Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge I

GA 90a — 13 June 1904, Berlin

XXIX. The Concept of Objective Presence and Subjective Perception

The eye is called upon to perceive. Sensation – perception – can only arise when a nervous system begins to develop. Half of the eye is a living physical apparatus; the other half is permeated by the nervous system. The optic nerve would never perceive if the physical were not constructed in a certain way; with the same physical laws as an inanimate apparatus, plus life.

So these two things are to be formed in humans: an apparatus to receive and one to mediate. Outside in nature we have the mineral kingdom, and the mineral kingdom has given us the apparatus, which is formed from the components of the same kingdom, with which we absorb this kingdom. Everything in the outside world we also have; little by little we have to absorb the whole mineral kingdom.

In the fourth round, we assimilate the mineral kingdom, and by the end of the fourth round we will have consumed the entire kingdom. During the first round, we expose the mineral, while during the fourth we absorb it. During the second, the same thing happens with the plants, while during the third, the same thing happens with the animals.

During the seventh, man is within himself; he has absorbed all the realms. How does this happen? In the nineteenth century, the materialistic one, people began to completely deny the life force. For example, urea, which was previously thought to be produced only by the organism, was produced in the laboratory. The researchers thought that if they could now chemically represent what was previously believed to come from the living, there would be no difference between the living and the inanimate, only a more complex organism. They should have said: there is life in the mineral too.

Man is first able to recognize the inorganic, only later will plant and animal life be understood. The sense by which the nerve spreads perceives the mineral process from the outside. But the nerve will then grasp the life contained in the eye, grasp the incoming prana as we do today with light. The eye will have progressed so far that the plant will flow in directly. The mineral has ceased to exist. The mineral has reached its greatest density in the fourth round and will soon disintegrate into cosmic dust. Therefore, the stone is the image of perfection within our round, and the leaf is the nearest cover. The image of the jewel in the middle of the lotus flower is the symbol of the tendency of human striving today. Buddha sitting in the lotus flower is such a symbol. Today, the human being perceives so strongly in a mineral way that the researcher even denies everything else. But within him is the life - prana - that now takes everything assimilated with it through the pralaya and possesses the processed as a spiritual inner life, as something absorbed within him. - So in each round, until the human being - absorbing everything - remains only in God.

During the first round, man had developed his physical self, the bone system emerged in the system; in the second round it was animated, man became a plant. It is hollow, the plant as an outline.

In the fifth round, he will have the core within him. The human being as a plant-human being in the second round reproduces, life begets life. In the first round, unity prevailed; in the second, number, the emergence of one from the other. Form also prevails – shape – because number comes together.

In the third round, the beings begin to live within themselves. Reciprocity rules – pleasure and pain.

Something new begins in the fourth round. Until now, there was still a shell everywhere. The mineral kingdom begins to form a core. We are only now able to distinguish between shell and core. The core can separate and control ever new shells. Birth and death prevail. The core can retain a germ that outlasts all shells, and we experience birth and death.

In the first three rounds up to the middle of the fourth, the daughter essence is released from the mother essence; it separates. Everything was there as long as the round lasted; only with the fourth round is birth and death possible.

The first is unity, which dominates the first round. The second is number, which dominates the second round. The third is interdependency, which dominates the third round. The fourth is birth and death, which dominate the fourth round.

The union of the Pitri with the Dhyan Chohan is the core. [...]