Notes from Mathilde Scholl 1904–1906

GA 91 — 21 September 1906

27. Number and Revelation I

The orbit of the earth around the sun is an ellipse. In the same way, all physical life describes an ellipse, with the spiritual starting point of all physical life at one of the foci. The other focus indicates the highest development of the physical. The physical is the opposite pole of the spiritual. Without the spiritual, there would be no physical.

All physical matter emanates from the spiritual. While physical matter is entirely dependent on the spiritual, the soul world, the astral and the human being's astral body, have a certain independence.

In the physical body, we distinguish two poles: one concentrated in the brain, the other in the reproductive forces, one spiritual, the other physical. These two poles are connected in the physical. In the astral body, however, there is a striving for independence. A special center is forming between the physical and the spiritual, which strives to unite the two. The astral body is partly aligned with the spiritual and partly with the physical, and thus it strives for independence. This is how the lemniscate movement arises in the astral body, causing it to flow partly towards the spiritual and partly towards the physical.

So there are initially three centers in the astral body. The center of the physical forms one pole, the center of the spiritual forms the other pole; and the center where the currents cross is in the middle between the two poles. In this current of the astral body lies the striving for the appropriation of the spiritual, while the path described by the physical life expresses the turning away from the spiritual. While we can only recognize the physical life by looking at it from the outside, from the periphery, the astral life flows through us in the form of the lemniscate; it passes by us like a panorama. Space is necessary to recognize the physical, time to recognize the astral, because space itself is mobile and passes by us, through us. That is why all feelings, passions and the like appear there as coming towards us, because they do indeed flow out from us, but in the direction of the loop, the lemniscate, they also flow back into us. That is why everything appears as a mirror image in the astral, because what we have emitted flows back to us.

The more a person spiritualizes, the smaller the lemniscate loop around the physical pole becomes, and the more the loop around the spiritual pole approaches the shape of the circle. The spiritual life is completely self-contained. It is a whole that radiates from the center. There, the center and the circumference are always connected. It is the life in the center itself, which flows from there to the periphery. That is why the line of spiritual life is the circle or also the point. Because the spiritual has both the greatest and the smallest expansion. There is the power in every point to spread over the whole. There the power is equally distributed in all directions, and the spiritual draws the power from itself, from its own center. Therefore, in its unity, spiritual life initially appears to man as sound, because sound is the expression of a self-contained, self-emerging, uniform force that comes to expression in the particular rhythm of a sound.

In the astral world, there is eternal change; there the astral forms pass by like clouds or images. In the spiritual world, spiritual power appears as sound, because sound is not bound by space and time. When a sound is heard, it fills the whole space; it is not bound to a specific place. The beginning of its sounding forms the center of an unlimited expression of power. Every sound fills the whole universe with its vibrations. The reason we do not hear all sounds from a distance is because our ear is not organized finely enough to absorb the finest vibrations. Those who have developed their soul organs to such an extent can hear the sound that arises from the harmony of all life on earth, the sound of the world. We can also recognize the extent to which unity is expressed in sound from the fact that different sounds that resonate at the same time immediately form an overall sound, a chord. In the world of sound, there is the greatest diversity of gradations of power, but also the greatest unity of all powers. That is why sound is what corresponds to the spiritual world. The spiritual man also has many powers, but they all resound together as one power in his individuality. His spiritual powers are like the individual notes of a whole symphony of sounds, but his individuality is the sound from which they all emerge and in which they all fade away.

The world of the physical is the world of what has become; the world of the astral is the world of what is becoming; the world of the spirit is the world of what is emerging ©. The world of what is emerging, of the clay, forms the world of what has become © out of itself as a reflex, in the forms. The world of becoming connects the two worlds ©O. It flows before the soul of man like the images of a panorama.

In art, sculpture represents the world of what has become, the physical. Painting represents the world of what is becoming, the astral world; music represents the world of what is emerging, the spiritual world.

The lemniscate is therefore also the line for the soul life of the human being, because it represents the ego at its point of intersection. Through the ego, all higher forces are introduced into the human being, and the ego itself gathers experiences in the physical world in order to incorporate them again. Thus, higher forces and experiences, which the I has gathered by descending into the physical world, continually pass through the I in the direction of the lemniscate. The point where the lemniscate crosses itself is the point where the physical and spiritual worlds intersect in the I of the human being. When the human being has fully spiritualized, he no longer needs to gain experience in the physical world; then the soul lemniscate passes into the spiritual form of the circle and the outpouring and inflow then transforms into a continuous outpouring of spiritual forces from the center.

The transition of the spiritual into the soul realm signifies the transition from unity into number, into manifestation. In mathematics, this is represented by multiplication. The lemniscate also comes about through the multiplication of a force. The transformation of the circle into the lemniscate represents the transition from unity into multiplication.

