Germanic and Indian Secret Doctrines
Berlin, 8th March 1906
Many a time I have already pointed here to the fact that it is
a prejudice if one declares the present theosophical movement
in the strict sense of the word as a Buddhist or neo-Buddhist
one. Theosophy or spiritual science does not want to implant a
foreign worldview from without, but to show how also within our
European culture deeper teachings of wisdom form the basis of
the striving of humanity that express themselves most
distinctly. Next time I venture to show how in a newer epoch of
the German spiritual life theosophical feeling and thinking
were expressed in a quite extraordinary measure, I would like
to say, in its intellectual purity around the turn of the 18th
and 19th centuries. Today, however, I would like to show
— as far as I can press it in a single talk — how
within the Germanic-German folk culture an impact exists which
goes back to views that we meet in theosophy.
A
careful comparison between the basis of the European religious
and worldview with that which has been expressed over there in
the East in such a peculiar, spiritual way will show us how
little the misunderstanding is justified that the theosophical
spiritual current wanted to force something completely strange
on the European life. We have to characterise — if we
want to carry out this comparison really — the basic view
of the so-called theosophical worldview with a few words at
least. If only just, let us once visualise the often-discussed
basic view of the theosophical or spiritual-scientific
worldview.
The
human being is, according to this theosophical worldview, at
first a being who has a double nature as basis, namely a
transient so-called cover part, an external member of his
nature, and an imperishable everlasting essence. The external
cover is as it were the sheath or the tool of the human being
with which his immortal essence works and is active in this
world. This cover is clearly divided into four members. The
first member is the so-called physical body, the body that one
can see with the eyes and perceive with the other senses. The
second member is the so-called etheric body. Life lives in this
body. It has the same figure approximately as the physical
body, but it forms the basis of the physical body as the bearer
of the life principle. The third member is the bearer of the
feelings, of joy and sorrow, of the instincts and passions. We
call it the astral body, because the forces, which are
effective in it, prove to be to someone who can deeper look
into the world the forces that live outdoors in the starry
heaven, in the astral, and are essential. We call the fourth
member the real human ego. We call it in such a way because the
human being has the three other members, physical body, etheric
body, and astral body in common with the remaining beings,
which are round him.
Every mineral has a physical body. The plant has a physical
body and etheric body, the animal has a physical body, etheric
body, and astral body. The human being besides has a fourth
member to live within this world that enables him to say to
himself “I.” This ego is the final member, the
final point of the development of the three above-mentioned
bodies that they have striven for since primeval times. It
lives in the three covers, which surround it not like
onionskins, but they interact regularly, penetrate each other
powerfully, and take shape. At the same time, the ego is the
bearer of a higher tripartite nature we call spirit self, life
spirit, and spirit man best of all. These members are today
included only as gifts in the majority of the human beings. The
Eastern mysticism calls the spirit self “manas,”
the life spirit “buddhi,” and the highest,
innermost member “atman.” It is the real spirit of
the human being, the innermost core, the immortal within the
human nature. With it, we have seven members of the human
nature as we have seven tones of the musical scale or seven
colours in the rainbow.
The
lower members are a confluence, an essence of the three realms,
which surround us: the mineral, plant and animal realms. The
higher members, manas, buddhi, and atman are not to be
perceived by the senses, they are of divine nature. The human
being has these members also in common with higher realms of
existence, as he has his lower members, the physical body, the
etheric body, and the astral body in common with the realms of
nature surrounding us on earth. As he extends with these three
lower bodies into the earthly existence, he strives with the
higher spiritual members of his nature up into the realms of
the divine that is tripartite like the external nature. Thus,
the human being is rooted in the earthly and he extends with
his branches into the spiritual-divine world. As he developed
out of the earthly world from lower beginnings, he develops
spiritually upwards, becoming more and more similar to the
higher spiritual beings. Therefore, we can also say, the human
being is divided in three parts.
While we connect the lower members and the upper ones, we have
the ego in the middle. It has a share of both, of the earthly
and the divine. It penetrates the etheric body and the astral
body. We call this ego soul. We call the real immortal inside
of the human being, atman, buddhi, and manas, mind or spirit.
