Lecture II

In the next form which will evolve out of this primeval flowing substance, we have to recognise that which, counting from above, we know as the second principle of man, which we call Life-Spirit: or, if we like to use an Eastern expression, we may call Budhi. Our teaching also tells us that man will only develop Budhi in normal life at a future stage; but as a super-human spiritual form-principle it has always existed among other entities, and, inasmuch as it always existed, it was the first form differentiated from the primeval flowing substance. According to the Sankhya philosophy the super-psychic existence of Budhi arose from the first form of substantial existence. Now if we consider the further evolution of the substantial principle, we meet as a third form that which the Sankhya philosophy calls Ahamkara. Whereas Budhi stands, so to speak, on the borders of the principle of differentiation and merely hints at a certain individualisation, the form of Ahamkara appears as completely differentiated already so that when we speak of Ahamkara we must imagine Budhi as organised into independent, real, substantial forms, which then exist in the world individually. If we want to obtain a picture of this evolution we must imagine an equally distributed mass of water as the substantial primeval principle; then imagine it welling up so that separate forms emerge, but not breaking away as fully formed drops, forms which rise like little mounts of water from the common substance and yet have their basis in the common primeval flow. We should then have Budhi; and inasmuch as these water-mounts detach themselves into drops, into independent globes, in these we have the form of Ahamkara. Through a certain thickening of this Ahamkara, of the already individualised form of each separate soul-form, there then arises what we describe as Manas.