Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge I

GA 90a — 11 March 1904, Berlin

XX. On the Sattva State

Only on a geometric and mathematical basis can humanity be raised to the Sattva state. That is why Plato demanded that every student have a mathematical preparation. Because only in mathematics is the Sattva state achieved. All other things are explored in a kind of selfishness.

Once people have come to terms with this, they will also face everything else as objectively as one faces mathematical truths today. Due to the way Western science relates to mathematics, the way it studies, it cannot arrive at deeper truths. Our science has only made it so far in mathematics to attain objective truths. That is why it is a kind of ideal state.

Do you remember the introduction I once gave when I talked about the immortality of the soul? I said that in the mysteries, only the students were prepared and that they wanted neither one nor the other. Today you can find people saying, “I don't want to be reincarnated!” or “I want to be reincarnated!” These were not allowed to enter the mysteries because they were deemed incapable of objectively grasping the higher truths. People first had to unlearn desiring. It is the same with Kamaloka. We must have no desires, for that makes objective observation impossible.

And now a few words about how Buddhism is to be understood in terms of its position in the world. When Buddhism was founded by Buddha, it was not a new religion, nor was it intended to be a new religion. The Buddha wanted the religion, which at that time was only priestly wisdom, to be made accessible to all people; he was to make it popular. He wanted even those who could not be initiated not to fall prey to mere image worship, but to be introduced to certain truths of salvation, so that by participating in the truths of salvation they would not be lost as they would be if it were mere image worship.

The Brahmans then possessed very high wisdoms that would have been quite impossible to proclaim to the people. Nobody would have understood them. Gradually, the people had taken the images for realities, just as in Catholicism. We can see this when we come to Tyrol, where the images of saints are worshipped like a kind of fetish. The Buddhist said to himself: There is too great a distance between the people's worship of images and the high wisdom of the Brahmins. Let us take only the two highest sentences of Brahmanic wisdom.

The first is: “That art thou!” That means: There is only one essence, and my body and this slate are exactly the same distance away from me. This slate is just as foreign to me as my own body. The whole sensual world is one. No part of it should be closer to us. The piece of flesh that I carry around is no closer to me than any other object.

The second sentence is: “I am Brahman!” I am the real divine being, a spark of the deity.

I must elevate myself so that I recognize everything as 'you' and the divine Brahman as 'I'. These are the two guiding principles. Everything else are explanations to them. The Brahman is completed by a shell, it becomes my Brahma or Atma - these are elaborations of the two sentences.

All the theosophical teachings that we know were essentially from the lower teachings. Karma and reincarnation were Brahman teachings. It is not surprising that this Brahman teaching, which goes back many millennia before the birth of Christ, has something peculiar about it. And what is it that is peculiar about the Brahman teaching? Imagine you learn Theosophy to a certain degree. If you then penetrate into the Brahmin teaching, you will find that everything that Theosophy has can already be found in the Brahmin teaching. What Jakob Böhme said is already a step higher. But if you go back to the Brahmin teaching, you will find that That was already there too. They go further, they become chelas, go back to the Brahman teaching and find that this is already in it. We finally come to the conclusion that we cannot determine how deep the Brahman wisdom is. And when we come across even deeper wisdoms, it is likely that we will find even deeper ones in them.

Now, however, Buddha said to himself: The teaching of the Brahmins must be made as popular as possible. But popularizing wisdom is only possible with individuals - through initiation. It is not possible to bring about wisdom through research. Rather, we should shape it through life. And now imagine that there were a method of telling people how to live, that would be a substitute for initiating them. I can accept anyone as a student and initiate them step by step. In doing so, I work on the intellect, on the intuition and, little by little, on the higher realms of spiritual life. But I can also do it differently. I can arrange their life in such a way that it gets better and better. Then he will naturally strive towards the treasure of wisdom. He will meet wisdom halfway. Just as two tunnels were bored from either end and met in the middle when the Gotthard tunnel was being dug, so does Buddha want it. Therefore, he gives no insights into the treasures of wisdom. He does not want to talk about the treasure of wisdom, he wants to teach the people. The people are to be taught about the best way to live. We do not want to concern ourselves with the wisdom treasure at all. Buddha differs only in method. He did not recognize a single sentence of the old teaching. But he says: It is useless at first to bother the people with teachings. We have to get the people to the point where they learn by living. He does not say: Teach the sentence “You are Brahma,” but he says, “Do not cling to matter!” If you experience the sentence “Do not cling to matter,” then it will be easy to understand the sentence, “I am Brahma.”

We also see this from the following: The Buddha once had a conversation in which he said, roughly translated, “Here is a cart. The chariot consists of the wheels, the seat, the shaft and so on. The wheels are not the chariot, the seat is not the chariot, the shaft is not the chariot. Each individual part is not the chariot, and yet the chariot consists of the individual parts. Just as the chariot is not in any single part, so the soul is not in any single part of a human being. Not your physical body, not your physical body's garment, not your desires, not your imagination are your soul!” So when Buddha said what is not the soul, he wanted to lead people to experience what the soul is. That is why he did not say, ‘I am Brahma,’ but rather, ‘Death, birth, desire, and so on, is passivity.’

