# Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge I

## GA 90a — 9 February 1904, Berlin

### XV. On the Formation of the Cosmos

Since Theosophy speaks only from its experience, it starts from one source, from our Logos. To call what man today sees as a ball of fire the sun is an idiosyncrasy of our materialistic age. Six centuries ago, people still said: This is a body; and to it belongs a sun soul and a sun spirit. The spirit of the sun is now the Logos; the physical body of the sun is its lowest manifestation. What reigns in it is the spirit. One imagines that the spiritual powers would be in contact with these. The sun-atma would be the sun-logos, and the other principles follow, down to the physical body, as with us. For the ancients, light was the body for a soul. The human perfection of intelligences is reduced to seven: the seven white brotherhoods; the seven spirits before the throne of God; the seven hierarchies - one great spiritual body each, enclosing many cells. The Seven Saints before the Lord are the one fundamental life of the cosmos. When the fourth round came, it was presided over by the Lord of Form, Yahweh.

The other intelligences are below these seven – the Lipika are so highly developed that they can or must be counted among the “touch-me-not” circle. ... The angels veil their faces from the mystery of birth; they themselves have no insight into it.

The seven Laya centers are the seven series that form a solar system [...]: the “office” of the fraternities.

The leading seven are therefore always the result of the white fraternities of the previous evolution. The Sun is the sthula sharira of the Logos.