Transition of the Fourth into the Fifth Root
Race
IN THIS CHAPTER we shall learn about the
transition of the fourth, the Atlantean root race, into the fifth,
the Aryan, to which contemporary civilized mankind belongs. Only he
will understand it aright who can steep himself in the idea of
development to its full extent and meaning. Everything which
man perceives around him is in process of development. In this sense,
the use of thought, which is characteristic of the men of our
fifth root race, had first to develop. It is this root race in
particular which slowly and gradually brings the faculty of thought
to maturity. In his thought, man decides upon something, and then
executes it as the consequence of his own thought. This ability was
only in preparation among the Atlanteans. It was not their own
thoughts, but those which flowed into them from entities of a higher
kind, that influenced their will. Thus, in a manner of speaking,
their will was directed from outside.
The one who familiarizes himself with the thought
of this development of the human being and learns to admit that man
— as earthly man — was a being of a quite different kind
in prehistory, will also be able to rise to a conception of the
totally different entities which are spoken of here. The development
to be described required enormously long periods of time.
What has previously been said about the fourth
root race, the Atlanteans, refers to the great bulk of mankind. But
they followed leaders whose abilities towered far above theirs. The
wisdom these leaders possessed and the powers at their command were
not to be attained by any earthly education. They had been imparted
to them by higher beings which did not belong directly to earth.
Therefore it was only natural that the great mass of men felt their
leaders to be beings of a higher kind, to be “messengers”
of the gods. For what these leaders knew and could do would not have
been attainable by human sense organs and by human reason. They were
venerated as “divine messengers,” and men received
their orders, their commandments, and also their instruction. It was
by beings of this kind that mankind was instructed in the sciences,
in the arts, and in the making of tools. Such “divine
messengers” either directed the communities themselves or
instructed men who were sufficiently advanced in the art of
government. It was said of these leaders that they “communicate
with the gods” and were initiated by the gods themselves into
the laws according to which mankind had to develop. This was true. In
places about which the average people knew nothing, this initiation,
this communication with the gods, actually took place. These places
of initiation were called temples of the mysteries. From them the
human race was directed.
What took place in the temples of the mysteries
was therefore incomprehensible to the people. Equally little did the
latter understand the intentions of their great leaders. After all,
the people could grasp with their senses only what happened directly
upon earth, not what was revealed from higher worlds for the welfare
of earth. Therefore the teachings of the leaders had to be expressed
in a form unlike communications about earthly events. The language
the gods spoke with their messengers in the mysteries was not
earthly, and neither were the shapes in which these gods revealed
themselves. The higher spirits appeared to their messengers “in
fiery clouds” in order to tell them how they were to lead men.
Only man can appear in human form; entities whose capacities tower
above the human must reveal themselves in shapes which are not to be
found on earth.
Because they themselves were the most perfect
among their human brothers, the “divine messengers” could
receive these revelations. In earlier stages they had already gone
through what the majority of men still had to experience. They
belonged among their fellow humans only in a certain respect. They
could assume human form. But their spiritual-mental qualities were of
a superhuman kind. Thus they were divine-human hybrid beings. One can
also describe them as higher spirits who assumed human bodies in
order to help mankind forward on their earthly path. The real home of
these beings was not on earth.
These divine-human beings led men, without being
able to inform them of the principles by which they directed them.
For until the fifth subrace of the Atlanteans, the Primal Semites,
men had absolutely no capacities for understanding these principles.
The faculty of thought, which developed in this subrace, was such a
capacity. But this evolved slowly and gradually. Even the last
sub-races of the Atlanteans could understand very little of the
principles of their divine leaders. They began, at first quite
imperfectly, to have a presentiment of such principles.
Therefore their thoughts and also the laws which we have mentioned
among their governmental institutions, were guessed at rather than
clearly thought out.
The principal leader of the fifth Atlantean
subrace gradually prepared it so that in later times, after the
decline of the Atlantean way of life, it could begin a new one which
was to be wholly directed by the faculty of thought.
One must realize that at the end of the Atlantean
period there existed three groups of man-like beings: 1. The
above-mentioned “divine messengers,” who in their
development were far ahead of the great mass of the people, and who
taught divine wisdom and accomplished divine deeds. 2. The great mass
of humanity, among which the faculty of thought was in a dull
condition, although they possessed natural abilities which modern men
have lost. 3. A small group of those who were developing the faculty
of thought. While they gradually lost the natural abilities of the
Atlanteans through this process, they were advancing to the stage
where they could grasp the principles of the “divine
messengers” with their thoughts.
The second group of human beings was doomed to
gradual extinction. The third however could be trained by a being of
the first kind to take its direction into its own hands.