By these three members of his nature, the human being is a
citizen of three worlds at the same time. He is a citizen of
the usual physical world here. When he has left the physical
world here, when he has left his physical body, also the
etheric body, he enters another world, a kind of intermediate
world, an astral world, as we say, the soul world. At first
immediately after death, he has to purify himself for a number
of years from that, which still adheres to him from the
connection with the earthly-physical world. We call this state
kamaloka or stay in the astral world. This is no place, but a
state. The disembodied human being, as long as he still has
certain effects of his physical nature in himself, stays in the
soul world and ascends then to a still higher world that we
call devachan or the world of spirit.
You
know now that the spiritual-scientific worldview assumes not
only a one-time stay of the human being in this physical world,
but that it knows that the human being has to go through
repeated earth-lives. His immortal essence can deify itself
more and more only thereby, can ascend to spiritual regions
going through experiences, through lessons in the earth-life
repeatedly. Thus, the human being returns to the physical world
when he has gone through the worlds of soul and spirit, then he
returns again to the spiritual world and so on. These repeated
incarnations are held together according to the so-called
principle of karma, according to the law of cause and effect.
If a human being, after he has gone through repeated
earth-lives, appears again, he is born with dispositions and
abilities, which he has appropriated in the former lives by
experience, and with the guilt, which he has burdened himself
in former lives. Thus, the one appears happy, the other unhappy
and miserable because he himself has prepared this. What we
have compiled here appears in the future earth-life again. The
human being thereby ascends and descends, goes to and returns
from the three worlds: physical world, astral world and
devachan world.
The
human being is not only a being, which belongs to these three
worlds, but he also has companions in these three worlds.
Someone, who searches spiritual-scientifically in the other
worlds, not only in the physical world, which the human being
perceives with his senses and can seize with hands, knows that
there are not only such beings which have the three members of
the human nature: body, soul and mind. However, there are also
beings, which are lower than the human being is, and beings,
outranking the human being. How we have to imagine the beings,
which are lower than the human being is? We have to imagine
them in such a way that they have not a spiritual core as the
highest like the human being, but they have a mental one only.
As well as the human being has mind, soul and body, the lower
beings only have soul, body and something that is lower than
the body. If you like, we call this unknown third world the
underworld and we can say, such beings have a tripartite
nature, too, whose lowest member is the underworld whose middle
member is the physical world and whose uppermost member is the
soul world.
However, there are also beings who have two members in the
spiritual and a third member beyond the sphere of devachan,
beyond the sphere of the spiritual. Thus, you see that you can
construct a whole number of beings to yourselves. Such beings
really exist as experience shows. The human being belongs to
the three worlds. Such beings also belong to the three worlds
and as well as the human being is developing from a level on
which his soul was his uppermost being in which the spiritual
core was implanted, these other beings are also developing
perpetually. You see that those who have experience of such
things must say to themselves that the human being —
after he has left this physical body and ascends to the worlds
of soul and spirit — is just the companion of other
beings, of beings whose lowest member is the mental nature.
This is the outline of the worldview that is not only spread
about any part of the world civilisation, but forms the basis
of all deeper religions and should be only renewed by the
theosophical or spiritual-scientific worldview. However, at the
same time this also is a worldview which is in perpetual
development, not a worldview which one has to consider as
something that was once determined in the abstract, but a
worldview, which develops through the various states of human
development most differently.
The
human being becomes more and more mature in the course of
development, which is also arranged variously. Now, however,
the human being takes not only share in this development, but
the basic teaching of all world cultures shows that certain
single human individuals can go through a faster development
that they can ascend quicker to higher levels of perfection
that they are able to rush ahead of their fellow men, so to
speak. Then they have already attained, while they are still in
the sensuous body, an insight into those worlds, which the
human being enters when he has passed, otherwise, the gate of
death. All religious cultures preserve this as a secret that
the human being is capable to behold into the worlds, which are
closed to him while he lives in the sensuous body. However, the
human being can already cross the gate of death in this life
and get a sight of those worlds which he has later to enter
developing upwards. As well as the human being rushes ahead of
the animal, such persons rush ahead of the remaining humanity.
