Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge I

GA 90a — 2 August 1904, Berlin

XLVIII. Incarnation

1. Do you know how the soul came into the world?
2. Do you know how the soul leaves the world?
3. Do you know the difference between the path of the fathers and the path of the gods?
4. Do you know why that world is not full?
5. Do you know why, at the fifth revelation, the waters begin to speak with the voice of man?

The three lower principles of man are held together and enclosed by the etheric sheath in the same way as the three upper principles are held together and enclosed by the auric sheath. It is the etheric body that prevents the physical cells from falling apart.

Prana is only a part of Shiva, enclosed and thereby separated, existing in its own right. Kama and Kama-Manas lie in the template of the etheric body, which, on the way back to an incarnation, is formed by the soul by drawing from the general Rupa-Manas and Kama-Stoff precisely those components that made up its Kama and Rupa body before its Arupa stay. Every soul has an arupa stay, because only through this it is soul, that is, a causal body, that the foundation for unselfish mental life is laid. Even the savage has the germ for this, and however small this germ is, it provides him with the passage through the arupa sphere, through Devachan. Our thoughts, building themselves into mental matter, usually still have undefined, imprecise forms because they have so many shells to break through, to push against.

We only take their essence, their germ, with us into the Arupa sphere, where they swell up and only then live their own life. Before each new incarnation, the human being must pass through the state of semen, that is, through the Arupa sphere of Devachan. On the way back, the seed must, through the magnetic power of its own previous formations, that is, actions, feelings and thoughts, clothe itself again with the substance of which they were composed. In the astral sphere, the thought image, which has become precise, finds the forms and templates that have been created by itself and assigned to it by Lipika, the Lord of Karma, according to eternal laws. The Maharajas supply the etheric substance to these templates, as it were, and they carry it from all four winds. This is how the lower personal covering, the etheric double body, is created, which then sinks into the physical body.

We understand the world of our desires as the 'fathers' path', which still chains us to enjoyment; only when we have become accustomed to regarding the three lower realms merely as a hall of learning and no longer demand anything from them, are we ready for the 'gods' path', which opens up life in the spirit.

Devajani, Pitrijani. As long as we still strive for selfish happiness, that world, Devajani, cannot be full. Only when we renounce the fruits of our deeds are we not bound to the world of the fathers, the world of Kama. The deed alone does not bind us.

The first sacrifice: the division of unity into trinity. The second and third: the outpourings of the third Logos; the fourth: the ensoulment by the second Logos; the fifth: the material world is spiritually fertilized by the first Logos, man arises, the Word becomes flesh.