From this third group the above-mentioned
principal leader, whom occult literature designates as Manu,
selected the ablest in order to cause a new humanity to emerge from
them. These most capable ones existed in the fifth subrace. The
faculty of the sixth and seventh sub-races had already gone astray in
a certain sense and was not fit for further development.
The best qualities of the best had to be
developed. This was accomplished by the leader through the isolation
of the selected ones in a certain place on earth — in inner
Asia — where they were freed from any influence of those who
remained behind or of those who had gone astray.
The task which the leader imposed upon himself was
to bring his followers to the point where, in their own soul, with
their own faculty of thought, they could grasp the principles
according to which they had hitherto been directed in a way vaguely
sensed, but not clearly recognized by them. Men were to
recognize the divine forces which they had unconsciously
followed. Hitherto the gods had led men through their messengers; now
men were to know about these divine entities. They were to
learn to consider themselves as the implementing organs of
divine providence.
The isolated group thus faced an important
decision. The divine leader was in their midst, in human form. From
such divine messengers men had previously received instructions and
orders as to what they were or were not to do. Human beings had been
instructed in the sciences which dealt with what they could perceive
through the senses. Men had vaguely sensed a divine control of the
world, had felt it in their own actions, but they had not known
anything of it clearly.
Now their leader spoke to them in a completely new
way. He taught them that invisible powers directed what confronted
them visibly, and that they themselves were servants of these
invisible powers, that they had to fulfill the laws of these
invisible powers with their thoughts. Men heard of the
supernatural-divine. They heard that the invisible spiritual was the
creator and preserver of the visible physical. Hitherto they had
looked up to their visible divine messengers, to the superhuman
initiates, and through the latter was communicated what was and was
not to be done. But now they were considered worthy of having the
divine messenger speak to them of the gods themselves. Mighty were
the words which again and again he impressed upon his followers:
“Until now you have seen those who led you: but there are
higher leaders whom you do not see. It is these leaders to
whom you are subject. You shall carry out the orders of the god whom
you do not see; and you shall obey one of whom you can make
no image to yourselves.” Thus did the new and highest
commandment come from the mouth of the great leader, prescribing the
veneration of a god whom no sensory-visible image could resemble, and
therefore of whom none was to be made. Of this great fundamental
commandment of the fifth human root race, the well-known commandment
which follows is an echo: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any
graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven
above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under
the earth . . . ” (Exodus 20:4).
The principal leader, Manu, was assisted by other
divine messengers who executed his intentions for particular branches
of life and worked on the development of the new race. For it was a
matter of arranging all of life according to the new conception of a
divine administration of the world. Everywhere the thoughts of men
were to be directed from the visible to the invisible. Life is
determined by the forces of nature. The course of human life depends
on day and night, on winter and summer, on sunshine and rain. How
these influential visible events are connected with the invisible,
divine powers and how man was to behave in order to arrange his life
in accordance with these invisible powers, was shown to him. All
knowledge and all labor was to be pursued in this sense. In the
course of the stars and of the weather, man was to see divine
decrees, the emanation of divine wisdom. Astronomy and meteorology
were taught with this idea. Man was to arrange his labor, his moral
life in such a way that they would correspond to the wise laws of the
divine. Life was ordered according to divine commandments,
just as the divine thoughts were explored in the course of the
stars and in the changes of the weather. Man was to bring his works
into harmony with the dispensations of the gods through
sacrificial acts.
It was the intention of Manu to direct
everything in human life toward the higher worlds. All
human activities, all institutions were to bear a religious
character. Through this, Manu wanted to initiate the real task
imposed upon the fifth root race. This race was to learn to direct
itself by its own thoughts. But such a self-determination can only
lead to good if man also places himself at the service of the higher
powers. Man should use his faculty of thought, but this faculty of
thought should be sanctified by being devoted to the divine.
One can only understand completely what happened
at that time if one knows that the development of the faculty of
thought, beginning with the fifth subrace of the Atlanteans, also
entailed something else. From a certain quarter men had come into
possession of knowledge and of arts, which were not
immediately connected with what the above-mentioned Manu had
to consider as his true task. This knowledge and these arts
were at first devoid of religious character. They came to man in such
a way that he could think of nothing other than to place them at the
service of self-interest, of his personal needs*
. . . To such knowledge belongs for example that of the use of
fire in human activities. In the first Atlantean time man did
not use fire since the life force was available for his service. But
with the passage of time he was less and less in a position to make
use of this force, hence he had to learn to make tools, utensils from
so-called lifeless objects. He employed fire for this purpose.
Similar conditions prevailed with respect to other natural forces.
