LECTURE ONE
THE BEING OF MAN
These
lectures are intended to give a general survey
of the whole field of theosophical thought. Theosophy has not always
been taught as it is today, in lectures and books that are accessible
to everyone. It used to be taught only in small, intimate groups, and
knowledge of it was confined to circles of Initiates, to occult
brotherhoods; ordinary people were meant to have only the fruits of
this knowledge. Not much was known about the knowledge or the activities
of these Initiates, or about the places where they worked. Those whom
the world recognises as the great men of history were not really the
greatest; the greatest, the Initiates, kept in the background.
In the course of the
eighteenth century, on a quite unnoticed occasion, an Initiate made
brief acquaintance with a writer, and spoke words to which the writer
paid no special attention at the time. But they worked on in him and
later gave rise to potent ideas, the fruits of which are in countless
hands today. The writer was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He was not an Initiate,
but his knowledge derived from one.
Here is another example.
Jacob Boehme, a shoemaker's apprentice, was sitting alone one
day in the shop, where he was not allowed to sell anything himself.
A person came in, made a deep impression upon him, spoke a few words,
and went away. Immediately afterwards, Boehme heard his name being called:
“Jacob, Jacob, today you are small, but one day you will be great.
Take heed of what you have seen today!” A secret attraction remained
between Boehme and his visitor, who was a great Initiate, and the source
of Boehme's powerful inspirations.
There were still other
means by which an Initiate could work in those times. For instance,
a man might receive a letter intended to bring about action of some
kind. The recipient might perhaps be a Minister, someone who had the
power but not the ideas to carry out a particular project. The letter
might be about something, perhaps a request, which had nothing to do
with its real purpose. But there might have been a certain way of reading
the letter. For example, if four words out of five were deleted and
the last word left, these fifth words would make a new sequence conveying
what was to be done, although the recipient, of course, was not aware
of it. If the words were the right ones, they achieved their object, even
though the reader had not consciously taken in their meaning. Trithemius
of Sponheim, a German scholar who was also an Initiate and the teacher
of Agrippa von Nettesheim, used this method. Given the right key, you
will find in his works much that is taught today in Theosophy.
In earlier times, only
a few who had undergone adequate preparation could be initiated. Why
was this secrecy necessary? In order to ensure the right attitude towards
knowledge, it had to be restricted to those who were adequately prepared;
the others received its blessings only. This knowledge was not intended
to satisfy idle curiosity or inquisitiveness; it was meant to be put
to work, to have a practical influence on political and social institutions
in the world. In this way all the great advances in the development
of humanity owe their origin to impulses issuing from occultism. For
this reason, too, all those who were to be instructed in theosophical
teachings were obliged to undergo severe tests and trials to prove their
worthiness; and then they were initiated step by step, and led upwards
quite slowly.
This method has been
abandoned in modern times; the more elementary teachings are now given out
publicly. This is necessary because the earlier methods, whereby only the
fruits of the teaching were allowed to reach humanity, would fail. Among
these earlier methods we must include religions, and this wisdom was a
constituent part of all of them. Nowadays, however, we hear of a conflict
between knowledge and faith. What is necessary today is to attain to
higher knowledge by the paths of learning.
The decisive event which
led to the making public of this knowledge, however, was the invention
of printing. Previously, theosophical teaching had been passed on orally
from one person to another, and nobody who was unripe or unworthy would
hear of it. But knowledge of the material world was spread abroad and
made popular through books; hence arose the conflict between knowledge
and faith. Issues such as this have made it necessary for much of the
great treasure of occult knowledge of all ages to be made accessible
to the public. Whence does man originate? What is his goal? What lies
hidden behind his visible form? What happens after death? — all
these questions have to be answered, and answered not by theories and
hypotheses and surmises, but by the relevant facts.
The purpose of occult
science has always been to unravel the riddle of man. Everything said
in these lectures will be from the standpoint of practical occultism;
they will contain nothing that is mere theory and cannot be put into
practice. Such theories have found their way into theosophical literature
because in the beginning the people who wrote the books did not understand
clearly what they were writing about. This kind of writing may indeed
be very useful for curiosity-addicts; but Theosophy must be carried
into real life.
Let us first consider
the nature and being of man. When someone comes into our presence, we
first of all see through our sense-organs what Theosophy calls the physical
body. Man has this body in common with the whole world around him; and
although the physical body is only a small part of what man really is,
it is the only part of which ordinary science takes account. But we
must go deeper. Even superficial observation will make it clear that
this physical body has very special qualities. There are plenty of other
things which you can see and touch; every stone is after all a physical
body. But man can move, feel and think; he grows, takes nourishment,
propagates his kind. None of this is true of a stone, but some of it
is certainly true of plants and animals. Man has in common with the
plants his capacity to nourish himself, to grow and propagate; if he
were like a stone, with only a physical body, none of this would be
possible. He must therefore possess something which enables him to use
substances and their forces in such a way that they become for him the
means of growth and so forth. This is the etheric body.
Man has a physical body
in common with the mineral kingdom, and an etheric body in common with
the plant and animal kingdoms. Ordinary observation can confirm that.
But there is another way whereby we can convince ourselves of the existence
of an etheric body, although only those who have developed their higher
senses have this faculty. These higher senses are no more than a higher
development of what is dormant in every human being. It is rather like
a man born blind being operated on so that he can see. The difference
is that not everyone born blind can be successfully operated on, whereas
everyone can develop the spiritual senses if he has the necessary patience
and goes through the proper preliminary training. A very definite form
of higher perception is needed to understand this principle of life,
growth, nutrition and propagation. The example of hypnotism can help
us to show what this means.
