---
ga: 90
title: "White Lotus Day"
date: 1904-05-02
location: Berlin
words: 2073
---
# Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge I

## GA 90a — 2 May 1904, Berlin

### XXIII. White Lotus Day

In a few days it will be thirteen years since the founder of the Theosophical Society left her earthly existence. She initially worked in secret societies, for it was not through free speech but in secret circles that the theosophical wisdom was presented, behind tightly closed doors.

This is to be taken more figuratively than literally, however. The Rosicrucians have preserved the treasure of wisdom that now flows in popular form in Theosophy. The tactics and diplomacy have been changed by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. [More than in earlier times, people today are compelled to self-introspection and self-knowledge in order to get to know the secret depths of their own hearts. Therefore, the leaders of humanity have decided to bring the truth into humanity and to speak to all people of that which was otherwise hidden in the mysteries. But not only the results came out of the secret brotherhoods, but also the word itself. What we proclaim today is more of a spelling. But it should lead to reading the deepest truths of man.

Important personalities have been connected with these secret societies in some way. In his fairy tales, Goethe consciously draws on the secret knowledge of all times. There is a poem that he wrote to glorify the Rosicrucian spirit, a poem in which he expressed what is now the lifeblood of the theosophical movement. The poem is called “The Mysteries”.

In it, the humble pilgrim Brother Mark seeks a resting place for the human soul, a spiritual Montserrat, which was a high point of human spiritual development. In his search, he comes to a strange monastery. There are twelve hermits in it. The thirteenth is the bearer of the greatest wisdom, a leader of humanity. Each of the twelve hermits symbolizes one of the forces of the nations. Mark, the thirteenth, is to unite what humanity has sought in different ways. The twelve brothers symbolize human opinions. The thirteenth is the one who unites them. If we today activate the attitude characterized in the poem, we are on the ideal Montserrat.

At the entrance to the monastery is the symbol, the cross entwined with roses, [Plato says:] the world cross of matter, on which the world soul is crucified. More than ever, the necessity of self-knowledge weighs on us. We must solve this riddle of man's past, man's present and man's future. This self-examination is to be practised in order to then speak publicly about it in the language that was given at the first stage of secret learning.

A few words about an introductory lecture in the secret schools can be found in one of the monologues in Goethe's “Faust”, which Goethe only wrote afterwards. What he says there is the confession that man must live within the universe and must get his basic rules from it. It is about the scene “Forest and Cave” from “Faust I”, where it says:

> Ehrlicher Geist, du gabst mir alles, was ich bat  
> Du hast nicht umsonst dein Angesicht im Feuer gewendet  
> Gabst mir die herrliche Natur zum Königreich.  
> Kraft sie zu fühlen, zu genießen. Nicht  
> Kalt staunenden Besuch erlaubst du nur,  
> Vergönnest mir in ihre tiefe Brust,  
> As in the bosom of a friend to look  
> You drive the series of the living  
> Before me and teach me my brothers  
> In the silent bush, in air and water know.  
> And when the storm in the forest roars and creaks  
> The giant spruce toppling neighbor branches  
> And neighbor strains squeezing down  
> And the hillside thunders hollowly with its fall  
> Then you lead me to the safe cave, show  
> Then myself and my own breast  
> Secret, deep wonders open up.  
> And as the pure moon rises before my gaze  
> Soothingly across, silver figures float before me from the rock walls  
> From the damp bush  
> silver figures of the ancient world,  
> and ease the strict pleasure of contemplation,  
> Oh, that nothing is perfect for man,  
> I now feel. You gave me the companion for this bliss,  
> which brings me closer and closer to the gods,  
> whom I can no longer do without,  
> can no longer do without, though he, cold and insolent,  
> humiliates me before myself and to nothing,  
> with a breath of words, transforms your gifts.  
> He fans a wild fire in my breast  
> after that beautiful image,  
> So I stagger from desire to fulfillment  
> And in fulfillment I languish for desire.
> [Faust I, Vers 3217-3250]

[We first see his deep inner perception of nature, the great view that the world spirit allowed him, and then Goethe continues with the line:]

> then show me myself and my own breast  
> Secret deep wonders open up.

[In the mystery schools, the teachers called their students together in the spring so that they could learn from the facts of nature.] Opening of the inner depths. In spring, when nature awakens, everything is full of wonder. These wonders of nature should not only be marveled at, but also deciphered. Mysticism leads us into nature at all levels, and we can learn how we ourselves as human beings should behave. What theosophical mysticism is is written in nature. If we understand the wonders of nature, we also understand our own wonders [then we understand what is alive in us, the secret meaning of life. The two lower realms of nature, the stone realm and the plant realm, lie chaste and mute before us.

