Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge I

GA 90a — 22 June 1904, Berlin

XXXIV. Ways of Coming to Knowledge and Will

The inventor has an idea in his head – for example, of the clock – then he searches for equipment. When the clock is ready, he knows how it is made, he has knowledge of the clock. The idea has preceded, [followed] by the execution in physical fact. The idea was drawn from the mental plan, then transferred to the physical plan. Let us assume that the watchmaker has died. Another, in order to imitate the clock, must take it piece by piece and then study the laws in order to form others. So first there is contemplation, then the idea is derived in order to form. So there are two ways of creating knowledge: where the idea originally lies or where it is derived from contemplation.

In the cosmic, everything is based on the idea. We call it 'Mahat', the universal spirit, after which all physical things are composed. The beings who are in place of the watchmaker cannot yet work on the physical plane. 'Dhyanis', they have the ideas for the physical plan, they would teach others, like the inventor, if he had not died immediately.

Two types of teaching: the original type of teaching, that the purely spiritual natures - dhyanis - immediately transfer the ideas into the mental, of the preceding race; a teaching by direct transmission of intuition. The first people were thus taught as one is taught by the creators; later as one is taught by those who have learned from objects of the physical plan. A remnant of this kind of direct influx is also contained in nature. The way beavers build their dams today, in such a way that an engineer could not build a better one with all his ingenuity. The beaver has this kind of receptivity in a degenerated state. There was a time when people also received wisdom and built their dams in this way. Lake Moeris, no longer in existence, but once artificially built in Egypt, with a sewage system that could not be invented today. Mankind was once more capable, but in a different way, in that they could not record it in mathematical forms in abstract, but in symbolic forms. An immediate flowing in of the Mahat; a drawing out of the physical plan Manas from Mahat.

Today, one has to carefully calculate how to lay beams; at that time, he could do more in terms of teaching; the direct telepathy from person to person - an influx of will into the pineal gland. Among ancient peoples, there are still similar institutions that seem senseless: [Couvade,] the husband's childbed. The opinion that this has a correspondingly favorable meaning for the child comes from the time when the psychic powers were still vividly active, so that the psychic processes on the part of the man worked just as the physical processes did on the part of the woman. [Couvade:] a resting, concentrating of the father's psychic powers for the good of the child.

There is a descent, a different kind of transmission of knowledge and will, and it must be reclaimed from below. No reception was needed from the senses at that time to receive Mahat; so the leader of the race does not need a refined organ of the mind, but the third eye. This is the organization of the human lion. He is more differentiated; spirituality on the one hand, animal nature on the other.

The teaching from below begins – spirituality has become coarser. It begins with the feeling; Mahat begins to penetrate from the outside. Through the senses, the world mind flows in. This makes the outer impression a reason for him to reflect. His mind is still very limited, a first stirring; the human being who then stands at the highest level, the leader, will read the writing of the world spirit everywhere, but he does not yet have memory. This dwarfish spirit, who looks up at the firmament - and deduces astrology from the impressions of his senses - is symbolized as an avatar, by the dwarf: the first looking at Mahat from the mind. One forgot immediately, but saw to the bottom, not pondering, thinking, but looking.

Astrology and alchemy, the refraining from the object, what it has for laws.

1. So first Mahat comes from outside through sensation, develops inside.

2. Through the imagination, where he holds on to the sensation through memory; man will only receive Mahat when he approaches it through the imagination.

This has two stages, namely the absorption of Mahat in the imagination.

The development of Rama: first the Rama of the center and secondly that of the developed imagination.

The next thing is that the person is already forming concepts.

For example, belladonna: the concept is formed on the basis of external experience. Belladonna is not edible; concept: where there is such a substance, the object is not edible.

Avatar – Krishna, who fills the world with ideas that apply to the physical plane, can be applied everywhere, are tailored for him, although they are far above him.

After man has grown to the point of forming ideas, wisdom reveals itself again, the source of the ideas from which the world flowed. He perceives the idea itself: the Buddha as a guide, suitable for a humanity that lives entirely on the physical plane, but is already ascending to spirituality.

Mythology, the starry sky viewed by the sage, populated, degenerates into idolatry and rises on the other side as a doctrine of ideas.

The purity of the Bhagavad Gita, imbued with ideas and leaving mythology, degenerates into mysticism on the one hand and rises to wisdom on the other – descending to complete materialism and mechanism, ascending to Christianity.