Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge I

GA 90a — 3 March 1904, Berlin

XIX. Microcosm and Macrocosm

In connection with the ancient occult sentence, I would like to show how the entire doctrine of the round is still connected in a very specific way with the thoughts we expressed last time. First of all, I would like to emphasize the following: Every great religious teacher, even if he is not a religious teacher but has only participated in the work of humanity, starts from the guiding principles. And one of the guiding principles is: the human being corresponds to the processes in the great world, the macrocosm.

Now I ask you to consider that when we look at the development within the rounds, when we look at the seven rounds, we have a kind of descending development during the first three rounds, because the whole earth and also the human being move away from the deity, as it were. Man was close to the deity in the beginning, in a childlike, innocent state. During earthly development, he gains experience and reaches his lowest point during the fourth round, in order to ascend again in the following three rounds, in the fifth, sixth, and seventh round. The question is always asked whether there is a purpose to moving away from the deity and then approaching it again. I would like to talk about this in a later lecture, if there is a purpose.

Let us consider the first stage, then all the middle stages and then the last stages of the gap in the transcript]). During the first three stages, man is formed from the outside, so to speak. Man is built up in such a way that by the fourth round he is ready to have his entire physical body built. This physical body is built around the self. The self is inside, and the physical body is around it. It took the first three and a half of the fourth round to build the body around the self. Think about what man was before. He was a purely active being before. He was a being that was not designed to receive impressions from the outside, but a being that was completely dependent on itself, however strange that may sound. When man, in the course of his earthly development, wanted an object, he made it himself. He was active. This is still the case today at the higher levels of existence. Today, initiation happens in such a way that the person concerned first learns to form the so-called “Mayavi-Rupa body”. This is not a body that is formed around us, but when the self escapes from the body, it must be able to form the mayavi-rupa body. You have to be able to form it yourself, while the other body is formed around us, whereby we remain passive. This passivity comes into consideration for the human being when the body is not formed by us. This is what everyone first has to do in the descent. He did not do this himself, but they were formed for him.

The student must learn to do what has been done to him himself. We form the mayavi-rupa body ourselves. We put it around us. The student first learns to form this body. In the second half, the self works its way out again and gradually learns to form this body. The substance of the devachan provides the substance for the mayavi-rupa body. When a person sleeps, the self leaves the body. But the mayavi-rupa body is not formed. The substance is there. It is called the mental body when it occurs in the devachan. In the case where it is thoroughly organized, it is called the mayavi-rupa body.

The situation is as follows: we have built up the three bodies during the first three stages and during half of the fourth stage. Then the self feels trapped in these bodies. It is passive, but becomes more and more active. If you want to prepare yourself for this point of activity in a dignified way, you have to recognize that you are now passive and that you have to become more and more active.

Being trapped in your body means being passive. This is the meaning of the Buddhist teachings. For Buddha, suffering does not mean feeling pain, but being passive. Being born and dying is being passive. You can only be sick in the body. The mind cannot be sick. The astral body and the Mayavi-Rupa body can still be sick. Being separated from what is loved, being united with what is unloved, is being passive. You can only desire what you cannot attain if you are in the body.

So you can see that Buddhism is not a religion that understands suffering in its deepest sense, but rather that suffering is a vehicle. It does not recognize pain or suffering as the essence of the world. There is a prohibition in Buddhism that shows how far Buddhism is from regarding suffering and life as suffering. One commandment says: If a monk murders or incites murder, or if he publicly preaches that dying is better than living, he is unworthy to be a Buddhist monk. A murderer, or one who incites murder, who preaches that suffering is not worth living, is not worthy of being a Buddhist monk. Strive to be active, says Buddha. Buddha also took this out of esoteric Buddhism, to make man an image of the whole evolution.

The first stage is when the first wave of evolution is formed, when the thought is there before existence begins. In the first state lies the thought of how existence should be, which is about to realize the sentence: Man should put himself in the state in which the deity was when it says: It should become light.

The second state is that the whole will is born. First there was the thought, then the release of the thought, then the sinking into [space].

