Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge I

GA 90a — 1 July 1904, Berlin

XLI. Noun, Verb

The more one moves up to the present in the consideration of evolution, one must take into account that time is an element of deception and the source of numerous errors in history. One must distinguish between what always goes through evolution, what is always there, is a total dying or death: and that is the development of the levels of consciousness of the Pitris. All that matters in the end is this development. No matter how much may have happened on the first planet: the moment the Pitris had the first state of consciousness, everything the Pitris had within them was dissolved. Only the result was transferred. All the work that was used is concentrated in one point. Everything winds around it like a spiral around the node, in which the Pitri has contracted like the snake around the Hermes staff. This is how we do it in earthly evolution. We discard the detail. Pitri has hereby achieved an elevation of consciousness. The stages are determined, the snake remains subject to a certain arbitrariness, its coils are what the illusions bring about in time.

We can predict the stages of consciousness of a Pitri. The paths of the snake are manifold and can be seen by the seer in their outcome – not in the future. So one can say for the future: it will be so and so, but not whether in two hundred or three hundred years. We do not know how much the stages of evolution will be drawn out. A can be reached in five years, C in a hundred years, or vice versa. Therefore, it is possible to determine the path, but not the length of time. Hence the deception, and one cannot say in advance in terms of time, because time belongs to macrocosmic development, the microcosmic is timeless.

This must be considered when following events in relation to the present and the future, because the microcosmic development is correct, but the macrocosmic development is subject to freedom, in that it can use external circumstances in different ways.

From this follows an occult sentence: the arbitrariness or freedom of the human microcosm expresses itself in its inclination towards the snake.

The rod is he himself, and therefore the snake symbol as the symbol of freedom. So, although the path is strictly prescribed, it would be futile to want to try to foresee what freedom of man, of external events, can be foreseen. Although external events can be foreseen, but the leaders and leaders use the external events at their discretion.

The Pitri has not yet awakened to freedom, and his future actions are mostly prescribed for him by the macrocosm.

Let us take this into account when considering the present, the Latin races. What the Pitris do can only be perceived through inner vision; what takes place in the macrocosm from the outside.

Therefore, the consideration of world history falls into events that we see from the outside and into the essential stages of development that we have to consider from the inside. We call the former noumenon and the latter all external phenomena.

All phenomena also have an inner side, and are phenomena insofar as we do not yet see their noumenon. Now, the Teutonic race has the task, the noumenal, of applying intelligence, the manasic, to external processes. Therefore, for centuries all science was transferred to the external physical plane. In his poem, Dante describes the three-tiered world. He did not, of course, believe that these were locas in space, but took them as symbols for spiritual processes. At that time, little importance was attached to the description of external events, but rather to the essence of spiritual matters.

In the Heliand saga, Christ is made the German military leader; the poet said to himself: It does not matter whether it is described through Palestinian or Saxon events, but rather it is used arbitrarily for inner events, because the temporal is Maya.

The actual mission of the Germanic race was to take the external and the temporal really seriously. In the past, the world system was used from a different point of view. From Copernicus onwards, the aim was to describe the world independently of man and according to material processes. The external is taken so seriously that the human will becomes the decisive factor. In the past, intentions for the social life of man were still taken from above, and the leaders were mediators. Now personal freedom becomes the decisive factor. Reason and self-will of the individual, freedom, equality and fraternity will [gap in the transcript]

Therefore, the French Revolution could only have been staged under the leadership of masters [gap in the transcript]

Voltaire, Rousseau, d'Alembert did not simply have an external historical [gap in the transcript] but were masters [gap in the transcript] and therefore executed it as a noumenon.

Everything that is snake is the abomination..., everything that is progress is the rod. The externally leading masters had to relinquish the leadership to the snake. In particular, Rosicrucianism withdrew.

Materialism at its highest in the forty years; it blossoms in the will.

Limitation to the external phenomenal principle of knowledge; we can only [gap in the transcript]

Kant introduced and Spencer expressed.

Ignorabimus.

The will had to be directed in such a way that it is forced down completely onto the physical plane, compressed, concentrated into a personality. To state what impression it makes, what the ultimate consequence / gap in the transcript]

Infallibility of the Pope. One does not have to investigate the counsel of God, but on the physical plane, [gap in the transcript]

The authority wants to be concentrated in one personality.

Agnosticism from one side, infallibility from the other.

Unity on the physical plane would only be possible if one ruled over all; on higher planes, unity is self-evident.

The task of the next race will be to create a culture with elementary force, renouncing the entire culture of the fifth race and starting from the original human nature.

The blessings of Western civilization will be used by the Slavic race to bring about a renewal of civilization; it will become the sixth sub-race. It will give its content to the American race, which will play a similar role to the Mongols for the future main race.

[Gap in transcript].