The Way of Man by Henry T. Laurency
3. THE FIRST SELF
3. THE FIRST SELF
1When the monad in the first triad passes to the human kingdom, it is equipped with a causal envelope and is separated from all group consciousness. The human monad thereby acquires a self-identity, which only apparently is lost at new incarnations. This enables the monad to become conscious of being a self. Of course, it is only after the monad has acquired such a self-consciousness that it can be called a “self”.
2When the self has in addition acquired causal consciousness and is able to causally study its many incarnations in the human kingdom, it recognizes itself as the same individual through all these different existences. In the collective consciousness of higher kingdoms the self has a self-identity it never loses.
3Thus man is the first self: the human monad in a first triad in a causal envelope in the causal world.
4The human individual is a first self until he has become a causal self. He is a first self, since he cannot be conscious but in his envelopes of incarnation, which have been formed by the first triad. After they are dissolved, he must incarnate in order to be conscious again.
5At the incarnation of the first self, the causal envelope is divided into two parts, a greater and a lesser envelope. The greater one remains in the causal world. The lesser envelope contains the first triad and is therefore called the “triad envelope”. It incarnates, embraces, and penetrates the four newly formed envelopes of incarnation. This triad envelope exists only during incarnation. Upon the conclusion of the incarnation (as the mental envelope dissolves) the two causal envelopes coalesce, in which process the causal matter of the triad envelope, which has participated in the incarnation, is blended with the matter of the greater envelope. Before the next incarnation a new triad envelope is formed in the same manner from the matter of the greater causal envelope.
6During incarnation man thus consists of the following five envelopes or beings:
the triad envelope (47:3) the mental envelope (47:4-7) the emotional envelope (48:2-7) the etheric envelope (49:2-4) the organism (49:5-7)
7At the end of the incarnation, the envelopes of incarnation dissolve in their due order: first the organism with its etheric envelope, then the emotional and mental envelopes, whereupon the triad envelope merges with the causal envelope. Having not acquired causal consciousness, the self sleeps in its triad in the causal envelope, until it is awakened to renewed consciousness and activity in a new incarnation.
8This is, in short outline, the story of man’s incarnation where his envelopes are concerned.
9Consciousness development is a process in which the individual identifies his selfconsciousness with the consciousness of ever higher molecular kinds and then liberates himself from the lower molecular kinds when they have served their purpose and subsequently are just a burden.
10All human (physical, emotional, and mental) abilities must be acquired in physical incarnation. Emotionality is ennobled through admiration, affection, and sympathy. Mentality is developed through reflection, the ever more exact apprehension of conceptual contents, increasingly widened perspectives on the relations of existence, through facts of reality being put into their correct contexts in thought systems that embrace more and more.
11The further development is best, most certain, and most efficient when allowed to go on in the subconscious. Development is automatic when the individual forgets himself and is absorbed in the service of life and evolution. According to the Law, every striving must bring about results.
12In the present section some problems of the life-ignorant first self are discussed. The problems that are particularly typical of the envelopes that are invisible to the normal individual are discussed in the subsequent sections, which are particularly concerned with those envelopes.
1The four envelopes of incarnation – the organism, the etheric envelope, the emotional envelope, the mental envelope – which the monad is able to work with, are four mechanisms. In so far as the monad has been able to activate the molecules and molecular consciousness of these envelopes, the four envelopes function as one mechanism for the monad in the triad.
2The monad in the incarnated triad envelope makes use of its envelopes of incarnation as instruments of observation, apprehension, and expression.
3Man’s aura consists of four material envelopes: the etheric, emotional, mental, and the causal triad envelope. The aura makes up man’s total life from his birth to the end of his incarnation. The aura makes up the self’s possibility of consciousness and the domain of the self’s apprehension; it is the receiver of all impressions, subjective or objective, from the four worlds. The aura radiates energy and has in some people a magnetic effect. The colours of the aura indicate the individual’s level of development, especially the colour of the mental and emotional envelopes.
4Man in incarnation is three beings simultaneously, since he has consciousness in his physical etheric, emotional, and mental envelopes. The envelopes have been given the name of “beings”, since they possess molecular collective consciousness. The term “being” is nevertheless not quite satisfactory, since it is not the purpose of the envelopes to be beings of their own or express their own tendencies, but to be instruments for the consciousness expressions of the self. However, the term “being” has been chosen to emphasize the consciousness aspect in the individual’s envelopes and not, as is the case with the term “body”, to emphasize the matter aspect only.
5The envelopes are never at rest, for they are pervaded in every second by countless vibrations in their worlds, vibrations produced by molecules with energy and consciousness. It is this influence from without that “telepathically” supplies the envelopes with all manner of illusions and fictions, which (if they are apprehended by the self) the individual takes to be his own feelings and thoughts.
1The envelopes are called “beings”, since the matter of the envelopes has an actualized, passive consciousness. This means that the envelopes are incapable of self-initiated consciousness expressions but have the ability to apprehend, record, and preserve vibrations that are carriers of consciousness expressions.
2The envelopes are easily activated by the faintest vibration. The envelopes are perfect robots that automatically reproduce all kinds of vibrations (consciousness expressions) they receive within their molecular domains. Therefore, the percentages of the different molecular kinds in the envelopes are very important. At his two lowest stages of development, for instance, man’s emotional envelope predominantly consists of the three or four lower molecular kinds (48:4-7). The lower the level of development within the stage, the greater the percentage of lower molecular kinds, and so the monad receives chiefly vibrations from the corresponding lower regions in the emotional world.
3The envelopes are directed by vibrations from self-consciousness (the waking consciousness), from the subconscious of the first triad, and from without, from the worlds of the envelopes themselves.
4In addition, the envelopes have their own tendencies: an instinctive striving after obtaining ever stronger vibrations. In part this tendency is “innate”, since the envelopes are directed by impulses from the subconscious of the triad, from the tendencies the monad acquired in previous incarnations. Through its habits, similar feelings and thoughts, interests, etc., the monad gathers up molecules “infected” with these tendencies in its envelopes; these molecules, called “skandhas”, accompany the triad on the dissolution of the envelopes and at the subsequent incarnation. It is obvious that these skandhas can have either an inhibiting or a promoting effect. Often they are the germs of new, similar skandhas in a subsequent incarnation. Also habits can in this manner become inherited and innate and assert themselves even though the envelopes in the subsequent incarnation belong to quite different departments.
5The above explains why the self has difficulty in freeing itself from old habits, from old consciousness associations. They have a tendency to recur in various connections. This has a promoting effect if the individual has received nothing but “good” impressions. At the present stage of mankind’s development, however, impressions are by and large a burden, the more markedly so the more the individual strives after ennoblement.
1The worlds of the first self have been made in order that the monad learn to distinguish between the matter aspect and the consciousness aspect, become conscious of itself and no longer identify itself with its envelopes (the matter aspect): “I am not my envelopes.”
2The first self’s envelopes of incarnation make three modes of existence possible: life in the physical, emotional, and mental world. Of these modes of existence, physical life is without comparison the most important, since it is only in the physical world that man can acquire knowledge, qualities, and abilities. Life in the emotional world and in the mental world are only periods of rest between incarnations. It is impossible for man to objectively explore those worlds. That is possible only for the second self.
