Awareness - Life - Form
GA 89
10 November 1904
Translated by Steiner Online Library
Planetary Development XII
[ 1 ] Today we want to try to shed some light on the transition of the Logos to a new system, to a new creation.
[ 2 ] People usually ask first: How did everything come into being? — This is probably the most difficult question, but it is asked often. One can only give a rough idea of this. Above all, one must realize that it is our intellect that asks how things came into being and tries to make a plausible explanation of how one would have created the world oneself if one had been the Creator. Human reason, however, is itself one of the things that originate from the Logos, and it is clear that the consciousness of the Logos is far greater; therefore, we cannot judge the Logos by human reason. For this reason, the question cannot be posed as follows: “Why did the world have to emerge from the Logos?”—but one can only ask how the emergence of the world from the Logos takes place, how things came into being, not why—because the “why” would imply a compulsion. The emergence of the world from the Logos must be a free act of the Logos, not an act of necessity.
[ 3 ] The creative nature of the Logos can be described only through an image, by imagining a being and its reflection. One must tell oneself: The reflection contains everything that is present in the being itself. It looks exactly the same, but it is not alive; it does not contain the life principle. If we wish to understand how the reflection can become equal to the being, we must realize that this is possible only if the being imparts its life, its existence, to the reflection—and this gives us the concept of the first sacrifice. The surrender of one’s own existence, the transfer of one’s own life to the reflection—that is the original sacrifice.
[ 4 ] The same is true of the Logos. The first Logos relates to the second as when, standing before our reflection in a mirror, we resolve to surrender our own life to that reflection. The surrender of life is the primordial sacrifice performed of one’s own free will. This is the act of the first Logos. The second Logos is exactly the same as the first Logos, except that it has received its existence through a sacrifice. If one now studies the effect of the second Logos, one finds that the essence of the second Logos consists in its radiating—reflecting back—the essence of the first Logos toward the first Logos. Thus, the Second Logos is a reflection of the First Logos, from whom he received his own life—the life that flowed forth from the First Logos.
[ 5 ] First, the first Logos is reflected; then it imparts life to the reflection. While in the first Logos everything is directed outward—existence acts outwardly—the second Logos possesses, first, the existence it has received, and second, the ability to reflect its content back onto the first Logos. Thus, we now have a duality in the second Logos. The life and the content of the second Logos are two distinct things. The content is the same as that of the first Logos, but the life is different from that of the first Logos:
[ 6 ] The line in the middle of the second circle signifies that, in the second Logos, life and content are two distinct things—that they are separate.
[ 7 ] As far as content is concerned, the image and the reflection are the same in both cases, but life is twofold. This, in and of itself, could not yet constitute a world system, for here only one Logos would relate to the other; there would be no diversity. Diversity can only enter through a further sacrifice. A further reflection must take place: the relationship that the two have to one another must also be reflected.
[ 8 ] First, the first Logos is reflected once more; second, the reflection itself is reflected. This then gives rise to the third Logos as the reflection of the other two Logoi. Thus, the third Logos contains:
1. the reflection of the First Logos
2. the reflection of what the First Logos has brought about in the Second Logos, namely its life
3. the reflection of what the Second Logos radiates back to the First.
[ 9 ] Let us now imagine: The first Logos is reflected in a. If the first Logos is the outward-striving, creative activity, then its reflection in the third Logos is precisely the opposite activity of the first Logos. In the first Logos, a is the highest spiritual light of the world; in the third Logos, a is the utmost spiritual darkness.
[ 10 ] b is, in the second Logos, the life that the second Logos received from the first Logos. It is not the life that sacrifices itself, but the one that has been received. The life that sacrifices itself in the first Logos is love. The opposite of this in the third Logos is the absolute desire, longing, and striving for the Logos. b is therefore the absolute desire in the third Logos.
[ 11 ] In the second Logos, c is the reflection of the first Logos, which the second Logos reflects back.
