Knowledge of Life Two
5. THE CONSCIOUSNESS ASPECT
5. THE CONSCIOUSNESS ASPECT
1The present theoretical section treats only of the different kinds of collective consciousness (group consciousness), monad consciousness, envelope consciousness, subjective and objective consciousness, and the unconscious.
2What more could be considered to belong to the consciousness aspect – psychology, education, etc. – is treated in particular essays in this volume and in others in the series Knowledge of Life.
3As primitive as mankind is in its conception of reality, and particularly of the consciousness aspect of existence (the matter aspect in the visible world is the restricted area), we probably must assume that it will be a long time yet before mankind can understand even approximately the significance of the various idiologies for consciousness development in their inhibitory or stimulatory effect, to say nothing of the effect of energies in this respect. It is only in recent years that physicians have said that they could observe that joy and an optimistic attitude are significant for the patient’s recovery. But how could they understand what this is due to when they know nothing about the energy expressions (physical etheric, emotional, and mental energies?) accompanying the consciousness expressions? Science is so far from reality that what has been said here must appear as imaginative constructions. An esoterician need not put forward his own reflections in questions about esoteric facts. The source of knowledge he draws from contains immensely more facts than is possible for him to account for.
4Consciousness makes up a unity. At the same time it is bound up with different kinds of matter. Everything conscious is simultaneously matter. An idea is a mental molecule (six kinds) or a mental atom. As seen from the matter aspect, consciousness appears to be graded, but from the consciousness aspect it is impossible to grade it. It merges but can be divided. This is one of the many paradoxes obtained when reason attempts to comprehend reality. Wholeness must be differentiated. That is one of the grounds why it is abortive to dogmatize, cram reality into conceptual compartments that are of significance only as an educational orientation. You must never lose sight of the fact that matter is one and a unity, consciousness is one and a unity, energy is one and a unity. Thus it appears to the individuals in the highest cosmic kingdom, the only ones able to have an absolute knowledge of the cosmos and everything in the cosmos.
5Consciousness is something quite different in each higher world, and nobody has any possibility whatsoever to understand a consciousness that is beyond his own experience. The planetary hierarchy asserts that the consciousnesses of the second triad are so totally different from those of the first triad that even the word consciousness is misleading. “Identification” would be a better term, although it, too, says nothing and of course is misleading if it is to be interpreted by the seemingly incurable human conceit with its faith in its own powers of perception and judgment. One of the greatest concerns of the planetary hierarchy is that people take their illusions, fictions, vagaries, brainwaves, imaginings as things that have the least counterparts in reality. So doing they idiotize their power of perception, the instinct of reality inherent in the collective consciousness, an instinct that manifests itself as flair, divination, or whatever terms you should use in trying to intimate the possibility of the monad consciousness to slowly and imperceptibly catch what from the very beginning is ineffable. In emotional mysticism this tendency finds its first, very fumbling expression.
6The tendency inherent in consciousness always meets with encouragement from those in higher kingdoms who always strive to help those in lower kingdoms to reach higher. But it is counteracted by people’s general tendency to inertia, their desire to keep the things they have become used to, master, and cherish; and by the forces that intentionally, directly fight development.
7Everything is “reborn”. All forms change and finally dissolve. And yet people idolize the perishable form and disregard the content of consciousness. Mankind should have learnt to see that the indwelling life is the essential thing, not the form.
8It is important to see that our conception of consciousness is valid in the worlds of man only and that it is impossible for us to conceive of the expressions of consciousness in higher worlds. The same is true, of course, of all the three aspects of reality. Everything is something “totally different” in each world, even if those fundamental characteristics remain which justify speaking about the three aspects.
9There are limits to the consciousness of all evolutionary beings. Those limits are determined by the individual’s ability to activate the passive consciousness in ever higher atomic kinds. The cosmic total consciousness is passive in nature. The monads (primordial atoms) acquire participation in this as their potential consciousness is actualized (awakened) into passive consciousness in the process of involution. This fact can also be expressed thus: the passive consciousness of every monad makes its contribution to the cosmic total consciousness, becomes like a drop in the ocean of consciousness, increasing its extent.
10The consciousness process of the monad, actualization in the process of involution and activation in the process of evolution through all the 49 atomic kinds, takes immense spaces of time. No data have been publicized about the period calculated for the development and dismantling of an entire cosmos. There are data about the life-time of a solar system, however, a fifteen-digit number as calculated in Terran years.
11Consciousness in the different kinds of matter is exactly limited to each one of these. Also individual consciousness is dependent on these. At the same time consciousness is collective, however, co-sharing in the cosmic ocean of consciousness. And that is why the stages of consciousness can merge in each other. It is must be clearly grasped, however, that man cannot determine whether, when, and how he has collective consciousness. Only the essential self is able to do so.
12Collective consciousness is the primary one and is common to all monads in all kingdoms. Individual consciousness, which becomes possible only through the collective one, must be acquired by the individual himself step by step in all the kinds of matter that make up his envelopes.
13The individuals in the three lowest natural kingdoms have collective consciousness (the “group-souls”), although of course they do not understand it. Man is limited to his individual consciousness, the condition of acquiring self-consciousness, self-determination, trust in self, etc. Not understanding it, he also is a being sharing in the collective consciousness, since this is primary and unlosable and the condition of the very individual consciousness. The isolation in causal consciousness is the cause of the feeling of loneliness (“the incurable loneliness of the soul”, which is an “illusion”). The experience of the community of all presupposes the acquisition of consciousness of unity, an acquisition through systematic work upon it. Everything collective is acquired through individual work. That was the insight which Goethe expressed in his: “What you inherited from your fathers must be acquired to be owned”. Everything given to you for nothing must be assimilated through your own work. Otherwise it will not be true understanding, not “your own”, but instead the common superficialness characteristic of so many memory geniuses, shining lights at school, and people in high places.
14Esoterics alone is able to give the requisite explanations of consciousness, by which term is meant the different kinds of consciousness which life-ignorant man apprehends as the organism’s consciousness. The esoterician learns to distinguish those different kinds. What is most important is that he does not identify his monad consciousness with the other kinds of consciousness there are in his envelopes. The monad consciousness, the self’s consciousness, is whatever you comprehend and understand. The rest is the consciousness of the envelopes. Because of this you can say: this is the will of my envelopes, it is not my will. True, the envelopes lack a will of their own. But if they are activated from without, they are dominated by vibrations coming from without, and this has the effect that the envelopes appear to have a will. This also has the effect that the thoughts of other people can dominate the envelope consciousnesses to the extent that they become determined by will from without. However, that does not free the individual from responsibility, for it is his duty to be self-determined. The individual’s biggest mistakes are due to his confusion of envelope consciousness and monad consciousness.
15The symbolic expression “to find one’s soul” has reference to the individual’s discovery of the monad consciousness in the various envelope consciousnesses he has already activated and in the higher envelope consciousnesses he will activate in the course of evolution.
16It is typical of the superficiality of philosophic speculation that esoterics must call philosophers’ and psychologists’ attention to the fact that consciousness, which by its true nature is subjective, can be objective as well. From of old, unphilosophical thinking made a distinction between subjective consciousness (reason) and objective consciousness (sense). The understanding of this difference was lost as philosophical speculation supplanted the faculty of unconfused reflection.
17Thus objective reality is material reality. The philosophers subjectivized the term “objective” to mean matter-of-fact, impersonal.
18By passive consciousness is understood the consciousness of involutionary monads, a consciousness that can only be activated from without. The corresponding state in evolutionary monads is called inactivity.
19All matter is active (activated through the atomic currents of primary matter). All activity simultaneously becomes consciousness. However, only with self-consciousness is purposiveness obtained. Active consciousness without self-consciousness is robot activity. As directed from without it can appear as self-activity due to possible purposiveness. One example of this is hypnosis, another is psychosis.
20A sharp distinction must be made between active consciousness, self-consciousness, and active self-consciousness.
21Mentality is still inactive in most people and is directed from emotionality. That is an old insight, which has not yet been applied by educators.
22The unconscious is divided into superconsciousness and subconsciousness. The superconscious is always purposive. The subconscious is robot activity, on the whole only mechanical complex work, and that is why impulses from the subconscious in most people are divorced from reality. They feed their subconsciousness with illusions and fictions, and the result of the work of the subconscious cannot be more rational.
23Sometimes it may appear as though the subconscious worked intentionally, purposively, expediently. But in that case this is because of particularly strong impressions from the waking consciousness.
24Besides it must be made clear that the subconscious (the triad consciousness) is of three kinds: physical, emotional, and mental. Only after this has been elucidated by the psychologists will they be able to go make the further division into the consciousness of the different molecular kinds.
25Obscurity and confusion of ideas are the result if you do not make clear to yourself that:
26consciousness is one: the cosmic total consciousness in which every primordial atom (monad) has an unlosable share;
27consciousness is of totally different kinds in the different atomic kinds;
28a higher kind of consciousness contains, besides its own kind, all the lower kinds;
29consciousness is by nature both analytic and synthetic, sees both what separates and unites;
30attraction and repulsion are qualities of matter (the motion of positive and negative atoms) as well as a particular tendency of emotional matter, and also the tendency to identification and elimination in higher atomic consciousness;
31the higher the kind of consciousness, the more clearly is seen the meaning and goal, means and purpose of life;
32a higher kind cannot possibly be understood by a lower kind;
33the fifth natural kingdom and higher kingdoms are able in their activity to use their lower kinds of consciousness and do not use higher kinds than are necessary.
1All consciousness is, first and foremost, collective consciousness, due to the fact that everyone has a share in the cosmic total consciousness. Collective consciousness is the lowest kind of consciousness and is common to all. The individual has to acquire individual consciousness by himself through ever higher natural kingdoms. Collective consciousness in the three lowest natural kingdoms manifests itself in the group consciousness of the “group souls”.
2All consciousness is by nature both individual and collective. This explains the esoteric axiom that “consciousness is one”. There is (from the cosmic viewpoint) only one consciousness (the amalgamation of the consciousness of all monads), the cosmic total consciousness in which every monad (after its consciousness has been roused to life) has an unlosable share. This is the explanation of the individual’s immortality. It depends on the monad’s level of development how great the share is.
3Just as the ocean is made up of water molecules, so the whole universe is made up of primordial atoms (monads) with collective consciousness. The whole universe is a living whole, a cosmic total consciousness. Blavatsky expressed the matter thus: “space is a being”. That vague expression required an elucidation, however.
4Every aggregate (atom, molecule, material form, world) has its collective consciousness. This collective consciousness is passive but can be activated. Anyone who can activate it can utilize its consciousness content. That is how omniscience is acquired.
5Every material world has its own collective consciousness, the sum total of all the monad consciousnesses belonging to this world.
6All worlds have their memories, the higher containing the lower. Universal soul is the collective consciousness in the highest world of the planet (46) and the solar system (43).
7Collective consciousness always contains more than individual consciousness.
8The higher the kind of matter, the higher the kind of consciousness; the higher the world, the more comprehensive is the collective consciousness, which penetrates all lower consciousness and incorporates the individual consciousnesses.
9Higher kinds of consciousness apprehend all lower kinds of consciousness. Into the causal world, for instance, also enter mental, emotional, and physical consciousness. To 43- consciousness, all the seven kinds of atomic consciousness of the solar system (43–49 within the solar system) are like one single consciousness.
10The higher the kind of matter, the greater its energy in relation to lower kinds.
11Anyone who is able to activate consciousness in higher kinds of matter knows more than the one who is only able to activate lower consciousness.
12The ruler in any world is the monad possessing the greatest powers of activating the collective consciousness of that world, thus the one who has activated a higher kind of consciousness than other monads.
13Collective consciousness is superior to individual consciousness in respect of consciousness as well as energy. The individual develops his consciousness by activating his passive consciousness in ever higher molecular kinds, this passive consciousness from collective consciousness. The individual expands his consciousness by directly acquiring ever higher kinds of common active collective consciousness, by becoming an ever greater self with ever more selves. From this follows the renunciation of all separative tendencies. Perhaps you now understand why unity is necessary, aspiration to ever greater unity, ever widening common consciousness and why exclusiveness is the real hindrance to expansion.
14The disciple of the planetary hierarchy discovers who have reached the same level of development, who are striving towards the same goal, and that their striving is in actual fact a striving to community. This discovery also does away with the illusion that there is any loneliness.