3By activating emotional as well as mental consciousness man enhances his ability to better use these kinds of consciousness in new incarnations. This he does more efficiently in the physical world than in higher worlds. He activates emotionality by cultivating attraction — admiration, affection, and sympathy — and mentality by working up the knowledge he has acquired in the physical world.
4If he takes the apparent realization of his imaginings (apparent, since matter forms itself according to the expressions of consciousness) for objective reality, then he is ignorant of the nature of these matters and must believe in what he is seeing. This is part of the illusoriness of the emotional world and the fictitiousness of the mental world. With a knowledge of reality he will no longer be the victim of the pertaining illusions and fictions but can purposefully help disoriented people to “find their bearings” in their new mode of existence, liberate them from the false notions about the “hereafter” that most people are afflicted with in physical life.
1The envelopes of incarnation are not the self. The monad, the self, incarnates time and again until it can be sovereign in its envelopes. These envelopes are the monad’s own work, performed during all its incarnations ever since the monad received a causal envelope and in so doing passed from the animal to the human kingdom. The monad is long a slave to the energies of these vibrations, which the envelopes absorb from the vibrations of their worlds in accord with the affinity between the molecular kinds of the worlds and the corresponding molecular kinds of the envelopes. In this dependence of the envelopes on the collective consciousness and energy of the worlds appears mankind’s collective responsibility for all individuals in the human kingdom.
2During our incarnations we have all contributed to “poisoning” collective matter and its collective consciousness by our perverse attitude to the laws of life, perverse because of our ignorance. Instead of trying to realize the meaning of life - consciousness development - we have preferred to identify ourselves with the matter aspect and to live an egotistical life, a life separated from the common consciousness. We have impregnated the consciousness of our molecules with this separative tendency, and this inevitably re-acts on everybody, since the matters of our envelopes at the dissolution of the envelopes are blended with the matter of their worlds and enter into the envelopes of incarnation of all people. The very separative tendency counteracts the meaning of life, which is everybody’s share in unity.
1The envelopes are united with each other through two “threads” or energy connections. The one goes through the heart centre of the etheric envelope; the other goes through the crown centre and has a contact with the etheric brain. In right sleep the emotional envelope withdraws out of the organism and the etheric envelope (and stays near the organism), in which process the brain connection ceases. Death ensues when also the connection with the heart centre is severed. Man can live with the heart connection alone, but is then a mere robot devoid of reason. Automatized habits and mental atoms in the brain have the effect that even in this state the individual can move about as usual, so that he appears to have “a little bit” of reason left.
2The five vital energies that maintain the life of the envelopes come from the third triad via the second triad and the causal envelope to the first triad’s envelopes of incarnation, where they go out through the heart centres. These five are: two physical energies, one emotional, one mental, and one causal energy. They are actually departmental energies, which fact is apparent from the envelope departments. The two physical energies come from the heart and basal centres and are distributed via the spleen centre.
3In addition, the envelopes are pervaded by countless vibrations from all directions in such quantities that we understand the saying “everything consists of vibrations”.
1In KR 7.22.5 there is a diagram showing the seven most important envelope centres (three below and four above the diaphragm) and how they are related to the seven departments. The combinations given are certainly not the only possible ones. Generally speaking, every centre is influenced by all departmental energies, but in addition the departments make themselves particularly felt in certain centres according to the individual’s stage of development.
2The seven most important centres are engaged in the individual’s consciousness development. Under guidance by the teacher energies from the sacral centre are directed to the throat centre; energies from the solar plexus centre, to the heart centre; and energies from the basal centre, to the crown centre (and eyebrow centre). The more active the centres above the diaphragm, the higher the stage of development.
3At the present stage of mankind’s development, the solar plexus centre is the most active one.
4All emotional energies go through the solar plexus centre. Clairvoyants perceive their phenomena through this centre. This is also the case of the most highly developed animal species (monkey, elephant, dog, horse, and cat).
5Man can activate his heart centre by striving towards unity, by seeing what is good in all, by serving mankind and life.
6All disease is due to the condition of the seven chief centres of the etheric envelope and their inability to rightly utilize the seven departmental energies pouring through the envelope. Such inability may have many different causes, collective and individual ones. In the individual case, it is generally caused by factors of the law of reaping (so-called karma).
7The ignorant are warned not to direct attention to the various centres (which is like thinking of diseased areas). The only sensible attitude is to allow the centres to function automatically and instead work to acquire good qualities, seek to contact your Augoeides, and lead a life of service, forgetting your “own self”, and moreover profit by sunlight, observe a suitable diet, avoid strain and any kind of agitation.
1The departmental energies that make themselves best felt in the different kinds of matter are:
1, 4, 5 in the mental world 2, 6 in the emotional world 3, 7 in the physical world
2The energies of the third department have their strongest effect in molecular kinds 49:5-7; and those of the seventh department, in 49:2-4. After the year 1950, the energies of the seventh department are the most dominant of all. This means that the lower matter of the etheric world (49:3,4) is especially activated, which makes it possible to acquire etheric objective consciousness and to master the pertaining energies. This will bring about a complete revolution in science and technology. Nuclear physicists have already started penetrating into domains of the lowest etheric matter, 49:4. The discovery of the etheric envelope will soon follow.
3Envelopes always belong to departments. Man’s five envelopes may belong to five different departments, although this is not very common; generally, seldom more than three out of seven possible. Usually, the causal envelope and the triad envelope belong to different departments. It is possible also for the first self to assimilate these departmental energies. The majority omit to do it, however, being ignorant of their departments. The horoscope of an individual may give certain indications, even though each department receives its energies from three zodiacal constellations out of twelve.
4Physical envelopes react preeminently to the departmental energies of the causal envelope, whereas the emotional envelope is influenced by the energies of the triad envelope. If, for instance, the causal envelope is of the first department and the triad envelope of the sixth department, conflicts between these energies easily arise with psychological problems for the self as the result.
5First selves can be divided into extraverts and introverts. Extraverts have departments 1, 3, 5, or 7 in their causal envelopes; introverts have 2, 4, or 6. Except those who belong to the first department, are pronounced dynamicians, and consequently cultivate the motion aspect, extraverts are more interested in the matter aspect of existence. Introverts have their interests in the consciousness aspects (philosophy, psychology, literature, music, etc.).
6Similar phenomena are encountered in those who have several odd or several even departments in their envelopes of incarnation.
7The following is a teacher’s comments on a disciple’s envelope departments and may serve as an example of the import of the departments in the envelopes. (Be it noted that the individual effect depends on individual character and level of development.)
8Your causal envelope is of the first department; and your triad envelope, of the fifth department. This in itself presents a problem for it produces a preponderance of those envelope energies which have an extravert effect (the line 1–3–5–7), resulting in a critical attitude; the first department with a tendency to isolation.
9Your mental envelope fourth department gives you a love of harmony and beauty but also that inner conflict which urges you to try to overcome your failings and so attain harmony of a “higher kind”. Your first department has facilitated this harmonization.
