Some Necessary Points of View
WE SHALL NEXT consider the development of man and
of the entities connected with him in the time which preceded the
“earthly period.” For when man began to unite his destiny
with the planet one calls “earth,” he had already passed
through a series of developmental steps in the course of which he had
prepared himself for earthly existence, as it were. One must
distinguish three such steps, which are designated as three
planetary developmental stages. The names used in mystery science
for these stages are the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods. It will become
apparent that these designations at first have nothing to do
with the heavenly bodies of today which bear these names in physical
astronomy, although in a broader sense a relationship to them
exists, which is known to the advanced mystic.
One will sometimes say that man inhabited other
planets before he appeared upon earth. But under these “other
planets” one must only understand earlier developmental
conditions of the earth itself and of its inhabitants. Before it
became “earth,” the earth with all the beings which
belong to it passed through the three conditions of the Saturn, Sun,
and Moon existence. Saturn Sun, and Moon are, as it were, the three
incarnations of the earth in primeval times. What in this connection
is called Saturn, Sun, and Moon no more exists today as a physical
planet than the previous physical incarnations of a human being
continue to exist alongside his present one.
This “planetary development” of man
and of the other beings belonging to earth will form the subject of
the following discussions “From the Akasha Chronicle.” By
this we do not wish to say that the three conditions were not
preceded by others. But everything which precedes these three is lost
in a darkness which for the present the research of mystery science
cannot illuminate. For this research is not based on speculation, on
a day dreaming in terms of mere concepts, but on actual spiritual
experience. As our physical eye can see outdoors only as far as a
certain boundary line and cannot look beyond the horizon, so the
“spiritual eye” can look only as far as a certain point
in time. Mystery science is based on experience and is content to
remain within this experience. Only in a conceptual splitting of
hairs will one want to find out what was “at the very
beginning” of the world, or “why God really created the
world.” For the scientist of the spirit it is rather a matter
of realizing that at a certain stage of cognition one no longer poses
such questions. Everything man needs for the fulfillment of his
destiny on our planet is revealed to him within spiritual
experience. The one who patiently works his way into the
experiences of scientists of the spirit will see that within
spiritual experience man can obtain full satisfaction concerning all
those questions which are vital to him. In the following essays for
example, one will see how completely the question concerning the
“origin of evil” is resolved, as well as much else which
man must desire to know.
We by no means intend to imply that man can
never receive enlightenment concerning questions about the
“origin of the world” and similar matters. He can.
But in order to be able to be enlightened, he must first absorb the
knowledge revealed within more proximate spiritual experience.
He then comes to realize that he must ask these questions in a
different manner than heretofore.
The more deeply one works his way into true
mystery science, the more modest he becomes. Only then does he
realize how one must very gradually make oneself ready and worthy for
certain insight. Pride and arrogance finally become names for human
qualities which no longer make sense at a certain level of cognition.
When one has understood a little, he sees how immeasurably long is
the road which lies ahead of him. Through knowledge one gains insight
into “how little one knows.” He also acquires a feeling
for the immense responsibility he assumes when he speaks of
supersensible cognition. But mankind cannot live without the latter.
However, he who promulgates such knowledge needs modesty and true
self-criticism, an unshakable striving for self-knowledge and the
utmost caution.
Such remarks are necessary here, since now the
ascent toward even higher knowledge than is to be found in the
preceding sections of the “Akasha Chronicle,” is to be
undertaken.
To the vistas which in the following essays will
be opened toward the past of man, others will be added upon the
future. For the future can be revealed to true spiritual
cognition, if only to the extent to which this is necessary for man
in order that he can fulfill his destiny. The one who will have
nothing to do with mystery science and from the judgment-seat of his
prejudices, simply consigns everything coming from that quarter to
the realm of fantasy and dreams — he will understand this
relationship to the future least of all. Yet a simple logical
consideration could make clear what is in question here. But such
logical considerations are accepted only when they coincide with the
preconceptions of men. Prejudices are mighty enemies of logic.
If sulphur, oxygen, and hydrogen are brought
together under certain definite conditions, sulphuric acid must be
produced, according to an inevitable law. The student of chemistry
can predict what must happen when these three elements come
into contact with one another under given conditions. Thus, such a
student of chemistry is a prophet in the limited field of the
material world. His prophecy could only prove false if the laws of
nature were suddenly to change. Now the scientist of the spirit
investigates spiritual laws in which the physicist or the chemist
investigates material laws. He does this in the manner and with the
exactness which are requisite in the spiritual field. However, the
development of mankind depends on these great spiritual laws. Just as
little as oxygen, hydrogen, and sulphur will combine at some future
time in a manner contrary to laws of nature, so little will anything
occur in the spiritual life which is contrary to spiritual laws. The
one who knows these spiritual laws can look into the orderliness
of the future.
