginning of the world, the first Logos began to pour out its essence; then, in a sense, a fragrance filled the space of the world.

Let the aroma of the world be the first Logos. Everything material originated from him, from his body. He is the aroma of the world. Then the second Logos began to flow forth and interwove the aroma of the world with images and forms. Then the world began to take shape; light and colors shone forth. Then the third Logos resounded through the world in the making. The aroma of the world floods space; magnificent forms shine forth, and this shimmering, fragrant world is filled with the sounds of the third Logos.

We can now understand the entire environment as an outflow of the three Logoi and thereby gradually penetrate to its true essence.

However, each of the three Logoi does not work alone, but they live and weave completely within each other, so that each of the three is also expressed in the other two. But the effect of the three is not equally clear to us in each of them. This depends on the time of their emanation.

When our chain of planets came into being, the outflow of the third Logos also began. And its sound will not fade away until our chain of planets has reached the end of its development. But the waves of the other two Logoi did not flow out only at the beginning of our chain of worlds; they have come to us from earlier world developments. The waves of these two have a longer duration than those of the third Logos. But even before our planetary chain reaches its goal, the radiation of the second Logos fades away and a new one begins.[^1] It is this new outflow that actually belongs to our planetary system, in which we are working. Long before the new radiation of the second Logos flows out fully, it prepares itself. It was such preparatory currents that brought the great religious founders Buddha, Zoroaster, Hermes, etc. into the world. But when the light of the second Logos shone preparatory for the last time, it shone most brightly, and that was in Christ Jesus. When it shines again, it is the second Logos itself that radiates its essence anew. The wave of the first Logos is even longer than that of the second. Long after the new second Logos has flowed away, the first Logos has only just faded away and begins its new radiation, which then actually belongs to our chain of planets. The third Logos is therefore most clearly audible to us. It sounds full and loud, and if we want to characterize its essence, we say that it has a bright, vocal sound: A ...

Just as in each of the three Logoi the other two are also perceptible, so in the third Logos the first and second Logoi also resound as sounds, just as in the second Logos the first and third shine forth as images and in the first Logos the second and third emanate their fragrance. For us, however, only the interactions of the first and second in the third Logos are initially recognizable. When we hear the bright, full A of the third Logos, another sound resonates within it, the sound of the second Logos. However, our second Logos is still in the process of becoming. That is why its sound is still muffled, but vocally full, like the U. Our first Logos, which will only come into being in the distant future, resonates like a soft humming undertone. Its sound is not vocal, for it is still too distant for us, but rather a muffled consonant: M.

Thus we have expressed the sound of the most sublime powers in:

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This is the goal to which we all aspire: to participate in the essence of these most sacred world forces. Only insofar as the human soul participates in these forces does it have value for the development of the world:

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The first and second Logos resonate in the third Logos. ![266-17](images/266-17.webp) Smell ♌︎ Sight ♑︎ Hearing ♈︎ Taste ♊︎ Feeling ♉︎ bound to the substance that emanates bound to images Imago bound to sound movement (intermediate stage)

The third logos, sound, is entirely on the physical plane. We can produce sound (emit it) and record it.

Recording B

Taste is between smell and face  
Feeling is between face and hearing

[...]

Long before the new radiance of the first Logos fully emanates the aroma of the world, it prepares itself. Its development took place in an earlier Manvantara, and only the remnants of it reach into ours, up to the sun. The second Logos (light, world light, Christ) reached into our Manvantara with its development, which also took place in an earlier Manvantara, up to ... (Earth). Then the development of a new Christ began in the time of Krishna, Zoroaster, Hermes, Buddha, Moses (??), and it continued in Christ Jesus. (See Events of Pistis Sophia and Twin Redeemers. M. K.)

[...]

The third Logos, the sound, is entirely on the physical plane. We can produce sound, emit it, and receive it. The third Logos (harmony of the spheres, world sound) began its development with our Saturn, and it will be completed with the Vulcan incarnation, with our Manvantara. That which the first Logos (world aroma) rejects in its development is embodied in all the evil spirits who, as already stated in myths and legends, spread an evil odor; and these descend into the eighth kingdom. The less evil ones, who are embodied in the rejected part of the development of the second Logos, are the opposites of the spirit of light: the spirits of darkness. The realm of the third Logos alone, the sound, can be taken in by man and also released from him again – namely, by receiving the sound through the ear and releasing it again through the larynx. Later, humans will be able to release what they have received through light, the images of the outside world that they take in through their eyes, through the pineal gland as images, as forms, through their (etherized) blood, which they will then have brought under their will. They will then be more selfless, no longer taking in from outside what plants give them today, namely oxygen, but producing oxygen within themselves. They will transform the blue blood that goes to the heart into red blood within themselves, without breathing air from outside. And they will give this away to create images and forms. And even later, when he has become even more selfless, he will be able to give away his own substance and create beings from it and, by means of the mucous gland located near the pineal gland, be able to expel them from himself.

Record C

All three are contained in each of the three Logoi.  
A shadow image of each in its substance is contained in the other.

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First Logos, Second Logos, Third Logos

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[^1]: In another, otherwise identical template, this sentence reads as follows: “But even before our planetary chain had reached its destination on the sun, the flow of the second Logos had come to an end, and a new outflow began.”