Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge I

GA 90a — 1 April 1904, Berlin

XXI. Genesis I

Today I would like to present to you a kind of lecture on the opening words of Genesis, as they were cultivated in the first times of Christianity in secret places. What I am going to say has been said many times, but always in secret places to a few people and has never really been popularized. It is not something that relates specifically to Genesis, but to the Lemurian Age. So I will not say anything different from what has been said over and over again in occult lodges. First of all, we have to realize that we have passed through two great catastrophes, one that led from the Atlantean era to our own time, and another that led from the Lemurians to the Atlanteans. We go back in time to before these catastrophes, to a time when humans already existed but did not yet have warm blood. They had cold, white blood. This cold, white blood was the reason that these beings could live in a watery element. At that time, the separation between air and water was not yet the same as it is today. All water was still a kind of fine mist or haze, so that everything that was earth was covered with this fine mist or haze. Air and sea were not yet there, only water and fog, which settled like steam over the earth, and this steam was also something that contained the life germs for everything that could live on earth at that time. The germs of life were themselves vaporous; they were not small grains, not small seeds, but vaporous, swirling forms in the general life of the world. Such a vaporous form, like a denser cloud, was at first still man himself. Man had a form that was composed of such condensed vapor. Within this vapor moved a thin liquid. And that which was most prominent about man was an organ on his head, which in its front part protruded far over his body, an organ that had a stalk and at the end of the stalk a kind of ball. This was an organ that could perceive not light but heat. What was particularly important at that time was the different degrees of warmth. One had to know that it was too hot here and too cold there; one had to be able to avoid that, and for that the warmth organ was necessary. One could perceive the degrees of warmth with the organ and could thus turn this way or that. The organ was later completely lost. But it was the organ that served man at that time for complete orientation.

The state at that time was called the “unfathomable depth.” It was so named because these beings could see nothing, hear nothing, speak nothing, understand nothing. They did not yet have all these abilities. The Secret Doctrine refers to this whole area with all the living beings in it as “the waters,” because in these waters the beings were not yet conceiving for themselves. They could not yet conceive. The entire earthly body was endowed with a single faculty of imagination. It was one great living being, which was regarded as the spirit. Individuals of the human race existed, but their imaginations were still common. Regarding this commonality of the world of imagination, the secret schools said:

“The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the deep.” [Genesis 1:2]

That is, this area had a common idea, and this idea hovered over the waters, it had not yet entered into the people.

So we have two things side by side: first, the “unfathomable depth” and, second, the “idea that Genesis calls the ‘Spirit of God’.

The next thing is this: The outgrowth on the front of the beings that we have described has shrunk. And this organ that has shrunk today, which arose from this outgrowth, is the pineal gland. Back then, humans did not yet have bones. They were vapor humans, fish humans. If you look at the germinating human being in the first weeks of pregnancy, you will find this fish human hinted at in the human germ. The human being really repeats these conditions in the first period of pregnancy. The small fish body that the human being has there possesses the small organ that then shrivels up. It is one of those regressed organs, like the spleen, the function of which is unknown to today's doctors. The more this stalk-organ regressed, the more the pair of eyes developed inside the human organism. The eyes arose, two eyes formed in place of the original stalk organ. Just as the stalk organ was a warmth organ, so the eyes became a light organ. This unfathomable depth worked in all beings and, by withdrawing the warmth organ, singled out the pair of eyes. In The Secret Doctrine, this unfathomable depth is also called the “forefather.

In the beginning, human beings only felt warmth and cold. Now, however, they perceive objects through their eyes, that is, the forefather allowed the ability to perceive not only warmth but also light to arise from within them.

And God said, “Let there be light!” And there was light.

Now we have come so far that these beings could perceive the light around them and consequently also the limited objects. Now I ask you to consider the following. Before that, the unfathomable depth was there; everything was contained in it. There was the idea and then the light. The light was limited by the eye or the ability to see around it, what eyes could see: the visible. Everything else had not become visible. That was beyond the visible. [The boundary of the visible was the firmament.]

And God set a firmament where the visible ends and the invisible begins. [Genesis 1:6-7]

Furthermore, man began to perceive the visible, so that a completely new state of affairs arose for him. You have to imagine what it would mean for you if you could not see and could not hear. Hearing, however, was out of the question at that time. The people of that time were themselves a fluid in a liquid element. And by swimming around like that, you would not perceive the exact boundary between yourself and the other. You only perceive boundaries when there is something visible.