15The meaning of life is the development of the monads’ consciousness. This development (activation) occurs in natural kingdoms. It begins in the mineral kingdom, goes on in the vegetable kingdom, animal kingdom, human kingdom, etc. Esoterically this was expressed in the symbolic saying: “Consciousness sleeps in the stone, dreams in the plant, awakens in the animal, and becomes self-consciousness in man”.
16Man is the fourth natural kingdom. There are twelve natural kingdoms in all. Each higher natural kingdom implies for the monad an enormous increase in consciousness, in intensive as well as in extensive respect, an increase of its share in the cosmic total consciousness, until the individual in the highest kingdom has incorporated this totality in his individual consciousness.
17If you start from collective consciousness, you can say that every material collective automatically makes up its own collective consciousness.
18Solar system, world, world in a planet, atomic kind, molecular kind in the different worlds, natural kingdom, etc., all make up their own collectives of all the monads entering into them. From this it should be evident that the number of collective subgroups is practically infinite. Where two or three atoms are united, they automatically make up a collective consciousness.
19In its totality, mankind makes up a collective consciousness; every race, nation, family as well. The same is true of all organizations, associations, etc.
20Every individual belongs to an immense number of collective consciousnesses, from the lowest group on the same level of development to ever greater units, planetary, systemic, cosmic units and, finally, the cosmic total consciousness.
21There is only one consciousness. That is why and that is the sense in which we are all one, make up a unity. That is why everybody shall reach the goal at last. All monads in all lower kingdoms are on their way towards the highest kingdom and will reach it some time. And those at higher stage receive all the help that is necessary to further development, but then they must do what they can to help those on lower levels. We are all dependent on each other and should then realize our responsibility for this community of life.
22The very fact that collective consciousness is the primary one makes it clear that collectivity is the essential thing and the existence of the individual is made possible through collectivity. Without collectivity and the experiences it has collected, no culture could exist. It is the cultural heritage that affords the individual a knowledge of reality and life. Without this heritage mankind would remain at the stage of barbarism.
23Of course wiseacreness has asserted that consciousness of community would preclude individuality. This is, as usual, an indication of unreason. The higher the kind of world and consciousness, the more developed individuality. On one thing there is only one, incontrovertible opinion, however: the absolute necessity of possessing knowledge of the requisite laws of nature and laws of life (in force in the worlds attained) and the ability to apply this knowledge and insight.
24Everything is individuality, individual character. Not until mankind has realized this will it realize the significance of individuality in all collectives. Every primordial atom has its individual character. Every combination of atoms has its individual character. Every collective has its individual character, a synthesis of the characters of the individuals entering into the collective. Every world has its individual character. Every cosmos has its individual character. Every individual’s apprehension of the individual characters of others has its individual character. There is nothing but individual character. Understanding is what is common in everybody’s individual character. Nobody can give up his individual character, should not do it, even if it were possible. But ever higher kinds of consciousness in ever higher kinds of matter are accompanied by increasing understanding of the particular in the general and the general in the particular.
25The individual as a self is a unique, absolute individual character while at the same time he is a part of a collective and of an ever larger collective and finally a cosmos. It is thanks to this ever larger collective that his consciousness can reach ever higher, embrace ever more, finally the all. Without the collective there would be no ascension, no consciousness expansion, for the collective can embrace the consciousness of others. By entering into ever higher, ever larger groups, his individuality is strengthened into universality without which the individual is doomed to wither away. He becomes ever richer by entering into planetary consciousness, solar systemic consciousness, ever greater cosmic consciousness.
26Those who have entered into collective consciousness need not “ascertain facts” by themselves any more but have access to everything that everybody has ascertained and which thus exists in everybody’s consciousness. Since everybody is a specialist and simultaneously a “universalist”, there is always special expert knowledge available if needed.
27The more the individual’s share in collective consciousness is increased through consciousness expansion, the larger is the content of the individual’s total consciousness. As long as the process of manifestation lasts, everything undergoes change, and so knowledge can never be anything established and concluded once and for all. Therefore, research is endless in all worlds, and this must be studied by the planetary hierarchy as well as the planetary government. This means that the scientific research of mankind is both taken into account and promoted in all ways by the planetary hierarchy, which assimilates the definitive results of all research.
28Omniscience is a relative concept, due to the fact that it is a result of experience and working up of experience, and this in all worlds in the whole cosmos. Since all material processes, events, etc., just as all expressions of active consciousness, are preserved in collective consciousness, everything past is accessible to research. Every individual ever since the mineral kingdom is, and becomes eventually in ever higher kingdoms something of a specialist (a special worker at the three aspects of reality), and the work results of this speciality of his are available in the collective consciousness. When the individual has reached thus far that he can begin working up what exists in this collective consciousness, he assimilates everything in this that concerns his own specialty and so doing becomes the true specialist. This benefits everybody. The consciousness of community makes it possible to obtain any special knowledge whatever as need arises.
29When the specialist has acquired interplanetary consciousness (45), he assimilates the corresponding knowledge of specialists in other planets; and when he has acquired interstellar consciousness (42), the corresponding knowledge in those of other solar systems. In that way cosmic specialists are educated. And everybody’s knowledge is at everybody’s disposal when need arises.
30Omniscience in the different worlds is the activated collective atomic consciousness common to all. This knowledge is a result of the experiences of all atoms ever since the planet came into being, preserved in the atomic memory, in subjective as well as objective respect. For consciousness is both subjective and objective, a truth that subjectivists have never been able to see. The material of knowledge is subjective as well as objective facts. It is only in the causal world that these facts have been put in their right contexts into systems or Platonic reality ideas. The world of ideas contains the collected, systematized experience of the three lowest atomic worlds (47–49). These ideas are the work of all those who have become causal selves and higher selves all the way up to 43-selves. All those individuals work at the consciousness and energy of causal matter for evolution. The world of ideas does not contain the “absolute” truth, only the result of evolution hitherto. The ideas of the world of ideas are constantly increased and reshaped through new experiences in an ongoing process of manifestation.
1Each material world, each molecular kind in a world, etc., makes up a unit in respect of consciousness. Every group of collective consciousnesses has one individual as its dominant in this collective being, an individual who in his consciousness sums up all consciousnesses within this “envelope of his”, and is the representative of law for the envelope. The entire planet, the entire interplanetary area, the whole solar system, etc., the whole cosmos, make up an “endless” series of such collective beings at different stages of development, a unitary organization.
2All monads, both those of involution and those of evolution, belong to any kind of “group souls”, although they are of so different kinds that, to avoid confusion, the term has been limited to the three lowest natural kingdoms and the term “clans” has been adopted for those in the fourth natural kingdom. The risk of communicating such a fact about mankind is that all at once think they can decide who belong to their own clan and also assign other individuals to definite clans. Therefore it must be emphatically made clear that men are unable to settle that matter. However, it is part of the esoteric knowledge that also human beings belong to a “group-soul” of a human kind. Man is no “soul erring at random through the cosmos”, even though he has no idea of his group.
3All essential selves and higher selves belong to expanding collective beings, groups of their own with consciousness of community. Such a group eventually receives (according as the individuals from lower kingdoms have acquired consciousness of the corresponding kind) ever more individuals. To begin with (in the fifth natural kingdom), the division into groups is made on the basis of the seven departments. In the sixth kingdom, the seven have merged into departments 1–3.
4So many individuals of the human kingdom have nowadays reached the stage of humanity and approach the stage of ideality that, in the year 1925, the planetary hierarchy decided to attempt a formation of groups among those individuals.
5Nine aspirants are brought together into a group and are made to jointly form an essential being. This is done in such a manner that mental atoms and emotional atoms from their envelopes are brought together into an envelope of essential matter, supervised by an essential self, who becomes the centre of the collective causal and emotional consciousness.
6This has the effect that the nine aspirants’ feelings and thoughts become shared. Everyone contributes his qualities and abilities, which benefit all, so that everyone has the potentials of consciousness and energy of the collective being at his disposal to use them in the service of evolution.
7Of course this conduces to a great extent to the facilitation of everybody’s individual development. Individuals in this manner help each other and collectively learn how to solve existing problems collectively.
8Since all know what the others feel and think, the condition of this is that all have acquired control of consciousness, so that there will occur no consciousness expressions of an “unsuitable” kind, disturbing others.
9Thus the group members even at this stage (the highest emotional, 48:2,3 and the higher mental, 47:4,5) learn to “enter into unity”, which to a great extent facilitates their entry into the world of unity (46).
1Evolutionary monads are always enclosed in groups within the same natural kingdom. In the three lowest kingdoms these groups are called “group-souls”, in superhuman kingdoms, “collective beings”. The highest group in a collective being is the “god” of that collective being.
2Men belong to collective beings. In these collective beings there are groups, clans, families. These monads have had experiences together in group-souls ever since the mineral kingdom and have finally causalized together. These esoteric clans, etc., make up groups that are united in the causal world (potential future collective beings), groups that as a rule incarnate together in all possible relationships. In times of transition between zodiacal epochs they have other, necessary experiences with other clans, families, etc., and then sense their alienation.
3Those small groups in particular which have ever and again formed families are attached to each other with unseverable ties: where the same individuals have alternately been father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter. In actual fact only those people have a right to speak of love at first sight. That love stands all strength tests in all the vicissitudes of life. Sometimes they are not “related” but just friends on this one true basis of friendship. If an individual is mistaken in this respect and his illusion suddenly is shattered, this probably is among the most difficult things to overcome in the tragedy of life.
4Separation from true friends seldom lasts long. They are present with you in the mental world and you will meet them again in a new incarnation. The mental form of them you make for yourself is vitalized by a molecule from the causal envelope of the friend. It is true that it happens that if you have become too much dependent, so that you have lost your independence, some incarnations may pass without meeting them. Then you seek your friends in vain and lead a lonely life.
5Consciousness is one, the cosmic total consciousness in which every individual has an unlosable share. In order to rouse consciousness to life and subsequently to make the individual acquire an ever greater share in the total consciousness, solar systems with planets have been made and the individuals on the planet are made to go through evolution in a series of ever higher natural kingdoms. For the individual to be able to acquire collective consciousness and to purposively apply the laws of life requisite to this, it is necessary that he acquires individual consciousness. Mankind has developed so far as to see the necessity of individual power of judgement, self-reliance and self-determination. But this is not the goal of development but only a condition of collective consciousness, ever more comprehensive sovereignty.
6Collective consciousness begins with consciousness of community in a few individuals: an esoteric family. It expands eventually to comprise an esoteric family, an esoteric clan, increasingly larger groups beyond the limits of race and nation. Race and nation are physical phenomena. And such things always become hindrances to the consciousness of community, which is essential consciousness without external attributes. Nations have had their missions. However, when people have developed so that they are able to conceive of mankind as a whole, the concept of nation becomes a hindrance.
7Every nation has a “soul” consisting of a greater and a lesser causal envelope. These two envelopes are formed by those incarnating. In ordinary cases, one causal molecule (47:3) is attracted from the incarnating individual’s lesser causal envelope to the national envelope. The individual then is a casual guest in the nation, as it were. If the individual is so enamoured with the nation, however, that he does not want to incarnate in any other, then a mental atom (47:1) is attracted to the greater national envelope. Then he becomes somewhat of a national type, as a rule with pronounced national traits.
8Group souls are always formed at meetings. The thoughts and feelings of those attending are thrown out of their envelopes in a constant stream. Molecules of a common affinity are attracted to each other in these mental or emotional forms and make up a material form, a collective soul binding together those attending the meeting, the more strongly the more elaborated and vitalized the form becomes. The collective soul of the Catholic Church, for instance, is of such a size and vitality that very few Catholics can evade its power and “seekers” are easily hypnotized by it.
9Man becomes conscious of his collective being only when he has entered into the fifth natural kingdom. When the individual is able to perceive his world as his own self, he has developed from an individual to a collective self, although he will always remain an individuality.
10In actual fact, mankind consists of seven collective beings (who are still at an embryonic stage) of whom individuals are aware when they have become collective selves. This fact is the basis of the universal brotherhood of mankind.
11Blavatsky, mentioning this fact in The Secret Doctrine, calls those collective beings “Heavenly Men”, a typical example of her helplessness in finding suitable terms. The individuals making up collective beings have long since left the human kingdom behind them.
