LECTURE VI
Berlin, 1st October 1905
Today we will take as our subject the different ranks of beings to
which man belongs. Man, as he is at present is a developing being who
was not always as he is now. There are not only stages of development
lying before and behind him, but also beings co-existent with him,
just as the child today has the old man beside him who is at another
stage of development. Today we will deal with seven ranks of beings,
and in this connection we must clearly differentiate between receptive
and creative beings.
Let us take as an example a colour which we perceive with our eyes,
for instance red or green. In this respect we are receptive beings.
The colour must however first be produced in order that we may
perceive it; we must therefore be confronted with another being who
produces the colour, for instance red. Through this we recognise the
different stages of beings. If we put together everything which
approaches our senses, there must also be a soul to receive it; but
conversely something must also be present in order that the sense
impressions may be brought to us. There are beings who can manifest.
These have a more god-like or deva-character. Beings whose nature is
more adapted to receiving have a more element[al] character. God-like
beings are of a manifesting nature. Elemental beings are of a
receptive nature.
Here, in this domain, we have the creative wisdom which manifests
outwardly, and the wisdom which is received by the human soul. Wisdom
is in the light and discloses itself in all sense impressions. Behind
what is revealed we must assume the revealers, beings of will nature;
wisdom is that which is revealed.
Man is both receptive and creative. On the one hand, for instance with
regard to all sense impressions, he is receptive, with regard to
thinking however he is creative. Nothing gives rise to thoughts unless
he first produces perceptions. Thus he is on the one hand a receptive
being and on the other hand a creative being. This is an important
difference. Let us imagine that man were to be in a position to create
everything he perceives, sounds, colours and so on, just as today he
creates thoughts. Today he is only creative in one sphere, in
thinking, and in order to have perceptions he needs creative beings
around him. In bringing forth his own being he was at first creative.
In the beginning he himself created his own organism. For this he now
needs other beings. Now man must incarnate in a bodily form determined
from outside. Here he is closer to the elemental beings than to the
sphere of perception and thinking.
Let us imagine for once that man were able to bring forth sounds,
colours and other sense perceptions and also his own being. Then we
should have the human being as he was before the Lemurian race, who is
called the pure man. Man becomes impure through the fact
that he does not produce his own being, but incorporates something
other into his nature. This pure man was called Adam Cadmon. When at
the beginning of Genesis the Bible speaks of man, it speaks of this
pure human being. This human being had as yet nothing kamic (astral)
within him. Desire first appeared after he had incorporated other
elements into himself. Thus there arose the second stage of humanity,
the kama-rupic man (man with an astral body). The higher animal is to
be seen as at a lower stage of this development. Without warm blood no
beings can possess an independent Kama-rupa (astral body). All
warm-blooded animals are derived from man.
Thus to begin with we have the pure man who up to the Lemurian Age
actually led a super-sensible existence and brought forth out of
himself everything that lived and was part of him.
Present day cold-blooded animals and the plants have developed in a
different way from the warm-blooded animals. Those which exist today
are remnants of strange, gigantic beings. Some of these can be
verified by science. They are decadent animals which are descended
from those which the pure man made use of in order to incarnate in
them, so that he might have a body for what is kamic (astral). At
first the pure man had found no means of incarnating on the earth. He
still hovered above what was manifested. From among these huge,
powerful beings (animals) man made use of the most developed in order
to incarnate in them. He attached himself to these beings and thereby
he was in a position to bring into them his own Kama (astral body).
Some of these beings developed further and then became the animals of
Atlantis and present day humanity. However it was not possible for all
of them to adapt themselves. Those who failed became the lower
vertebrate animals; kangaroos for instance are such attempts as proved
unsuccessful on the way to becoming man like pottery vessels
which are rejected and left behind.
Now man tried to introduce Kama into the animal forms. Kama is first
to be found in the human form, in actual fact in the heart, in the
warm blood and in the circulation of the blood. Attempts were made
again and again and in this way there was an ascent from stage to
stage. We see unsuccessful attempts for instance in the sloths, the
kangaroos, the beasts of prey, the monkeys and apes. All these
remained behind on the way. The warm-blooded animals are unsuccessful
attempts to become human forms endowed with Kama. Everything in them
which is of the nature of Kama, man also could have within himself; but
he unloaded it into them, for he was unable to use this kind of Kama.
There is an important occult axiom: Every quality has two opposite
poles. So we find, just as positive and negative electricity
complement one another, so we have warmth and cold, day and night,
light and darkness and so on. In the same way every Kamic quality also
has two opposite aspects. For instance man has cast rage out of
himself into the lion, and this, on the other hand, when ennobled by
him, can lead him upward to his higher self. Passion should not be
annihilated, but purified. The negative pole must be led upwards to a
higher stage. This purifying of passion, this leading upwards of its
negative aspect was called by the Pythagoreans catharsis. At first man
had within him the rage of the lion and the cunning of the fox. Thus
the kingdom of the warm-blooded animals is a comprehensive picture of
Kama qualities. Today the opinion is commonly held that the Tat twam
asi (That art thou), is to be understood as something general and
undefined, but one must conceive something quite definite underlying
it. Thus in the case of the lion man must say to himself: That art
thou. We have therefore in the kingdom of the warm-blooded animals
spread out before us the kama-rupic human being. Previously there only
existed the pure man: Adam Cadmon.