Anyone who recognizes the sentence, “I am Brahma,” knows all of this. So Buddha says, “Free yourselves as much as possible from all that is subject to birth, death, old age, and disease!” The old Brahmin told people what is permanent. That is why he does not say, “Seek your higher self,” but rather, “Free yourselves from the lower self, cast off the fetters of the lower self!” And there are ten of them. Just as the Brahmin said, “I am Brahma,” so the Buddha says, “I will enumerate the ten fetters, and then the higher self will emerge from you.”

The first fetter is the deception of the lower self-awareness. Buddha does not say, “Recognize the higher self,” but rather, “The lower self is an illusion, a composition of temporary principles:

1. Physicality, 2. Perception, 3. Feeling, 4. Desire, 5. Consciousness.

These five things make up the lower self. The higher self is in there, but Buddha does not speak of the higher self. He only says that these five things are illusions; you must recognize that! And he is convinced that when he tells people, “This is the sheath of the sword,” they will also realize what is inside.

The second fetter is that one could believe that there is no moral world order, that is, disbelief in a moral world order. Buddha did not say, “Believe in divine beings!” He said to himself, “Man has nothing to gain from that. He should believe in a moral world order and free himself from the belief that something could be unjust that could affect us. It only seems unjust to us because we cannot see through it. For example, a brick may fall on my head. If I did not deserve this in the past, I will experience compensation in the future.

The third fetter is the belief that our rites and ceremonies can have a meaning, can be something other than parables. Those who take the symbol for reality suffer from the third fetter of existence. Symbolism is beautiful and sublime – but it must not be taken as reality.

The fourth fetter is the belief in sensuality, the opinion that the sensual is real. Imagine this book! The moment the temperature is a hundred degrees higher, we and this book will no longer be here. The moment our temperature is no longer here, the whole physical world is no longer possible.

The fifth fetter is that which imprisons us in our sensuality, which teaches us the belief that we may be special beings, that we encounter other beings with antipathy, may hate them. This fetter is antipathy towards other beings. Because we have antipathy towards other beings, we indulge in the illusion of separation. This is the fifth fetter.

The sixth fetter is love of sensual personality.

The seventh fetter is the longing for the preservation of personal existence. This is particularly pronounced in Christianity, the longing for the preservation of personal existence in the earthly personality. According to Buddha, this is the seventh fetter.

The eighth fetter is pride, the struggle for the elevation of personal existence.

The ninth fetter is the belief that one can achieve something in the world without karma, through self-righteousness. The Buddha refers to karma in everything. He says: “No one can achieve anything without karma.”

The tenth fetter is something that only Buddhism has developed, and by emphasizing the tenth fetter, Buddhism indicates that it is one of the most sublime religions that has ever been taught. The Buddha calls religious ignorance the tenth fetter.

Christianity has thoroughly misunderstood the first sentence of the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit”. “Blessed are the ignorant,” the Christian translates. But Buddha says: “There are many kinds of dirt. But the greatest dirt that can cling to you is ignorance!” Christianity regards those who want to know as being possessed by demons. The Protestant is content with being united with God by faith. But the wise man is united with God by wisdom.

This is what Buddha taught. The religion of the Brahmans remains in its entirety; it is the highest. But we cannot bring it to the people for the time being. Therefore, we teach the people how to free themselves from the bonds of the transitory existence. The Brahmans taught: “How can one recognize the eternal?” Buddha wanted to teach: “How can one overcome the transitory?” Buddha has only changed the method. We do not want to teach the eternal, but we want to teach how to live to overcome the transitory.

The second truth is: Recognize that in the impermanent is the cause of passivity! The third truth is: Kill attachment to the impermanent! This allows the eternal to break through by itself.

What I have said today refers to the four great truths and to the doctrine of the ten fetters and to the fact that the cause of all suffering lies only in ignorance. All of this is called 'the creation of a divine future'. Knowledge, realization, is called the creation of a divine future. The Buddhist lives for the sake of what a person becomes. And life and its application in this sense, he calls 'Dharma'.

And now he is convinced of the following:

Firstly: that Buddha is not a god, but that he is enlightened, that Budhi, the realization, has arisen in him, because Buddha is also a transient. To regard the Buddha as something eternal would be superstition in the Buddhist sense. So the Buddhist says: “I believe in the enlightenment of the Buddha!”

The second is: “I believe in Dharma”.

And the third is: “I believe in the brotherhood,” in “Sangha,” in the brotherhood of those who have gone so far as to overcome their separateness, that is, I believe in the possibility that they have overcome their separateness.

I believe in: first, a cause - karma; secondly, in life - dharma; thirdly, in what has been achieved - the Sangha brotherhood; the same: “I believe in the community of saints.