12Men must learn to think collectively. What everybody learns, each particular experience, enters into the general fund of experience of life, enriches the ideas of the causal world and increases their number, increases the knowledge of the planetary hierarchy, which is a result of the experience of all monads in the planet. We must learn to rejoice at all people who think independently at all and are not talk robots. All who strive to develop contribute to the universal development.
13Everything develops. Even the solar system is developing, with everything which that connotes. When everything has reached the degree of perfection possible to reach in the system, this has achieved its final purpose for further development in cosmic kingdoms. Understanding this you will take another view upon life than the one taken by the ignorance of life hitherto. All monads make their little contributions to development, and it is the accumulated product of these contributions that in the long run makes the system increasingly purposeful. It is clear from this how envy counteracts development and is hostile to life, how short-sighted is moral judging, how erroneous is that view of life which concentrates on imperfections and so doing hampers and counteracts the striving inherent in life.
14Whenever formation of groups is possible, and it is possible nowadays, it must have priority over individual treatment. Collective phenomena are increasingly manifest in economical, social, and political respect. The fact that conflicts exist is still inevitable and must not obscure the fact that a mass movement for cooperation is on foot for the welfare of class, nation, mankind. Mankind has entered onto the stage of collectivity as a preparatory stage to general physical-etheric objective consciousness as well as causal group intuition. The “incurable loneliness of the soul” is at an end. All members of the group awaken to consciousness of community.
15Such a large percentage of mankind has reached such a stage of development that the hierarchy has deemed the time is up to change from individual to collective treatment of mankind. Thus it is no longer the individual, but the individual in the group that is the object of special attention. It is emphasized with vigour that the first thing the individual must observe when striving to develop is the group community. We all belong to a group even though in most cases we are still unaware of the fact. And it is no use speculating about who are possibly members of it. We must start from the assumption that everyone we meet who has the same striving to development, service, and possibility of a common understanding belongs to the group.
16Every kind of collective has a common collective consciousness. If people saw this, they would not, as presently is the case, be so strongly oppositional but more willing to cooperate and understand each other. This in no way precludes “criticism”, if this means matter-of-fact, impersonal analysis of the views of other people. On the contrary, it is of advantage, if it is taken in the right spirit. Strictly speaking, you cannot analyse too much. The more analysis, the greater clarity, which benefits all in the collective. But as long as envy, self-assertion, desire for power, vulnerability hold sway, nobody has any use for collective consciousness.
17When man has reached the stage of humanity and has in the human kingdom acquired all the requisite qualities and abilities so that he stands a good chance of passing to the fifth natural kingdom within rather few (relatively speaking) incarnations, when he has had all the necessary experiences so that practically nothing remains for him to be learnt from human experience, when he demonstrates by his serving attitude to life and mankind that he wishes to put all his powers at the service of evolution, volunteers as an aspirant to the planetary hierarchy, then he stands a good chance of being accepted as a disciple of a 45-self. From his teacher he will receive the necessary instructions of how to acquire collective consciousness, in doing which he makes his entry into the planetary hierarchy.
18By his teacher he is given to know that he has been brought together with some individuals unknown to him to form a “group”. It is his task to acquire consciousness of community together with those people, a group consciousness of their own, a common emotional and mental consciousness so that whatever one of them is feeling and thinking is perceived by the others as their own feeling and thinking while at the same time they know from whom those vibrations are coming.
19When the individual has been successful in this endeavour, he is made to enter into a greater group and in ever greater groups, until he is ripe to enter into the common essential consciousness of the planetary hierarchy.
20Since collective consciousness is the primary one and consciousness of community is a condition of entering into unity, it follows from this that the individual should seek a group whose members possess understanding of life and strive to acquire the ability to communicate mentally. This is the first step towards causal and essential objective “vision”, the possibility to see, hear, etc. in all worlds what you want to experience of something present or past within the planet. A 45-self is present in the same moment he directs his attention to this object. To those possessing six-dimensional vision everything is within their range of vision.
21To those who see that consciousness of community is a condition of consciousness expansion the individual in his isolated individuality seems to be an instrument of no use. The planetary hierarchy is looking for co-workers who are able to join and merge with a group whose task, when group consciousness is acquired, is to achieve a certain work with all the greater efficiency (the “group power”). What “feats” a group can achieve was demonstrated by Hitler and his group of Satanists.
1We all belong to a group, whether we know it or not. The sense of loneliness is an illusion. If in a certain incarnation we perhaps have not met any member of our group, this does not mean that the group does not exist. We are fully justified to think that it exists, and we should assume that it exists, for it does exist.
2The disciple is taught to think and feel “as if”. When he does so in agreement with the esoteric knowledge, he is building his future thereby. The motive is the most important in everything concerning our own future.
3On the other hand it is wrong to include in the group persons whom we have met and wish belonged to the group. Perhaps they do, but it is not the individual’s business to start setting up his own group until he has become a causal self, can study his previous incarnations, and ascertain who have most frequently been with him in these.
4The group is no imagined group but a material reality. It thus has what could be called a group soul, mostly embryonic. The essential world (46), the lowest world of unity, is largely made up of such groups. Small groups merge into ever greater groups, until the groups have become so great that they can merge into the essential world.
5When man becomes a disciple of the planetary hierarchy, he is to form, together with some other disciples, a small collective being with a consciousness of community, the first beginnings of ever expanding group consciousness and finally essential world consciousness.
6Every group gives birth to a common collective with atoms from all the individuals in the group. This collective makes up the unity of the group.
7The smallest group that can exist as a group consists of three individuals at the least and nine individuals at the most. Their feelings (48:2,3) and thoughts (47:4-6) about community, unity, shape in the essential world unconsciously, gradually a material form that grows ever stronger. Then the individual has given up his isolated attitude, his sense of opposition to other individuals. In subsequent incarnations his opposition to the external world vanishes gradually altogether when he has realized that every living creature has a share in the cosmic total consciousness, that all in the cosmos make up a unity.
8These small groups are supervised by some member of the planetary hierarchy until they have reached such an extent that they can merge into ever greater groups so that they must be taken charge of by a 45-self, whereupon the individuals stand a chance of acquiring causal consciousness.
9The envelope of community, which the individuals in the group construct jointly, consists of mental, causal, and, eventually, also essential molecules. Like all envelopes it has a unitary consciousness of the consciousness of all the individuals and grows by being supplied with charged molecules. The envelope dissolves when the members enter into the fifth natural kingdom. Of course the envelope remains through all the incarnations and as long as it exists, it is personified by an individual in a higher kingdom.
10There is an essential difference between the individual’s centralized monad consciousness and his partial consciousness decentralized in group consciousness. The individual’s possibility of really efficient service depends on his seeing this. In group consciousness his efficiency is a hundredfold greater.
11Consciousness development during the current zodiacal epoch (of Aquarius) will lead to formation of groups, as the epoch just past brought about an intensive “individualization”. We shall have group work, group institutions, group idealism, etc. If in this work the idea of universality is not the dominant one, there will be a very dangerous time. For the group brings about a combination of wills and energies that has an immensely greater effect than has the individual energy. If the group motive is of a repulsive nature instead of attractive, then evil will increase in the world. “Conscience” (the individual sense of responsibility) is suppressed, the individual is carried away by the group psychosis, in which dishonesty and the tendency to distortion contribute. We all have experience of such things already (blacklisting, etc.). It will be worse if not everybody alerted to the “group risks” and offers energetic resistance to persecutions of any kind. People must learn to distinguish between ordinary kindness, goodwill, and will to the good, which does away with passivity, puts an end to expressions of hate of any kind, and creates the world anew.
1Scientists deny the possibility of telepathy. The esoterician asserts that most thinking, and even more feeling, is telepathic influence.
2Telepathic phenomena cannot be counted among the unconscious processes, as many think they can. They belong to neither the subconscious nor the superconscious. They are among the vibrations that pour through the envelopes of all people in immense numbers every second. If the individual’s receiver is tuned to his particular wave-length (determined by knowledge and experience) and his attention is not occupied with other things, then he experiences thoughts and feelings which he believes to be his own but which can come from without. All are telepathic without knowing it. Most thinking (more than 80 per cent) in most people is telepathic reception. The lower the stage of development, the lesser the ability of self-activity in the individual’s envelopes, the greater the share of subjective experiences received from without. Mass thinking, mass suggestion, psychoses are telepathic phenomena. We are much more dependent on collective impulses than we suspect. Only when the individual has acquired a mental control and can by himself determine the content of consciousness in his envelopes will he become free from those influences from without. Those who deny the possibility of telepathy have no idea of what telepathy is. Telepathy is the most common of all common things.
3The individual is submerged in an ocean of vibrations. How much of those he is able to perceive depends on his stage of development. The more developed consciousness in the different envelopes is, the more vibrations can be perceived by consciousness. A mental self perceives the mental vibrations and particularly those touching his sphere (consciously or unconsciously). The law of cause and effect rules even in the unconscious.
4Therefore it is not unimportant what we feel and think. All consciousness expressions have their effects also on others, since they give rise to vibrations in the worlds of man and material forms in the emotional and mental worlds, vibrations that are received by others.
5People are still too ignorant of life to comprehend what sowing they sow and prepare for reaping with their thoughts and their chatter. Every consciousness expression has its effect. And since what most people think are repulsions, the reaping is the effects of hatred in all respect: lies, murders, wars.
6There are two kinds of ordinary telepathy: emotional and mental. Thanks to emotional telepathy dogs and cats, for example, are able to find their way home from immense distances. They are guided by vibrations from their homes. Those vibrations are received by the solar plexus centre.
7In man, there are three kinds of telepathy: emotional, mental, causal. Emotional telepathy manifests itself most strongly at the stage of barbarism, diminishes strongly at the stage of civilization (due to the increasing activation of mental consciousness 47:6,7). The solar plexus centre of the etheric envelope receives vibrations in 48:4-7, the heart centre in 48:1-3, the throat centre in 47:6,7, the eyebrow centre in 47:4,5, the crown centre in 47:1-3. Conscious telepathy is obtained only after the vitalization of the eyebrow centre (symbol: the triangle with the eye). The lowest kind of conscious collective consciousness is obtained in essential consciousness (46). A typical manifestation of unconscious collective consciousness is socalled mass psychosis.
8The planetary hierarchy does not allow its disciples to make experiments on their own with vitalization of centres (chakras) in the envelopes of incarnation. Those who need the faculty of telepathy for the service of life are taught the method.
9Telepathy is a discipline of the future. Within a few hundred years, the elite will not need to use words but will be able to transfer their mental ideas directly to the mental consciousness of other people. Then those misconceptions will be removed which are caused by our putting different senses into words (at present so common and ordinary that you are amazed and joyed when you are not misunderstood).
10Before man can acquire consciousness of unity with everything in the essential world, he must have acquired emotional and mental telepathic consciousness in a group supervised by some member of the planetary hierarchy who brings together a number of suitable disciples in groups with different missions in life and in mankind. This group community facilitates the acquisition of the qualities that are required for essential consciousness unity. It is in those groups that telepathy is methodically and systematically developed.
11The ideas of the world of ideas are material thought-forms containing everything that has once been correctly apprehended and thought within a certain domain of thought. Anyone who is occupied with the pertaining problems has a possibility of contacting those forms and can thereby receive ideas. Of course, the man ignorant of life imagines that his own genius has invented these marvels and he feels that he is very special. Mental consciousness produces no ideas, but can only combine facts or pick up the vibrations of the mental world (what others have thought) or receive ideas from the world of ideas. That is a thing which psychologists have not yet realized. The usual accusations of plagiarism (“theft of ideas”) brought by ignorance are often due to the fact that those who are simultaneously occupied with the same problem apprehend each other’s ideas. The question who “was the first to think it” is meaningless.
12“Thought-transference” of another kind is obtained when writers produce what they thought in a previous incarnation. It has happened that an individual has “copied” his own manuscripts without being a clairvoyant or even knowing that such a manuscript existed. If this manuscript is subsequently discovered, the poor fellow is of course accused of literary theft and exposed as a fraud. (Whatever suffering has been wrought by ignorance, stupidity, malevolence, and malicious joy in combination goes to the collective fund for common responsibility. People have no reason to complain about “undeserved suffering”. The esoterician is taught to try and lighten the burden instead of increasing it, to think good instead of evil. When will mankind learn such a simple thing?
