Divine Thoughts and Human Development: The Rosicrucian Cosmology

GA 266I — 26 February 1908, Berlin

Esoteric Lesson

Record A

You remember the esoteric saying that stood on one of our columns at the Munich Congress: “In pure thought you find the self that can hold itself.” — You must remember that the truth of this saying constitutes a large part of esoteric life.

Everything that people think and feel today can be divided into two separate areas. The vast majority of humanity thinks and feels as a result of external perceptions. Thoughts and feelings are ignited by things. When you read scientific or popular books, for example about the origin of the earth, the development of the planetary system, chemistry, and the like, do not believe that what is contained therein came into being in any other way than through external stimulation through perception. In principle, it is exactly the same when you see a tram on the street and are inspired to think about it, or when an astronomer observes the path of a star through his telescope with the aid of a circle and makes calculations based on these perceptions.

All such thoughts that are stimulated from outside have an inhibiting effect on the further development of the astral body. When a person sleeps, their physical and etheric bodies lie in bed, and the astral body floats above them. It is active throughout the night. All the thoughts that the person has thought during the day come to it. And since these are mostly thoughts that have arisen through external stimuli, they disturb him. Only that part of the astral body that has retained its harmony by being born out of higher worlds works to restore the worn-out etheric and physical bodies. But only those thoughts that are not stimulated from outside work as forces in the astral body, promoting and purifying it.

Where do these thoughts come from? They originate from the divine creative spirits. The knowledge of the thoughts of these spiritually creative beings is of immense importance for the occult student. These beings first had the present world as thoughts within themselves before they created it. First of all, the will was within them. The deed came first. This inspired them to feel. And only from feeling did the thought arise, according to which they solidified and created things. The world is therefore built according to thoughts. In modern humans, the completion of an action takes place in reverse order. First there is the thought — stimulated by an external object — which evokes feeling, and only then does the human will principle come into play to perform an action.

All truly esoteric life can only develop by taking in the thoughts of those divine, creative spirits, the thoughts that existed before the creation of things. The whole exoteric life is hostile to this. The majority of people are completely absorbed in the thoughts of exoteric life and seek to suppress all esoteric life. These people, who are very numerous, are in truth, even if unconsciously, holding back the progress of humanity. They are enemies of all further development — they cause humanity to become rigid. Only esoteric truths have a beneficial effect on the development of humanity.

Now it is a law in occultism that every esoteric truth wears out after a certain time. And it is the task of the leaders of humanity to ensure that a new one is proclaimed. But now there are also many in esotericism who say: what do we need a new truth for? Such people cause religions to become stagnant and prevent any esoteric progress. However, it is the task of the true esotericist to ensure that the whole life of thought is kept alive and flowing. This is achieved by taking in the thoughts of the divine creative beings. These thoughts work at night in the astral body and have an effect on the etheric body. And when the work of these thoughts in the astral body becomes ever stronger and more effective in relation to the etheric body, then gradually that moment approaches which must come sooner or later for every student, when he becomes conscious of the spiritual worlds, where thoughts are imprinted in the etheric body like a seal in wax. During the Earth period, the fourth element is added. While the heat of the Saturn period in combination with the air of the Sun period produced combustion, and the interaction with the cold of the surrounding space produced moisture, the interaction of fire and water, heat and moisture now produces crystallization, and thus we have the fourth element: Earth. This is also the fourth stage in divine development. And the will, feeling, and creative thought of the three previous periods give rise to the form of the fourth stage, the physical human being of the Earth period.

One of these thoughts is expressed in the Rosicrucian saying we discussed in the previous lesson.

Today we want to look at the same saying from a slightly different perspective. We know that first there was [Saturn].

In the course of the following explanations, it was obviously written on the board. In this record (A), it is recorded as follows:

The matter of Saturn was not even gaseous, it was a heat matter. A human being with today's sensory organs would not have perceived the old Saturn. He would only have felt heat if he had been standing where Saturn was. The Saturn man consisted of heat matter. The atmosphere of Saturn was fiery and bloody. Man did not yet have blood, but in the atmosphere around him lay the first germ of his later blood. Of man himself, only the physical limbs were present in germ form.