All deeper teachings of the world culture call these persons
initiates. You see, there we get really the sequence about
which I was speaking already last time in the talk on Lucifer.
We get a whole sequence of beings, which puts the human being
wonderfully, however, comprehensibly in the quite natural
spiritual world. Thus, the principle forms the basis of every
religion and every bigger worldview that there are divine
natures beside and above the human beings that, however, these
divine natures have gone through the stages in bygone times,
which the human beings go through today. They have gone through
them under other conditions and in another way; for nothing
recurs in the universe.
So
we can say, those who today are gods were once human beings,
and the human being develops up to divine nature in future. He
is becoming a god, and the gods are nothing else than perfected
human beings. This is the basis of any secret doctrine as one
calls it. Understanding this sentence in its entirety means
just to be an “initiate.” However, one must not
understand this only in the abstract with the intellect, but in
the experience. The ray of spirit accessible to the human being
now is necessary to it. Then only one knows which big, infinite
significance this sentence of any secret doctrine has, this
sentence, which, so to speak, penetrates all worldviews as a
leitmotif.
Allow me now to look at the different images of the Germanic
and German prehistoric time, partly until the present time.
Perhaps, I am allowed to go back to the fact that science has
only taken a little into consideration, unfortunately, how
these things are. At the end of the eighties, a book by my dear
friend Ludwig Laistner (1845-1896, novelist and literary
historian) appeared — its title is The Riddle of the
Sphinx (1889) —, a nice, two-volume work. It does not
deal with some exceptionally high teachings, but starts from
the very simple. It starts from a quite simple fact that takes
place within our present folklore still in numerous forms.
There still exists, for example, the folk legend of the Lady
Midday with the Wends (Slavic people in Germany). It
runs as follows: if certain people who work in the field
outdoors do not break off for lunch, but remain on the field
between twelve and two o'clock, the Lady Midday comes and puts
questions to them. She asks, for example, the flax farmer about
the linen weaving or something else. The people must answer
these questions. If they stall with a question, it is all up
with them. Until two o'clock, they must come through with the
answer. If they cannot properly give an answer, the Lady Midday
strangles them or cuts off their heads with her sickle. The
farmers use different means against her. The person concerned
must be able to pray the Lord's Prayer inversely. If he is able
to do this, the Lady leaves him; otherwise, she offends or
kills him.
You
see a legend researcher, Ludwig Laistner, starting from simple
legends. Then he investigates similar legends. Still today,
they are to be found in our folklore. He visits them in the
manifold regions and thinks at the same time that this is a
simple example of the so-called interrogative torment, of the
dilemma in which the human being is placed by the fact that
spiritual beings ask questions he has to answer. He shows how
in another legend forms the same thing becomes more and more
complex, until one ascends to the riddle which the sphinx puts
to the human beings, and which Oedipus solved. Laistner
explains this nicely where he shows how the legend of the Lady
Midday relates to the complex question of the human riddle, put
by the sphinx.
Laistner then shows something else. I must tell this because
you learn from it how exceptionally important it is for
theosophy. He started, like most legend researchers, from the
different concepts of god, and he got around to seeing symbols
in them. You know that some gods are understood as symbolic
representations of the clouds, the sun, the moon et cetera.
This is a widely ramified view you can find everywhere. But it
is put up by such people — Laistner has exactly got to
know in his own personality — who do not know in reality,
how the imagination of the people works, who do not know that
it is far from the imagination of the people to make up gods
from wind and weather, from flash, thunder, sunshine, and rain.
Laistner also already realised this when he was still dependent
on the academic life that there can be no talk of it. Now in
the book of the sphinx he asked, what is there, actually, if
the Lady Midday comes and torments everybody with questions?
