The Occult Truths of Old Myths and Legends

GA 92 — 22 July 1904, Berlin

V. Reincarnation

Today I would like to speak to you about something that is more distantly related to what I have told you before. Although the Theosophical Society has existed for 29 years, it is still the case that the basic teachings are often misunderstood. For example, the doctrine of reincarnation is often understood by those who have perhaps never heard anything other than the name or a few terms, as if we were teaching the transmigration of souls through the most diverse bodies, including animal bodies. In a sense, we are reproached for this.

Reincarnation in animal bodies was taught in Egypt and Greece, and we cannot help but see that it is also found again and again in India as an external teaching. It is true, and it cannot be denied: In the esoteric teachings everywhere it is said that what we today call the human soul has gone through stages of development that are said to have taken place in animal bodies. This seems to be particularly confirmed by a circumstance that is highly interesting on the other hand, namely that by far the greatest number of all fairy tales, legends and fables can actually be traced back to India. If you go through the animal fables and other fairy tales of the most diverse countries in Europe, you will find minor or major changes, but you will see that the basis of many European fairy tales can be found in the old Indian books. This does not surprise us, since the cultures together belong to the fifth root race, which spread from the Gobi Desert across Egypt and Greece to Europe. That the initiates of different nations presented their teachings in the form of fables is not surprising to us. However, we must be clear about the significance of those fables that take place in the animal world. From this point of view, the problem of reincarnation will appear in a new light, which is not yet generally known.

Indian culture has spread throughout the world, even if it is perceived as something foreign today. You may recognize this from the fact that Buddha was accepted among the ranks of Catholic saints early on, under the name Josaphat. This happened many centuries ago. Through John of Damascus, who describes the whole process of Buddha's development in the Legend of the Holy, the inner teaching of Buddha could be incorporated into Catholic Christianity. Only the outer expression of Buddhism was rejected. This should shed light on the tremendous significance of Indian culture for the whole fifth root race.

There is a large collection of many hundreds of fables, the Jataka collection. As these fables have been spread in India over the centuries, Buddha always played a role in them. We are told that Buddha was embodied as this or that animal, how he lived as this or that animal here and there, how he behaved within the animal world and how he remembered it. And then there is usually a moral lesson about how to behave in similar cases. The fable was considered an excellent educational tool for the sons of kings. This pedagogical method may also have been used in Europe.

You all know the story that when you look at the moon, you can see an animal figure in it. In any case, some people do see an animal figure in it; the most common is a hare. The way the hare came to be in the moon is told in different ways. This also goes back to the Indian collection of fables, Jatakam. Once in his many lives, Buddha was a rabbit, he lived in the forest and had three friends. His first friend was a jackal, his second friend a monkey and his third friend an otter. He lived with these three animals and was already a very advanced being at that time, so that he could teach the animals in a variety of ways. He taught them lessons and, above all, he taught them that the holidays should be kept holy and that sacrifices should be made on holidays. He said to them: Above all, you must strive to spare something of what you have for food, and you must give it to those who come to you as supplicants, so that they too may offer the sacrificial offerings in a dignified manner on the holiday. Now a festival day was approaching. One of the animals went to a neighboring area and found that people were gathering fish to eat. After the people had left, the animal thought, “I can take some of that.” But then it thought, “I want to protect myself,” and said, “Does anyone own this food?” Since no one answered, it took some of the food. The second animal did the same, and then the third animal. Now the predicted days of the festivals arrived. Then the god Indra disguised himself as a Brahmin and went to visit the various animals. Indra came to the first animal and asked: “Can't you give me some food for the sacrifice?” The animal told how it had found the food. Indra said: “I will come back and take some of it then.” He then went to the second and third animals in the same way. The hare, however, had eaten some grass and said to himself: “If someone comes to me now to ask me for something, I cannot give him grass; I will offer myself as food.” When Indra came to him and asked him for a gift, the hare said: “I have nothing to give you, but I offer myself to you as food. Make a fire, you will be able to roast me and then eat me. I only ask that none of the insects that may be found with me perish in the process.” Indra saw from this how advanced the hare was in moral terms and caused the fire to do it no harm, so that the hare remained completely unharmed. When the hare saw Indra standing before him, he said: “O wise Indra, stay here, and we will proclaim the teaching together.” And the god Indra replied: “Yes, we will proclaim it so that it can never be extinguished again for the duration of the world.” And he took a pen and drew a hare on the moon, which is now visible for the duration of the world.

So this is the fable of Buddha, who is transported to the animal world as a hare and who completely sacrifices himself. This fable is entirely designed to dig itself deeply into the minds of those to whom it is told, in order to prepare them for a later incarnation, so that the souls become mature to seek the truth themselves. That was the whole purpose of the fables. Originally, fables were not told as they are today, where it is not even known why an animal acts in a certain way. Rather, it was counted on the fact that during the telling, people experienced certain images in their minds, which had an effect on the causal body and in the next life were absorbed as a sense of truth. Fables were not told to give people aesthetic pleasure, but to prepare the souls so that when they are reborn after many years, they are prepared to receive the truth more easily. If such a fable is to have this meaning, if it is to create the spiritual form, as it were, so that the pure truth can be absorbed later, then it must have pure truth in itself, otherwise the vibrations in the astral and causal bodies of people are not aroused in such a way that they are able to absorb the real truth later. But there is such an extraordinarily deep meaning in this fable, and it is so finely poetically shaped that we would have to be very surprised at the ancient Rishis if we did not know that they were men taught by Devas. And we would also be amazed if we did not know that this fable is connected with a fundamental fact, namely with the relationship of the human soul to all other beings in nature. Now consider how the whole process of our life on earth has unfolded. We are now in the fourth round, preceded by the third, second and first rounds. In the first round, we humans were all already present, but not in the form in which we are present now. We had a significantly different form. We came over from an earlier planet as Pitris and began our earthly journey in the first round. We Pitris were able to collaborate in the creation of the forms of the mineral kingdom that were created at that time. The mineral kingdom looked very different then than it does now; there were no crystalline forms; all physical substances were in a mineral-elemental state, including what became the bodies of human, animal and plant beings. In this first round, plants, animals and humans did not yet live – if we consider the external form – everything lived there spiritually, but not yet in form. The Pitris prepared the forms that were created in the first round and that then became the bone system as a mineral substructure.