When the powers that reveal themselves in the soul reunite in spiritual unity, this corresponds to a division. The circle, which is the image of the spiritual, is also formed by the division of one power by another. Multiplication, transition to number, thus signifies revelation; and division, transition from number to unity, signifies descent into the primal source of the revealed powers.

The intersection of the lemniscate is therefore the sign for multiplication, for revelation; the two foci are the sign for division. The aim is to move from number to unity.

The ellipse, the line of physical life, comes about through the interaction of two forces centered in the two foci of the ellipse. The ellipse describes the straight line that arises from the addition of these two forces. Thus the ellipse arises through the addition of two forces. These two forces, one of which represents the turning away from the spirit and the other the inflow of the spirit, are represented by the sign of addition, the cross.

Now, for the independent development of his life, the human being has been given a part of the spiritual power, the spiritual life, to make his whole individuality possible as a free being in its individual manifestation. This is the own life force in him, which is incorporated into his ego, in contrast to the general life force in the cosmos. He himself possesses a part of the cosmic life force, which is continually renewed from the cosmic source of life. The outflow of the human prana, the life force, and the counterflow of cosmic prana are mathematically expressed in the hyperbola, the two curves that strive towards each other. There the foci are separated, not enclosed.

It arises when one force is subtracted from another, in other words, by subtraction. The symbol for subtraction is the straight line, the diameter of the circle that separates one half from the other.

Thus we find hidden in both the signs of ordinary arithmetic and the geometric figures the greatest secrets of the world, the secrets of life.

is the sign for physical life,

is the geometric figure for it.

is the symbol for the human prana.

is the geometric figure for it.

is the symbol for the astral body with the ego, for the human soul.

is the geometric figure for it.

is the sign for spirit;

is the geometric figure for it.

In physical development, the possibility of a new physical being arises from the coming together of two forces. The emergence of a new physical being is the addition of paternal and maternal forces. The new physical being acquires independence through subtraction – by making a part of the maternal forces its own, by withdrawing them from the maternal organism.

The spiritual essence of a human being, however, arises through the multiplication of the world spirit, in that the world spirit multiplies itself. It flows out of itself and flows back into itself, in that the two currents cross. At the point of intersection, the new spiritual being is formed, the I of the human being.

This self of a human being achieves independence through division, by uniting with the world spirit: or . So the sign for new physical life is this: (+), the sign for new spiritual life is this: (\times).

The sign for physical life that has become independent is this (-); the sign for the completion of the individual mind is this: or .

The symbol for the emerging and independent higher self is this: (⦻)

While or represents life, the self, and (\times) represents the manifestation of life, the number, the line (-) or also represents the individual striving towards the light, the striving towards wisdom; and (+) represents in a higher sense the confluence of forces in physical nature, expressing itself as chemical affinity, as heat emission and, in the human and animal kingdom, as love.

On the other hand, there is multiplication in the physical through addition, through the coming together of two forces, and multiplication in the spiritual through multiplication, through the revelation of the one power in its own development and devotion. Addition is the expression of reproduction in the physical realm; multiplication is the expression of reproduction in the spiritual realm. Division is the expression of the development of the individual in the spiritual. Subtraction represents the development of the individual in the physical. In subtraction, the opposite occurs to division. In subtraction, one force separates from another and frees itself. In division, a force gives up its expression and does not return to itself. In subtraction, therefore, there is a division and a reduction of force to form a new unity; in division, there is a strengthening of force by concentrating the whole force in the unity.

While in the physical world the personality is formed by addition and subtraction, (+) and (-), in the spiritual world individuality develops through multiplication of the one life, the self; and through division, drawing this individual life into the point or circle, (\times) and . The whole physical and spiritual being, which thus arises on the one hand from the confluence of the two physical forces through love and the unfolding of the one spiritual force through the self, would thus be represented by this sign:

the cross of the spiritual and the cross of the physical, of unfolding and of confluence. If we connect these [crosses] to form a whole, the following sign emerges:

or, if we only express the interaction:

The evolved spiritual being is represented by the circle, the evolved physical being by the line. Thus the evolved spiritual being in physical embodiment forms the circle with the diameter, the circle and the straight line.

From the [Secret Doctrine] it appears that the ratio of the circle to the diameter, the number x, expresses the relationship between the World Spirit and Creation. Thus, the number x also expresses the relationship of the spiritual individuality of the human being in its perfection to the emergence of the individual incarnations.

But there is something else hidden in this. The diameter of the circle is a straight line. The infinite straight line forms a circle, because we can imagine that a circumference at infinity is so large that the curvature disappears completely.