— There is — and Ludwig Laistner proved it almost
exactly — that these things have arisen from another
state of consciousness, the dream state. He proved that the
Lady Midday is nothing else than the product of a dream
experience which those have had who slept during noon on the
field. Not the day consciousness fantasised, but the dream has
become symbolic. Laistner distinguishes sleeping in a room and
sleeping on free field. As well as the human being can dream
with the blanket in the hand of a frog which he holds in the
hand, the outside world symbolises itself in the Lady Midday.
This has arisen from a dream experience. Laistner tried to
develop this thought. He did not yet know spiritual science.
Hence, he had to point to the fact that important components of
our legend poetry have arisen from real dream experiences.
However, dream experiences are only rudiments of another state
of consciousness. Someone can attain this other state of
consciousness that goes through a certain inner development
about which we still speak in the talk of 19 April. Who has
visited these talks knows that if he goes through certain
exercises, trains himself spiritually, he can transform the
usual chaotic dream world into a quite regular world which does
not show him only parts of the usual reality as memories, but
introduces him also in the higher spiritual world which he can
then take along in reality. This is the higher state of
consciousness; this is the astral or imaginative consciousness.
It begins with the fact that the dream experience becomes
regular and that the person concerned realises one day that he
experiences a new reality. Then he can rise to a still higher
spiritual reality.
That the human being rushes ahead of his fellow men, that he
can already reach what the future gives all human beings that
he can look into the worlds of soul and spirit, this was there
in a certain way in past times. Because the human development
consists of the fact that he develops from one level of
consciousness to the next higher one. The present human
consciousness where he perceives with external senses and works
on the sensory impressions with his reason only originated from
a consciousness, which was not the same, but was similar to the
dream consciousness. This dreamlike consciousness was somewhat
darker. However, the human being did not perceive immediate
impressions but symbols. What took place in life expressed
itself as pictures in the human being. He lost this
consciousness and bought the clear day consciousness for it. At
that time, he did not have the present clear consciousness. He
could not perceive with the senses, could also not see the
daylight. He had to see this consciousness sinking in darkness
to attain the present consciousness of the bright day. In
future, he attains a consciousness where he has both, the
imaginative consciousness, which leads him into the astral
world, and furthermore the bright, clear day consciousness.
These are the contents of all secret doctrines, which form the
basis of any culture.
Thus, the human being can look at a time in which he can say to
himself, at that time I saw the world around myself as a soul
world. It caused a pictorial consciousness in me. This was
internally bright and clear. No external sun appeared to the
external eye, but an internal light illumined the mental all
around. This inner light descended into the darkness, and the
external light ascended which the human being perceives with
the external senses. As rests, as rudiments of all things
remain, rests exist with those classes of the population, which
have lagged behind, which have not sharpened their intellect so
much, which have forced back not so much what the picture
consciousness answered to them, which deduced less, which are
less prudent. Thus, their dream consciousness is much brighter.
There they experience not only chaotic dreams, but they also
experience higher truth for which perhaps they cannot account
to themselves properly. They experience just like the
clairvoyant, and they experience another astral world if the
inner consciousness has awoken. They get to know beings that do
not exist here and have a certain relationship to the human
inner nature. It is more or less clear to the usual people, and
they only experience the picture of the Lady Midday.
However, others have a more developed imaginative
consciousness. They experience still more. In present primitive
legends, rests of an ancient astral consciousness are
preserved. We look back at a human past, in particular here in
Central Europe and in Western Europe, at a past, in which
— the further we go back — more and more of that
consciousness exists which was substituted by the present
bright day consciousness. Only that remained to the people as
recollection of bigger or lower clearness, the disappearance of
the astral consciousness in a dark past, in darkness. Of
course, I do not say, the thoughts of the people, but I say,
something that lives in the people and that I want to grasp in
thoughts only. — That is which the human being of the
people says to himself without realising that: I have to move
the consciousness away from the day view; I must sleep, then I
get entrance in that world again which my forefathers
experienced, in a world which disappeared to the human beings.
I do not experience it as a clear image, but as an obscurely
assembled recollection.