The Stone Kingdom stands before us like a reminder of our distant past. [The Stone Kingdom reminds us of a distant time when we once enjoyed the brightly shining crystal in a dull trance state; the heavens themselves stand before us as a language of memory that we ourselves have gone through. The starry world and the Stone Kingdom remind us of the creative power from which we have sprung.

And the plant kingdom reminds us of another stage. We have left behind not only the crystals, but also everything that appears to be lifeless. With its millions of stars, nature appears lifeless, yet it is majestic. This realm reminds us of the omnipotence of the majestic creative power from which we have emerged. It is not just our Earth, on which we spend a short span of our existence, no, it is all the other worlds that the occultist knows.

[The whole, seemingly inanimate nature of the minerals is majestic. The kingdom of growth and life is based on this.

Then comes the plant kingdom [also to be seen as a stage in the remembrance of our own existence]. There is something of calm bliss in every plant, a blissful serenity that sprouts and sprouts and through which we ourselves have passed [when we found our way out of the majestic realm of minerals]. These two regions belong to the worlds that only a secret knower can reach.

[Majestic] rock formations and plant formations in blissful serenity can be found everywhere. But only on our Earth does one thing [exist, a realm the seer finds only on our Earth, the realm of the higher animals, where feeling arises, where the living is contained within itself and develops self-awareness.] You cannot find the animal kingdom on other worlds as it exists on our Earth. Where we develop pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow out of blissful serenity, the forms we know arise, and our earth is the only setting for them.

It has often been said that something is expressed on the face of the animals that could only be described as compassion. Animal nature is really rooted in suffering. Animal nature arose so that humans could break free to higher levels. He had to leave animality behind him. He had to separate what lives around us as living animality. [From this follows for us compassion for the animals, which has ethics as its guide.] Man's ascent had to be paid for with the detachment of animality. Those who did not have the ability to free themselves from pain through lofty thoughts fell prey to this. Then man went the torturous path of the ego to cross over into another, higher world. All teaching and learning should only be there to lead us to what lies beyond life, because man's essence is spiritual. Anything that theosophy teaches that cannot be lived would be a futile effort.

[We can learn from nature how it presents us with three virtues in its three kingdoms.] There are three fundamental virtues of man:

> - Majesty - in the first kingdom  
> - Blessed serenity - in the second kingdom  
> - Suffering and joy [compassion] - in the third kingdom.

What should we learn from pleasure and pain? [To endure pleasure and pain with patience, this is taught by] the doctrine of reincarnation. The animal cannot rise above the state of pain and pleasure. But the essence of man is spiritual. And the spirit seeks a home in that which is pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow.

Patience – that is what follows from the great teaching of reincarnation.

What can we learn from the plant kingdom in its blissful serenity? We learn what can flow to us from the great law, which the theosophical world movement has also given us in a popular form, from the law of karma, the law of the eternal causation of all spiritual things.

It seems to be the nature of plants to painlessly and calmly reproduce their kind in blissful serenity. They are completely devoted to producing their own kind. The sacrificial life of the whole plant consists of sprouting, growing and budding. When we face the world, we do not judge or condemn, but try to understand what it is doing from our own perspective. When we do not judge but seek to comprehend, we immerse ourselves in our fellow beings and draw from them the means to understand them. That is what the second kingdom teaches us. The law of karma teaches us love as the second moral principle. The plant kingdom reminds us of a preliminary stage of love.

[Then we can also understand the chaste, majestic realm of stones. Through our self-knowledge, we learn to appreciate the self in every other person, which faces us just as great as the stone kingdom; and once we have understood this, how we should approach every person with reverence, we have three fundamental virtues that the three natural kingdoms teach us: reverence for every ego, the mineral kingdom; love for every being, the plant kingdom; and patience, the animal kingdom.

Theosophy gives us the secrets of our hearts. We should practice self-knowledge. Then the deep meaning of an apparently simple saying by Goethe will become clear to us: “Know thyself and live in peace with the world.

What says “I” in every human being also says “I” in every other human being. This self-knowledge leads to true, highest respect for people. We must not interfere in the lives of other people, just as we must not or cannot interfere in the lives of the stone realm. The human self must be a sanctuary for us. Reverence for every human ego - that is the third ethical principle that the Theosophical movement wants to bring back into honor.

Patience, love and reverence are the three virtues in the human realm. Through reverence we approach the silent stone realm. From this flows what has been present as a principle in the secret schools. Make the mute, chaste realm of inanimate nature your ideal, so that you stand reverently before every other ego and it would violate your spiritual sense of shame to reach into that which is a human ego with a coarse hand. When that happens to you, then you have understood this highest ideal. This is what has been proclaimed as the sevenfold nature of nature and man. Three virtues in the realm of nature, three virtues in the realm of man. And in between the I. The I stands in the middle and develops in the same but retrograde sequence as nature offers it to us. So we progress through patience, through love, to reverence.