The use of precisely this comparison for the
prophetic prediction of the coming destinies of mankind is
intentional here, because true mystery science really understands
this prediction in just this sense. For the one who forms a clear
idea of this conviction of occultism, the objection that any human
freedom is made impossible because events can be predicted in a
certain sense, becomes void. That can be predicted which is in
accordance with a law. But the will is not determined by a
law. Just as it is certain that in each case oxygen, hydrogen,
and sulphur are combined into sulphuric acid only according to a
definite law, just so is it equally certain that the establishing of
the conditions under which the law will act, can depend on the human
will. Thus it will be with the great world events and human destinies
of the future. As a scientist of the spirit, one foresees them,
although they are to be brought about only by human choice. He
foresees what is accomplished by the freedom of man. The following
essays will show that this is possible.
However, one must be clear about one
essential difference between the prediction of events through
physical science and that through spiritual cognition. Physical
science is based on the insights of the understanding, and therefore
its prophecy is only based on the intellect, which has to rely on
judgments, deductions, combinations, and so forth. Prophecy
through spiritual cognition, on the contrary, proceeds from an
actual higher seeing or perceiving. The scientist of
the spirit must strictly avoid even representing anything to himself
which is based on mere reflecting, combining, speculating, and so
forth. Here he must practice the most far-reaching renunciation and
be quite clear that all speculating, intellectual philosophizing, and
so forth is a hindrance to true seeing. These activities still belong
entirely to the lower nature of man, and truly higher cognition
begins only when this nature raises itself to the higher nature in
man. Here nothing is really said against these activities which are
not only wholly justified in their field, but are there the
only justified ones. In itself, a thing is neither higher nor
lower; it is higher or lower only in relation to something else. What
is high in one respect can be very low in another.
However, what must be understood through
seeing, cannot be understood through mere reflection or
through even the most magnificent combinations of the intellect. A
person may be ever so “ingenious” in the usual sense of
the word, but this “ingenuity” will avail him absolutely
nothing with respect to the cognition of supersensible truths. He
must even renounce it, and abandon himself solely to the higher
seeing. Then he will perceive things without his
“ingenious” reflecting, just as he perceives the flowers
in the fields without further reflection. It does not help one to
reflect about the appearance of a meadow; all intellect is powerless
there. The same is true of the seeing into higher worlds.
What can be said prophetically in this way about
the future of man is the basis for all ideals which have a
real, practical significance. If they are to have value,
ideals must be rooted as deeply in the spiritual world as are natural
laws in the natural world. Laws of development must be such true
ideals. Otherwise they spring from a gushing enthusiasm and a fantasy
which are valueless, and can never be fulfilled. In the broadest
sense, all great ideals of world history have proceeded from clear
cognition. For, in the final analysis, all these great ideals
originate with the great scientists of the spirit or initiates, and
those lesser ones who collaborate in the development of humanity
direct themselves either consciously or — most often —
unconsciously in accordance with the instructions of the
spiritual scientists. Everything unconscious must finally have its
origin in something conscious. The bricklayer who works on a house
“unconsciously,” directs himself according to matters of
which others are conscious who have determined the place where the
house is to be built, the style in which it is to be erected, and so
forth. But this determining of place and style is based on something
of which the determiners remain unconscious, but of which others are
or were conscious. An artist, for example, knows why a
particular style requires a straight line here, a curved line there,
and so forth. The one who uses this style for his house perhaps does
not become conscious of this “why.”
This is also the case with the great events in the
development of the world and of mankind. Behind those who work in a
certain field stand higher, more conscious workers, and thus the
scale of consciousness goes up and down.
Behind the general mass of men stand the
inventors, artists, scientists, and so forth. Behind them stand the
initiates of mystery science, and behind them stand superhuman
beings. The development of the world and of mankind becomes
comprehensible only if one realizes that ordinary human consciousness
is but one form of consciousness, and that there are
higher and lower forms. But here too one must not
misapply the expressions “higher” and
“lower.” They have a significance only in relation to the
point where one happens to be standing. It is no different with this
than with “right and left.” When one stands at a certain
place, some objects are “right” or “left” of
him. If one moves a little to the “right,” objects which
before were on the right, are now on the left. The same is true of
the levels of consciousness which lie “higher” or
“lower” than ordinary human consciousness. When man
himself develops more highly, his relations to the other levels of
consciousness change. But these changes are connected with his
development. It is therefore important to indicate such other levels
of consciousness here by means of examples.