Such a thing lives in the people, and, hence, people know that
the astral experiences were richer and richer; the further one
goes back in the past. What did the people experience whose
scanty rests they have today like the questions of the Lady
Midday? This is the recollection of beings that inhabit the
astral world; this is the recollection of the old gods. The
images of the gods are taken from them. Now you remember that I
have emphasised as especially noteworthy that one should pray
the Lord's Prayer inversely. Those who have heard me
occasionally here know that one must read everything inversely
in the astral. One must read the number 341 in the imaginative
world as 143. This applies to our passions, too. The passions
that go out from us appear — if the astral world has
opened to us — as beings which hurry towards us. This is
very painful for those who did not prepare themselves before.
Everything that flows from us flows apparently to us. Hence,
they see animals and all possible beings rushing towards
themselves. With pathological conditions, for example, with
insanity, you notice that there suddenly beings appear in the
form of animals. These are beings living in the person
concerned flow out of him and appear reflected in the form of
animals.
Something that moves in the sensuous world from behind forwards
moves in the astral world inversely. One has to pray the Lord's
Prayer from behind forwards to satisfy the Lady Midday in the
world in which she is. You can see how the legend adheres this.
Now we could go through the entire Germanic world of gods and
we would find that that is reflected in it, which I have shown
at the beginning of the talk as the secret doctrine of all
cultures. What I have shown in great thoughts and outlines as
the worlds which apparently pile on top of each other —
in truth, they are in each other — all that is reflected
popularly in the Germanic world of gods. When the human being
lived once in a world in which he still had a picture
consciousness in which he had not yet advanced to the present
deducing intellect, his ego was not yet as powerful as today.
Indeed, he did not think and act as an animal, but the lower
members: physical body, etheric body, and astral body prevailed
in him. The ego did not yet have senses. It still lived an
inner life; thereby he still controlled the external. It was
another form of human beings, they could not yet think with
that consciousness we have today.
The
human beings were much more imperfect than the present ones,
but they were more perfect concerning the lower members. They
had developed them more powerful and more varied. Hence, they
did not yet belong to the spiritual world. They were soul
beings in certain respect whose highest member belonged to the
astral world whose middle member was also mental, and the third
member was still lower. The imaginative consciousness meets
such beings on the astral plane; there it discovers their
highest essence. These beings, in certain respect ancestors of
the human beings, are reflected in the Germanic folk
consciousness as the giants. They are nothing else than
predecessors of the human beings. Then the world developed. The
human beings developed up to higher spheres. They received
their thinking and became companions of spiritual beings that
are finer organised in certain respect than the giants are
because they took part in the higher spiritual worlds. These
beings are reflected in the Germanic folk consciousness as the
Æsir. The original Germanic mythology did not see anything
miraculous in all that, but it saw in it an expression of the
sentence, which I have stated: the human being is a becoming
god, and the gods are those whom one can call perfect human
beings, deified human beings. Gods are beings who have gone
through their human level in bygone times. Thus, you see that
the sequence of the beings of the Germanic mythology also
expresses itself in the difference between the giants and the
Æsir.
Still more expresses itself in it. It expresses itself in the
fact that the development of such beings definitely takes place
in the same sense as the human development. The present human
beings — the Germanic mythology understands it that way
— learnt from Wotan what they learnt. Who was Wotan
originally? We hear that our ancestors learnt the runes, the
art of poetry, and still other things from Wotan. However, one
always attributed this to the great initiates. Thus, an
individuality expressed itself in Wotan whom we had to call a
great initiate just now in the sense of the secret doctrine, a
being who rushed ahead of humanity and who had already gone
through the stages which humanity has to go through only
now.
How
did Wotan become the great teacher of the prehistoric times?
Like other initiates in the other secret doctrines. There are
initiates in all secret doctrines. Today these experience the
same as at that time, while they outgrow their lower ego,
develop the spiritual essence in themselves, and become
citizens of a higher world already in this life. At the same
time, however, it is made clear to us that at a certain hour
the lower nature faces them. In every human being is a sum of
passions, desires and wishes, which cling to his lower nature.
From all that the human being has to come out first. Then it
appears like a being before him. If the human being rises up to
his higher nature, his lower nature is like something that is
outside of him, while he is, otherwise, embedded in the desires
and passions. Just as little anybody can lay his brain on a
plate and look at it, just as little you can see your inner
life, your inner lower nature. One calls this detached being
the guardian of the threshold.