13Most of what is said of a man, even in his biography, where the worst manifestations of hatred should have been sorted out, does not agree with reality. What has been thought of a man is more than 90 per cent directed by repulsion, unless the flora of anecdotes adorns an idol of the public. Then a genius or a saint is obtained.
14The condition of telepathy is emotional attraction and, further on, essential striving to unity. You think this is so self-evident that it need not even be said. But even the so-called cultural people are so disoriented that it needs to be trumpeted. You cannot apprehend the cosmic total consciousness without being a conscious part of it, and then you have entered into unity.
15Mankind is deplorably unaware of telepathy, of the fact that it largely lives on universal thought-transference. The worst aspect of scientific authorities is the infantile certainty of their belief that they can judge everything, whereas most things are beyond the range of their ability to even ascertain. They deny everything they cannot comprehend, and this blind, hardened denial has always characterized them in all ages. Dogmatism manifests itself in the denial of “possibility”. Nobody demands that they hold the unknown to be likely. It is high time that scientists learnt to keep to their specialty and to their own experience and did not make statements on things about which they know nothing.
16You must be as infantile in psychological respect as modern psychologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, etc., to deny the possibility of telepathy. The experiments they have made in this area are so primitive that they necessarily must fail. And then they deny the whole thing. The usual procedure in science. What they do not know and are unable to do is impossible pure and simple. The esoterician may tell them that without the correct esoteric methods they will always fail.
17It should be added that the generally low standard of mankind where its mentality and compliance with law are concerned has the effect that the pertaining methods remain esoteric. True knowledge and true humanity must go together. The knowledge is not intended for “unrepentant thieves” who abuse it. And more than 90 per cent of mankind are counted among that category by the planetary hierarchy. They put no weapons into the hands of potential bandits. The individual must have acquired the right of confidence, and assuredly not many people have done so. They should not complain. If this annoys them, it is the worse for them. The process of law embracing all life will teach them that defiance is not the way of obtaining the result desired. Obedience to law is required of them.
18There are about one million people now living in the physical world who are able to communicate with each other by telepathy. These esotericians are silent about their knowledge and their faculties, which regrettably is necessary because public opinion is intolerant and arrogant, and is afflicted with a mania for calumny and persecution. Moreover, such faculties would only be abused by those who abuse everything they already know.
19The following example is only one of countless similar ones. At the time of the great mutiny in British India in the 1850-ies, the English could not possibly grasp how the natives all over India could be so well informed about what was happening at distances of thousands of kilometres, such things as the English with their superior means of communications learnt much later. The yogis, who were in a position to explain the matter, were wise to be silent and still are before those Western “barbarians”.
20It is because of its insatiable egoism, its possessive urge at the expense of all other life, that mankind has by itself got into an ever deepening isolation in consciousness, broken off its consciousness of community with all life. Anyone who does not want to experience the community but, instead of becoming more and more inclusive, is striving to become increasingly exclusive, counteracts his own development.
21How to make consciousness development lucid is a question of presenting the process of evolution in the most intelligible manner, how individual consciousness gradually acquires an ever increasing conscious participation in the collective consciousness.
22The energies issuing from the highest cosmic kingdom are the fundamental cause not only of the formation of matter but also of the development of consciousness by means of the attractive force of energies from higher worlds. Consciousness development can be considered as the individual’s gradual conquest of ever higher kinds of consciousness. It can be seen as the result of influence issuing from higher worlds, an attraction without which the initial impulse of consciousness development would not exist. The impelling force in development issues from higher kingdoms and, in the last analysis, from the highest cosmic kingdom (the goal of evolution). It is the task of all kingdoms to serve each other in the ways they are able to in the great cosmic barter economy. It has been the fatal mistake of mankind that it has considered everything to exist for man’s sake, demanded and wilfully taken everything not understanding that all life is a mutual give and take. We are all links in the stupendous chain of evolution, we are all dependent on each other and exist for each other. Mankind’s perverse attitude to life has had the result that the energies that would have had a constructive effect instead have had a destructive effect. The history of mankind’s suffering is the effect of causes that mankind itself has originated. Our world history needs to be rewritten, to teach us something rational instead of conveying the illusions and fictions of ignorance.
23Still science has not recognized the reality of telepathy. Until it does so, additional facts are pearls cast. To the elite, who seek after the truth and can rightly use the knowledge, this is always available.
1The self exists but it looks in vain for itself as a material, objective reality. It has always caused people great difficulty to understand what the self is and much acute and profound balderdash in verse and prose has been wasted on explaining the self, especially in Oriental literature. The self has been said to be all and nothing, illusion and the universe.
2The self is a monad, a primordial atom. The primordial atoms can be studied by those who have reached the highest cosmic kingdom (1–7). Until then the monad–the self remains inaccessible in material, objective respect. What we can apprehend of our self is its subjective consciousness aspect, the very self-identity.
3The three triads of the monad, everything that can be ascertained objectively, everything material, everything is only envelopes for the self. The self can be ascertained only as selfidentity.
4In the monad (the primordial atom) there is the possibility of atomic, molecular, aggregate, world, planetary, solar systemic consciousness and ever higher kinds of cosmic consciousness.
5Self-identity, once acquired (in the human kingdom), can never be lost. Self-identity is not enough, however. Continuity of consciousness is required, so that the self is conscious of its identity through all its incarnations. This can be acquired by the self as a causal self only, when it is able to study all its incarnations as a man.
6From the beginning the monad consciousness (the monad as involved into primary rotatory matter) is potential, individual self-consciousness and universal collective consciousness. In the process of involution consciousness becomes actualized passive, and becomes active in the process of evolution. Thereupon the monad is to acquire by its own activity everything that remains to be conquered: consciousness, subjective and objective consciousness in ever higher molecular kinds and worlds, continuity of consciousness, telepathy with incipient collective consciousness, group consciousness, departmental consciousness, world consciousness, etc., until objective consciousness has been acquired in and of all the 49 cosmic atomic worlds.
7Having essential unity consciousness the self enters into the planetary collective consciousness (comprising atomic consciousness in worlds 46–49). In this consciousness, the self finds it even easier to preserve its continuity of consciousness, since this has been actualized in the collective consciousness.
8As a 43-self the monad has the collective solar systemic consciousness at its disposal. But even in this case the continuity of consciousness can be lost, as it does for all in the lower worlds of the solar system at its dissolution. To preserve cosmic continuity of consciousness you must have entered the second divine kingdom (or the first cosmic natural kingdom), worlds 36–42. This is not as dangerous as it seems, however. For the collective consciousness of the dissolved solar system lives on in the 42-atomic consciousness (42-atoms involved into 43-atoms), and by its means will it be possible for the new planetary hierarchy in the new system to reacquire continuity of consciousness. It will also be possible for the lower selves to study, in higher kingdoms, their past in the previous system.
9The lower is always enclosed in the higher. And in the highest cosmic world exists the memory of all processes of manifestation ever since this cosmos came into being. The collective memory is annihilated only when the cosmos is dissolved.
1All primordial atoms from the beginning have potential consciousness (possibility of consciousness). In the cosmic process of manifestation, this becomes first actualized passive consciousness, later gradually activated, active, self-active consciousness, and finally selfdetermined self-consciousness.
2When the potential monad consciousness has been actualized into passive consciousness, nothing of what the monad experiences can be lost. The monad consciousness is like a mirror which mirrors everything but which moreover preserves everything it has ever mirrored. It is a quite different matter that this cannot quite simply be recalled in the waking consciousness. What is important in this respect is the understanding that the concept of “past time” does not exist in the consciousness of the monad–the self and that, therefore, everything that has been exists in the cosmic total consciousness. To this consciousness the past is part of the present.
3The self in the lower develops by activating consciousness in the higher. Under normal conditions (on other planets) this process of activation is quite sufficient. But on our planet those in higher kingdoms must try to collaborate in this activity. The initiative originates from 43-consciousness and influences 49-consciousness, from the third triad to the first triad. When the animal during “psychosis” has reached 48:3, such a contact can be achieved between the second and first triads that a causal envelope is formed where both enter into the centres of this envelope. Then it remains for the self to activate them, so that a self-conscious connection between both triads is obtained.
4In the emotional world emotional consciousness develops, and it is the particular world of the animal kingdom in consciousness development. The mental world is the world of thought and the particular world of men. Since most people have not yet conquered full consciousness in the lowest mental molecular kind (47:7) and true researchers work with 47:6, perhaps you understand how much remains if you consider that each higher molecular kind also involves an immense expansion of consciousness.
5The expansion of consciousness can in a certain respect be likened to a sphere with an ever increasing radius. It becomes ever more extensive in all directions, both towards the consciousness of higher molecular kinds and towards that of lower ones. The difference is that where the higher ones are concerned, expansion occurs only extensively, whereas in the lower ones intensity is enhanced. This also has the result that the individual experiences the sufferings of other people, which would be unbearable unless the faculty of impersonality had been acquired.
6Consciousness is one and indivisible. This means that there are no definable limits. But the individual’s apprehension of consciousness expresses differently in different kinds of matter, and this makes a division possible. With each higher kind of matter the self’s potential of consciousness expansion is increased. This is perhaps the best way of explaining the process of consciousness.
7The acquisition of higher kinds of consciousness is a process, which, like all kinds of processes, comprises all three aspects, beside consciousness also matter and energy, even if the consciousness aspect is the only one that mankind stands a chance of using without risking a catastrophe.
8The acquisition of higher kinds of consciousness is not done from below but from above. The individual prepares himself to receive those higher energies, which he does through the right use of energies already existing and a life of service that enables him to have a right attitude and creates the need of ever more purposive service. From the beginning the process is largely more instinctive than clearly conscious.
9The proper task of the self in the human kingdom is to acquire self-consciousness, individuality. This becomes possible only for the causal self, the self as self-conscious in the causal envelope. Until then, the self is self-conscious in some one of its envelopes of incarnation and thereby the victim of the erroneous view of reality and life inherent in the pertaining envelope consciousnesses. An exact perception of reality will be possible only when the self is able to experience the ideas of the causal world, the “Platonic ideas”.
10When the self acquires essential consciousness, the self ceases to start from itself and becomes collectively conscious. To be able to be collectively conscious on a factual basis the self must have acquired self-consciousness. Else the self would not be able to rightly judge the content and phenomena of collective consciousness. The self can become a collective self precisely because it has self-consciousness. It is true that the self ceases to start from itself, but without self-consciousness it would be incapable of collective self-determination, unable during its further consciousness expansion to identify itself with an ever increasing part of the cosmic total consciousness, would lose its faculty of self-identity in the collective.
11The more we identify ourselves with the matter aspect, have our attention directed to material forms and consider them to be essential, the less we are able to understand the meaning of life. It is our task to develop consciousness, to acquire ever higher kinds of consciousness and we can do this only if we identify ourselves with the consciousness aspect. Our motto should be: we are our consciousness, not our bodies. The monad is a primordial atom, an exceedingly tiny part of matter. But the task of the monad consciousness is to identify itself with the cosmic total consciousness. That is a thing most people do not know and the others constantly forget.
1There are 49 cosmic atomic worlds of ever higher kinds. Corresponding to them are 49 ever more extensive cosmic total consciousnesses, the higher comprehending all the lower.
2There are seven cosmic atomic worlds within the solar system and seven cosmic atomic consciousnesses. Each one of these has been divided into six molecular worlds with corresponding systemic and planetary total consciousnesses.
3What has been said hereby about consciousness is equally true of the different kinds of cosmic, systemic, planetary energies. All matter has its correspondence in consciousness and energy.
4Depending on the three aspects of reality there are seven kinds of cosmic, systemic, and planetary department consciousnesses and department energies in the cosmic, etc. worlds and consciousnesses previously mentioned.
5There is only one consciousness, the cosmic total consciousness. Due to the material structure of the cosmos, however, there are countless kinds of matters, consciousnesses, and energies. There is only one “primordial force”, the dynamic energy of primordial matter.
6To explain to ignorance such things as are totally beyond people’s own experience is a well-nigh impossible task. You can resort to similes, but these are all too easily directly misleading. Sometimes attempts must be made. Perhaps some idea of what the matter is about can dawn on someone.