Since the diameter multiplied by the number x gives the circumference of the circle, the number x indicates by how much the straight line must be curved in order to coincide with the circumference of the circle, or conversely, by how much the curvature of the circle must be reduced in order to coincide with the straight line. Furthermore, the number π shows the way in which the spirit must transform in order to become physical, or conversely, how the physical multiplied by the number π yields the spiritual. The number x is thus the expression of the transformation from the diameter to the circle or, conversely, from the manifestation of the creative power in creation and from the return of the world of forms to spiritual power, from the emergence of personality from individuality and from the return of personality to individuality. It is the number of our incarnation on earth and the number of our incarnation of God in the spiritual world.

In infinity, straight lines and circles are one; so too, one day, Creator and Creation will become one, and the spiritual and physical in man will also become one.

The number (\pi) is (3.1415) and so on. In The Secret Doctrine, it is said that from the One emerged the Three ((3)), the One ((1)), the Four ((4)), the One ((1)), the Five ((5)), the two times Seven, the sum total. All other numbers are composed of these numbers. Now these are counted together as fourteen if you count the two ones, or as twelve if you regard the one as non-number and do not count it. The one is the origin of the other numbers, but is not itself actually a number; if you multiply one with itself, it always remains one; it does not increase by multiplication and does not decrease by division; therefore it is eternally equal to itself and the archetype of all unity.

Thus we can understand the number (\pi) – (3.1415) and so on – in the following way: From unity comes first the trinity , then from unity comes the four ; then the unity again produces the five , the pentagram, and with that the foundation is laid for all development in the number, for all revelation. Division of the (4) produces the (2) and addition of the (4) to itself produces the (8). Together with the (3) produces the (7), and together with the (5), the (9).

In this way, the whole world of numbers is created from the multiplication or addition of the other numbers. From this first revelation, which expresses the relationship of the diameter to the circle – or of the revealed to the origin of revelation (-), then everything that is arises.

The first revelation, the first number, is (3) because (3) is the first number to reflect unity. 2 does not reflect unity, but 3 does.

Likewise, the is a unit and so is the , but anything beyond that in the world of numbers is no longer a unit. All further revelation is a composition of this first unity, for example the 6 , the 7 🔯.

The first revelation, which emerged from the One, represents the higher self of man, Atma, Budhi, Manas, the Three .

The second revelation was that in which these three should work: the physical, etheric and astral bodies and the ego, the connection of the astral body with manas, the four .

From the three and the four arose the seven according to the nature of the forces, but these were expressed in the next revelation as the five, the pentagram.

The first five, the pentagram, is the interaction of the three and the four. The fact that the seven forces in man interact in this way is also represented by the human form: the head at the top, then the outstretched arms and the feet at the bottom. The human being stands in space with outstretched arms. The seven spiritual powers resting in man find expression in space as the pentagram. With the feet he stands in the physical; the lines of the pentagram run from the feet to the head, thus connecting the physical with the spiritual and to the hands. The hands represent the soul, which can turn to the physical and the spiritual. Hence the free movement of the arms and the turning of the hands. With the arms and hands, the person can be active in the physical, and he can lift himself up to the spiritual to receive strength there. Taking from the spiritual world and giving to the physical world is expressed in the arms and hands.

Now the perfection of man can be seen in the number (10). In the number (5), the pentagram, half of the perfection can be seen. This is also indicated in the twice 5 of the division of the hands and feet, that 5 expresses half of the actual human being. Just as the left foot belongs to the right foot in the whole physical human being, and the left hand belongs to the right hand in the whole spiritual human being — in order to represent something complete — so the completion of the human being expressed in the pentagram still needs a supplement, that is, another five, to bring about the number of completion, (10). The pentagram also represents the point in world development at which it has arrived at its lowest point, because, after half of the perfection was attained in (5), every further development was a complement of this half and consequently an ascent to perfection.

A force can only ever reveal itself up to half of its strength; further revelation is not possible. Thus, the pentagram represents half of the primal force, which can be seen in the perfect number (10), the circle with the diameter. Now the number (5) was the expression of (7) interacting forces. Likewise, the number 10 is the expression of 14 interacting forces. Man's descent to the lowest point happened in the order of the number 7; he was given 7 forces: Atma, Budhi, Manas, the I, the astral body, etheric body and physical body. He must now ascend this same ladder of powers, beginning with the I, then transforming the astral body with the manas and making it his own, then permeating the etheric body with budhi and making it immortal, and finally permeating the physical body with atma. When he has thus made the ascent with the (7) powers given him by the Godhead, and which are expressed in their confluence in the pentagram, and has attained perfection, this perfection, which was attained through (7) stages of descent and (7) stages of ascent, thus through (14) stages, is expressed in the number of perfection, the (10), which &