His
lower nature stands as a being beside the human being, and he
must say to himself once, that are you! You must detach this!
— In all initiations, one calls this the descent into
hell. One has to become a companion of the infernal powers, to
descend into the depths of the world because the human being is
simply embedded in them and his higher nature lives only
halfway in him. One calls this being the guardian of the
threshold because the human beings who do not appropriate
courage and presence of mind do not overcome that. Those are
called initiates who have crossed this threshold. Gradually the
human being goes through development. He overcomes a stage at
first where the human being becomes aware of his lower nature.
Whereas he identifies himself with it, is embedded in it, it
faces him like something else, as well as the table stands
before me now. In all initiations, one calls this stage
crucifixion. The human being is crucified to his own body
because it is to him as irrelevant as an external cross to
which he is nailed. If he has overcome this stage, he ascends
higher. Then he became wise. One calls him with a symbolic
expression “serpent” for the same reason, because
generally the serpent is the symbol of wisdom. There he drinks
from the springs of wisdom in the world. Then he still goes
through a third stage.
One
has to go through this stage in the different religions most
variously. Look at Wotan. What is shown to us by him? These
three stages of initiation are shown to us. One tells us first
that Wotan would have had to hang once on the holy wood. During
nine days, he suffered there and shouldered the sufferings of
the world. There the giant Mimir came to him and gave him a
drink from the cup of wisdom. He was released from the holy
wood. This was the first initiation of Wotan. After he had gone
through this, he was longing for the cup from which the potion
can flow, which his uncle Mimir had given him at the gallows.
Then, however, one further says that this cup of wisdom is
protected in the abysses of the mountains and that Wotan crept
in the figure of a serpent through the abysses to Gunnlod in
order to seize the cup of wisdom. This was the second
initiation.
The
third stage is that where one tells us — and this is
something very significant — that Wotan himself went to
the spring of that wisdom which is the wisdom of the present
and is to be found with that spring which is in the root of the
world ash Yggdrasil. There lived the giant Mimir. Wotan here
attained the initiation that enabled him to be the teacher of
the prehistoric time, namely the present wisdom. Once he had
attained wisdom from the abysses of the mountains, from the
higher worlds. However, he should become a teacher of our
wisdom, of that wisdom which is obtained by the senses and by
the mind. He obtains the strength to this here. This was
expressed in a nice symbol. One says that he lost an eye. What
is the eye that he must leave behind to find the present
wisdom? This is the astral eye. Now, because he should take up
the wisdom of the runes, the wisdom of the present, he loses
the astral eye, so that he can be a leader on the sensuous
plane to which humanity has developed. These things show in no
uncertain manner how in these three successive pictures the
secret doctrine, which forms the basis of all religions, is
also expressed in the Germanic mythology.
In
another way, deep truth is expressed if we look, for example,
at the legend of Baldr who is killed by the blind Hodur with
the mistletoe at Loki's instigation. Loki is the adversary of
Baldr. If we consider this legend, we realise that many people
say that Baldr symbolises the sun, the setting sun. They say
this without having an idea of the fact that no people write
that way. The people experienced in the primeval times on the
astral plan in pictures what we have got to know as the basis
of the secret doctrine at the beginning of this talk. What did
the folk experience in this respect? I have already pointed to
the images that appear like obscure recollections, but not in
the clear consciousness, I have pointed to the astral light
disappearing in darkness, so that the present sensory life
originated. The former astral consciousness, Baldr, is killed
by the present darkness, mental darkness, by the present
sensuous looking which Hodur symbolises, namely at the
instigation of Loki. Who is Loki?