10Your emotional envelope second department has been the most important in your personal development by balancing you to the energies of the first and fifth departments.
11Your physical envelope third department with its active intelligence has given you your capacity to lead a purposeful life in the physical world and to handle money in the right way.
12Your most difficult problem has been an opposition between your emotional envelope second department and your physical envelope third department mental energies, a conflict in the choice of different courses of action.
1There is physical, emotional, mental, etc., magnetism, a phenomenon that has been very little noticed. However, that empirical principle, “like is attracted to like”, expresses a truth that can be verified by everybody. When you are ill at ease in a certain environment physically as well as emotionally and mentally, the cause of it may be magnetic repulsion.
2Reciprocal magnetic attraction is obtained if two individuals have the same departments in their envelopes: at lower stages, in their etheric and emotional envelopes; at higher stages, in their causal and triad envelopes.
3The opposite magnetic polarities of male and female envelopes complement each other in a manner that is still unknowable to us in many respects. The effect of this is of course greater if the partners have the same interests in life; and it is the greatest if, in addition, they have reached the same stage of development. The two factors mentioned are the most important ones among the almost countless other factors summed up in the old saying, “Birds of a feather flock together”. So it is because quite many causes of friction are then eliminated.
4People often misunderstand magnetic attraction. Physical and emotional attraction often mislead man and woman to believe they match each other when they do not at all match or mentally understand one another. Such misunderstanding is the cause of many unsuccessful marriages. A successful marriage is the result when the two partners on the same, higher level of development have the same departments in their causal envelopes. If they, in addition, have the same departments in the causal envelope (the second, for instance) and the triad envelope (the fifth, for instance), then the result is the perfect marriage. Any departments will do; if only they are the same, then there is direct, mutual understanding.
5Many marriages are “reaping marriages”, and a divorce is advisable only if the debt to be repaid has been settled per contra. Otherwise the result may be one more unhappy marriage in a new incarnation. Schiller says rightly: “Drum prufe, wer sich ewig bindet, ob sich das Herz den Herzen findet; der Wahn ist kurz, die Reue lang.” (Therefore, whoever binds himself for ever should try whether heart finds heart; delusion is short, remorse is long.) But how many people consider that when so-called love has blinded their reason? When people fall in love, it is the result of the most infatuating illusion, an instance of the power of emotionality over mentality. Many times it is not even a matter of emotionality, but physical attraction is quite sufficient to begin the game of chance.
6In the emotional world, the individual is attracted to those having a similar emotional attitude in almost any respect whatever that they deem essential. Since in that world none can conceal his emotions (though quite his thoughts, and since most people have no thoughts except emotions in mental garb), the habitual hypocrisy is no longer possible. “Hypocrisy” is a hard word, as are most true words. But a clarifying unmasking of things that people do not wish to see in themselves and in good faith deny helps those who want to be unmasked to see the truth at any cost. Only he has a prospect of coming to know himself who sees that he is a scoundrel. The fact that, potentially, he is something quite different and some time, as a cosmic self, will become the saviour of monads is also a part of the picture.
1It can often be observed that the vital energies from the causal envelope are largely used up in the activity of the mental and emotional envelopes and that little is left for the etheric envelope. The consequence is either lack of energy and a state of weakness in the organism or that the individual takes little interest in physical life and is unable to develop the necessary qualities and abilities, is unable to assert his capacity. Then the remedy is to switch off attention from the interests of the higher envelopes and to direct it to physical life.
2The ability to direct attention to the various kinds of consciousness and keep it in the kind of consciousness that is temporarily the most suitable is very important to “psychic health”. In so doing the individual liberates himself from his dependence on the consciousness content of his different envelopes and thus also from emotional depression, grief over losses, obsessional thoughts, and other similar states.
3The three beings of the first self — the etheric, emotional, and mental envelopes — function side by side although sometimes with considerable friction, with the effect that vitality is reduced and health is impaired.
4There are doctors for the organism as well as for the etheric, emotional, and mental envelopes. In order to help in the right manner, however, you must have a knowledge of the right manner. Regrettably, there are many people who think they possess abilities they do not have. If they have some knowledge of reality and life, in addition loving understanding and the desire to enter into the conditions and problems of other people, then the risk of misjudgement probably is not too big.
5It has been assessed that in certain categories (due to their stage of development), about 25 per cent of disease have physical causes and about 50 per cent have emotional causes. D.K., however, assesses that the average contribution of the emotional envelope to the causes of disease is 90 per cent at the present stage of mankind’s development (which has reference to the present proportions in which clans at lower stages dominate). Emotional consciousness is a great tax on the physical mechanisms, which have their own tasks to perform.
1The normal individual has passive consciousness in all the 18 molecular kinds of the worlds of man: causal-mental 47:2-7, emotional 48:2-7, physical 49:2-7. He has subjective active consciousness in nine of these — 47:6,7; 48:4-7; 49:5-7 — and objective active consciousness in three — 49:5-7. In this it should be noted that the individual has no great use of his passive consciousness in 47:2-5, 48:2,3, and 49:2-4, since it, on account of its very passivity, is beyond his understanding.
2We are still waiting for exact definitions, along with the necessary explanations, of consciousness in molecular kinds 47:2-7, 48:2-7, and 49:2-7. The information we have received so far is insufficient for an exact esoteric psychology. In their attempts to explain superphysical kinds of consciousness, occultists have started from results of nuclear physical experiments in physical etheric matter. Such explanations remain speculative, however, and are as all such things untenable.
3Just as consciousness is divided into physical, emotional, and mental, so interests can be divided into physical, emotional, and mental ones. Physical interests include all branches of technology, etc. Emotional interests include music, art, and fiction literature. Mental interests include scientific disciplines (philosophy, psychology, etc.), political, social, financial problems.
4Imagination is the highest technical faculty of emotional consciousness. Then come the mental faculties: analytic and synthetic, perspective, and system thinking. The transition to causal intuition is done via visualization and the cultivation of imagination.
5The self always lives in consciousness, both when experiencing something as subjective only and when directing its attention to physical material reality. In that respect consciousness is always subjective. The crucial point, however, is whether consciousness is or is not determined by an independent material (objective) reality. This is what justifies the distinction of subjective and objective consciousness, a necessary distinction for anyone who does not want to end up in a confusion of ideas.
6All consciousness expressions are also material phenomena that have an energy effect. The material phenomenon in higher worlds may be an atom, a molecule, or a whole material form (a so-called thought-form). The last alternative is the most common one, since the atom or molecule that was the “idea” by its vibration attracts involutionary matter from the environing world and so makes a form of emotional or mental matter. In still higher worlds no forms are made, but there it is only a matter of atoms and molecules of different dimensional capacity in entirely different kinds of space and distance, quite incomprehensible to the first self. All speculations on such things are vain.
7Generally, man is controlled by the consciousness content of his envelopes with their tendencies (our qualities self-acquired during thousands of incarnations). This struggle of the self against the power of the subconscious Paul tried to describe in his so-called Epistle to the Romans. When the self has gained a knowledge of reality and life, it wants something different from what it wanted till then. This entails an opposition to what the self previously thought to be the self (envelope consciousness). It may take many incarnations for the self to win that victory and become sovereign in its envelopes.