7You may perhaps venture to liken consciousness in some respect to the ocean. The greater the “depth”, the greater the “pressure”. With matter, it is the other way round. Primordial matter is absolute density and absolute pressure. In manifestational matter (atomized primordial matter) the “pressure” is highest in the highest world and lowest in the physical world (49). Where consciousness is concerned, this can in one respect be said to be analogous. It is “weakest” in the physical world and increasingly greater intensively and extensively the higher the atomic kind and the atomic worlds. It becomes ever more difficult to conquer. When this is done, however, the capacity is multiplied by itself.
8Causal consciousness (dynamis in the causal world) dominates matter in worlds 47–49. Atomic essential consciousness (46:1) has access to all consciousness in worlds 46–49, everything past as well.
9Atomic consciousness implies the possibility of world consciousness within the world of the atom.
10You should once and for all make it clear to yourself that the “past exists in the present”, that the motion of every leaf millions of years ago can be studied as though you were standing before it.
1During incarnation in his organism, man is the centre of material envelopes of five different kinds in all. Man is a very composite phenomenon. He consists of five different beings, his five envelopes. These undergo constant change. The material envelopes consist of six physical, six emotional, and six mental-causal molecular kinds. All primordial atoms have their own consciousness, all envelopes collective consciousness. Man’s material envelopes thus have five main kinds of consciousnesses, sharing in the total consciousness of their planetary worlds.
2The collective consciousness of an envelope corresponds to that of its own world as well as to the ability of molecular consciousness to apprehend. Those who identify themselves with their envelopes easily become their victims. The collective consciousnesses of the envelopes are by nature passive but can extremely easily be activated by vibrations from without or by the human monad. If the vibrations coming from without are stronger than those initiated by the monad itself, man is a slave to his envelopes. If the vibrations of the monad are stronger, the envelopes are the obedient servants of the monad.
3It is a difference between (collective) envelope consciousness and the self in the envelope. Man is the central monad, the central consciousness, in his envelopes.
4The five envelope consciousnesses are those of the etheric envelope, the emotional envelope, the mental envelope, the triad envelope, and the causal envelope. With man at the stage of civilization, the self can be active and self-conscious in the etheric, emotional, and mental envelopes.
5Man’s possibility of apprehension of vibrations in the emotional world and mental world depends on which kinds of molecular consciousness he has activated himself.
6A mental idea is a mental molecule. Since there are four different kinds of mental molecules, there are four different main kinds of mental ideas. The corresponding is true of causal consciousness: three different kinds of causal ideas.
7Man’s consciousness is divided into waking consciousness, subconsciousness, and superconsciousness.
8It is not only through his organism that man is related to the animals. The animals, too, have emotional and mental envelopes. The worlds of man are those of the animals as well. What makes up the essential difference is the causal envelope, which the individual acquired at his transition from the third to the fourth kingdom. That is also the reason why man can never incarnate as an animal. The animal has no causal envelope. It is deeply to be deplored that such things still must be pointed out. But you must go on nagging until it goes home in the blockheads.
9The aura, surrounding the organism, is considered to be the sum of attractive energies within the sphere of the individual’s activity. It is through the aura that the individual influences his environment. The three aggregate envelopes making up the personality are transformers, radiation devices, and have other functions as well.
10Those at the emotional stage who take their emotions to be their true being are emotional selves, self-conscious in their emotional envelope. Mental selves are self-conscious in their mental envelope, and causal selves in their causal envelope. The causal selves live in the “world of Platonic ideas”, the world of intuition. To them, mental consciousness is only a mode of communicating by concepts with their fellow human beings.
11When the self has acquired consciousness in the causal envelope, it views its envelopes of incarnation as valuable tools to be used in the lower worlds. Until the self has become conscious in its own permanent envelope, it is disoriented in existence. The great problems of life are insoluble in the mental world and are solved only in the causal world.
12When man has come to the realization that all his consciousness expressions are phenomena in his various envelopes and that he is something different from his envelopes, he has learnt more than most people are able to realize. When later he has realized that these envelopes are intended as instruments for his true self and when he is able to apprehend all vibrations in his envelopes and purposefully utilize these energies, he is ready for the next kingdom.
13To life-ignorant man his organic envelope is of “irreplaceable value”. To the planetary hierarchy, who knows that the monads are indestructible and the self is immortal, the envelopes of the selves are of secondary importance. If the envelopes have become hindrances to the self’s consciousness development, then it is a benefit for the self that they dissolve. Soon enough the self receives new envelopes to abuse, for that is what the majority do.
14The following facts are highly illustrative of the normal individual’s mode of reaction and can yield material for many exhilarating reflections of a humorist.
15Also from the viewpoint of consciousness the self functions quite differently in its different envelopes. It identifies itself so completely with the envelope in which it is temporarily centred that the other envelopes appear more or less strange. The self feels in its own way sovereign in each particular envelope. It feels like quite different selves in the different envelopes due to the fact that its capacity for vibration is considerably increased with each higher envelope. Each envelope is aware of the existence of the lower envelopes and unaware of the higher ones. When in a state of trance the self has become centred in the emotional envelope, it demonstrates a manifest disdain of the “organic self”, calling this the “idiot”. To the self centred in the mental envelope the emotional envelope as well as the physical envelopes appear to be totally lacking in judgement. And centred in the causal being the self considers all the lower envelopes to be utterly deficient.
16Man in incarnation is first and foremost his envelopes of incarnation. It is true that in addition he is a monad in a triad in a causal envelope. But as long as the monad–the self cannot dominate its envelopes of incarnation, the self is largely just an onlooker of the creations of its envelopes.
17Each envelope has its own consciousness. It lacks will but not a tendency, a normal tendency and an acquired tendency. Passive consciousness is activated by the faintest vibration from without or from the self. If the vibrations coming from without are stronger than those of the self, the individual is impotent. If the individual is on a low level of development (lacking insight, understanding, and ability), he allows the envelope (with vibrations from without and tendencies brought along) to decide and even approves of the suggestions of the envelope. The vibrations are material and rouses consciousness, so that the emotional envelope feels and the mental envelope thinks in accord with the vibrations received.
18Among the countless vibrations pouring through the envelopes from without, the following ones are the most important:
- the horoscope vibrations (cosmic and planetary ones)
- the vibrations from the environment (received from parents, brothers and sisters, friends, teachers, colleagues, acquaintances, etc.)
- the vibrations conveyed through newspapers, literature, radio, TV, etc.
19These vibrations coming from without, such as they can be apprehended on his level (activated atomic kinds), largely determine his view of life and way of life.
20It is clear from this that the individual on lower levels is largely a robot, a reactive centre under external influences. It is only when the individual has become sovereign in his envelopes that he can be called a true “personality” with a personal responsibility. (One more fact to be considered by the life-ignorant moralists.) Even on very high levels the individual is not always sovereign. The hypersensitive mechanism is often out of order.
21It is a great mistake to believe (as the theologians do) that everything the envelopes urges the self to do is the self’s will. At lower stages, the self accepts and approves of the content of its envelopes, all the hate impulses of evil. When the self is tormented by it, however, this is the sign of the self’s disapproval. The envelopes are activated by vibrations from without, and if there are lower kinds of matter in the envelopes, they are influenced by them. Whatever man experiences in his consciousness may quite simply be the thoughts and feelings of the lowest human stage, consciousness expressions which he has outgrown a long time ago. Anyone who is not tormented by these phenomena can learn much from observing impersonally what the envelopes receive in their passive consciousness. It will remind him of the fact that by meditating on their opposites he will gradually eliminate those molecular kinds in the envelopes which can record such vibrations.
1There is such a lack of clarity and confusion of ideas in the matter of these concepts that exact definitions should be desirable.
2Consciousness as consciousness is subjective. Sense perceptions, emotions, and thoughts are subjective. Consciousness as “inner” consciousness, as awareness of its own content, is subjective.
3Consciousness is objective when it apprehends something that is ”external” to consciousness, something that is independent of consciousness, something that belongs to material reality.
4All facticity concerning subjective and objective consciousness is absolute. The concept as concept is absolute according to the law of identity. Every fact is absolute. Every deductive conclusion is absolute. Every principle, which has been given an exact definition and, because of that, a correct content, is absolute. In conceptual respect absolute therefore means that the conception of consciousness is exact.
5Many esotericians call such matter as is non-observable, imperceptible, “invisible” to consciousness (at the present stage of mankind’s general development) “subjective”. From the logical point of view, this is erroneous. It is not matter that is subjective, but consciousness (at the stage in question). When the corresponding matter aspect can be perceived as a material reality, the perception of it will be objective.
6The contrariety of objective consciousness (the experience of the matter and motion aspects) and subjective consciousness (the individual’s own self-consciousness) is not perceived in the fifth natural kingdom as a contrariety in the proper sense.
1The consciousness aspect is the world of subjective consciousness and the matter aspect is the world of objective consciousness.
2Consciousness development in ever higher natural kingdoms involves an ever increasing intensive and extensive subjective and objective consciousness in ever higher, ever more embracing and penetrating worlds.
3In the “odd” departments 1, 3, 5, 7 and in the “odd” worlds 43, 45, 47, 49, the monad consciousness works most easily with the objective matter aspect.
4In the “even” departments 2, 4, 6 and in the “even” worlds 44, 46, 48, the monad works most easily with the objective matter aspect.
5Emotional (48) and essential (46) consciousness normally ascertain only the subjective consciousness aspect, not the objective facts belonging to the matter aspect.
6If matter in the envelopes of man mainly belongs to the odd worlds, individuals are spoken of as extravert objectivists, and where even worlds are concerned, individuals are spoken of as introvert subjectivists.
7With each higher kingdom the motion aspect (the energy or will aspect) has an ever greater importance.
8Philosophical, epistemological subjectivism (“idealism”) has too long been allowed to idiotize mankind with its seductive pseudo-proofs. Its assertion that everything existing in consciousness is a product of consciousness is so patently false that you would be surprised at the fact that such things could be accepted, if you did not know the human incapability of solving even the simplest problems of knowledge. The subjectivists have not even been capable of separating things inner and outer, consciousness as the apprehending agent and outer, material reality independent of apprehending consciousness. Its assertion, “consciousness alone is immediately given”, is false. The material objects and their motion are as immediately given as consciousness. The insight that whatever apprehends outer reality is an inner reality, consciousness, is the final result of a long, circumstantial reflection and by no means immediately given. It is outer reality that rouses consciousness. All atoms, all material forms, radiate energy that makes a sufficiently strong impression on both the passive consciousness of involution and the active consciousness of evolution to make apprehension of existence possible. But those ignorant of esoterics know nothing of this. Without outer reality man could never acquire common sense, for it is the matter aspect that sets limits to the extravagances of imagination. It is outer reality that makes those definitions of concepts possible which make up the content of our conception of everything concerning the two of the aspects of reality: matter and motion.
9Subjectivism, denying the existence of matter, always refutes itself when speaking about atoms or energies, which it must do to explain real things.
10Consciousness is by its very nature subjective. Consciousness becomes objective when directing itself to the material outer world and apprehending objects in this. Thus there is gross physical, physical etheric, emotional, mental, causal, etc. consciousness.
11The faculty of distinction begins in the physical organism and the etheric envelope. We can acquire objective consciousness only by developing the sense organs, by learning to use them and by their aid to develop those centres in the emotional envelope from which they originate. When physical and emotional objective consciousness has been acquired, the sense organs can be dispensed with, since those faculties are preserved which have been developed with and through these organs.
12The faculty of vision presupposes mental consciousness; touch, emotional consciousness; and hearing, physical consciousness.
13Much of what consciousness believes to be mere subjective is the result of vibrations in higher molecular kinds in which the self has not yet acquired the ability of objective consciousness.
14To the extent that the self can activate the passive consciousness in ever higher molecular kinds, to the same extent it acquires subjective consciousness in these to begin with. When the self can activate, for example, the higher emotional molecular kinds, in which the vibrations have an attractive nature, the self acquires the capacity for love.
15All consciousness expressions (even those which the self believes to be subjective only) are the result of vibrations in some kind of matter and bring about changes in that matter.
