Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge I
Theosophy, Christology and Mythology
GA 90a
5 September (1904?), Berlin
Translated by Steiner Online Library
57. The Realms
[ 1 ] There must be something within a person that corresponds to every object in the external world. There must be something in external objects that corresponds to what is within us. We encounter objects on a common plane. They encounter us in three ways:
- Mineral; human beings originated where minerals condensed through the power of God
- Evokes both desire and aversion
- Stimulates thought.
[ 2 ] In the Manasic realm, there must be something that gives rise to thoughts from outside. That which receives thoughts within us must be something that arises from those thoughts. Everything above is as it is below. Human beings descended to meet creative activity. The course of development was such that the creative met the post-creative. The mineral kingdom is the setting for this encounter. Human beings have evolved into the mineral kingdom and must now evolve out of it.
[ 3 ] Thus, in the mineral kingdom, the microcosm and the macrocosm meet. As God evolves downward, He encounters humanity through His relationship with the mineral kingdom.
| Medieval Terms | |
|---|---|
| Elemental Realm | Realm of Reason |
| Elemental Realm | The Celestial Realm The Sprouting of Thought from Universal Reason |
| Elemental Realm | The Elemental Realm |
| Elemental Realm or Mineral Realm | The Mineral Realm (or the Small World) |
[ 4 ] All human development exists so that we may one day stand freely before the Divine: Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, Chapter 8, Verse 19: “For the creation waits in eager expectation for the sonship to be revealed.” All development is a longing.
[ 5 ] Buddhist self-awareness will confront the Mahabuddha.
[ 6 ] Hence the attempts at development: Human beings must develop the appropriate organs in the various realms. They live a double life in the physical realm in order to become familiar with everything that is native to it, just as they do in the astral realm and in Devachan. He will be able to live in pure Devachan when he no longer has any inclination toward the other worlds. Human beings can have an inclination downward or upward; they should have the desire for enthusiasm, to transform the lower into the higher, to elevate the temporal to the eternal. The student of the mysteries has developed the measure of desire that lived within him toward the spiritual side; this desire becomes a gaze upward.
[ 7 ] The astral is an intermediate realm; if desire tends downward, a person’s astral is kamic; if it tends upward, it is purified and mental.
[ 8 ] Human beings have a cosmic task: to develop the forces of the mineral kingdom. Because they encounter the Divine in the mineral kingdom, they must offer the forces they find there to the Divine. Hence the parable of the bee.
[ 9 ] He must gather the three realms and unite them with the Divine. Through our earthly life, we fulfill our dual task: to transform the sighing of disharmony into harmony. If we do not accomplish this task, we are missing out on something.
[ 10 ] We now stand at the boundary where we must effect the reversal. It is the meeting of two realms; it is the crossroads at the level of the mineral kingdom.
[ 11 ] Theosophy is therefore a theory that must come to life.
[ 12 ] Human beings bring into consciousness everything that animals carry within themselves as unconscious memories. By cultivating thought through meditation, human beings recover the memory of past earthly lives. Christianity had the task of sanctifying the personality; for this reason, the concept of individuality had to take a back seat for a time.
[ 13 ] Development is the extension of the later into the earlier; the earliest manifestations of humanity are the harbingers of later development.