8In the normal individual (the majority) the subconscious is man proper. It is his whole past in lower natural kingdoms and his tens of thousands of incarnations in the human kingdom. Men are unaware of their subconscious and its potency, one is tempted to say: omnipotency. Men often do not know why they choose as they do. They are often unaware of what they say and do. That is why they can often in good faith flatly deny what they have said. It sprang forth from their subconscious spontaneously and without their noticing.
9It is only when the individual enters into reality and frees himself from emotional illusoriness and mental fictitiousness that he gets into contact with his superconscious and is more controlled by this than by his subconscious. It takes many lives before the subconscious has lost its power and the constantly recurring choice between lower and higher ceases. When it has ceased, man is an aspirant to the fifth natural kingdom.
1Self-identity, self-consciousness requires objective consciousness, at least in the organism, and a contrasting subjective consciousness in a higher envelope. The first stage in the development of self-consciousness is that the self in the emotional envelope knows that it is something different from the organism. The second stage is that the self believes it is thought and knows it is something different from feeling. The third stage is that the self has acquired causal consciousness and becomes aware of the fact that the consciousness of the lower envelopes is the tool of the causal self.
2The monad as a first self cannot be aware of its immortality. At each new reincarnation it is a new self. The first self is aware of its mortality, not of its immortality.
3Since the self does not have causal consciousness until the monad is about to pass to the second triad via the causal envelope, the self loses its self-identity at the dissolution of the envelopes of incarnation. In a new incarnation the self thinks it is a new individual without a past. It acquires its true self-identity only as a causal self with an ability to study its incarnations as a human being. The planetary hierarchy deems the loss of self-identity to be the greatest disaster that can befall man; so great that the hierarchy speaks of “immortality” only in reference to the causal self’s unlosable continuity of consciousness. This is also logical, since the first self, consisting of the envelopes of incarnation, is annihilated at the dissolution of the envelopes. Thereupon the self, unconscious and asleep in the triad in the reintegrated causal envelope, has lost its self-identity, the knowledge of the fact that it is an immortal self.
1Mediums in the spiritist sense are those who have the ability to lend their organism with its etheric envelope to those in the emotional world who have recently put off these envelopes. It is characteristic of such mediums that they do not know what is happening, what “others” say and do. They are standing beside their lent organism, unable to perceive anything in the physical world. Quite another condition would obtain if a causal self with unlosable continuity of consciousness would lend his organism with its etheric envelope to a third self.
2The prevalent notions about the different kinds of objective consciousness – improperly called “clairvoyance” – in different worlds and kinds of matter are very vague. In principle, there are in the worlds of man (47–49) four kinds of physical etheric, seven kinds of emotional, four kinds of mental, and three kinds of causal objective consciousness. However, many of these kinds of consciousness are inaccessible to first selves. The ones accessible to first selves can in actual fact be further divided into many more kinds according to individually different conditions of right perception in each kind of consciousness. Emotional objective consciousness, clairvoyance in the proper sense, has its particular difficulties and because of that exhibits great individual differences. There are no two similar cases of clairvoyance, and it is difficult to find two clairvoyants describing the same thing in the same way.
3It is impossible to classify the individual phenomena that go by the terms “mediums” and “clairvoyants”. Common features may certainly be indicated, but beyond them there are always individual traits. There are countless kinds of people who are “disposed to mediumism” though they are not mediums or clairvoyants. The larger part of these phenomena is still esoteric and will remain so until public opinion is tolerably oriented in that part of the esoteric knowledge which has been allowed for exoteric publication. Before then, everything said on these matters would be misinterpreted.
1All consciousness has a material basis, and so it is in all worlds. A feeling is beside consciousness also an emotional molecule; a thought is beside consciousness also a mental molecule; molecules consisting of the matter of the respective worlds. If the feeling or thought is strong enough and the molecule thus has vibrational power, in addition an emotional or mental material form is produced. Beside these material vehicles of man’s consciousness expressions there are of course in the emotional and mental worlds a great number of material phenomena independent of man.
2The normal first self perceives nothing of this superphysical material reality. He takes consciousness in his aggregate envelopes (etheric, emotional, and mental envelopes) to be only subjective. He does not suspect that there is a material etheric world, a material emotional world, a material mental world around him. In order to apprehend this objective, material reality he must, to be sure, possess the corresponding objective consciousness.
3According to the old theological view there were only two worlds: the sensuous world (the physical world) and the spiritual world (the emotional world). These are also the only two worlds of which the first self is aware. In its organism this self is aware of the physical world, and later, after putting off his organism, he is in his emotional envelope aware of the emotional world. In certain individual cases, the first self can already in his organism acquire objective consciousness of and in the emotional world, and these are the cases meant by “clairvoyance”.
4The first self can acquire two kinds of objective consciousness beyond the sense perceptions of the organism: physical etheric and emotional. The etheric objective consciousness is exact, ascertains facts in the higher physical molecular kinds. The emotional objective consciousness the first self can acquire is not reliable. The reason is that the emotional matter man is able to observe, formable secondary matter, is affected by the pertaining consciousness, emotional illusions, and moreover by mental fictions. Particularly in its higher kinds (above 48:4) this emotional objective consciousness is positively misleading, for in its regions imagination reigns supreme. Constant primary matter, the basis of secondary matter, can be observed only by causal selves. Thus the first self cannot ascertain facts in the emotional world.
5Therefore it is correct to say that the only knowledge of reality the first self can acquire on his own is the knowledge of physical reality, the domains of scientific research. The speculations of the philosophers, being subjective, without an objective basis, cannot accord with reality. For everything concerning the matter aspect of existence the facts of objective consciousness are the only criteria of reality.
6For the first self, the man who has not become a causal self, there are only the physical and emotional worlds. Higher worlds belong to the second self and the still higher selves. That also the mental world is included here, is due to the fact that objective consciousness of and in that world is acquired only by the causal self who purposively prepares his transition to the second self. The normal first self at the emotional stage can certainly acquire subjective consciousness in the lower mental (47:6,7), but does not know that this consciousness is mental, since it is part of the emotional consciousness of this self, is that mixture of emotionality and mentality which yogis call “kama?manas”.
1The fact that clairvoyants can ascertain the existence of higher worlds than the “visible” physical does not in the least imply that they know of still higher worlds or are even convinced of their existence. Often they have got stuck in some theoretical view that confirms them in their assumption that they have reached the final goal or, like Indian yogis, are on the verge of nirvana.
2Then the first self cannot by himself determine the limits to his consciousness, and all mystics are instances of this fact. The clairvoyant, in his ignorance of esoterics, may even imagine himself to possess “cosmic consciousness”. Ramakrishna believed so as well as Martinus of more recent date. None of them had even mental objective consciousness, for that is an ability acquired only by the causal self. It should be noted that the mystic, if he learns about causal selves, very easily imagines himself to be one.