Thus man learned to make use of such natural forces without being
conscious of their divine origin. So it was meant to be. Man was not
to be forced by anything to relate these things which served
his faculty of thought to the divine order of the world. Rather was
he to do this voluntarily in his thoughts. It was the intention of
Manu to bring men to the point where, independently, out of an inner
need, they brought such things into a relation with the higher order
of the world. Men could choose whether they wanted to use the
insight they had attained purely in a spirit of personal
self-interest or in the religious service of a higher world.
If man was previously forced to consider himself
as a link in the divine government of the world, by which for
example, the domination over the life force was given to him without
his having to use the faculty of thought, he could now employ the
natural forces without directing his thoughts to the divine.
Not all men whom Manu had gathered around him were
equal to this decision, but only a few of them. It was from this few
that Manu could really form the germ of the new race. He retired with
them in order to develop them further, while the others mingled with
the rest of mankind. From this small number of men who finally
gathered around Manu, everything is descended which up to the
present, forms the true germs of progress of the fifth root race. For
this reason also, two characteristics run through the entire
development of this fifth root race. One of these characteristics is
peculiar to those men who are animated by higher ideas, who regard
themselves as children of a divine universal power; the other belongs
to those who put everything at the service of personal interests, of
egotism.
The small following remained gathered around Manu
until it was sufficiently fortified to act in the new spirit, and
until its members could go out to bring this new spirit to the rest
of mankind, which remained from the earlier races. It is natural that
this new spirit assumed a different character among the various
peoples, according to how they themselves had developed in different
fields. The old remaining characteristics blended with what the
messengers of Manu carried to the various parts of the world. Thus a
variety of new cultures and civilizations came into being.
The ablest personalities from the circle around
Manu were selected for a gradual direct initiation into his divine
wisdom, so that they could become the teachers of the others. A new
kind of initiate thus was added to the old divine messengers. It
consisted of those who had developed their faculty of thought in an
earthly manner just as their fellow-men had done. The earlier divine
messengers — and also Manu — had not done this. Their
development belonged to higher worlds. They introduced their higher
wisdom into earthly conditions. What they gave to mankind was a
“gift from above.” Before the middle of the Atlantean
period men had not reached the point where by their own powers they
could grasp what the divine decrees were. Now — at the
time indicated — they were to attain this point. Earthly
thinking was to elevate itself to the concept of the divine. The
human initiates united themselves with the divine. This represents an
important revolution in the development of the human race. The first
Atlanteans did not as yet have a choice as to whether or not they
would consider their leaders to be divine messengers. For what the
latter accomplished imposed itself as the deed of higher worlds. It
bore the stamp of a divine origin. Thus the messengers of the
Atlantean period were entities sanctified by their power, surrounded
by the splendor which this power conferred upon them. From an
external point of view, the human initiates of later times are men
among men. But they remain in relation with the higher worlds, and
the revelations and manifestations of the divine messengers come to
them. Only exceptionally, when a higher necessity arises, do they
make use of certain powers which are conferred upon them from above.
Then they accomplish deeds which men cannot explain by the laws they
know and which therefore they rightly regard as miracles.
But in all this the higher intention is to put
mankind on its own feet, fully to develop its faculty of thought.
Today the human initiates are the mediators between the people and
the higher powers, and only initiation can make one capable of
communication with the divine messengers.
The human initiates, the sacred teachers, became
leaders of the rest of mankind in the beginning of the fifth root
race. The great priest kings of prehistory, who are not spoken of in
history, but rather in the world of legend, belong among these
initiates. The higher divine messengers retired from the earth more
and more, and left the leadership to these human initiates, whom
however they assisted in word and deed. Were this not so, man would
never attain free use of his faculty of thought. The world is under
divine direction, but man is not to be forced to admit this; he is to
realize and to understand it by free reflection. When he reaches this
point, the initiates will gradually divulge their secrets to him. But
this cannot happen all at once. The whole development of the fifth
root race is a slow road to this goal. At first Manu himself led his
following like children. Then the leadership was gradually
transferred to the human initiates. Today progress still consists in
a mixture of the conscious and unconscious acting and thinking of
men. Only at the end of the fifth root race, when throughout the
sixth and seventh sub-races a sufficiently great number of men are
capable of knowledge, will the greatest among the initiates be able
to reveal himself to them openly. Then this human
initiate will be able to assume the principal leadership just as Manu
did at the end of the fourth root race. Thus the education of the
fifth root race consists in this, that a greater part of humanity
will become able freely to follow a human Manu as the germinal race
of this fifth root race followed the divine one.
*For the present it is not permitted to make
public communications about the origin of this knowledge and
these arts. A passage from the Akasha Chronicle must
therefore be omitted here.
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