If one observes with the spiritual gaze that sweeps over the planets how, after a pralaya, the old Saturn transforms itself into the Sun, one notices how the warm atmosphere of Saturn condenses into air. Man receives an etheric body on the Sun. He is a luminous being. The spiritual beings work through the astral atmosphere of the sun upon the etheric body, igniting it and causing it to glow. This process is called the sulfuric process. Something very similar occurs today in thinking. Through the fact that our fiery blood is brought to the nerve mass, a combustion process takes place and a glow arises.

When transitioning from the sun to the moon, the air condenses into water. The moon is a body of water. We notice a remarkable characteristic of this body of water. In many places, the individual water droplets exhibit the peculiarity of changing their position with tremendous liveliness and darting around with inner mobility. This property of these water droplets can be compared in a certain way to mercury. Therefore, this principle, which is new to the moon, is called the mercurial principle. But that is not all. You know that all reproduction occurs when the female cell divides and these cells divide again and so on. If you take a plate covered with a fine powder and stroke the edge of the plate with a violin bow, the particles of powder arrange themselves according to the inner force of the sound. Something similar happened on the ancient moon. A cosmic sound permeated the entire body of the moon and arranged those water particles in certain places. This added the female principle. A male principle did not yet exist.

During the transition from the moon to the earth, water condensed to form the earth. On earth, what is known as the salt process took place for the first time: a clarification, a separation. Furthermore, the earth contained the male principle, without which no further development was possible. From this, human beings arose. On earth, human beings acquired the “I,” the erring I.

If we now consider this series of developments, we first see the four elements: fire, air, water, earth — corresponding to the third line of the saying. In the second order follow: sulfur, mercury, and salt. In the third line are the female and male principles, which in the fourth line have the actual human being as their crowning glory. Understood in this way, the old Rosicrucian saying takes on meaning:

Whoever understands the workings of numbers ...

Record B

There is a fundamental difference between humans and gods. Humans are largely influenced by external factors, by the external universe. They see objects and form certain mental images and thoughts about them. These thoughts cause certain feelings in relation to the objects. Finally, their feelings stimulate their will, which gives them the impulse to act from within.

With creative gods, the opposite is true. The will comes first. The will to create (the creative will) causes a certain sensation in these gods, and as a result of this feeling, the creative thought arises, and this thought crystallizes into form.

During the Saturn period, there was only one element, fire. However, it did not express itself as fire, but as heat, just as we have fire in our blood as heat. On the other hand, there was no light during the Saturn period. There could be no light because the cosmic ether did not permeate (fill) Saturn, and therefore the state that would exist if our ether were outside the Earth prevailed at that time. At that time, the sun's rays could not illuminate our globe.

During the solar period, the cosmic ether permeated the globe. Saturn lit up, shone like the sun, and became the sun. Another element is added, air, and when fire and air are combined, combustion occurs, and the hidden fire becomes visible as light. This combustion process is symbolically represented in occult writings as sulfur (sulfur) 🜍 and underlies all thoughts. Therefore, it corresponds to “feeling” in the divine process of development. One can say: The Saturn period was the will; the Sun period was feeling.

During the Moon period, cosmic astrality permeates the globe, and the third element, water or moisture, is added to the other two. Certain small water globules appeared in the atmosphere, moving back and forth with great speed and permeating everything, so that something very similar to mercury appeared during this process. Therefore, this type of activity is designated in occult writings with the symbol of Mercury: ☿. This type of activity is the third stage in divine unfolding; it is the stage of creative thought, just as the Saturn state represents the stage of will and the solar period the stage of feeling. This creative thought reveals itself as “sound,” and through this sound the bodies of humans and animals are formed in the water of the planet.

In the Saturn period, the predisposition to physicality was expressed as heat; in the Sun period, it condensed into air; but now, during the Moon period, the inner heat of the planet on the one hand and the cold of the outer cosmic space on the other hand produce moisture; and we have the stage of water, during which the predisposition to the body condenses into water. However, this activity is of a negative nature, and so during the lunar epoch the first of the two polarities, the feminine, appears.

The form has thus been achieved. The four elements have provided it. But if form were all there were, crystallization would soon put an end to further development, and so the negative, feminine pole of the moon period is complemented by the masculine or positive. What the combustion of the solar period, the activity of the lunar period, and the crystallization of the first half of the earth period had achieved, “man,” humanity, the conscious thinker, began to dissolve again so that evolution could continue.