3It is important to know about these limits to the objective consciousness of the first self, because then you need not be misled by those who appear with absurd claims. If Swedenborg, Ramakrishna, Steiner, and Martinus (just to mention the most well-known) had realized this fact, then they would not have led mankind astray.
4The esoteric knowledge alone can orient us in the world of consciousness. The limits of consciousness are marked by the different envelopes and by the different molecular kinds in the envelopes. The self cannot be conscious except in its envelopes and in the molecular consciousnesses it has itself activated. This is not contradicted by the fact that the self is in addition able to sporadically contact higher consciousness. Such a contact, which is made possible by the fact that all the higher atomic kinds are always involved into the lower ones, does not entail any consciousness conceivable to the self.
5It counts as an esoteric axiom that only a higher kind of consciousness can clearly see the limitation of a lower consciousness. Only the second self can see the limitation of the first self. Only the third self can see the limitation of the second self. Only a cosmic self (at least a self in the second divine kingdom, 36-42) can see the limitation of the third self. Et cetera. The gist of what is said here is that nobody knows his own limitation until he is informed about it by a higher self.
6Thus only second selves are able to determine, in the individual case, the limit to the first self’s objective exploration of reality. Beyond that, what layers of the universal collective consciousness the subjective monad consciousness is able to spontaneously contact cannot be determined even by second selves. All divisions and groupings are insufficient, and all dogmatizing in connection with them are just demonstrations of life ignorance, lack of experience. That is a thing which theologians, philosophers, and scientists cannot grasp for then there would be no dogmatism. Laurency (whoever he is; not the one people think, though) should have taught us all that much.
1Attention indicates the concentration of consciousness. Attention can be called the visual point of the self. The consciousness content of our envelopes of incarnation is determined by how we use our attention. Control of consciousness is control of attention and the most important factor of evolution.
2Self-consciousness (attention) must be occupied. If it is not occupied with something essential, something that promotes consciousness development, then it must be something different, less useful, often useless, quite often harmful. Hobbies, amusements, etc., thus are only substitutes. The individual’s level of development appears in his choice of objects of his attention. There are physical, emotional, and mental interests. Anyone who has acquired control of thought decides himself what he will think of. Others are dominated by their illusions and fictions.
3It is important that man learns to tell the difference between himself (the monad in the triad) and his envelopes. Life-ignorant man identifies his self-consciousness with the consciousness content of his envelopes and thereby becomes the slave of these envelopes. The content of the envelopes are the tendencies we acquired in past incarnations as well as the perverse conceptions we have picked up from our environment in this incarnation. This content can any moment be vitalized either by the monad itself or by vibrations from without. Therefore it is a good rule, whenever you become the victim of your consciousness content, to say: “My envelopes want this. I do not want it.” Thereby you liberate yourself from your dependence on the envelope consciousnesses. The self can make itself free, if it really wants to.
4If you really want to develop it is important always to be conscious of what you are doing, what you are thinking, feeling, saying, etc., to observe from which envelopes and which worlds those energies are coming which you use when acting. In so doing you will find it easier to control those energies and possibly use others as well.
5Observing perceptions in your different envelopes need not at all imply that you are occupied with your own self, which you are recommended to forget. You can study your perceptions as an impersonal observer when it is clear to you that you are not your envelopes. It is the envelopes that perceive, that feel, that will, not the self, unless the self identifies with these consciousness expressions, believing them to be the self, and allows them to hold sway.
6Where there is consciousness there is also energy. Meditation, which is concentrated consciousness, implies concentrated energy. Meditation that has a higher kind of consciousness as its object activates this, and that higher kind of energy, which is linked to consciousness, re-acts unfailingly on the individual meditating. If mental or causal consciousness is concerned, then second selves are able to observe these material currents and see by which aggregate envelope centres they are absorbed and distributed and which organs in the organism they influence. Ignorant man deals with forces, having no idea whatever of the effects they produce.
7You can meditate in many different ways. The only truly efficient methods are still esoteric. Mankind is not ripe enough for them. Many people practise meditation so intensively that they supply the envelopes with energies that they cannot use rightly and which because of that have a destructive effect.
8Subjects of meditation: happiness, joy, good qualities (especially those lacking or in need of strengthening); responsibility, sacrifice, friendship, idealism, qualities that exist in people, despite appearances, and need to be strengthened by telepathy.
9Meditation is quiet, calm reflection. You can, for instance, choose a good quality and daily contemplate its importance to your own life until it has entered into your subconscious in a complex that manifests itself spontaneously in waking consciousness. A good quality that most people need to acquire is to be glad in order to spread gladness about you wherever you are. Another necessary quality is gratitude. There is so much we should be grateful for: sense, reason, knowledge, etc., that we have come to understand the importance of being helpful, etc. You can offer yourself as a server of your Augoeides so that he may give you an opportunity of helping someone whom you are able to help in the right way.
10Every expression of consciousness is at the same time a manifestation of energy that often enough affects all man’s envelopes and, last, the organism. Each individual expression may be unnoticeable in its effect, but added together they become noticeable. If people knew this they would observe their thoughts more. The general nervousness, irritation, tension is an outcome of the pertaining bad conditions and, in its turn, becomes a cause of all manner of organic ill-health. Many people have a bad habit of being irritated at other people’s stupid things long afterward, and this does not add to their well-being. Most people are discontented however well they live; there is always something that falls short of their expectations. In so doing they demonstrate that they lack several of the qualities that are necessary to the art of living. It is to our own detriment that we cannot take life as it is. That is a lesson we must learn if we want to reach any further. Having learnt it we make life easier to live for ourselves and others. Nothing but truisms that nobody cares about. Obviously there is much to do before we have learnt how to learn from experience; the experience of mankind during untold years and our own tens of thousands of incarnations.
1Telepathy is a basic quality of all matter with actualized consciousness. Telepathy is due to the cosmic unity of consciousness, the togetherness of all monads (with actualized consciousness) in the cosmic total consciousness. “Consciousness is one and single” in the whole cosmos. The inner differentiation of consciousness is due to the fact that there are different degrees of actualization and activation of consciousness in the monads.
2All existing beings receive radiating vibrations from all beings in their worlds. In the last analysis, vibrations originate from the cosmic motion through the 49 atomic kinds. It will be a long time yet before mankind has acquired the ability to be aware of vibrations and their significance.
3For man there are three different kinds of telepathy: emotional, mental, causal. In order to reach the brain the pertaining energies must affect centres in the etheric envelope: emotional vibrations are received by the solar plexus centre, mental ones by the throat centre, causal ones by the eyebrow centre; these centres thus must be activated. Telepathy of the ordinary kind (the only possible at the emotional stage) is the emotional vibrations through the solar plexus centre.
4We are all telepathic, everybody to some degree. Telepathic transference is either conscious or unconscious. Conscious telepathy presupposes a special technique unless it is innate. Unconscious telepathy is the everyday phenomenon and common to all. Our emotional envelope is pervaded by vibrations in the emotional world, the consciousness content is received unconsciously by those who are on the same wavelength, and man thinks that it is his own feelings and thoughts.