The philosopher of natural science, Oken, who in the first half of the
19th century was a professor in Jena, was acquainted with all these
ideas and expressed them in a grotesque way in order to nudge people
to attention. Here we find an example which points to a still earlier
stage of human development, before man separated off from himself the
kingdom of the cold-blooded animals. Oken connected the cuttlefish
with the human tongue. In this analogy of the tongue with the
cuttlefish one can find an occult significance. Now we also have
beings who for the first time are, as it were, being conjured up as
by-products. Man has ejected from himself the cunning of the fox and
retained its opposite pole. In the fox's cunning however the germ of
something else is beginning to develop, for example something similar
to the way in which the black shadow of an object has a secondary
shadow when light enters it from outside. We incorporated cunning into
the fox out of our inner being. Now spirit is directed towards him
from the periphery. The beings which in this way work from the
periphery into what is kamic are elemental beings. What the fox has
received from us, is in him animal; what coming from outside attaches
itself to him from the spirit, is elemental being. On the one hand he
originated through the spirit of humanity and on the other hand
through an Elemental being.
Thus we differentiate: firstly, elemental beings, secondly, the
kama-rupic man, thirdly, the pure man, fourthly, the man who in a
certain respect has overcome the pure man, who has taken into himself
what is outside and around him and is creatively active. He has
contacted and taken into himself everything which is around him in
earthly existence. This gives him the plans, the directions, the laws
which create life. Once man was perfect and he will become so again.
But there is a great difference between what he was and what he will
become. What is around him in the outer world will later become his
spiritual possession. What he has won for himself on the Earth will
later become the faculty of being creatively active. This will then
have become his innermost being. One who has absorbed all earthly
experiences, so that he knows how to make use of every single thing
and has thus become a creator, is called a Bodhisattva, which means a
man who has taken into himself to a sufficient degree the Bodhi, the
Buddhi of the earth. Then he is advanced enough to work creatively out
of his innermost impulses. The wise men of the earth are not yet
Bodhisattvas.
(24)
Even for such a one there always remain things to
which he is still unable to orient himself. Only when one has
absorbed into oneself the entire knowledge of the Earth, in
order to be able to create, only then is one a Bodhisattva;
Buddha, Zarathustra, for example, were Bodhisattvas.
When man ascends still further in evolution, so that he is not only a
creator on the Earth, but possesses forces which reach out above the
Earth, only then is he free to choose either to use these higher
forces or to work further with them on the Earth. In this case he can
bring into the Earth something coming from higher worlds. Such an
epoch occurred before man began to incarnate, in the last third of the
Lemurian Age. The human being had developed his physical, etheric and
astral bodies. He had brought these members of his being with him from
an earlier Earth evolution. The two next impulses, Kama and Manas, he
could not have found on the Earth; they do not lie in its evolutionary
sequence. The first new impulse (Kama) was only to be found as a force
on Mars. It was added shortly before man incarnated. The second
impulse (Manas) came from Mercury in the fifth sub-race of the
Atlanteans, with the original Semites. The stimulus of these new
principles had to be brought to the Earth from other planets through
still higher beings, through the Nirmana-kayas. From Mars they added
Kama, from Mercury Manas. The Nirmana-kayas are yet another stage
higher than the Bodhisattvas. The latter are able to order evolution
which has continuity; but they cannot bring into it what comes from
other regions, this can only be done by the Nirmana-kayas. [In] yet another
stage higher than the Nirmana-kayas, stand those beings who are called
Pitris. Pitris = Fathers. For the Nirmana-kayas can indeed bring
something coming from other regions into evolution, but they cannot
sacrifice themselves, sacrifice themselves as substance, so that on
the following planet they can bring forth a new cycle. This can be
done by the Pitris, beings who had evolved on the Moon and had now
come over; they became the activating impulse towards Earth evolution.
When man has gone through every possible experience, then he is in a
position to become a Pitri. The next and even higher stage, the last
that it is possible to mention, is that of the Gods themselves.
Thus we have seven ranks of beings: Firstly the Gods, secondly Pitris,
thirdly Nirmana-kayas, fourthly Bodhisattvas, fifthly pure human
beings, sixthly human beings, seventhly elemental beings. This is the
sequence of which Helena Petrovna Blavatsky speaks.
Now we can add the question: What kind of organ is it which has made
man kama-rupic? It is the heart with the veins and the blood that
pulsates through the body. The heart has a physical part and an
etheric part. Aristotle
(25)
speaks about this, for in earlier times
it was only the etheric man which was held to be important. The heart
has also an astral part. The etheric heart is connected with the
twelve-petalled lotus flower. Not all the physical organs have an
astral part; for example the gall bladder is only physical and
etheric, the astral is lacking.
|