16There are as many kinds of subjective and objective consciousness as there are molecular kinds. At his present stage of development, the normal individual (the majority) in physical incarnation is objectively conscious in molecular kinds 49:5-7 and subjectively conscious in 49:2-4; 48:4-7; 47:6,7. Those who have reached the highest level of the stage of culture or of the mystic have acquired subjective consciousness in 48:2. Those who in mental respect have acquired perspective consciousness are conscious in 47:5.
17In the emotional world after the end of the physical incarnation, the normal individual is from the beginning objectively conscious in the three lowest molecular kinds (48:5-7) and later in the mental world not objectively conscious at all. But his mental imagination “conjures up” mental images which he takes for objective reality.
18Thus one can be subjectively conscious in higher molecular kinds without objective consciousness in the same matter. The first self can receive “inspirations” with material energy from the second triad without being aware of its existence.
19In man there can exist (beside the apprehension of the three lowest physical molecular kinds, 49:5-7, by the general objective consciousness) in all three kinds of objective consciousness: physical-etheric (49:2-4), emotional (48:2-7), and mental (47:4-7).
20Etheric objective consciousness is innate or can (without guidance) be acquired by the individual if it does not exist as a predisposition from previous acquisitions. Emotional objective consciousness (so-called clairvoyance) can be innate or acquired. Mental objective consciousness is not innate and can be acquired only in connection with objective causal consciousness and only by disciples of the planetary hierarchy (at the so-called third initiation).
21Clairvoyance is the term used to denote emotional objective consciousness within the four lower emotional molecular kinds (48:4-7). Thus it is unjustified and misleading to call the other kinds of objective consciousness “clairvoyance”. This needs to be pointed out, for as the esoteric knowledge increasingly spreads, ever more fantasts will fantasize about their “cosmic consciousness” and all other visionary gifts. We must also expect incarnations of ancient magicians (most closely related to the hatha yogis of India) who will astound the superstitious masses with their experiments and be trumpeted as “prophets”.
22No self-tutored seer ever acquired mental objective consciousness, not Swedenborg, not Rudolf Steiner, not Ramakrishna. What they saw were their own and other people’s imaginative creations in the emotional world. The highest regions in the emotional world are not accessible to others than those who are approaching the stage of the saint. Such a one was Ramakrishna. What he saw, thus apprehended objectively as reality, were phenomena in those regions, material forms which all are creations of the imagination. You could call the highest three emotional regions (48:1-3) the world of imagination. Anyone who forms an idea of how “reality” must be made up and is in a position then to visit the world of imagination will find his assumptions confirmed there.
23Those monads which made up the matter in the originally formed solar system need a total of three successive solar systems to conclude their consciousness development. In the solar system of the first kind, the lowest three physical molecular kinds were automatized. This makes automatic development from seeds and eggs possible, by which process plants and animals can automatically receive the standard form achieved. In the solar system of the second kind, the monads pass to a higher natural kingdom (46). In the solar system of the third kind (which evinces an enormously heightened speed of development), the mineral monads reach the causal stage (the second triad), and the other ones the third triad (43–45) or cosmic consciousness (at least 42).
24The life-time of the solar systems (as calculated in Terran years) runs to a fifteen digit number.
25In the face of these facts you will better realize the limits of human judgement and the vanity of the faith of natural science in its ability to solve the problem of reality. The ability to ascertain the facts of esoterics requires objective consciousness in eighteen molecular kinds (47:2-7, 48:2-7, 49:2-7), and science is occupied with the exploration of the four lowest ones (49:4-7).
1There is only one consciousness, the cosmic total consciousness, in which every primordial atom (monad) has an unlosable share after the monad’s consciousness has been roused in the process of cosmic manifestation. Thus in that sense there is no “unconsciousness”. The unconscious can only refer to the individual himself. This unconsciousness of his is either his superconscious or his subconscious. The superconscious is whatever remains to “be conquered” by him. The subconscious is his past experiences ever since his consciousness was roused to life.
2Just as the time of human apprehension is divided into past, present, and future, so consciousness can be divided into subconsciousness, waking consciousness, and superconsciousness. The subconscious includes everything that ever passed through the waking consciousness. To the superconscious belongs not yet activated, passive molecular consciousness in man’s envelopes as well as the consciousness of the causal envelope and of the higher triads.
3The unconscious is the individual in the proper sense. The waking consciousness is only a tiny fraction of the whole human being.
4All our five envelopes are at the same time five consciousnesses that are practically never at rest. Only a tiny fraction of the pertaining consciousness expressions become waking-conscious. Dreams (conscious consciousness expressions during states of sleep) can be divided into five kinds (consciousness expressions of the organism, etheric, emotional, mental, and causal envelopes). Only essential selves are able to interpret these rightly.
5The subconscious is partly the past experiences of the self (in the various envelopes), partly the memory of the first triad (accessible only indirectly). The faculty of memory is the ability to resuscitate vibrations once experienced in the envelopes. It is exceedingly different in different people and has nothing to do with the individual’s level of development. “Memory geniuses” are regarded as geniuses, which is a typical phenomenon at the stage of civilization.
6What the envelopes have once assimilated is worked up by the envelopes, which are veritable combination machines. The more intensive the impressions have been, the greater the effect of combination. This is the explanation why the solution of problems often is obtained by engraving facts into one’s “memory” and then ”forgetting the whole thing” (leaving the “subconscious” alone).’
7The explorer of unknown domains collects facts and afterwards makes systems out of them. Often he finds after some time that the paper he has written is in need of revision. And this can be repeated however many times. His envelope consciousness has meanwhile worked upon the “problems”. It can often be hard to determine to what extent that consciousness has received facts from the mental world telepathically.
8In contradistinction to waking consciousness and superconsciousness, subconsciousness can be divided into latent and actualized. Latent subconsciousness exists in the first, or lowest, triad, in which the monad–the primordial atom–the self–the individual has been encapsulated ever since the beginning of evolution in the mineral kingdom. Actualized consciousness is everything that has passed through the waking consciousness in the current incarnation and has subsequently sunk down below the threshold of waking consciousness.
9The remembrance anew of the monad (self-atom) could be included in the latent subconscious. It has once been part of the waking conscious and is stored in the triad. This latency can make itself felt as instinct before it has reached full remembrance anew. Certain kinds of presentiment that try to work their way forward, so to speak, to perfect clarity, full remembrance anew can be included in this instinct. Certain kinds of presentiment, or divination, belong to the superconscious.
10The individual is an exceedingly complex phenomenon. He does not only consist of five envelopes that make up five beings. He also possesses a triad with all its depositions from the different incarnations. Add to this the new experiences of the monad in the new incarnation, the various influences, the different views on existence at the different ages of life. Therefore, it is by no means to be wondered at that the individual appears to be full of contradictions. As his culture increases and his attitude to life grows more unitary, such changes become less noticeable.
11Superconsciousness is partly made up of consciousness in those emotional and mental molecular kinds that have not yet been activated by self-consciousness, partly of causal consciousness in the lowest causal molecular kinds awakening at the stage of culture. There are two ways of activating these consciousnesses. Either you lead your life like all the rest and have these consciousnesses activated in the normal process of mankind’s development through millions of years. Or you work consciously at the activation of these kinds of superconsciousness, so that they become waking consciousness subsequently to be controlled by the self. These superconsciousnesses are activated by directing self-consciousness (attention) to them. For everything that consciousness attends to is affected by energy (mental, emotional, and physical activity). You acquire qualities by constantly attending to them, by making their nature, their desirability clear to yourself, by making them the objects of emotional attraction and by practising them in physical life. You acquire higher consciousness by acquiring the qualities belonging to that higher consciousness. The greater your esoteric knowledge, the better your insight into the best methods of procedure. If you as an individual do whatever you can, then Augoeides, too, can supply his insight and energy to an ever-increasing extent.
12Also the relationships between the consciousnesses of the causal envelope and of the envelopes of incarnation (including those of the triad envelope) can be assigned to the unconscious. A long observation of the various kinds of consciousness is required in order to learn to differentiate these from one another and thereupon to ascertain their different influence on each other. It is of great interest to analyse the pertaining phenomena impersonally and matter-of-factly. To begin with, the monad identifies itself with the mental, at least as long as the individual thinks that the mental is himself. It is only when he realizes that he is the one who analyses the mental content that he will be able to differentiate himself from the mental envelope consciousness.
13When making such an analysis, the aspirant is greatly aided by his power of visualization (which is developed through ritual).
14There is much going on in the unconscious, things of which the aspirant has no idea. If everything seems to have failed and proved useless, in moments of seeming stand-still, his trust in the law of life may be the only thing that remains for the waking consciousness. Then the aspirant should leave his worry to the unconscious and live in that “divine lightheartedness” which he must learn to cultivate. As long as his will is bent on development and he keeps to his resolution of will to develop, his development goes on even though appearances indicate the opposite.
15The subconsciousness in the triad is the memory of the past. It solves no problems. It supplies what we have experienced and worked up. The solution of problems goes on in the superconscious part of mental consciousness, which is activated by the problems that occupy waking consciousness. The term the “subconscious” used in PhS 3.69 actually is misleading but we must use it while awaiting the reception of requisite facts from the planetary hierarchy to elucidate the problem of the unconscious. The monad–the self in the triad is given a new triad envelope at each new incarnation (new causal molecules from the greater causal envelope). The skandhas are physical, emotional, and mental atoms that accompany the triad at its incarnation and make up tendencies acquired in previous incarnations, but except for this function their significance for memory is unknown to us.
16Esotericians must sometimes resort to auxiliary constructions, but this is no defence for those in the occult sects who mislead people with their own fantasies. An esoteric auxiliary construction must not be resorted to except when it agrees with reality so closely that it does not have a misleading effect; only is to be regarded as correct in all essentials even though “clumsy” as an explanation.
17Even the esoterician must sometimes be content with his own constructions. But there is an essential difference between the views of the exoterist and the esoterician. The former believes that his brainwaves are correct, the latter knows that theories are temporary and therefore not exact, that they are auxiliary constructions to be used until causal facts can be received from the planetary hierarchy. Mental consciousness cannot ascertain such facts.
1There are four principal kinds of subconsciousness, which physicians, psychiatrists, and psychologists of course do not even suspect exist. Such things aren’t “scientific”, you see.
2Those four kinds are the subconsciousness of the monad, of the triad, of the skandhas, and of the envelopes. The subconscious of the monad contains everything its consciousness has experienced ever since this consciousness was roused to life. The subconsciousness of the triad contains everything recorded ever since the formation of the triad in the mineral kingdom. Its human incarnations are, of course, of particular actuality. The subconsciousness of the skandhas contains the memory of everything that formed them as companions of the triad. And finally we have the subconsciousness of the etheric, emotional, and mental envelopes of incarnation. The consciousness of the causal envelope can never become subconscious, since everything it has experienced exists in the present.
3The monad cannot forget anything of what it has seen, heard, experienced. Any perception it has ever had, ever since its consciousness was awakened to life, is unlosable.
4The monad in the fourth natural kingdom (the human kingdom) has an unlosable memory of what it has experienced in the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdom, quite apart from the memory of all incarnations in the human kingdom.
5Consciousness is by nature both individual and collective. All of the content of consciousness there is in the monad also exists in the collective consciousness of the group (the aggregate) as unlosable memory.
6Memory is by nature passive and latent. To be remembered anew it must be actualized and activated. This can be done in various ways, usually by renewing the contact with it.
7Everything existing in lower kinds of consciousness also exists in higher kinds. That is why the causal collective consciousness of the planet can represent everything that has been, everything that the monads in the planet have experienced ever since the planet came into being. That is why there is no “past” in planetary respect to the causal consciousness of the planet. Everything past is always accessible to anyone who has acquired causal sense and the ability to actualize the planetary memory.
8Each incarnation deposits a layer, as it were, in the subconscious of the first triad. If experiences in a new incarnation touch on related matters in the subconscious, this can be activated and influence waking consciousness. Where “spiritual” domains of life are concerned, the religious man often takes such things as truth, revelation, divine inspiration, etc.
9All the qualities and abilities acquired by the monad (the individual) through all its tens of thousands of incarnations as a physical, emotional, and mental being at all the different stages of development, all this exists in a latent state in the subconscious. At lower stages (the stage of hatred), the qualities belonging to the instinct of self-preservation and to reckless egoism are almost the only ones to be acquired. At the present stage of mankind’s development, the percentage of these qualities is greater than that of noble qualities, which therefore remain to be acquired. If these latent bad qualities have opportunities of reactualization, then those phenomena are obtained which appear in the increasing juvenile crime of our times.