[ 12 ] When it comes to our own reflection, we distinguish between:
1. The radiated image that returns from the darkness.
2. What we have given away returns as desire.
3. The image itself, which is who we are.
[ 13 ] This corresponds to the three parts in the third Logos:
a spiritual darkness = Tamas
b absolute desire = Rajas
c the simple reflection of the First Logos = Sattwa
[ 14 ] Tamas, Rajas, and Sattwa are the three gunas, the three aspects of the Third Logos.
[ 15 ] To begin with, a, b, and c exist. When a exists on its own, it is simply Tamas. When a—spiritual darkness or Tamas—combines with b—Rajas, absolute desire—darkness combines with desire, and there is a striving toward the First Logos. When a and c—Tamas and Sattwa—are combined, we have the image of the First Logos, created out of darkness. Similarly, we can combine b with c. Each can occur on its own and be combined with one of the others. All three combined together are what the First Logos itself is. We have seven possible combinations of the three gunas:
[ 16 ] These, then, are the seven different combinations of the gunas. Imagine these seven possible combinations as the next world-creating principle that can emerge from the three gunas. These seven entities truly exist. They are the so-called seven creative spirits before the throne of God—the seven creative forces following the three Logoi:
[ 17 ] From these seven creative forces arises that which we call the Prajapatis. Since each of these can repeat this fact exactly at lower levels of consciousness, life, and form, we get three of each everywhere: that is, three times a, three times b, three times c, three times ab, three times ac, three times bc, three times abc—which together amounts to three times seven = 21 Prajapatis. Each of them behaves like a primordial Logos. This gives us the 21 creators of a specific solar system.
[ 18 ] The first concept we encounter, then, is that of the completely free sacrifice. Once one grasps it, the question of “why” ceases to have any meaning. Human progress consists in no longer asking this question, but rather in rising to the concept of the creative Logos.
[ 19 ] If you have a mechanical device, such as a clock or a machine, you can predict how it will behave. This is somewhat less possible when it comes to natural phenomena, though it is possible to a certain extent there as well. A solar eclipse, for example, is predictable. In this case, one can speak of a necessity. One can even specify what a plant will do under certain conditions. However, the higher we move up in the realm of nature, the less we can say about what a being will do in a given situation. The greater a person’s talents and inner depth, the less it is possible to predict anything about their actions, for one cannot fathom their reasons and motives. Then one has no choice but to wait and see what they will do in a given situation.
[ 20 ] Likewise, one must accept the creation of the world as a free act of the Logos. And progress consists in knowing that, when it comes to the universe, one need not ask “why,” that the question of “why” is unwarranted. All who have realized this have not spoken of a “reason” for the world. Jakob Böhme speaks of an “unreason” of the world. If we wish to ascend to the knowledge of the creative power of the world, we can do nothing other than go as far as we know our own development must lead, for that is where the Creator must once have stood. The Creator must possess, in reverse, everything that we possess. Atma is the deepest point within us. The Creator, however, has Atma as a multitude of points within His sphere. At the beginning of the solar system, the world-creating Logos possessed the qualities that we have found to be the goal of our development: Atma, Budhi, Karana Sharira, or Manas, Kama, Linga Sharira, Prana, Sthula Sharira—all within His being.
[ 21 ] We must clarify where the activity of this creative Logos might lie. To do so, we will first examine where the various metamorphoses lead us. The metamorphoses of form are: one physical, two astral, two mental, and two arupic—seven in total. Once we have reached the height of the mental plane, we have become Karana Sharira from the outside; thereafter, we become Budhi, then Atma [left diagram]. When the Earth has reached its goal, we will be active on the higher mental plane. Then begins the transition that carries us over to the next planet. For this, we must have Atma on the outside. Thus, Karana Sharira and Budhi must also disappear from the outside [right diagram]:
[ 22 ] Amar The consequence of this is that we must not imagine that nothing happens during the transition to a new planet—Pralaya is not inactivity or sleep—but rather, during Pralaya, the Karana Sharira and Budhi are shed. On the Budhi plane, we must shed the Karana Sharira, and on the Nirvana plane
[ 23 ] Budhi himself. The development unfolds as follows:
[ 24 ] Pralaya is an activity of a completely different nature than the activity during a Manvantara. In order to form a new planetary chain, the being must have passed through the Budhi and Nirvana planes on the other side. The significance of the Budhi and Nirvana planes lies in the fact that on them, the beings between planets undergo exactly the same process as humans do in Devachan. There are also great Pralayas: Mahapralayas. If we trace the metamorphoses of consciousness from one planet to another, we find that on Earth we have waking consciousness, on the Moon we have dream consciousness, and so on (see diagram on p. 201):
[ 25 ] One must pass through the Nirvana Plane to move from one state of consciousness to another. Once the highest state of consciousness has been attained, and Atma has shed all its veils and truly become the All-Encompassing, it becomes capable of forming a new solar system. To do so, it must pass through two further planes of consciousness. By then, it has attained a kind of universal vision and can survey the entire world system.
