Inner and Outer Evolution

GA 91 — 31 August 1904, Berlin

9. States of Consciousness

Seven states of consciousness develop one after the other. What develops and rises to higher degrees is the ego. What we study is what the I experiences. So that theosophy is: self-knowledge. We were there and participated in the life on all planets. On the first one was a peculiar state of consciousness, not spatially we have to think of the planets. They are states that emerge from each other, like the girl from the child - in between only pralaya states. Metamorphoses they are.

From distant states we come to the esoteric plan. Mars. - On it we lived and had a consciousness that was quite dull -, not yet dream consciousness - as it is today in the stones, mineral. - But it went into the vastness, an all-consciousness it was. Such a person knew /gap in transcript]

Now only to be artificially evoked in pathological states. There they begin to draw /unreadable] great world systems [...]. A dull trance consciousness, but extending over the earth with surrounding world bodies.

In each round it becomes brighter. Seven rounds, each in seven states. So that 7x7=49 states the consciousness has already gone through. - Materially, the planet dies, but all the plants pass over, like the lily from the seed.

On the second planet - Sun - a consciousness is formed which extends not so far, not over the dead, but over all living things, the consciousness which man has in dreams, where all vegetative functions continue to work; plant consciousness in 49 states. The planet is esoterically called the sun. Solarpitris, which here complete themselves high.

The third planet - Moon - develops a higher state of consciousness, dream trance, like the consciousness of the higher animals. Moon - again seven states: arupa, rupa, astral, physical, [illegible]

Fourth planet: earth. Now it comes over and becomes earth-development, which has to develop the bright day-consciousness.

Then passes over into the fifth state of consciousness - fifth planet: Mercury: psychic consciousness. To be distinguished by the fact that man will be brightly conscious not only in the physical but also in the astral. The desire nature of the other becomes transparent, his own he can direct like a force. Psychic consciousness.

On the sixth planet - Venus - more-than-psychic, super-psychic. Thought is conducted.

Seventh planet: On Jupiter spiritual consciousness; man will be all spirit.

343 states man thus undergoes. 7 x 7 on each planet. Thus we understand the seven principles that are in eternal formation. Four are formed in man, three in the plant. The earth is for man to be formed as he is now; because man is in the fourth round, he has also formed his fourth principle.

Important theosophical proposition that basically everything is one and we are connected with all beings - let us study.

In the great seed that arose as earth, as loud seeds were pitris that surrounded themselves with matter of various kinds, took bodies and lived out in seven principles. What happens on the earth is the means for man to reach his goal, to climb up the ladder. Man is the center and goal of the earthly development. There would be no /unreadable] if /gap in transcript]

The Pitris enter, find the earth quite undeveloped, must prepare the ground; form the mineral world. The human being has it in itself - bone structure is mineral -, even we have predisposed it, together with the formers. Not like today it was, a radiating system and germ of what should become. However, one had not been able to use everything, but had to separate out. From the rest dead bodies became, the nobler materials were taken away to living ones. So the human being came into being at the expense of the mineral kingdom. So that we can stand and develop further, we had to form it. Everything can be distributed only polar. If we climb up, we push the others down.

Now man got out of what he had already drawn to himself the vegetable and repels that which is useless for him.

During the third round, he does the same with the animal kingdom, but only as far as the fish-like creatures.

During the fourth round, the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms are there, and man first segregates what becomes amphibians, and also the birds. Within the animal kingdom he segregates the higher, so that he eliminates at their expense the very noblest parts to form himself. - Thus within the warm-blooded animals man arises.

Elohistic days - the rounds.

So the mineral kingdom arises in the first round, becomes properly finished in the fourth. The plant kingdom begins in the second, becomes finished in the fifth. The animal kingdom comes into being in the third, is completed in the sixth. Man comes into being in the fourth, and in the seventh becomes the image of God.

Fifth day: teeming [Mostly illegible and very fragmentary notes follow]

That man rules means that he has already sucked into himself.