Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge I

GA 90a — 20 June 1904, Berlin

XXXIII. What Does Man Gain From Knowing His Past?

Through his past he comes to know his future. He connects the past with the future. The ancients called death the brother of sleep. What we are today is a continuation of yesterday; sleep connects, yesterday is the cause of today's karma. Man maintains himself by building on the past. This is how it is with the human race. We learn our past in order to control our future; we also learn about the present from the future.

More highly developed people like Plato have brought more to revelation from the higher basic parts than others; others must become what he was. Plato is an artificial five-rounder. Buddha, Christ, Zarathustra are six-rounders. They, too, continue to develop. At the end of the seventh round, humanity will have reached a certain degree of harmonious development.

The lunarian epoch only became disharmonious as a new principle. It will be the same at the end of the seventh round. Sin is not from God, it came into the world through the law, but the law is from God, according to Paul. Manas approached Kama to take it to a new level. Kama had to be integrated, sawed and filed, like a wheel for a clock. Through the law; Kama or the flesh in itself was good. At the end of our terrestrial epoch, the firstlings come with a far higher development than the harmonious development of the masses. Theosophy calls it the Dhyan Chohans.

So it was at the end of the lunar epoch: the first Pitris were so advanced and came over to undergo a development in the earth epoch that went beyond the regular. They could only intervene when the earth beings could feel something of Manas within themselves. They were first active in the formation of humans in order to be understood by them later. [For example: the] Elohim of the Old Testament were only understood when the spark of the spirit was awakened in them [humans]. In particular, they were able to understand Jahve-Elohim, the Lord of Form, who clothed everything with the physical shell.

The great teachers, Sons of Light, Manasaputras, had appeared in this way - teaching. In revelation, everything can only appear in polarity, in two forms; man must understand through opposites; he enjoys the light when he sees the shadow. Here, too, polarity appeared in God Michael - Yahweh - and Lucifer. Yahweh-Elohim and his group are destined to direct man's intellect to the external in form; the other group directs attention more to the purely spiritual, to the inner being in man. Thus, God and the serpent appear in myths as opposites: God wants to teach love; the serpent wants to teach wisdom. God wants to teach form; the serpent wants to teach life.

The differentiation into imagination and sensuality, into sexuality, which had not existed before, now occurred. With it, language, as an expression of imagination.

So that two kinds of intelligence were at work: “You shall know!” said Lucifer, and imparted speech with thinking. He imparted the inner life. Jehovah was the God of form and procreation, and also of love — who hallowed outer sensuality through nobler feelings. “You shall bear children with pain.

We thus see the intervention of higher intelligences in the form of the God of love and the God of wisdom. When love was to become personality in Jesus, the head of the serpent had to be crushed.

So we have the three currents: Lunarian Pitris in germ form, which are animated by the mineral kingdom and have to mature to receive the influence of the Elohim. The Elohim have the task of leading up to this point. So that in the first three rounds the normal entities progress until they are mature to connect with the Elohim and to progress together with them.

What happened is what is described as the fall into matter, the Fall of Man. Humanity only became aware of sensuality when it was there, so they made clothes out of leaves. The Sons of Form and Love and the Sons of Wisdom now led people until the fourth race, in which something new occurred. The Sons of Wisdom have to do with thinking and imagining; the Sons of Love with the sanctification of human sensuality. This is the greatest task, for it is to be led to divinity. It is difficult because in sensuality there is desire, longing - that is, the tendency to remain within sensuality. First there was the fall into matter; now there is the tendency to remain within it, if it is not pointed upwards. It was a sacrifice of the Sons of Light to become the leaders of sensuality, a greater sacrifice than becoming the leaders of thinking. The Sons of Light are exposed to all the dangers of sensuality; it became more and more seductive the more they developed it. And the result was the subjugation of some of the Sons of Light under the power of matter. This led to the great catastrophes of the Atlantean period. This is what is called black magic. The second case is when the danger became a trap for some of the Sons of Light: material selfishness instead of guidance from matter. The flood - mythical account.

The Sons of Light found the Earth Daughters beautiful: This sex had to succumb. They threw off what could not be taken. And now we have what came next; our savages are the decadent descendants of those ancient races that perished. Within Asia, there were those who had retained their equilibrium and progressed to the fifth race. This small part went to India, partly to Babylonia, Egypt, Europe and so on.

What happened then is happening today on a higher level of consciousness. Today, a geographical area - the ark - cannot be isolated. Today, instead of spatial isolation, there must be isolation of thought and attitude.

Even now individuals can incarnate from the Atlanteans who perished – only their culture and their geographical soil were destroyed. The culture of the fifth race, too, will be destroyed if it becomes evil. Some of it must be gathered to form the basis of the sixth race, united by that which will form the core: love. We must now collect in the spirit of love, we must consciously do what was once done unconsciously – calling from all nations to the brotherhood. We have the high task of being for the sixth race what was once done for the fifth.

Those who have an interest in the future culture are working on it. Those who do nothing for it will also enjoy the fruits; if the perished Atlanteans had found what they had sown, they would have found a hell; so too would the fifth race find it in the sixth if we did not work to prepare new karma for the sixth race. What we sow, we will reap, also in terms of racial karma.