34. The Bible and Wisdom II

Direct inheritance seems much more vivid than when the blood is mixed. This is still the case today when a son comes from unmixed blood. In the past, this was the case to a high degree; it was not only in the imagination. In the old days, people did not marry outside their tribe. It was considered a great sin to step outside the blood. In all ancient peoples you find sagas and structures where breaking this commandment had to be atoned for. No blood brotherhood existed among ancient peoples, and what was in the blood was a completely different power. In those days, consanguinity brought with it a kind of clairvoyance. Today that has passed, today it would even cause harm. This clairvoyance was expressed in such a way that one not only lived in the imagination, but one had real memories that went back a long way. Just as you remember your youth today, so one remembered events from the life of the father, grandfather and great-grandfather. Today's man does not believe that. At that time, what the father had done was felt as: I have done it. For today, this is a highly wonderful situation. Thus, what was the experiences of the fathers, as in Anzengruber, passed into the memory. You could have felt your father as your self at that time, so that you did not say “I” to yourself, but you took father, mother, grandfather and great-grandfather all together as “I”, you felt the whole generation as “I”. So Adam was everything that people felt for centuries as a common consciousness, patriarchs are a whole generation embracing self-awareness. You have to know that consciousness arose through blood-brotherly memory. This is how we understand those statements in the Bible, and a great wisdom is revealed to us. So I could explain from chapter to chapter how theosophy is based on our religious feeling.