This means that the principle of crystallization is inhibited by the principle of dissolution. This is the principle of development, of redemption from the prison of matter. This is referred to in occult writings as “salt”: 🜔.

This is also shown in another method of occult writings, as indicated below: first the four □, which represent the elements, then the three △, namely sulfur, mercury, and salt, then the two · ·, which represent “male” and “female,” and finally the one - , which represents the thinker, the human being.

Diagram of record B:

Record C

Esotericism means contemplating thoughts about God. All esotericism is given to us as the thoughts of divine spiritual beings, which continue to work in the human soul—to which such content is given and entrusted—and are meant to spark life. How do we come to be able to receive such thoughts of God? — Here we must point to a certain technique that serves to enable human beings to kindle such thoughts within themselves into true life.

During sleep, the astral body lifts itself out of the physical body. The human being then lives in a sea of the astral, swimming, so to speak, in the sea of wisdom of divine thoughts. But he knows nothing of this, since his astral body is largely clouded and darkened by the thinking of the erring ego, which binds itself to the outer world through the senses during the day. He reproduces this at night.

But there is a very small part of the astral body that has remained, so to speak, as it once was in primeval times, when the divine astral body gave birth to the human astral body. This very small part has never been clouded by the instincts, lusts, desires, and passions that drag human beings down; it has remained virginal. Only this part of the human astral body that has remained virgin can still live in this sea of divine thoughts during the night; it can be active in this sea of light, this light of wisdom. But during the day, human beings know nothing or only have a vague inkling of this experience. And it is constantly drowned out, swallowed up by the loud confusion of the day's sensory experiences. Through thinking as practised in esotericism, however, we enrich this virgin part of our astral body in full consciousness during the day, allowing it to grow and strengthen until it finally becomes strong enough to transmit its impressions to the coarse or solid etheric body, so to speak. It imprints them on it like a seal in hot sealing wax. Then, with full, clear daytime consciousness, the spiritual worlds become open to the human being, who can live consciously in the sea of divine thoughts. That is, so to speak, the technique. Then the human being can contemplate God's thoughts in their fullest clarity and purity. He is guided and led to this experience by the Rosicrucian teacher.

God's thoughts are recorded in certain signs of occult writing; they are not arbitrarily devised. These signs correspond to forces that weave through the world. This occult writing exists in all secret schools, and all true secret teachings are written in it. By learning to read such occult writing, the student learns to see the great connections in the world. He recognizes the becoming of the world and of himself; he learns the purpose and goal of his path of development through the world.

Such occult writing is handed down to you today. Learn from it to reflect on God's thoughts by letting your soul dwell on this writing in contemplation! In this writing you will recognize how the world and human beings originated from God's thoughts.

You will recognize how human beings, by taking God's thoughts into themselves, find their way back to their divinity through such writings.

Everything flows from a point. The point signifies the original beginning. What constitutes the whole human being was once compressed into a point. From the point, diversity sprang forth.

Even now, the human physical body begins its existence in the mother's womb with a point, the germ cell. Thus, human beings began their cosmic existence with a spiritual point. The diversity of his limbs, with all the forces working within them, sprang from this point. All the characteristic properties of the mineral, plant, and animal worlds are present in human beings. These interact within the human being today. Although individual properties are more developed in animals than in humans, this is only the result of a one-sided development in animals, which has taken place at the expense of diversity. Human beings are versatile and diverse. The student reads this development toward versatility from the point when he looks at the point.

The development is expressed in the second row. There, each figure begins again with a point. This points to the general appearance of the stream of life development. After reaching full development, everything merges into a point, and the new begins its development again from the point to which it is attached. This is the point that acts like the embryonic point in the body of the mature mother.

The I flows out of the womb of the Godhead, unconscious of itself. The long journey through planetary developments clothes it with its bodies, in which it becomes conscious and finally conscious of its divine origin. The Rosicrucians depict this in this occult writing.

Human beings began their development on Saturn. They possessed only a dark body of warmth. In this warmth, the beginnings of our physical body were formed. After Saturn had reached its highest stage of development, it passed into the seed state, the point: the Pralaya.

