The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. Cosmic Wisdom and Human Wisdom

[ 1 ] Today I would like to return to a few points concerning human principles. We must seek out what exists in the world just as it exists within ourselves. A clock is a device made possible only by an intelligence that designed and assembled it. It is foolish to say: The clock has given itself this ingenious design. It would be just as foolish to say: Human beings have created themselves in their own image.

[ 2 ] We have a small piano inside our ears, the “Corti organ.” It has tiny hairs on it, and each hair is tuned to a specific pitch. These hairs vibrate along with the sound when a key on the piano is struck. In this way, the vibrations of the air are transmitted to the tiny hairs, which then vibrate in unison. The same is true of the eye. The eye, too, is a complex apparatus brought into being by wisdom. In this sense, human beings are wisdom made tangible. The world was created according to thought.

[ 3 ] We call the wisdom in space “cosmic wisdom” or [“Mahat”]. Mahat is the sum of the wisdom that pervades the world. Thus, it is a process of extracting wisdom from the clock. This is just as a person draws wisdom from nature.

[ 4 ] Mahat is the archetype of wisdom. “Mala” is the image of Mahat within human beings. According to Indian teachings, it was like this: Brahma was alone at first, slumbering, then he awoke. A night of Brahma had passed. Creative wisdom awakened within him. Nothing remained except the creative wisdom of Brahma. And this creative wisdom is Mahat. A solar system exists as a thought in the mind of Brahma. We contemplate this cosmic thought.

[ 5 ] Wisdom is present everywhere in the world. It flows into our soul from a kind of spiritual seed. Cosmic wisdom resides in the soul. Mala lives in many. Mahat lives only once. As Mahat becomes individual—that is, becomes Mala—he needs a connecting link. That is Ahankara. Through Ahankara, every human being is connected to the universal wisdom of the world.

[ 6 ] I immerse myself within and withdraw from the external sensory world. By severing this bridge, I am allowed to look inward. I possess the common essence of all things within me through ahankara. I must return to universal wisdom. First, a person finds manas within themselves, and then they find ahankara, which leads them back to unity, to divine wisdom. As we journey through ahankara, you will come to realize that we are undergoing an important spiritual process. We generally become more absorbed. It is the awareness that one’s own self is a part of the divine Self. I then do not remain fixed in my own self, but I begin to feel myself as a part of the universal Mahat. I exist only because I was originally placed into the world through a divine thought. Ahankara leads to absorption in the world of God’s thoughts. I and the Father are one. I speak not because I will it, but because I allow Ahankara to flow through me. With regard to the physical sensory world, it would be a mistake to say, “I and the others are one.” Mahat is, at the same time, what we call Atma in Theosophy.

[ 7 ] I have two thoughts. First: “I want to go into town tomorrow”; and second: “I want to visit a friend.” These are two thoughts that exist as a single entity within my soul. Thus, human beings are thoughts of Mahat. Human beings are united in Mahat. Mahat has many Atmas, but all Atmas are together in Mahat. This Mahat of the world system, in which we evolve, is the “third Logos.” And so we can say: We consist of three principles—first, Manas; second, Budhi; and third, Atma. When we rise to this level, we are no longer individuals.

[ 8 ] At the level of the Atma, we call a thought an “image.” Let us now try to grasp the difference even more clearly. What lives within us as a thought is, in its true meaning and essence, a shadow image. In terms of its true essence, it relates to the object just as a shadow relates to it. The shadow image is only there when the lamp is there and I am there. But one can also sit in such a way that one sees only the shadow images. If we could go out into that sphere where the true essences of these shadow images are, we would recognize the archetypes. And we also call these archetypes “Spirit.” Spirit is a spiritual essence that is both thought and will. Thus, it is creative thought. Living entities are realities; they are individuality. An intellectual thought is that which lives with Kama-Manas. When we free the intellectual thought from sensory images, all that remains is a gray generality, an abstract thought. The soul must have passed through this abstract thinking. Then, instead of coming from below, new content flows in from above. When we walk across the street, our thoughts are stimulated from the outside. But they must also be able to receive impressions from within.

[ 9 ] We can become passive, which means we can surrender ourselves to Mahat, the third Logos. We then call this “spiritual” or “intuition.”

[ 10 ] Thus, the spiritual flows into us through ahankara and through manas. That is why manas can be influenced from above, by budhi, and from below, by Brahma, by the sensory world. This gives us nine principles. Then we must consider the tenth. The seventh principle is the Third Logos. We can [also] speak of only seven principles. When a principle disappears downward, another must enter from above.

[ 11 ] Human beings have currently developed four principles. The fifth principle is in the process of emerging, and the next two are still completely undeveloped. What we cast off below must be replaced above. Our consciousness does not fill the entire body. We have no more control over the Manas body in Kamaloka than you have over the physical body here. When we enter Devachan, Ahankara or Budhi takes over.

[ 12 ] In Devachan, it is not as cold as is often portrayed, because the spirits passing through do not feel the cold. While in physical life and in Kamaloka we cling to particularities, here we feel the Great, the Whole—the great primordial being of the world—into which all things flow together. Ahankara comes to life all the more once we have freed ourselves from particularity in Kamaloka. The more Kama disappears, the more Budhi emerges within us.

[ 13 ] The development of the budhi is an essential development of the emotional life, but one in which the world of particular interests is transformed into the world of universal interests. The mystic calls this the purification of the astral body. It would be wrong to believe that the mystic is supposed to become unfeeling. On the contrary: one should not be cold toward the world, but rather aligned with the center of which every individual being is a part. We must become objective.

[ 14 ] Justice in one’s feelings—that is the same thing Paul calls the Law. Paul says: Through the Law, sin entered the world. Without the Law, sin would be dead.

[ 15 ] You cannot call the Kama nature in a lion or a tiger a sin. This is because the animal is incapable of reawakening within itself, in a refined form, that which exists externally as Kama. The situation is different when a being is capable of unifying all its particular interests under the Law. Budhi is subject to the Law. If there were only animal Kama natures, there would be no sin in the world.

[ 16 ] The law was born from Budhi. As long as Kama exists only in nature, there is no sin. Sin came into being only after there were beings through whom Budhi could act—that is, beings capable of shaping the law. I use the power of feeling to attain the great unity of nature. Animals can find satisfaction in sensory pleasure. Humans cannot, for Budhi demands more. Budhi is the sum total of the emotional world. This has been distributed among the individual creatures. Not a single drop of the emotional world should be lost. What remains unpurified does indeed live on, but our task is to return all of it to the common reservoir from which it originated. That is why Theosophy calls for collective action. Our task is to gather the emotions so that they can pass over to the new planet as a unified whole. What was left behind from the Moon remains unprocessed as the eighth sphere. This remnant of our Moon is connected to the unprocessed part of our ancestors. It is what pulls us down. These are milestones that must be carried along, and the delays in cosmic evolution are connected to them. This is also related to what we have come to know as the Brothers of the Shadow and their influence.