5It is foreseen that in our new epoch a considerable portion of mankind will be consciously telepathic. People will be influenced by their knowledge that people not directly concerned can perceive their emotions. Also mental telepathy will be possible between thinkers and scientists who have learnt to think clearly and distinctly.
1Until psychologists have acquired knowledge of man’s different envelopes, their kinds of matter and consciousness, their departments, and the effects of departmental energies in the individual’s envelopes, they will be unable to understand man’s “temperament”, the subjective causes of his different patterns of reaction, his “complexes” and inhibitions, his “type”: extravert or introvert. Until then psychoanalysts or psychosynthetists will grope in the dark with all their different hypotheses and elaborated systems, all of them abortive.
2The knowledge of the stage of development, the departments of the causal envelope, of the triad envelope and the envelopes of incarnation (mental, emotional, and etheric; the brain-cells are of the same department as the etheric envelope) is very important to self-knowledge and assessment of others. A skilful esoteric astrologer can read the stage of development from an individual’s horoscope. More seldom he is able to state the departments though not how they relate to the envelopes. You must be a causal self to determine that matter with certainty. The departments of the envelopes of incarnation depend on the interests of the self in its previous incarnation. The department of the causal envelope depends on the circumstances at causalization.
3We are all affected inevitably and largely unconsciously by everybody we come into contact with. That is a thing which is too seldom considered, particularly by those who are eager to make new acquaintances whom they naively call “friends”. There is some justification for the old “cynical” saw that nobody harms us as much as our friends. As for our so-called enemies we are on our guard. However, anyone who has the attitude of serving (of giving and not demanding) need not consider this danger but passes through contacts unharmed.
4Psychologists should ponder the problem why certain people are unwittingly able to supply an “atmosphere” in which other people can think, create, and perform what otherwise they would not be able to.
5The individual’s normal consciousness development through the human kingdom requires tens of thousands of incarnations during millions of years. No psychology is possible without this knowledge.
1Mankind has not reached farther than that hatred rules between individuals, families, classes, nations, races, religions, the two sexes, etc. And then man is defined as a being equipped with reason. It is a very narrowly developed reason, exclusively concentrated on physical material reality. The consciousness aspect of existence is scarcely discovered yet. Socalled psychology is a miserable business.
2Mankind could have been given all knowledge of life by its planetary hierarchy. In their striving after power men knew how to arrange their lives and banished their teachers of wisdom. During twelve thousand years we have reaped our own sowing.
3“The history of the entire evolution on our planet is a taking and a giving, to receive and give out. The explanation of the troubles of mankind is that it has taken and not given, received and not shared.” (D.K.) When we do not demand more than our necessary share there is abundance for all. The more we get the greater is our responsibility to manage it in the right way so that it benefits as many as possible and above all those who are most in need, which by no means is easy to decide.
4Life supplies the material (worlds, envelopes, energies, etc.) for men to use in the right manner and thereby to develop consciousness. Man’s every consciousness expression entails an energy effect. It is men that have made physical life a hell by their expressions of hatred (everything is hatred that is not love). Then they accuse god of having created such a world. He has not done it. Man’s god is a monster of his own imagination. There are planets where the monads’ consciousness development goes on without friction. They are examples of paradisal life. Our planet is not included among them.
5In no other place in our solar system and, according to what has been intimated, in our seven-globe of solar systems, is there such a mankind as ours. People arrive here from other solar systems to watch a mankind whose match in stupidity and brutality they have never seen. So the planetary hierarchy and planetary government have certainly assumed an exorbitant burden: to lead this mankind forward to unity. To bring monads of repulsive basic instinct together and turn them into “human beings” may be likened to a Sisyphean labour. Twice it has been necessary to drown mankind and a future third drowning is not precluded.
6Human life contains many incomprehensible facts. A man who has once been standing before the highest divinity of our planet may later in life regard that experience as an illusion and deny the hereafter. Krishnamurti is an instance of this.
1At mankind’s present stage of development, the normal individual (the majority) is objectively conscious only in the “visible” physical world (49:5-7) in his physical organism, subjectively conscious in the lower part of the emotional world (48:4-7) and lower part of the mental world (47:6,7).
2Mankind can be largely divided into three categories: people of instinct, people of reason, and people of unity. Most people are guided by their instinct, their subconscious, and their emotionality. A certain percentage (percentages vary in different epochs) have reached the mental stage; and a very small portion, the stage of unity. In this it is to be noted that those who realize their possibilities according to the level they have reached are as perfect (divine) in their way as those who have reached higher stages and realize the possibilities of these. In that respect there is for the planetary hierarchy no difference between things profane (“worldly”) and sacred, as men conceive of them. Everything is in its way as sacred as anything else. However, this is probably understood only by those who have entered into unity, become conscious of their share in the cosmic total consciousness and experience the “universal brotherhood” of all life.
3Men think that they are rational and are guided by their reason, which is an equally big and fatal error. At the present stage of mankind’s development, only the two lowest mental molecular kinds (47:6,7) are activated. Men have activated the mental atoms in the physical and emotional molecular kinds. But this mentality is fitted only to work up the impressions of physical things into concepts and order these into mental systems, which men take to be knowledge of reality, a very superficial knowledge even though it has yielded amazing results in technical respect. Reason in the emotional world can affect emotional matter and emotional consciousness only. And the result has been religions, the expansion of mysticism into infinitude along with a firm belief in the correctness of the illusions that ensue and create material forms in the emotional world. Occultists speculate (fantasize) with the esoteric facts that have been publicized hitherto and supplement their own brainwaves where facts are lacking. They make the same basic mistake that philosophers have made in all times. It cannot be said too often that the only ones who possess knowledge (as far as it goes) of reality are those disciples of the planetary hierarchy who have received their knowledge from teachers belonging to the fifth and sixth natural kingdoms.
4A very little fraction of the consciousness of the mental envelope reaches down into the brain (man’s waking consciousness). It can take years until a clear mental idea in the mental envelope is conceivable. When speaking about superconsciousness, consciousness in activated and non-activated molecular kinds must be distinguished. Since the monad is centred in its emotional atom and emotional consciousness is without comparison the most active, the individual is the most conscious of his emotional states. Most people are indeed controlled by these states.
5The idea is part of mentality and the ideal is part of emotionality. In this connection the causal idea is disregarded. If the causal idea reaches the brain directly through the first triad (not through the envelopes), this always results in realization (thanks to the enormous energy of the idea). The mental idea is realized only by mental selves. In order to be realized it must, at the present stage of mankind’s development, pass through emotional consciousness to get the requisite driving force from it. If the ideal does not succeed in being sufficiently vitalized, then it will remain a beautiful subject of contemplation, armchair reflection, oration or poetical effusion; that much energy the ideal can often mobilize. Regrettably, this is true of most ideals. They are not put into physical action.
1It is essential that children grow up in an atmosphere of love (which excludes fear), patience, understanding, orderly conditions and activity. To this should be added the consideration of the innate instinct, of the normal inclination (conditioned by the level of development), and the character tendencies (conditioned by the envelope departments and indicated by the horoscope).
2With its primitive psychology and educational science mankind has not managed to solve the problem of upbringing. Parents do not take the interest in their children they should when they are responsible for having brought them into the world. Children are “old souls” with the experiences of tens of thousands of incarnations latent in their subconscious.