The individuals were held together by the idea. The individual was not so sharply defined. Each being felt that it belonged to the whole, to the general. It would be as if today your stomach were to feel independent; it must feel that it belongs in the body. Only at the moment when a sensation of light occurs does the possibility arise of perceiving the other as something different. An object is only something outside of us when we see its boundaries outside of us. Light was what distinguished the individual beings from one another. In the moment when humans were distinguished from one another, it became necessary for understanding of the environment to open up. The beings not only had to have the idea outside of themselves, but they also had to be able to have the idea within themselves. An object that I merely look at would be something quite mysterious for me if I could not imagine it myself. This understanding [of the environment] was imparted by entities that were of a higher nature than the beings living on earth. The light-sensitive entities were guided by entities that stimulated the intellect in them. Thus they became endowed with intellect. They became the “Sons of Manas.”

This brings with it the possibility of forming a false or a correct idea. Therefore, the Secret Doctrine says: “Mind and Truth” arose as the second pair. They arose through the influence of the Sons of Manas. [I cannot feel a false coldness or a false warmth, but the mind can form a false idea.] Only now, when the idea, the mind, was within the beings themselves, did the beings hold themselves together in a kind of sense of community. Earlier, the idea was outside; but now a spark of it was within the beings themselves. I have said: warmth and cold were differently outside in the world. The beings draw this warmth into themselves and distinguish themselves as warm and cold beings. A warm being is one that no longer perceives warmth, but generates warmth. Warm blood now originated in man.

So what had happened? Man was formerly born of water. Now that which the Secret Doctrine calls the “blur” had been generated in him. Man was therefore first born of “water”, then of “blood”. And if we could go back even further in time, to before the Lemurian period, we would find, before the water, the “spirit that had not yet become water.” So we have: spirit - water - blood. The warmth that was general then appeared as the warmth of the warmth-bearing beings. Man is born of blood - that is the moment when man becomes a warm-blooded being. This enables him to organize within himself everything that was previously organized outside of him. Warmth and cold were something different outside. Now he differentiates between warmth and cold within himself. Just as creation was outside before, man now became a creator within himself. And the first thing that makes man not only an inner being, but also an inner being that manifests itself outwardly, was the “speech. And with speech, ‘life’ arose. [Man was able to express himself outwardly; what was drawn in pushes outward – that is speech.] Only then is human life present when man is not only present as a being but also expresses himself as such – [an independent, self-contained, differentiated life, not coexistence. The being has become independent, can express itself, can reveal itself.)

The third pair is therefore 'speech and life'. Animals that are unable to produce sounds are cold-blooded. Only warm-blooded creatures are capable of expressing the soul outwardly through sound. A creature that is said to have a voice must differ from its surroundings in warmth. It must have a life that is differentiated from its surroundings. The third pair is therefore “speech - or voice - and independent life”. The fish has the same temperature as the water in which it lives.

Now we have come so far that the being has become independent, that the being can reveal itself and thus appear to its surroundings as an independent living being.

I ask you to take into account that today's concepts must not be transferred to that time. In later times, the cold-blooded creatures also changed in various ways. The fish were much larger at that time and more similar to humans.

The reproduction of the creatures at that time, however, was still such that they simply emerged from one another. You have to imagine that when a new offspring was to arise – copulation or fertilization did not yet exist at that time, nor did incarnation, incarnation has only existed since sexuality has existed, since there have been two sexes [we are not dealing with incarnations, but with materializations] – so when a new being was to arise, the one being allowed matter to emerge from itself into the new being. The determination for this process came from the general world spirit. Through elective affinity a new being was brought forth. A being was overshadowed by a spirit. It is exactly the same as when the medium [at a spiritualistic sitting] provides the material for a spirit that wants to embody itself in matter, to materialize, to manifest itself. Matter was always usable, always virginal, a nourishing process. The original being remained as it was. The process is there as it has been described in the description of its plant aspect. Matter was then depleted, it had become incapable of producing a new order from itself [without new inspiration], and differentiation into sexes occurred. In this way, the descent of the Lemurians essentially occurred; they had lost the ability to have virgin matter within themselves. If a new being was to manifest itself, there had to be a germ to stimulate life. With that [sexuality entered and with that] birth and death and also incarnation. And man became, as one adds, the beginning of “gathering, of ”fraternization.”

From the middle of the Lemurian period, the process of unification begins, the process of fraternization, which must lead to the point where the mystery sites unite, and then live on into a new world epoch. [Now comes the fourth pair: 'Man - the gathering that leads to fraternization'.

This explanation was also given repeatedly in the Pythagorean schools. It was said: Since the spirit has entered into every human being, birth and death came into the world. [And in Genesis it says:] In pain you shall give birth to children, it says now. In the past, they simply emerged through overshadowing.

This is the meaning of blood, water and spirit, as can also be seen from the words: Truly, truly, whoever is not born again of water and the Spirit will not see bliss.

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