10It is the latent fund of experiences had and worked-up that makes up the true basis of understanding. The greater this fund is, the vaster and quicker is the perception, provided that the brain works as it should, which is far from always the case.
11The self cannot understand whatever it has never experienced in its countless forms of life through the natural kingdoms. It was an esoteric axiom that Platon gave to mankind when he said that all knowledge is remembrance. “There is nothing new under the sun” is another esoteric axiom. The race wins and loses constantly the same knowledge until it has learnt not to abuse it. The individuals who have not abused it have opportunity of reacquiring it but soon learn to be silent with their insight not to be declared insane, be locked up in asylums, burnt or killed in other ways or “neutralized”. Still religion, philosophy, and science are at the infantile stage. Mankind knows nothing better because it has not deserved anything better.
12The kinds of atoms and molecules attracted by the individual are due to the vibratory capacity of the permanent atom and belong to the same level of development.
13The subconscious from previous existences belongs to either the sympathetic or cerebrospinal nervous system. In the sympathetic system there are reminiscences from our ancestors or via our permanent atoms from the time we were savages or animals. This subconscious also includes automatized habitual movements.
14Emotional vibrations reach us through the sympathetic nervous system (the solar plexus in particular), which is the most important connection with the emotional envelope. Those vibrations are then conveyed to the brain. Fear, for instance, can originate from our ancestors or come from the deep layers of the brain, the pituitary gland (the individual’s own innate experience) or from the sympathetic nervous system. In the last case it depends on a hostile being in the emotional world.
1There are many “instinctive” consciousness processes that have not yet been elucidated. They have been given the common name of instinct. We can discern three kinds of instinct: the experience acquired in some life and synthesized by the subconscious; expressions of the latent experience of the self; and contacts with the superconscious.
2In man, instinct is an expression of latent knowledge and ability. It is a guide in our search for a renewed contact, a presentiment of remembrance anew.
3Before something new is clearly and distinctly apprehended in waking consciousness, it may run through many series of increasing consciousness, preliminary stages to conscious conceptions. Westerners are by and large psychological idiots, like ignorant children at the lowest school levels. Their psychological ideas and categories are miserably infantile. A chemist in the 18th century knew more about the elements than a psychologist in 1950 knew about the “mind”. Freud, Adler, Jung, etc. would not have had such enormous success with their imaginative speculations, if a science of consciousness had been in existence.
4The instinct of the normal individual is his latent knowledge and manifests itself as understanding. At higher stages the individual’s instinct is reinforced as incipient, subjective causal consciousness (from 47:3).
5The instinct of the cultural individual shows him what he should see, hear, read, etc. He avoids systematically everything base, vulgar, brutalizing. He does not read the smutty literature of modern “culture”, depicting the basest qualities of subhumans. He does not read the newspapers scandalmonger in all manner of crime and lawlessness. He does not see the films promoting the barbarous views held by civilization on the meaning of life, as though the best things in life were amusements, luxury, and all manner of nonsense. He does not listen to gossip. He has more important interests, knowing well that the life of the personality is short and meaningful for anyone who knows the laws of life and wills for development. He avoids seeing and hearing anything debasing, for he knows that all such things enter into subconscious complexes with an inevitable effect that directly obstructs his striving for selfrealization. An eminent esoterician said that anyone who daily devotes more than ten minutes on the average to reading newspapers so doing evidences his lack of vital “spiritual” interests. By directing our attention to things of inferior quality we supply our subconscious with harmful suggestions.
1Everything we think sinks down into the subconscious where it enters into complexes that do their work in secret.
2The subconscious is our servant that uncritically, mechanically obeys the directions it has once received from the waking consciousness. If those directions are contradictory, then complexes arise that fight each other, that divide the faculty of decision-making, of reaching results. If directions are positive, the result is positive. The directions of most people are negative, and then they are amazed at the fact they so often fail.
3By our thoughts we activate the superconscious and receive in return ideas that inspire and guide us. We influence the superconscious through our ideals, our attitude to life as service, our uncompromising, consistent way of life. The more integrated we are, the more light and power we receive from our higher self and the guide of our collective. There is no use of begging for help. We are given the help we need, we deserve and have got the right of in accord with the life we lead.
4The unconscious does the actual work for us after we have once supplied it with thoughts, motives, confidence. Whatever happens we know that our superconscious is divine and greater than anything ordained by destiny or whatever.
5Habits of thought unfailingly become complexes.
6All virtues and vices are the results of complexes.
7The habits of life of most people have arisen without their reflecting on it. This fact demonstrates the importance of controlling thoughts. Whatever has been prepared in thought often finds expression in word and deed.
8“Character” is the sum of our complexes, habits of thought and of life. We can change character by forming new complexes, habits of thought and of life. It is the sum of complexes that determines our attitude to life, and this shapes our future destiny.
9We can form good complexes as easily as bad ones.
10“The power of the past” is enormous. It lives a life of its own under the cover of unconsciousness. Add to this the fact that, at the present stage of mankind’s development, the subconscious is the strongest kind of consciousness. Not least for this reason consciousness control is necessary, in any case a prerequisite of discipleship with an imperative demand of “never looking back”. The “forgiveness of sins” is in that respect a valuable psychological trick for liberation from the power of the guilt complex for anyone who has been able to accept the theological fiction system.
11“Energy follows thought”, which reinforces everything it considers. The more intensive the “remorse”, the stronger grows the complex until a final collapse can be the result.
12Of course there is a synthetic factor in subconsciousness. But the work of the subconscious is purely mechanical, a continuous process reminiscent of analysis and synthesis. The factors participating in the process are combined to be dissolved again until a combination has been obtained that reaches up into the waking consciousness. It is wrong to speak about “constructive and liberating” forces in that connection. If a liberation from the complex is obtained, then it depends on the fact that the subconscious (usually with the current methods accidentally) has received from the waking consciousness a factor to work upon which yields the solution of the problem. No, the “liberation” comes from the superconscious, and the psychosynthesists know nothing about that. It is still part of esoteric psychology.
1“Knowledge is remembrance.” This tenet of Platon has been misunderstood, of course. Ignorance misunderstands everything.
2The chapter heading does not say “knowledge”, for most things remembered anew are not knowledge but previously acquired learning, which is fictitious more than 99 per cent. All fictions that we have once by our work incorporated with a mental system are familiar to us when in some subsequent life we hit on them anew.
3Remembrance anew requires a renewed contact and renewed work. Isolated facts or fictions are of significance, become apprehensible only in their given contexts. In isolation they say very little, if anything at all.
4The different incarnations deposit their own layers, as it were, in the subconscious (in the three units of the triad), layers of mental, emotional, and physical atoms. These lead their own lives and make themselves felt in the most unexpected ways when the individual experiences consciousness expressions (experiences) of analogous kinds.
5Remembrance anew means reconquest. To comprehend facts you must put them into their contexts or into a system. That was what Goethe had in mind when saying: “What is inherited from your fathers must be acquired to be owned.”
6Whenever we find anything hard to understand, then this is an instance of learning without latency. Everything difficult is proof of previous unfamiliarity, be it learning, skills, qualities, abilities. The difficult begins with the new. From this you can easily judge what is new or latent.
7Facility depends on how thoroughly we have mastered the matter before. Our previous ability developed to 90 per cent perfection appears to us as “innate” and just as “catching”. Of course physiological predispositions from physical parents, a “flexible” brain, etc., facilitate the reacquisition of the ability. But no predispositions are of any avail to anyone to lacks previous experience. A primitive individual has no possibilities of using purposefully the most perfect brain inherited by him. This remark should give fanatic eugenicists some food for thought. A whole tribe can easily degenerate if only primitive clans incarnate into it.
8If the esoteric student has assimilated the esoteric learning in such a manner that this has become a live system that in many cases solves new problems of knowledge automatically, then this is worked into the subconscious of the triad to such an extent that it will be quite clear to him, even in future incarnations, that what the learned say cannot be the truth. He has an unlosable instinct for the truth that life has a meaning, has an instinctive trust in life and trust in the Law. If he does not meet the system of hylozoics, yet he will not be a victim of universal fictitiousness. If he remains a seeker, he will find esoterics sooner or later. Often he devotes himself to a useful life-time achievement, being calmly confident in life without the need of an elaborated life view.
9Things are in motion. Sane, critical, common sense is awakening. Nobel prize winner, professor of chemistry Frederick Soddy: “I think that cultures have existed in the past that knew of atomic energy and that were totally destroyed through the misuse of this energy.” It was not quite that way. But the instinct has awakened to the fact that there was real knowledge in cultures that vanished long ago. Instinct because that idea comes from experience collected in previous incarnations and preserved in the subconscious.
1Man’s superconsciousness is the consciousness of the causal envelope, which preserves the memory of everything it has experienced ever since it came into being when the individual passed from the animal kingdom to the human kingdom. Superconsciousness also includes not yet activated passive consciousness in the molecular kinds of the envelopes of incarnation. A normal individual at the stage of civilization, for example, has such passive consciousness in 48:1-3 and 47:4,5.
2Inspirations (molecules or atoms that reach the brain and become conscious) can come from mental forms in the mental world, ideas from the causal world or essential world (when these have been attracted by something closely related to them in the monad consciousness), from Augoeides, from someone in the planetary hierarchy. Most often it is the case of vibrations in the emotional world caught from someone who has been thinking keenly on the matter. (Vibrations consist of molecules.)
3Much of what man takes for inspiration from without, from higher beings, or from within, from Augoeides, is the work of his own superconscious mental or causal consciousness. Ideas picked up and forgotten long ago have been preserved in the corresponding envelopes or by the triad consciousness. To the extent that it is possible for the individual to apprehend them or he needs them for the understanding he desires, these molecules can pour into the pertaining brain cells, and the individual may then take them for revelations. Until he has acquired functionality in the centres of his different envelopes above the diaphragm and is able to determine where the vibrations spring from, the individual cannot determine with certainty the quality of his “inspirations”.
4To those at higher stages there are domains of consciousness that have not yet been activated. Add to this the fact that the consciousness content of the mental envelope by no means always is recorded in the brain. There are many mental ideas that are never correctly apprehended or even apprehended at all, quite simply because the brain does not have the capacity required for this. Other obstacles are ineradicable mental fictions that block the path to understanding, so that these ideas are never assimilated and incorporated with the ideas of the brain.
5It can take many years until a mental idea (mental molecule) that has been caught in the superconscious mental consciousness has succeeded in working its way down into the brain through the emotional and etheric envelopes and become physically conscious.
6Ideas with their evolutionary energies are at the disposal of those who endeavour to acquire the preconditions of receiving them: the development of common sense and the will to serve. Common sense includes understanding of the reality surrounding us; no dogmas and idiologies of ignorance.
7The superconscious comes directly to the brain. It seldom makes itself felt until at the stage of culture.
8In those who have reached the stage of humanity, subjective causal consciousness is fully active in 47:3 an partially even in 47:2. But this causal consciousness does not reach down into the brain, since mental consciousness is so strongly active that it cannot act as an intermediary for ideas, which it must learn to do. The purpose of meditation is to make mental consciousness a tool of causal consciousness. As long as man in his ignorance thinks that the intellect can produce real knowledge and can judge everything, he will hinder causal ideas from making themselves felt. Two stages in the transition from mental to causal activity can be discerned. At first mental consciousness attempts to mentalize (scale down) the causal idea. Then it just mediates the idea to the brain.
9It can take up to fifteen years before a causal idea apprehended by the self in the mental envelope is able to penetrate down into the etheric envelope consciousness of the brain cells and be actualized in the physical waking consciousness. As long as the individual has an organism and his brain is intact, the brain consciousness is the essential one for the self in everything concerning objective perception. That is why the individual can acquire qualities and abilities in physical life only, not during the sojourns of rest between incarnations.
10Emotional superconscious vibrations often come through the emotional counterparts of the physical senses. In states of fear the physical brain is paralysed and the sympathetic nervous system takes over the function, and thereby the possibility of connecting the superconscious with waking consciousness ceases.