In the second round, the Pitris prepared their plant substructure. Everything that was later modeled into the digestive and respiratory systems was not yet designed as it is today, but it was prepared as a foundation. In addition, the mineral kingdom continued to develop as a kind of independent being. An independent mineral kingdom arose from the fact that not everything that had been formed in one round was suitable for being included in the higher level of plants. That was separated. Now I ask you to recognize the process in its full significance. In the old days, human beings formed their plant substructure. If, during the second round, we had only the substances that were formed during the first round, we would never have achieved a higher level of plant cultivation. During the second round, we, as human Pitris, carried out an eminently selfish act. We said to ourselves, so to speak, we want to take out of the porridge what we can use, and leave out what is of no use for our further development. We have thrown the mineral kingdom out of us in the Pitri culture. We have developed ourselves higher at the expense of the mineral kingdom.

In the third round, we then rejected the plant kingdom as a separate entity. Only then did plants emerge. We absorbed everything we needed to build our systems in such a way that we could build up kama and get a blood circulation. In doing so, we rose to the animal kingdom and pushed other beings down into the plant kingdom. In the third round, we fought our way into the animal kingdom. However, the animal kingdom at that time cannot be compared to any form that exists today.

During the fourth round, we developed into human beings by taking what we needed from the animal kingdom in a very selfish way. We sorted out the rest, and that became today's animal kingdom.

So during the first round, we first developed as mineral beings. During the second round we separated the mineral kingdom, during the third round the plant kingdom and during the fourth round the animal kingdom. What are the minerals, the plants and the animals? The minerals, the plants and the animals are the developmental elements of our nature that were once connected to us but have since been separated from us. We have given everything we do not need to the earth so that it can develop independently. If we survey the animal kingdom, we see that it is the same thing that was externalized by us and that was still one with us in the third round. Now the occultist says: What you see today in the animal kingdom is not something separate from you; it is something that was still in you and ruled in you in the third round. In the course of the fourth round you have thrown it out of you. The anger of the jackal, the cunning of the fox are your kamic elements. The fox was created from the cunning that was in you, the anger that you had made the jackal. So the whole animal kingdom is your own kamaworld. You yourself have formed and created the animal world. What has become physical in the animal kingdom today were the processes within your own kamabody during the third round. Look at the animals and you look at your own past. We have reached these levels by leaving others behind us. So now we are also buying a higher level of perfection by repelling others. Every ascetic buys his own perfection by plunging another human being into all the more blind sensual rage. This is an eternal necessity.

The whole development is always moving forward and upward. The mineral kingdom, which was formed during the first round, developed independently during the second and third rounds and took on the forms we know today during the fourth round. It will no longer exist in the fifth round; it will scatter at the end of the fourth round, it will fall away like the withered bark of a tree. In the next round, the fifth, the plant kingdom will be the lowest, in the following round the animal kingdom, and in the seventh round only man will remain.

The minerals have reached the highest level of development as forms. The substance of the minerals is completely indifferent. Through the transformation of the scattered forms, it will take on a different structure and form the archetype for a new world system. At the end of the seventh round, the human kingdom will have dissolved. That is the case when the substance has undergone its normal development. We have bought each kingdom by separating it from the one before. In order for human beings to become like this, they had to let the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom out of themselves through repulsion. We are now a little beyond the middle of a kalpa - a world age. The development in the second half consists in our having to take back into ourselves what we previously expelled and to process it on higher levels. This must be done with the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom and the mineral kingdom. In the animal kingdom, we have spread out our passions like in a large tableau.

We can transfer an astral process that takes place within us to the animal kingdom when we tell fables. We can thus narrate actions in the animal kingdom and we narrate our own passions. And when we narrate the conquest of a passion in the animal, we narrate the conquest of a passion in ourselves. The occultist is clear about the fact that by narrating his own body, he is narrating what he himself has formed, because we only formed our bodies during the fourth round. We now live in Kama, and the struggle of Kama with Manas is now presented to us. If we look up to higher stages, we prepare an ethical higher development. If our ideas are linked to lower Kama stages, then they are intimately related to the animal stages of the third round.

The occultist says: the human world is Maya. I tell the story much more truthfully when I omit the deceptive human bodies and tell the story in figures from the animal world. Man owes the physical body to the macrocosmic development as a whole. But the human being has remained behind in the overall development. If you do something that can no longer be undone, then your body does not correspond to what you are. The macrocosm would demand that the human being be on a higher level. That which overcomes the body to such an extent that it completely corresponds to the macrocosmic image is represented by the hare, which sacrifices the physical body in the outer fire and develops on the other side.