The beehive or that magnificent commonwealth
embodied in an ant hill provide bases of such an indication. The
collaboration of the various kinds of insects (females, males,
workers) proceeds in a completely systematic fashion. The
distribution of tasks among the several categories can only be
described as an expression of true wisdom. What happens here is just
as much the result of a consciousness as the institutions of man in
the physical world (technology, art, state, and so forth) are an
effect of his consciousness. However, the consciousness at the base
of the beehive or the ant society is not to be found in the same
physical world in which the ordinary human consciousness exists. In
order to describe the situation, one can express oneself somewhat as
follows. One finds man in the physical world. His physical organs,
his whole structure are such that at first one looks for his
consciousness also in this physical world. It is otherwise with the
beehive or the ant hill. Here it would be quite wrong to confine
oneself to the physical world with respect to the consciousness in
question, as was done in the case of man. No, here one must say that
to find the ordering principle of the beehive or the ant hill, one
cannot confine oneself to the world where the bees or ants live in
their physical bodies. In this case, the “conscious mind”
must be sought directly in another world. The same conscious mind
which in man lives in the physical world, in the case of these animal
colonies must be sought in a supersensible world. If with his
consciousness man could raise himself into this supersensible world,
he would be able to greet the “ant or bee spirit” there
in full consciousness as his sister being. The seer can actually
do this. Thus, in the examples given above, we are confronted by
beings which are conscious in other worlds and which reach into the
physical world only through their physical organs — the
individual bees and ants. It is quite possible that a consciousness
like that of the beehive or of the ant hill existed in the physical
world in earlier periods of its development, as that of man does now,
but then raised itself and left behind in the physical world only its
acting organs, that is, the individual ants and bees. Such a course
of development will actually take place in the future with respect to
man. In a certain manner it has already taken place among the seers
in the present. That the consciousness of contemporary man functions
in the physical world is due to the fact that its physical particles
— the molecules of brain and nerves — exist in a quite
definite relation with one another. What has been discussed in
greater detail in another connection in my book. Wie erlangt man
Erkentnisse der hoheren Welten? (How Does One Attain Knowledge of
Higher Worlds?) will also be indicated briefly here. In the course of
the higher development of man the ordinary connection of the brain
molecules is dissolved. They are then connected more
“loosely,” so that the brain of a seer can really be
compared with an ant hill in a certain respect, although the
segmentation is not demonstrable anatomically. In different
activities of the world these processes occur in quite different
ways. At a time long past, the individual molecules of the ant hill
— that is, the ants themselves — were firmly connected,
just as are the molecules of the human brain today. At that time, the
consciousness corresponding to them was in the physical world, as
that of man is today. When human consciousness will travel into
“higher” worlds in the future, the connection between the
material parts in the physical world will be as loose as is that
between the individual ants today. What in time will occur physically
in all men, already takes place today in the brain of the
clairvoyant, but no instrument of the world of the senses is
sufficiently delicate to show the loosening which comes about through
this anticipatory development. Just as among the bees three
categories, queens, drones, workers, are formed, so three categories
of molecules are formed in the “seer brain,” molecules
which are actually individual, living beings, brought into conscious
collaboration by the consciousness of the seer, which is in a higher
world.
Another level of consciousness is represented by
what one usually calls the folk- or racial spirit, without
representing anything very definite to oneself by this. For the
scientist of the spirit, a consciousness also exists at the base of
the common and wise influences which appear in the communal life of
the members of a people or of a race. Through occult research, one
finds this consciousness to be in another world, just as was the case
with the consciousness of a beehive or of an ant hill. However, there
are no organs for this “folk” or “racial
consciousness” in the physical world; rather these organs are
to be found only in the so-called astral world. As the consciousness
of the beehive works through the physical bees, so the
folk-consciousness works by means of the astral bodies of the human
beings belonging to a people. In these “folk and racial
spirits” one is therefore confronted with kinds of entities
quite different from those in man or in the beehive. Many more
examples would have to be given in order to show clearly how
subordinate and superior entities exist in relation to man. But it is
hoped that what has been given will be sufficient to introduce the
avenues of human development described in the following chapters. For
the development of man himself can only be understood when one
considers that he develops together with beings whose consciousness
exists in other worlds than his own. What happens in his world is
also dependent on these beings who are connected with other levels of
consciousness, and therefore can be understood only in relation to
this fact.
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