3The important thing is to encourage the good dispositions and tendencies that children manifest, and to explain the consequences of mistakes as to the Law: to teach them that we have no right to violate others, that the suffering we inflict on others is returned to us, that we all make up a unity and, therefore, what we do to others we do to ourselves. It is a mistake to grant children freedom before they have learnt to distinguish between right and wrong, have understood where the limit to their own rights is. It is with the freedom of children as with the freedom of adults. The clearer concepts of right they have, the greater freedom they should be granted. The more correctly men apply laws of nature and life, the more safely from all evil they walk through life, the more safely from backlashes and bad reaping, the greater insight and right to knowledge that confers power. Children should be taught to make good in some way whenever they have broken against a rule. In contrast, corporal punishment after the age of three is a mistake as is any kind of “psychological torture”.
4Sensible parents should put questions to their children rather than wait for them to ask. Children should be taught to think for themselves, not just parrot adults. How many people grasp that?
5In educational respect three types of children must be distinguished: emotional, emotionally mental, and purely mental children. These three types require completely different teaching methods. But educators do not comprehend that. They cannot even discern the types. The future will give us educators of quite a different kind, however.
6Many children and young people prove to be “impossible” at school, and their teachers declare them inferior. This need not mean, however, that those young people are at a lower stage of development. It may be due to the fact that they have reached beyond the stage of civilization and latently have a superior understanding of life that deems the things taught at school quite uninteresting.
7Parents who have children at higher stages of development should not let them go to ordinary schools, but to special elite schools. That does not at all mean any genius farms but schools where every pupil is respected by his teachers and fellows as a free individual and a fellow human being. All too many people have been harmed psychologically at school with the consequence that their incarnation has been more or less wasted.
1Man is on the whole controlled by his subconscious as well as by unconscious telepathic influences from his nation, his environment, and those who are on the same wave-length (the same developmental level). The subconscious manifests itself as “instinct”, tendency, spontaneous attitude: instinct from the triad, tendencies from the skandhas of the envelopes, spontaneity from the individual’s unconscious “system of thought” (the synthesis of his collected experience of life). Man is always influenced by all with whom he associates. Our company thus is more important than we think. The deliberate choice of right company (not to let it be the product of given circumstances) is part of the art of living. Letter-writing can make up for a lack of company.
2Isolation is a sign that an individual has given up the hope of finding “his group” where he “is at home”. If in some incarnation we need physical isolation for our consciousness development, then life will arrange that matter. But to isolate oneself unnecessarily is to miss the experiences we need. We get much by living among people. We share in their experiences and learning, get opportunities to study various levels of development and many other things. We need to assimilate the collected experience of mankind in science, literature, and the culture of ideas. It is by new contacts with what we have once studied that we revive our latent learning.
3The so-called friends you have had can be divided into four categories. The first category are the real “bosom friends” with whom you have shared your problems of development. They have had the same departments as yourself in both their causal and triad envelopes (a very rare case). The second category are those who have had the same kind of causal envelope: they, too, are true friends. The third category are those who have had the same kind of triad envelope. They are such friends as you lose sight of in the course of life. The fourth category, finally, are those more or less temporary acquaintances you have made and scarcely are what you mean by “friends”.
4The disadvantage of all such things as races, nations, churches, sects, societies, orders, etc., is their exclusivity. Their members look upon non-members, “the others”, as not being of the same sheep-fold. For the esoterician, however, there are no “others”. All are one, and where that understanding does not dominate, exclusivity rules and thus the opposite of unity. Universal brotherhood also extends across the borders of all the kingdoms in nature. We are all monads on our way to the final goal. We are all brothers irrespective of our level of development. Such is the view on life taken by the planetary hierarchy, and anyone who wants to reach the fifth natural kingdom must share that view.
5We incarnate in all races, frequently changing our sex, belonging to all religions, etc., in succession. If we despise a certain race, etc., it may happen that we are reborn in that race. Thus for instance Nazis have to incarnate as Jews and Jews as Nazis until they have ceased to hate each other. Oppressors will be among the oppressed in a new incarnation. The law of reaping is a law of justice.
1The ideas and facts that mankind has collected during millennia make up our heritage of knowledge. In this heritage many esoteric ideas and facts can be found. They were originally communicated in the esoteric knowledge orders led by the planetary hierarchy but have later been smuggled in among the ideas that first selves have acquired from their own experience. Only the esoterician is able to decide which ideas and facts are such originally esoteric ones. This condition is due to the inability of the first self to ascertain facts except in the physical world. These esoterisms have usually been distorted in some respect or other, but there is something left that reveals their origin.
2The knowledge that in the secret knowledge orders was acquired by initiates entered into their subconscious just to emerge from it suddenly in subsequent incarnations. When remembered anew these ideas were seldom put into their original contexts and so lost much of their true meaning, and this is the explanation why in most things there is only a “kernel of truth”. When such a “kernel” ends up in a wrong context, the result nevertheless is fictitious.
3The experiences of reality we have not received from the planetary hierarchy make up that fund of mankind’s own collected experience of life which is the condition of the further evolution. The first self is by and large “historic man”. To deprive us of our historic heritage, as many in our times try to do, is to return to an even more primitive stage. If, in addition, political demagogues are allowed to rule as they want, then we may get more than we bargained for and be forced to start once more from the stage of barbarism.
4Historians too easily drown in details. What we need is a history where unessentials are weeded out and only such data as are essential to understand life are included.
5The planetary hierarchy has promised to present us, in the next century, with a survey of human consciousness development in Lemuria, Atlantis, and in the present continents. Such a history can only be written by a second self (an essential self). [Editor’s note: This was written in the 1960-ies.]
1We develop automatically by studying various spheres of life systematically and by ascertaining facts. We do not develop by speculating. Theoretical learning we have received from others for nothing may be very valuable for some certain incarnation but is easily lost when the envelopes of incarnation dissolve. In other words, theoretical learning is insufficient. Only the thorough experiences the monad has had and worked up itself into understanding of life are for ever incorporated with the monad’s capacity. Thus the individual must apply in his own life whatever he learns. It is necessary that his experience is based on his own experiments in life. Only in that way is his learning turned into knowledge that enters into the knowledge fund of his subconscious.
2Therefore, only having the experience is not enough to learn from it. If it were that simple, we would not need millions of years to learn the simplest common sense. What we learn is remembrance anew of thousands of previous experiences in thousands of incarnations. It is because we do not work experiences up that we need to repeat them. The ability to work them up certainly increases on the ever higher levels of development. What man has learnt thus is part of his level of development. We are not as remarkable as we imagine.
3The monad-the individual-the self, having evolved from the animal kingdom, uses approximately 40 000 incarnations to overcome the stage of barbarism proper and some additional 20 000 incarnations to reach up to understanding the stage of civilization with a constant risk of relapsing into barbarism. Consciousness development is a slow process. But the further development proceeds, the more rapid is it, so that men, if they want to work for self-realization, are able to reach greater results in some tens of incarnations (taken in rapid succession) than previously in hundreds and thousands.
