Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge I

GA 90a — 30 December 1904, Berlin

LXXIX. Past and Future Rounds

When speaking of the following rounds, it might seem as if one were telling something that is not known. However, what is told is undoubtedly true insofar as it relates to the laws. Man must cooperate in the future and familiarize himself with these laws. Water must always be created when water and oxygen come together. The laws are eternal, and in so far as they are lawful, the future is revealed.

In the next rounds we know that the empires will be absorbed and that man will become man in the seventh round. The question arises as to what the outer form of the future plant kingdom will be. For it is form that comes to consciousness and life. We have become acquainted with the form of the first round, the second, the third and now that of the fourth, which consists in the mineral man being subject to birth and death. The third realm was under the sign of elective affinity. The second was under the sign of the number.

What will the form of the next round be? It is conditioned by the fact that man will then be much more plastic, not opposed by a rigid mineral kingdom. What will this form be shaped from? Always from that which remains behind at the expense of which it develops further. That is now evil. Man develops through karma towards the good. He overcomes karma completely in the fourth round; he extracts the good and leaves the bad behind. So that from this evil the forms of the next, the fifth round, are formed. So that the fifth round will outwardly bear the plastic impression of all the evil deeds of the fourth round. The New Testament gives us the image of this truth in the Last Judgment. Evil will be visible. People will bear in their faces the good that they have acquired and will produce beings through their previous evil deeds. The karmic debt register will be open.

First round: abyss; seeing oneself in the mirror
Second round: number, measure, weight
Third round: elective affinity
Fourth round: birth and death
Fifth round: evil.

This has the effect of a dandruff remedy, in that it shows that man cannot hide his evil. He will find it as buried, a new realm that interposes itself between the animal kingdom and the human kingdom; inferior people who bear the deeds of the guilt of present humanity. Now man can only absorb again what he has set out of himself. He does this with the realms, with birth and death, with the evil that he releases in order to absorb it again in the form. Personally, he will be able to redeem it and balance it out in this round, but his deeds will be buried in a new realm, in objectivity. He can free himself because he can achieve innocence at the expense of the evil that has been released.

All the Kama that is impregnated with evil is now outside of him. This evil makes it impossible for him to reach the higher self. It is now outside of him. The higher self can now shape its aura, the outside can shape the inside. When the outside then completely shapes the inside without hindrance from Kama, then we have the immediate mental self. So that in the sixth round humanity has the mental body.

The inner self expresses itself in the outer when we give what we speak to the waves of the air. That is what we will do in the sixth round. No more hiding of the inner self; whatever a person is, he pours out, his whole soul lies open. As man expresses himself through his entire being, the sixth round is that of the word. The word does not become flesh, it could only become flesh in Christ, but it does become form, shape. It was similar in the second round; only the sounds were inarticulate, the beings did not speak them; but now the names are spoken. Every human being speaks his name into the world being. Novalis' writings are in this respect like intuitions of great theosophical truths. The union with the heavenly Sophia is then consciously achieved.

In the seventh round, complete union is now achieved. The human soul is not lost in the totality; each person has their name, but these names resonate together in a great harmony of sentences. And this name is that of the Earth Deity. No degree of consciousness that has been attained can be lost, but together all these names resound and give that of the Earth Deity. Goethe: Gewoben ist [Lücke in der Mitschrift]

That is the immortal garment that remains, and in the esoteric language it is called 'divinity'. So the

first form: reflection in the other, objectivity
second form: number, measure and weight
third form: elective affinity
fourth form: birth and life
fifth form: evil
sixth form: the word - logos
seventh form: godliness.

These are the seven forms through which the Pitri passes during a planetary evolution.

Why does evolution continue to develop when a particular kingdom reaches an impasse? This question coincides with the following: Why is [blank in transcript] inserted? Because: the moment a particular kingdom is present in two forms, it recognizes itself. Man has set the mineral kingdom apart and cannot recognize it; in the second round, the plant kingdom, in the third round, the animal kingdom. But when he can say to himself, “I am,” then he is also able to influence himself through his will. He cannot do this in his sleep. When he can say “I am” to the astral, pranic, mineral, he will recognize them. Because he is a mineral being, he recognizes himself as an ego.

In the next round, he will be able to say, “I will and form plastically.” In the sixth round, he will be able to say, “I feel myself,” and he will pour out his entire being in wavy lines, his word.

In the seventh round, he pours out his being in such a way that his I blends into the entire earthly sphere.

After a trinity has arisen, in which the self exposes itself, a trinity arises as it absorbs it. I am. That is the achievement of the fourth round. If the self understands itself correctly, it must withdraw its own being. The luciferic principle wanted to lead it further. The eighth sphere is what wanted to burst out beyond the point where it had to withdraw.

It is in the highest form – self-knowledge.

In a sense, the future rounds are what they were in the previous ones, only now each person has their center within themselves. What was automatic before becomes life.

Inarticulate sounds, which in the second round resound as the harmony of the spheres, become names. God Himself speaks His name in the first round, and all beings speak it in the last.