Hypnotism, which has always
been known to the Initiates, implies a condition of consciousness different
from that of ordinary sleep. There must be a close rapport between
the hypnotiser and his subject. Two types of suggestion are involved
— positive and negative. The first makes a person see what is not
there, while the second diverts his attention from something that is
present and is thus only an intensification of a condition familiar
enough in everyday life when our attention is diverted from an object so
that we do not see it, although our eyes are open. This happens to us
involuntarily every day when we are wholly absorbed in something.
Theosophy will have nothing to do with conditions where consciousness is
dimmed and dulled. To grasp theosophical truths a man must be quite as
much in control of his senses when investigating higher worlds as he is
when investigating ordinary matters. The serious dangers inherent in
Initiation can affect him only if his consciousness is dimmed.
Anyone who wants to know
the nature of the etheric body by direct vision must be able to maintain
his ordinary consciousness intact and “suggest away” the
physical body by the strength of his own will. The gap left will, however,
not be empty; he will see before him the etheric body glowing with a
reddish-blue light like a phantom, but with radiance a little darker
than young peach blossom. We never see an etheric body if we “suggest
away” a crystal; but in the case of a plant or animal we do, for
it is the etheric body that is responsible for nutrition, growth and
reproduction.
Man, of course, has other
faculties as well. He can feel pleasure and pain, which the plant cannot
do. The Initiate can discover this by his own experience, for he can
identify himself with the plant. Animals can feel pleasure and pain,
and thus have a further principle in common with man: the astral body.
The astral body is the seat of everything we know as desire, passion,
and so forth. This is clear to straightforward observation as an inner
experience, but for the Initiate the astral body can become an outer
reality. The Initiate sees this third member of man as an egg-shaped
cloud which not only surrounds the body, but permeates it. If we
“suggest away” the physical body and also the etheric body,
what we shall see will be a delicate cloud of light, inwardly full of
movement. Within this cloud or aura the Initiate sees every desire, every
impulse, as colour and form in the astral body. For example, he sees
intense passion flashing like rays of lightning out of the astral body.
In animals the basic colour
of the astral body varies with the species: a lion's astral body has
a different basic colour from that of a lamb. Even in human beings the
colour is not always the same, and if you train yourself to be sensitive
to delicate nuances, you will be able to recognise a man's temperament
and general disposition by his aura. Nervous people have a dappled aura;
the spots are not static but keep on lighting up and fading away. This
is always so, and is why the aura cannot be painted.
But man is distinguished
from the animal in still another way. This brings us to the fourth member
of man's being, which comes to expression in a name different
from all other names. I can say “I” only of myself. In the
whole of language there is no other name which cannot be applied by all
and sundry to the same object. It is not so with “I”; a man
can say it only of himself. Initiates have always been aware of this.
Hebrew Initiates spoke of the “inexpressible name of God”,
of the God who dwells in man, for the name can be uttered only by the
soul for this same soul. It must sound forth from the soul and the soul
must give itself its own name; no other soul can utter it. Hence the
emotion of wonder which thrilled through the listeners when the name
“Jahve” was uttered, for Jahve or Jehovah signifies
“I” or “I AM”. In the name which the soul uses
of itself, the God begins to speak within that individual soul.
This attribute makes man
superior to the animals. We must realise the tremendous significance
of this word. When Jean Paul had discovered the “I” within
himself, he knew that he had experienced his immortal being.
This again presents itself
to the seer in a peculiar form. When he studies the astral body, everything
appears in perpetual movement except for one small space, shaped like
a somewhat elongated blue oval, situated at the base of the nose, behind
the brow. This is to be seen in human beings only — more clearly
in the less civilised peoples, most clearly of all in savages at the
lowest level of culture. Actually there is nothing there but an empty
space. Just as the empty centre of a flame appears blue when seen through
the light around it, so this empty space appears blue because of the
auric light streaming around it. This is the outer form of expression
of the “I”.
Every human being has
these four members; but there is a difference between a primitive savage
and a civilised European, and also between the latter and a Francis
of Assisi, or a Schiller. A refinement of the moral nature produces
finer colours in the aura; an increase in the power of discrimination
between good and evil also shows itself in a refinement of the aura.
In the process of becoming civilised the “I” has worked
upon the astral body and ennobled the desires. The higher the moral
and intellectual development of a man, the more will his “I”
have worked upon the astral body. The seer can distinguish between a
developed and an undeveloped human being
Whatever part of the astral
body has been thus transformed by the “I” is called
Manas. Manas is the fifth member of man's nature. A man has just
so much of Manas as he has created by his own efforts; part of his astral
body is therefore always Manas. But a man is not able to exercise an
immediate influence upon the etheric body, although in the same way that
he can raise himself to a higher moral level he can also learn to work
upon the etheric body. Then he will be called a Chela, a pupil. He can
thus attain mastery over the etheric body, and what he has transformed
in this body by his own efforts is called Buddhi. This is the
sixth member of man's nature, the transformed etheric body.
Such a Chela can be
recognised by a certain sign. An ordinary man shows no resemblance either
in temperament or form to his previous incarnation. The Chela has the
same habits, the same temperament as in the previous incarnation. This
similarity remains because he has worked consciously on the etheric body,
the bearer of the forces of growth and reproduction.
The highest achievement
open to man on this Earth is to work right down into his physical body.
That is the most difficult task of all. In order to have an effect upon
the physical body itself, a man must learn to control the breath and
the circulation, to follow consciously the activity of the nerves, and
to regulate the processes of thought. In theosophical language, a man who
has reached this stage is called an Adept; he will then have developed in
himself what we call Atma. Atma is the seventh member of man's
being.
In every human being four
members are fully formed, the fifth only partly, the sixth and seventh
in rudiment only. Physical body, etheric body, astral body, “I”
or Ego, Manas, Buddhi, Atma — these are the seven members of man's
nature; through them he can participate in three worlds.
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