Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge I

GA 90a — 5 September 1904, Berlin

LVII. The Realms

There must be something in man that meets every thing in the external world. There must be something in external things that corresponds to what is in us. We meet with things on a common scene. They meet us in three ways:

– mineral, man originated where the mineral power of God has condensed
– arousing pleasure and displeasure
– awakening thoughts.

In the manasic there must be something that produces the thoughts outside. That which receives the thoughts within us must be something that emerges from the thoughts. Everything is the same above as below. Man came down to meet the creative activity. The development was such that the creative met with the post-creative. The mineral kingdom is the setting for this encounter. Man has evolved into the mineral kingdom and must now evolve out of it.

Thus microcosm and macrocosm meet in the mineral kingdom. By evolving downwards, God encounters man through his relationship with the mineral kingdom.

All human development is in preparation for a future free confrontation with the Deity: Letter of Paul to the Romans Chapter 8, Verse 19: “For the fearful creature waits for adoption as a son.” All development is a yearning.

The Buddhist self-awareness will confront the Mahabuddha.

That is why there are attempts at development: the human being must develop the appropriate organs in the various spheres. He lives a double life in the physical plane in order to know everything that is native there, in the astral and in Devachan. He will be able to live in pure Devachan when he no longer has any inclination for the other worlds. Man can have an inclination downwards or upwards; he should have the desire for enthusiasm, make the down to the up, raise the temporal to the eternal. The mystery student has developed the amount of desire that lived in him towards the spiritual side; the desire becomes looking up.

The astral is an intermediate realm; if desire tends downwards, man's astral is kamic; if it tends upwards, it is purified and mental.

Man has a cosmic task: to develop the forces of the mineral kingdom upwards. Because he encounters the deity in the mineral kingdom, he must bring the forces he finds there to the deity. Hence the parable of the bee.

In the three kingdoms, he has to collect and unite with the deity. Through earthly life, we unite our dual task: to develop the sighing in disharmony into harmony. If we do not accomplish this task, we are missing something.

We are now at the boundary line where we have to reverse. It is the approach of two realms, it is the crossroads at the level of the mineral kingdom.

Theosophy is therefore a theory that must become life.

The human being brings into consciousness everything that the animal carries as unconscious memory. By developing thought through meditation, man brings back memories of past lives on earth. Christianity had the task of sanctifying the personality; therefore, the concept of individuality had to take a back seat for a time.

Development is the penetration of the later into the earlier; the firstlings of humanity are the forerunners of later development.