Loki's name is already connected with the fire. What, however,
is the fire in the secret doctrine? It is not the physical
fire. The physical fire is only the external expression of an
internal one, of that which the secret doctrine knows as the
soul of the fire. This also lives in the human being in certain
ways as his desires and passions. Only that separated itself
during the further development that lives in the human being as
desires and passions. It is no longer connected with the
external fire, but the secret doctrine points to that. You get
to know this more and more if you get involved with the occult
side of theosophy or spiritual science. It shows how passions
and desires are connected similarly with the fire as the
positive and the negative poles of a magnet: the passions are
one pole and the physical fire the other, however, they belong
together. With the iron, you have both poles unseparated. This
seems absurd to the materialistic worldview, I know this well.
However, everything seems to be absurd to that who does not
want to get involved with the depths of occult science. The
look goes back to those times when one speaks of figures, as
Loki is one. This being had an original existence and an
immense strength when passion and fire were not yet separated
when the passion still flowed through the seething fire. Such a
fire being was Loki. Then the world developed further in such a
way that from Loki, the fire, the lower nature formed and from
the Æsir the higher nature. Both have arisen from Loki's
nature.
This forms the basis of the Germanic legend. This is the secret
of the Germanic mythology, that the world of the gods
originated, while the beings developed further in the
passionate primordial bases as well as in the spiritual. One
tells us of three children of Loki. The first child is the
Fenriswolf, the second is the Midgard Serpent, and the third is
the goddess of the dead, Hel, who is bright on one side and has
a black body on the other side. What does she show? She shows
the lower human nature, which causes birth and death. Hence,
Hel appears black and white. The Midgard Serpent that entwines
the continents of the present world represents the etheric body
that is tied to the present lower human nature. The third
member represents what has arisen from the lower passions. Loki
has remained from a former development. He had to deliver his
children, so that the present world could originate which is
thereby provoked to opposition and falls a victim to that which
was the view of the former world.
Baldr has to descend to Hel, into the depth. The depth
symbolises the usual physical human nature. What is Baldr?
Baldr exists as sub-consciousness if, for example, in trance
the usual surface consciousness is extinguished and the old
consciousness is roused again. Baldr is killed for us now.
However, with Hel he still exists as the strength, as the
strength of passion connected with the nature of fire.
Thus, we could call every member of the Germanic world of gods
an external expression of this secret doctrine. You would see
if we had fifty talks instead of one that all that is
wonderfully right in the minute details, that we are concerned
with a secret doctrine, which forms the basis of the pictorial
ideas of the Germanic mythology. We also here find initiates,
sages, who knew what I have told at the beginning of the talk.
However, the people got to know beings of other worlds by means
of various rests of their consciousness. They ranked these folk
spirits in the world of the old gods. That is why the Germanic
mythology appears as born out of the folk consciousness. How
Siegfried, who is overcome, finds his higher self, this
presents itself to us as an expression of deep secret
teachings. This is not contrived, but it becomes completely
certain that it is so to someone who is able to go back in such
way in the spiritual depths of the prehistoric time. If we go
through the Germanic mythology, we get a pictorial
impression.
If
we look at the East, we see the same secret doctrine as I have
explained it at the beginning of the talk. However, we see it
differently formed. With few sentences, we can characterise it.
Not with Buddhism and not with Hinduism we want to get
involved. We only need to know that they revere the brahma as a
spiritual original being that forms the basis of all. The main
ability of brahma is the creative knowledge, called vidya.
Imagine a person standing beside a machine and studying it. He
has a receptive knowledge. Imagine, however, the inventor who
made the machine originally, he composed it from single parts.
He had creative knowledge first. Such a creative knowledge,
spread about the world surrounding us, is vidya, and the
receptive knowledge is avidya. Thus, there are different
gradations of vidya and avidya. However, brahma is the owner of
all that is subsumed in vidya and avidya. Everything is born
out of the thought and the human being himself is born out of
it. But he has to develop again back to vidya, to the creative
knowledge. This is the sense of human development.
The
human being is led again through three places that the Indian
doctrine calls loka. When the human being has died, he must
stay in Bhurloka for a while, it is the same as kamaloka. The
highest world is the spiritual world, Svargaloka. It is the
devachan. From there he goes back again to the Bhurloka and
back to the physical world. Thus, one sees how he takes up the
most various forces and materials in the physical world. These
came into being from Vidya of the enclosing Brahman. There we
have the finest material world on top, the world of the Akasha.