The third is what is called: the voice resounds. Not only is the thought let out, but the thought begins to sound. The fourth stage is where not only voice is there, but where real action begins, where action begins. [Fifth:] After action comes life; the middle state [sixth]. And when that is achieved, it goes up again. [Seventh: the upward striving.]

After the seventh round is the transition to nirvana, after the sixth [gap in the transcript]. [Looking back at the entire previous illusion.] You should strive for this cosmic development. This is your path, your eight-part path. So you should live like the cosmos. It is important that you cultivate right thinking; then, secondly, right resolve; and thirdly, right speech; fourthly, right action; fifthly, right livelihood; sixthly, right effort; seventhly, right mindfulness; eighthly, right concentration. There you have the whole cosmic evolution, which the disciple should endeavor to emulate in his path. The eightfold path is a repetition of cosmic development.

When the Buddha was about to found a religion, he said to himself: “I must make cosmic truths the goal of aspiration.” How does a person become a founder of a religion? By making cosmic truths into precepts. The founder reads in the cosmos what he sees. Therefore he says: “I and the Father are one.” What he gives is the same as what is written in the stars. This thought, this harmony gives Buddhism a deeper character. I doubt that the Sinhalese recognizes this. But it does not matter. The Buddhists recognize the legitimacy of the esoteric. The Buddhist strives for the eightfold path. He does everything to fulfill it.

The priest, the monk who leads the religious community knows it, and it is not customary to communicate everything to the outside world. It is the same as in Catholicism. Catholicism is a religion of sacrifice. The priest knows. He knows the esoteric. The believer only does the prescriptions. It can also be a high priest or an administrator without being an esoteric. This is more consciously a Dominican and Franciscan order, and therefore also structured in certain ways. What can you bring in?

A moral code is approved by a seemingly subordinate monk. He has written a book. The bishop has approved it and put his name to it. This book is now used in all schools. Who has the real spiritual influence? It depends on the right person writing the book, someone who feels called to do so. The bishop does not write a book himself. Why doesn't the monk become a bishop? He wants no distraction, no external position, he wants to devote himself to the inner life.

And the Pope, he knows esotericism. It may happen that there is no one. Leo was an esoteric, Pius IX was not. The present one is probably quite harmless.

The correspondence of the eightfold path with the cosmic law - when it is carried out, evolution is perceived. When man makes himself a microcosm, he also perceives the macrocosm. This is not just a penance, it is an expansion of the being of the whole person. The reproduction of the human being brings him together with the macrocosm.

Now something else: we have described the state where man is furthest removed from the divine. That is the state where one sees the other from the outside. When one sees the other from the outside, then the self is always closed off by a shell. This looking is called “looking in tamas, in darkness.” So one sees, in complete passivity around oneself, “in tamas.”

When we begin to feel with each other, then we perceive something of the self of the other through feeling. Also, through desire, we seek to spread our self beyond ourselves. By desiring a plate of broad beans, I am already reaching beyond myself. This reaching beyond oneself in mere feeling and desire, which concerns only the astral body, is called “life in rajas.

And the next higher state is when one goes out not only with feelings and perceptions, but with thoughts. There the barriers really fall even in life when one goes out in thought. We become calm through thoughts. It stops being deceived by desires. When I rise to the thought, I am no longer deceived by desires. I think according to the higher meaning. That is the “life in Sattva”. This is the state that can be achieved through thinking.

Then there is the state of intuition. These are the ones in which wisdom guides us through the world, in wisdom. This is the higher state. This is the Durga state. “Living in the Durga state” is the state of life that the chela strives for: to have a divine mission for all his actions. Man usually always asks himself: Is it good or evil? Various such logical impulses have been employed. But he who is to become a disciple must no longer act according to logical and moral impulses, but he must also ask himself whether there is a divine mission for him. Imagine a monk. There are many right actions. Suppose he is supposed to write a book, no one can blame him if he does not write a book. He writes the book because he is carrying out the divine order to write the book. That is acting in the Durga state. There is an inner urge to do so.