This is the man who has entered into the Godhead. Because the (5) is the number of the ultimate revelation, there is no new number beyond the (5) that is not composed of the other preceding ones, and among the composite numbers there is none beyond the 10. It is the perfect number, the number of perfection, just as the 5 is the number of revelation. All numbers move between these two, from (1) to (5) and from (5) to (10), from (10) to (15) to (2 \times 10) and so on. Thus, the ten numbers represent everything in the cosmos, and the number (10) represents the unity of the whole and the number 5 represents the revelation of the whole. The forces expressed in (5) are seven; the interaction of and the first two revealed numbers, the powers contained in the (10) are (2 \times 7 = 14), the (7) emanating from God and the (7) as appropriated by man.

But if you count the revealed numbers themselves, there are (3), (4), (5) – or together , in between the stepping back into the unit (3), (1), (4), (1), (5). Thus, in the cosmos, there are (3 + 4 + 5 = 12) forces expressed in number; according to spiritual effect, there are (14), (7) in descent, (7) in ascent; according to revelation, there are (5), geometrically represented in the pentagram; according to completion, there are (10), the circle with the diameter.

The seven forces are expressed in all phenomena

in the world, for example in the seven days of the week, the seven colors, the seven tones.

A beautiful interaction of the seven tones also occurs according to the laws of revelation in the number. The harmony is based on the correct sounding together in the chords: major triad, minor triad and seventh chord. In the triad, we can sound three tones, the prime, the major or minor third and the fifth, i.e. the first, third and fifth tones. Together with the octave, these make four. The octave is the repetition of the prime. In the seventh chord, four different notes sound: the prime, third, fifth and seventh, and the octave as a repetition of the prime. In the triad, three notes and the repetition of the first note create harmony; in the seventh chord, four notes and the repetition of the first note. The triad represents the threefold nature in man – Atma, Budhi, Manas – while the seventh chord represents the unification of the four forces in man. The resolution of the seventh chord into the triad is the transference of the four human forces into the higher three: Atma, Budhi, Manas. Prime and octave are the same in chords, just as the 'I' is the same in man, whether it resounds in the seventh chord of the physical world or in the triad of the spiritual world.

The sum of the revealed numbers is ((3 + 4 + 5) = 12), corresponding to the twelve signs of the zodiac through which the sun passes. The number of revelation is (5); the number of completion is (10), the number of the entire ascent to completion is (9), the number of powers sunk into man is (7), the number of powers given to him and those he has made his own is together (14), the total number of revealed numbers is ((3, 4, 5) = 12).

This is the number of levels of consciousness that a person passes through: (7) until completion as a human, (5) beyond human development, (7) in the Manvantara, (5) in the Pralaya.

After going through all the levels of consciousness of the Manvantara and Pralaya, he has absorbed all the powers of the Logos and emerges as the thirteenth, as the new Logos. These twelve levels of consciousness represent the zodiac through which the sun progresses, and the twelve apostles, from among whom Christ emerged as the thirteenth. The twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve months, the twelve hours of the day and night also represent these twelve levels of consciousness. Everything that has to do with the human spirit follows the number twelve – when Jesus was twelve years old, he taught for the first time in the temple. The development of consciousness in humanity progresses with the sun and passes through a new stage when passing through each sign of the zodiac.

Everything that has to do with the human ego follows the number seven. Man develops in his descent and ascent through seven forces. The principle that took up the ego in man and first served him as a power is Kama, and man received Kama from the moon. In the influence of the moon on man, the number (7) dominates. The moon's revolution around the earth takes (4 \times 7) days. The influence of the moon is expressed in the (4 \times 7) days of the month and in the (7) days of the week. Thus we find that mental life is organized according to the influence of the Sun and the zodiac, according to (12 \times 30) days = (360) days, according to (12) months, (12) hours of day and night, (5 \times 12) minutes in an hour, (5 \times 12) seconds in a minute, and so on. We find the life of the ego in Kama, organized according to the influence of the moon and the seven planets in the seven days of the week and the forty-seven days of the month.

The number of the physical and spiritual man in the embodiment is (5), the pentagram; thus the (12) spiritual powers – the solar powers – and the (7) ego powers come together on earth in the pentagram, the number of the Revelation, which finds its completion and fulfillment through the ascent.

The union of the (7) powers of the I with the (5) again symbolizes the higher (12) powers. Just as the (7) powers are expressed in the physical in the pentagram, at the middle of the manvantara, so they are expressed in (5) stages of consciousness during pralaya. There is nothing in the physical world that is not a reflection of the spiritual world.

The entire spiritual world is spread out around us in the physical. There is the revelation of the spiritual.