Akasha is only a material expression of Indra, which is the
soul of this world. Then we come to the world of fire, to Agni.
This is the material expression of the god Agni and the same as
the god Loki in the Germanic mythology, only in another shade.
Then we come down to the air, Vayu, then to the water and,
finally, to the solid. Thus, the Indian doctrine imagines the
construction of the external world. The Indian cult is the
external symbolic expression of this secret truth.
If
we ask ourselves which characteristic the Indian secret
doctrine has that it developed other pictures, we can say that
it bears a less symbolic character, but a more conceptual one.
This is generally the difference between the Indian and the
Germanic secret doctrines. Internally they are the same, an
external difference exists, however, because the external
religions in Europe have taken on a pictorial character that
corresponds more to the beings of the astral plan, while the
Indian people advanced a further step and gave them characters
reminding of external impressions. We must indicate this as a
difference of the Germanic and Indian doctrines that the
Germanic doctrine is closer to the astral, the Indian one,
however, to the thinking. Hence, it is also clear that the
Indian doctrine is closer to that which the human being regards
today as his innermost possession that one understands it
easier than the world of the Germanic gods that has faded away
into the unknown.
These doctrines were differently developed. As we see two
configurations in Europe and India, we see one more, in the
middle, so to speak, in Greece. We can see that two quite
different forces in nature cause the Indian and the Germanic
characteristics. The Indian characteristic approaches more the
present ego. Hence, the Indian looked for his higher
consciousness in the contemplation in his inside. He attempted
to advance from Avidya to Vidya, from the receptive knowledge
to the creative knowledge. A science of knowledge, a higher
doctrine than a doctrine based on astral pictures is the Indian
doctrine, and a doctrine based on astral pictures is expressed
in the Germanic mythology. Why is this the case? The Germanic
mythology gives us a great and fine answer. The higher
consciousness that the human being should attain is represented
in all secret doctrines as the female principle, as the soul.
What is taken up from the outside what fertilises the soul is
shown as the male principle. We have there the female soul that
is fertilised by wisdom, by the spirit of the outside world.
Thus, the human being moves up if he develops spiritually,
figuratively spoken, to the higher female principle in his
nature. Goethe means that saying: “The eternally-female
pulls us upwards.” You must not understand this
pedantically, because you read it in the “Chorus
Mysticus” (Faust II). If we understand this that
way, we understand what the Teuton means if he says, if the
warrior is killed on the battlefield, the Valkyrie meets him,
there he reaches the higher mental. — The mentality of a
warlike people, the passage through the gate of death and the
attainment of a higher consciousness is symbolised by the
approaching Valkyrie, taking up the soul in Valhalla, the
connection with the higher consciousness, with the Valkyrie.
The highest god is in the original Germanic the god Ziu
(Týr) from whom Tuesday has its name. This is the same god
as Mars in the Roman and as Ares in the Greek mythologies.
Mardi (French) is the day, which is consecrated to the god of
war, Mars. It was a warrior religion and it differs from the
internal religion of the Indian.
Who
lives in the inner world develops the passions less that live
in the astral world and are expressed in it. Thus, the
consciousness, the warlike nature of the Teutons is reflected
in the world of their gods. The Valkyrie is the higher
consciousness naturally. Because the passion of war was here
the creator of the mythology, the world of the gods was
expressed in astral pictures; because over there in Asia, in
India the creator was the introversive sense, therefore, a more
spiritual religion was expressed. Both worldviews found their
higher unity, their harmony when the Germanic one got the
inside from Christianity.
Thus, you see that a deep internal sense forms the basis of the
human development, and that one must look for this deep
internal sense. Then one comes to the profundities of the world
development, and then one does not stop at abstractions, as if
one single figure of humanity formed the basis, but one
understands that it is a variform wisdom. The secret doctrine
had to be different in India, different in Europe, different
with a warlike people, and different in Greece, with the people
endowed with art. Humanity develops through the most various
forms of cultural existence — the course of this world
development always forward and always upward at the same
time.
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