Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge I

GA 90a — 16 June 1904, Berlin

XXXI. The Main Law of All Round Evolution

Each round runs in seven sections, namely the three [gap in the transcript], the middle one, which is the turning point, main point, and the decisive one, and the three receding ones, where everything turns inward. The descending movement is always delayed; there is a decrease and delay in the evolution of the first three states, now the slowest, and then an increasing speed, an acceleration until the seventh has the same movement as the first. We have created three different states:

1. Deceleration
2. Apparent persistence
3. Acceleration.

In each subsequent round, these states are briefly repeated, and this happens in the first rounds. So we have little to deal with in the first three rounds because they are a brief repetition. In the fourth round, the first state is also a brief repetition. We divide this again into three parts – seven races into three parts. Seven-thirds – two-thirds and one-third is what we now have to imagine.

So we have two first races: preparatory race; the third is still preparatory in its first third, and in the second third the characteristic of the race begins.

The further two and one third give four and two thirds. So we have the next state until the second third of the fifth race. And from the last third of the fifth race, the flooding takes place again.

Our fifth has an important turning point, namely that of the flooding, where we have to draw the last conclusions and lead the development over to the sixth race, where the preparatory work for the future round will take place.

In the first races, therefore: none
in the second and fourth: preparatory fruits
in the fifth: peak of racial development, final results
in the sixth and seventh: preparation for the next time.

Confessions:

1/3 a. Race. A kind of pantheistic-unclear form, but esoterically unified. Brahminic pantheism. b. The doctrine of unity then splits into the various forms of polytheism. 2/3 a. Polytheism develops into b. so-called theomorphism, returning to the unified concept of God, but shaping, theomorphisizing. 3/3 a. Fourth race forms anthropomorphism, which has Christology at its center. The one man is the son of God. b. Fifth sub-race. We have brought God down to man, to the physical plane, and form physical materialism out of it. 4. The sixth sub-race, which we are preparing. Within Sophia, wisdom, preparing the science of God: theosophy. Seventh race: practical theosophy, theosophical living, accomplishment of what has been recognized. Man will externalize the God he has grasped. He will sanctify objects, will consecrate everything he does. In the past, the divine reached into him. Now, in the age of sacrament, he will consecrate the object - while it is being ceremonially consecrated for him.

Thinking knowledge is what must be striven for and accomplished in the fifth race. It is the task - the struggle for knowledge from P [gap in the transcript] to the sacral [gap in the transcript]

To bring concepts to life in man. Before man could come to conceptual knowledge, he first had to form ideas. The fourth [race] thus had the task of developing the power of imagination. The Atlantean was the imaginative race, while the Aryan is the thinking one. The Atlantean is memory and imagination. The doctrine of reincarnation [the Atlanteans] did not have, but they had the memory of previous incarnation. Atlantean temples consisted of busts of the Atlanteans, who were interested in seeing their earlier image.

Lemurians also did not yet have the ability to form ideas. Before them, people still picked out colors and tuned their ears. The ability to form sensations began with the third race. To take in sensations from the outside. Cis. G., color. They live entirely in the present.

At the beginning of the Lemurian race, we have the attachment to the spinal cord - nerve cord and attachment to the brain. There were no other bodies. In the Atlantean period, the formation continues until the forebrain develops in the Aryan - the thinking brain.

Avatar:

• the fish, because the highest leader could only incarnate in the existing body. Nerve cord with attachment. . like the fish.
• Turtle: the amphibian state;
• the brain's attachment to the nerve cord increases until the transition to the mammal, of which the bear is the representative and avatar; memory-related docility as in the Atlantean race, imagination-related, unclouded by the consciousness of thought, as in the trance dance.
• As leader and avatar from the fourth to the fifth race, man, lion, with the beginnings of a pre-brain and a thinking brain.