[ 26 ] Our current daily consciousness can encompass the mineral kingdom; psychic consciousness can encompass life; intellectual consciousness can encompass sensation; and spiritual consciousness can encompass all that exists. Atma has then reached the highest level. Atma is universal consciousness.
[ 27 ] If Atma is to radiate outward, it must first acquire the ability to surrender everything; it must be creative. It becomes so by enveloping itself with Budhi and Manas. Then it can begin a new world system on the Arupa plane. Thus, once consciousness has reached the final stage, it must still pass through two other planes. The first plane is the one where it does not shed Budhi but adds to it; this is called the Paranirvana plane. The one where the being descends again in order to be active once more on the Arupa plane is called the Mahaparanirvana plane. Each pair of opposing planes corresponds to one another. The lowest is the physical plane; its opposite is Nirvana:
[ 28 ] On the Astral Plane, desire reigns; on the Paranirvana Plane, love—Budhi—reigns. On the Mental Plane, knowledge—which encompasses thought—reigns; on the Mahaparanirvana Plane, creative thought reigns. The Budhi Plane is absolute, loving devotion to the Divine. Its opposite is the absolute turning away from all that is Divine. If the Budhi Plane has something blissful, its opposite is absolute misery. This is the eighth plane, the eighth sphere.
[ 29 ] Imagine that some being, on some plane of evolution, had turned away from the course of development and gone its own way; it would then fall into the eighth sphere and would have to wait there until the entire cycle of development had run its course. It could only be taken along again in the next evolution as the lowest being. In this cosmic compass rose, the opposites are clearly expressed. — When we have reached the Nirvana plane, the being has reached the point where its Atma is entirely outward-facing. We are then dealing with a Logos of the kind we have designated as the Seven. These are the seven creative spirits; that is why we also have seven different races, [the so-called root races, each with seven subraces].
[ 30 ] The seven different spirits belong to the Nirvana Plane. As we then pass through the Paranirvana Plane and the Mahaparanirvana Plane, we arrive at the First and Second Logos themselves. The Second Logos comes into being on the Paranirvana Plane, and the First Logos on the Mahaparanirvana Plane. On the Nirvana Plane, the world system is perfected by the 7 × 3 = 21 Prajapatis. The last of them is abc, the Third Logos itself. Only the First Logos can take back what has fallen into the eighth sphere. It takes it along with the dust of the worlds. To be cast out of the course of evolution means to link one’s life to something that inevitably remains behind, and to wait there until evolution once again reaches that particular state. A savage inhabited by the soul of a savage is relatively happy; but imagine a developed being in the body of a savage or a dog—that is indeed exile. The higher soul has taken the path into a lower manifestation. In fact, “entering the eighth sphere” means: not progressing with evolution, not being able to participate in the development of others, but rather being cast back to a lower level.
[ 31 ] Consciousness is, at first, a consciousness of cognition up to the Nirvana Plane. From the Nirvana Plane onward, it is no longer mere perception, but inner creation. On the Paraniirvana Plane, it is outward creation. On the Mahaparinirvana plane, it is the creative consciousness of the Logos. From there, the consciousness of the Logos passes through the eighth sphere onto the physical plane, where it becomes creative forces of nature. In truth, they are the expression of divine thoughts, which appear to us as forces because we cannot comprehend them.