Then the solar state arose from this. Something new was added: the sun had a luminous air body. Why did it shine? Because the etheric body gradually drew into it. From the outside, it attached itself to the dark warmth, and a kind of combustion process took place. Breathing is also such a process. This still takes place in human beings today. Thinking comes about through a combustion process. Divine-spiritual beings worked on the sun through their astral body, which was like a cloak around the sun with its etheric body, and which they sacrificed to the sun being. This made the sun glow and become visible.

Once again, everything goes into the point, the seed is for the lunar state. There everything is further condensed into water. In many places, small globules form; these are independent, in perpetual motion, like mercury today, but not yet metallic. They are held back in their movement by sound (where this comes from will be explained later). Sound works in the same way as can be reconstructed today on Chladni's plate: the sound forms certain figures. And so the sound now acts on the watery globules [of the moon], so that a certain structure is created, with one first attaching itself to another, then two to two, and so on. This results in the greatest diversification of forms. (In the ice flowers forming on the window, the occultist sees the process that is repeated by the formative forces acting in the watery substance.) The grotesque moon beings arose through the action of the cosmic sound on the watery substance of the moon. The sound acted on the moon from outside—it feels like the feminine, receptive, formative. On earth, the feminine acts in such a way that through its forces the cells combine to form certain shapes, ears, noses, limbs of the emerging human body. The moon was a cosmic feminine. This existed before the masculine. The latter only arose in the earthly state.

A further solidification took place [on Earth]: the solid settled out of the watery, and the watery became more refined. Now the masculine arose from the pure earthly forces. And it is only through the interaction of the masculine and feminine that the earthly human being can come into being. Thus, from 4, 3, 2, 1, the following is formed: □

1. Fire effect (Saturn) 2. Air effect (Sun) 3. Water effect (Moon) 4. Earth effect (Earth).

Above this is the △, which dissolves everything by passing through it again in a recognizable, retrograde manner, that is, leading it to spiritualization [until] it reaches the point in the human being that represents the pure human being, Adam Kadmon, through the interaction of the male and female spiritual principles. This carries out the combustion, mobility, dissolution, that is, the sulfur processes of the solar period, the mercury-Mercurial processes of the lunar period, the dissolution-salt formation processes of the earth state, and repeats these processes in an upward progression. And this is also how the future planetary states are built up and formed: Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan. These could not come into being if human beings did not cooperate and participate in the work of the gods. That is:

Thus, the past and the future are expressed in these signs, and human beings are in the middle of them as effective, punctual beings.

In the Lemurian era, man began his descent into the four elements. He surrounded himself with his physical shells and put on his earthly garment. The most important chemical element is carbon, whether in the form of black coal or transparent diamond. Carbon is the densest substance and is occultly the embodiment of the principle of the physical plane: 9 This symbol also signifies the solidification of the physical body.

Record D

Saturn is entirely heat, including the beginnings of humankind. Modern humans would not have seen anything of it, only noticed it passing through the warmer temperatures.

The sun condensed into air, but the sun was visible; it glowed or glimmered through a kind of combustion process. This combustion is symbolized by sulfur.

The moon continued to condense, at least initially, into a liquid (“water”). In this liquid lunar mass, small particles formed in many places, which moved in continuous lively activity, as mercury now demonstrates. These particles were joined together by a sound coming from outside (the origin of which will be explained later) to form shapes similar to sound figures. First two joined together, then two joined to form four, and so on, as is still the case today with every new life form in plants, animals, and humans. This is the principle of the feminine. The feminine was more present than the masculine in the earlier physical forms of existence on Earth.

The earth finally condensed into the solid element “earth.” Only the presence of the solid alongside the liquid made the process of dissolution possible — like salt in water; salt is the prototype for this (sulfur — mercury — salt).

The stimulus for formation in the feminine now also appeared on Earth itself, the masculine principle. And from all this, the present human being finally emerged. - Physically speaking, the stage of existence for human beings became increasingly complicated.

The above figure is formed from these 4, 3, 2, and 1, with the square of the four elements at the bottom; above it the triangle of the three principles sulfur, mercury, and salt (combustion, mobility, and dissolution); the two points: dual sexuality; and the one point: the human being.

See the saying: Whoever understands the workings of numbers ...