11The lack of balance seen in the genius is due to the fact that vibrations are too strong for the corresponding envelopes and are converted by them into the kind of energy the envelope most easily assimilates and consumes.
12Superconsciousness makes itself felt unconsciously in many ways of which those ignorant of life have no idea, do not realize and do not understand. Often the pertaining vibrations find expression in almost imperceptible impulses, admonitions, perceptions of responsibility, inspirations in one’s work, in dissuasions (what theological ignorance call conscience).
13Those who constantly attend to superconsciousness will soon experience its growing significance.
14Mankind makes up a consciousness collective. And like all such collectives it has both super-and subconsciousness. Those who have some understanding of this can ascertain that beside ruling illusionism and fictionalism there runs a mightily current of “idealism”, a longing for greater understanding and trust in “life”.
15You conquer the superconscious by thinking of it. By meditating on rules of living that belong to a higher level of development than your own you create conditions of understanding future experiences and prepare for a more rapid development in life or in your next life.
16Superconsciousness in higher worlds (those of the second and third triads) will not be more easily conquered, that is true, but will nevertheless afford the possibility of having glimpses that are easily mistaken for incipient subjective consciousness. The risk of making such erroneous conclusions seems to be particularly existent in causal selves who have glimpses from the essential world via the unity centre of the causal envelope. The law of selfrealization also has the effect that the individual hesitates to consult superior expertise. He wants to solve by himself problems that he thinks are within the range of the possible. The consciousness of community of essential consciousness has seven degrees and it can be difficult to determine the limits between them when the problem belongs to a higher degree. By making mistakes about the superconscious causal selves as well as essential selves learn to consult the resources of checking there are in higher selves.
1People picked up the word intuition and as usual everybody knew at once what was meant by intuition and that everybody had intuition. And so that word was idiotized. Then of course all psychologists, psychoanalysts and educators have contributed to the confusion of ideas. So we might expect that soon dogs and cats as well possess intuition.
2Much of what ignorance has called intuition is only manifestations of “remembrance” from latent subconsciousness, such as immediate recognition, lightning-rapid perception, immediate understanding.
3The certainty of the unconscious can come from sub-or superconsciousness. The one from subconsciousness is the manifestations of experiences the individual has had and worked up; they are related to instinct. Then the individual knows without being able to explain why.
4Intuition is possible only when passive causal consciousness is activated. It is of two kinds, the one concerning the matter aspect (causal intuition) and the other the consciousness aspect (essential intuition). Causal intuition is obtained through the second triad mental atom via the intelligence centre of the causal envelope (47:3). Essential intuition is obtained from the second triad essential atom via the unity centre of the causal envelope (47:2).
5To be able to listen, to become sensitive, to hear what never is uttered, to understand without words – significant expressions of incipient intuition. There is a cyclone of vibrations rushing through our different envelopes, vibrations of which we apprehend perhaps one quadrillionth. The noise of the lowest octaves makes us deaf to the “voice that is heard in the silence” (when the voices have fallen silent).
6Anyone who has acquired intuition need not analyse and uses analysis only to clarify, to concretize, to make things comprehensible to the analyst. It is an evidence of psychological ignorance that psychoanalysts consider themselves intuitive. As soon as a theory is at the basis of judgement, the conclusion will be false, since no theory agrees with reality. Theories are means of orientation and valuable as such; in any case they are necessary for those ignorant of life. However, at the present stage of mankind’s development we are in no position to construct a correct theory. You can do that only when you have researched a sphere to its end.
7The psychosynthesist considers himself to be intuitive when his analyses make syntheses possible. But the mental capacity that has made synthesis possible is perspective consciousness (47:5, not 47:2). Besides, the synthesist is seldom able to determine whether his synthesis is correct. Infallibility is reached only with intuition.
8The ruling ignorance of life has of course misused the term “inspiration” as much as “intuition”
9Besides, how could people comprehend things they know nothing about? They know nothing about the different worlds in the planet and man’s different material envelopes with their different kinds of consciousness and everything else you must have facts about before you can judge it. What people call inspiration generally are impulses from the subconscious of the emotional and mental envelope or of the triad, moreover vibrations in the emotional or mental world perceived telepathically. Real inspiration like intuition comes from causal consciousness. The difference is that inspiration is information received from individuals in the fifth natural kingdom (the human planetary hierarchy or the deva hierarchy) whereas intuition is a self-acquired contact with the causal world.
1Essentiality (46) is by nature “group consciousness”. That is perhaps the definition that best clarifies how far mankind, at its present stage of development, is from the fifth natural kingdom . Telepathy is the first step in the right direction. The next step is the experience of another individual’s consciousness as though it were one’s own, a process going via the common consciousness of the group. The condition of such a process is that the group has a common material envelope. Such an envelope can be constructed only by a 45-self. From this you understand that nobody will reach the essential world without the planetary hierarchy.
2How impossible it is for human reason to form an idea of higher kinds of consciousness is perhaps best seen in the explanation given of essential consciousness. It is a union of selfconsciousness and universal consciousness. The self perceives itself to be everything and everyone, thus with an intensive heightening of self-consciousness. It is the direct opposite of the idea that the self is to lose its self-identity in universal consciousness. Instead, the self absorbs in itself and embraces the universe. The opposition of me and you has vanished definitively. The self is all because all is the self.
3Subjective essential consciousness is called love; objective essentiality is called wisdom. Subjective essentiality manifests itself as group consciousness, in its first beginning as “psychological understanding”. From this you perhaps realize that egoists lack a “psychological eye” for essentials when judging individuals. They probably have eyes for misleading other egoists. But that is because they have picked up some “business psychology” (primitive association psychology) from people with a full-grown “business genius”.
4The human experience we have had and worked up through all our incarnations manifests itself as a particular pertaining instinct. “Business genius” is acquired, like all other kinds of genius, through specialization during a number of incarnations. Understanding of man as a man is not reached in that way. Only he knows himself who is aware of his godhead. And only then is he able to understand others. Only through essential consciousness does one become aware of one’s godhead. But it is of enormous significance to the individual that he learns to see what is meant by “god immanent”: that all creatures being monads share in the cosmic total consciousness on whatever level the monad is found. This was what Blavatsky proclaimed: that the “true path to happiness, peace, and power is in the discovery of the divine nature within ourselves”.
5According to Schopenhauer, what we call happiness is a negative state, the absence of suffering. We feel “happy” when for a short while we are free from tiredness, pain, and anguish, when we can relax and devote ourselves to agreeable influences. And this is confirmed by all essentialists when from the essential world they return to the physical world. Essential consciousness affords the most intensive, indescribable sense of bliss. It is not bliss alone, however. Any thought of rest is out of the question. Essential consciousness brings about an enormous energy, a need to be active that is incomprehensible to the normal individual, a desire to serve all and everyone that is indomitable, and inexhaustible powers to do it.
6Schopenhauer’s attitude to happiness is shared by most people at higher stages, those who have even the faintest reminiscence from their sojourn in the mental world. It is perhaps inevitable that those who occasionally experience incarnations of happiness have no understanding of this view upon the matter.
1Man’s stage of development depends on which kinds of molecular consciousness of his envelopes the monad consciousness is able to activate. All the molecular consciousnesses the monad is unable to activate make up its superconsciousness. The process of activation is a slow process from the first successful attempt to full sovereignty in the consciousness of a molecular kind, a process that requires thousands of incarnations for each new molecular kind. It needed not be like that, but self-initiated consciousness activity is almost non-existent at lower stages of development. When the individual has acquired an insight into this and the ability of continuous self-initiated activity, the final process can be immensely rapid. But then it will be required that the individual is not affected by the consciousnesses of his envelopes activated from without, does not think thoughts coming from without, is not emotionally affected by emotional vibrations from without, thus does not think, feel, speak and act on the basis of impulses, but only out of self-determined factors. Which these factors are will be learnt by the individual slowly at the stages of culture, humanity, and ideality.
2At the stages of culture and humanity, people liberate themselves from the majority of illusions and also from fictions, of course. However, the individual will become wholly free from illusions and fictions only when he has acquired a knowledge of reality. That knowledge can never be acquired by mankind on its own.
3Only by using consciousness does one obtain the corresponding energies. Since the masses at large use only physical and emotional consciousness they cannot perceive and assimilate the energies of mental consciousness. Their mental envelopes are empty of all those colours which in the envelopes of mentalists change kaleidoscopically.
4It is only at the stage of humanity that man acquires the ability to think by himself. At lower stages, thinking is dogmatic, parroting. Learning consists in knowing what others have thought. Knowledge is memory knowledge. All people get materials for thought from books. Using only that method they will have no consciousness development.
5Theology is a dogmatic system that precludes all thinking beyond the limits defined by the dogmas. And the same is true of most scientific disciplines. If you know what, for the time being, is science, then your education is completed and you believe yourself able to judge everything, even things that are outside your own sphere of knowledge. When will it dawn upon the learned that this attitude is idiotic?
6They have tried to define belief in the following terms: “Belief is that portion of your knowledge before which you feel: this will never in all eternity change.” That it easy to say, but it means that belief is emotion, and that is no firm ground on which to build anything. And no man is able to decide whether “this” will not change. If this were true, no belief would be needed, for then this would be the definitive, the absolute knowledge.
7The percentages of blind belief, assumption, learning (comprehension) and knowledge (understanding) indicates the level of development of the personality. We can know nothing about the latent level of the self. And self-deception always avails itself of this fact. There are many indications that you certainly are a very special person. The level-headed individual goes by and judges himself by his work, not by his chimaeras, wishes, expectations, resolutions.
8Many people neglect their emotional ennoblement, cultivating instead mental consciousness in a one-sided manner. They flatter themselves that they are highly intellectual. In a subsequent incarnation this can bring about a serious setback. Mental faculties without emotional qualities generally lead to a perverted attitude to life, an egoistic self-assertion with its painful consequences.
9There is also something that could be called the craze for mental possessions, a ravenous appetite for perfectly useless facts. The esoterician takes in whatever affords perspectives and a greater understanding of life, increases his capability of living and ability to help.
10If emotional consciousness is to influence or be influenced by the lowest causal consciousness, 47:3, activation of 48:3 is necessary. As for mental consciousness, at least 47:5 must be activated.
11The mental goes to the causal, the emotional to the essential, the physical to the superessential via the three centres in the causal envelope when these have been activated. In this respect, too, the physical proves to be of the greatest significance. It is also evident from this how perverse is that theology which considers the physical to be something “ungodly”.
12It is by no means uncommon that it takes several incarnations for an idea to be realized in the physical after being apprehended mentally. There are perfect individuals at all stages of development. They perform all their tasks in the physical world in a perfect way. In such individuals there is no distance to be seen between the mental and the physical. When this is possible at the stage of ideality, man will be ripe for his transition to the fifth natural kingdom. But there are individuals who are mentally many incarnations ahead of their physical perfection. They are not appreciated by the moralists who consider only physical perfectibility. Those moralists are quite unable to realize that the mentalist can be thousands of years ahead of the rest of mankind in his mental development.
13Consciousness identifies itself with whatever it is occupied with – be it above or below its own level. When we are occupied with things that belong on lower levels, we sink below our own level, and when we reflect on the higher, we are attracted by our ideas and ideals up into the higher. It is true that we soon go down again to our actual level, but impressions are preserved in the subconscious and are never without effect.
14Everything in existence goes on in cycles with increasing and decreasing energy and activity. This is true of consciousness as well. The aspirant must be prepared for periods of high tension and low tension, periods of clarity and darkness, periods of success and failure when everything seems won and everything lost; as the mystics express it: periods when you are with God and periods when God has forsaken you. The esoterician who has acquired trust in self (based on understanding), trust in life, and trust in the law has those qualities to keep to in periods of decline and need never despair or lose heart. The esoterician knows that the envelopes collapse sometimes, especially under the enormous pressure from the mass vibrations or such ones from the black lodge, so that the self feels powerless. In periods of reduced physical vitality or depression you relax physically, emotionally, and mentally, you rest and seek distraction. After night comes day. And over the clouds the skies are always blue.
The above text constitutes the essay The Consciousness Aspect by Henry T. Laurency. The essay is part of the book Knowledge of Life Two by Henry T. Laurency. Copyright © 2002 by the Henry T. Laurency Publishing Foundation.