4The more primitive all mankind is, the longer time consciousness development takes. But whenever an elite begins to appear, rising above the general level, there are opportunities for those who have the requisite instinct and faculty of attraction to join the elite and make a “rapid career”.
5General consciousness development moves apparently in a circle (“everything returns”) but actually in a spiral, for “the circle closes” on a somewhat higher level.
6The individual’s speed of development is determined by himself. There are record-holders in rapid development as well as in lagging behind. The record of rapid development is held by Christos, who in twenty million years has covered the path from the middle levels of the stage of barbarism to the sixth natural kingdom and who now has incipient cosmic consciousness (42). His speed of development thus has no match in the history of mankind. The statement that he was among the most advanced human monads at their transfer here from another planet is not correct. He has overtaken all except Gautama Buddha who had a long lead.
1All life, from the mineral kingdom to the highest divine kingdom, is a seemingly endless series of levels of development. The levels are the true classes of nature.
2In the human kingdom, the level of development is due to the age of the causal envelope, the number of incarnations, and the individual’s previous use of his opportunities to learn, to work up and apply his learning.
3Our level determines what we are able to understand and assimilate of the experiences we have in life.
4Man’s level of development appears from the material content of his five envelopes. The higher the percentage of higher molecular kinds, the higher the level he has reached. The monad is dependent on the consciousness of these molecular kinds. When all his envelopes exclusively consist of the highest molecular or atomic kind, then human development is concluded and the monad centres into the second triad essential atom.
5The level of development also appears in the centres of the different envelopes, their speed of rotation, the number of detached spokes and their rotation.
6It depends on the monad’s level of development what impressions are recorded, worked up, and assimilated in life. In most people, impressions come from the physical or the emotional world. This condition lasts until the individual has become a mental self. Then the possibility of receiving impulses from the superconscious increases. To what extent the individual receives such inspirations depends essentially on his general attitude to life and his striving to be in constant contact with his Augoeides.
7Physically, people’s organisms are largely equal in their capability of functioning. That is what people see, and so all people are similar and equal. Psychologists nowadays realize that people can be very unequally “gifted”. Such differences may, although very seldom, be due to the quality of the brain. In 99 cases out of 100 they are due to the age of the causal envelope and the individual’s level of development, which is determined by the degree of activation of emotional and mental consciousness in the molecular kinds of the corresponding envelopes. There is a great difference between those who have one hundred and fifty thousand incarnations behind them and those who have just thirty thousand. The greater the number of incarnations, the more experience of life acquired, latently preserved in the individual’s subconscious.
8Knowing these esoteric facts you may understand that there are different stages and levels of development, and also understand what Rousseau meant when he said that there can never be any true democracy.
1During incarnation in the physical world man is at the stage of barbarism a physical self with a primitive emotional life; at the stage of civilization, an emotional self controlled by his largely repulsive emotions; at the stage of culture or of the mystic, still an emotional self though now with attractive emotional energies; at the stage of humanity, a mental self with perspective consciousness and emotionally sovereign (no longer the victim of his emotional states); at the stage of ideality, a causal self and mentally sovereign (no longer attached to more or less fictitious mental systems).
2Everything said here of course is true of man only as fully mature and, in addition, physically normal. As a rule, emotionality reaches its full development during the fourth age of life (at 22–28 years), and mentality generally during the fifth age (29–35 years). At 35 years, the individual as a rule begins to be able to think on his own, independently of ideas picked up during school years. Often this entails a radical rethinking with the result that he discards the world view and life view that controlled him until then and he acquires an individual view determined by the stage of development he has reached (the understanding of life he has acquired by himself in previous incarnations).
3It is strongly emphasized that the rule must not be made absolute, that everything we are given to know should be taken as a general information about life and valid for the time being and not (as usually happens) be turned into tenets of mechanical or dogmatic thinking, because all life is change and everything is subject to the law of development, individually and collectively.
4Generally, man at the stage of barbarism is a chaos. He feels one thing, says another, and does a third. At the stage of civilization, he thinks one thing, feels another, says a third, and does a fourth thing. At the stage of culture, he begins to feel, say, and do one and the same thing. And at the stage of humanity, he thinks, feels, says, and does the same thing. Only then is he a unitary individual and reliable in all conditions.
5The different stages of man’s development largely imply a progressive stabilization of his character. The division of his being grows less and less noticeable, with the exception of incarnations in which he is subjected to ever stronger conflicts in his envelopes. Finished as a man he is only when he is unitary in spite of the most violent influences.
6The human elite includes those who have reached levels 48:3 and 47:5. About 60 per cent of incarnated mankind have not reached above 48:4, 47:7. That is the great majority who have more than one hundred thousand incarnations left before they have reached up to the elite. That slow is consciousness development.
7Civilizations as well as cultures exist in order to afford clans at the different stages of development opportunities to learn such things as they are able to grasp. Civilizations are built up by the elite, and when subsequently their work is taken over by people at lower stages, society falls rapidly to a lower level. This happens in series of about 2500 years (the zodiacal epochs).
8The esoteric history, which is the true history of the world, gives the percentages of the groups of incarnated men on the different levels.
9No data have been given out about the percentages of total mankind (60 billion individuals) at the different stages of development. Such statistics would be in need of constant adjustment, since the age of the causal envelopes is not necessarily the determining factor, although it has largely proved to be so. If the self decides to live for its consciousness development and strives purposefully for it, the self will reach quite different results than otherwise. There is a purely theoretical possibility to pass through the human kingdom in one eon.
1Higher kinds of consciousness are not acquired at once. The connection with higher realities may be compared to the beginning of a fabric that is enlarged with more and more threads until the entire fabric is finished in its full width.
2There are two thread connections between the triads, and they are eventually expanded until a channel is obtained for the transfer of the monad between the triads. It is these threads that connect man with his Augoeides. Through the threads Augoeides supplies the envelopes of incarnation with the energy that keeps them alive.
3The highest animals have a connection also with the lowest mentality, having “threads” that reach into 47:7. That does not imply, however, that they possess mental consciousness as man does.
4“Psychologically”, the self as a monad is the very attention. When we are attentive it is thus the indication that the monad attends to some one of its envelopes. When we experience our feelings, the monad in the triad has its attention directed to the emotional envelope. When we are thinking purely mentally, the monad in the triad has its attention directed to the mental envelope. We activate the consciousness of the envelopes, the consciousness of their different molecular kinds, by directing our attention (“living in”) that consciousness. If we direct our attention to lower kinds, then we live in that lower consciousness and strengthen its power to attract our attention. Therefore, the method of activating higher consciousness is to direct consciousness to it, for example by reflecting (“meditating”) on what we have been given to know about it. In so doing we also strengthen the power of the higher over the lower.
5Nobody can methodically acquire higher kinds of consciousness until he has become a disciple of the planetary hierarchy.
1Reincarnation means that the lower causal envelope (the triad envelope) with the triad, which by its vibrations produces the mental envelope, emotional envelope, and etheric envelope, takes possession of an organism already prepared.
2The new envelopes of incarnation (the emotional and mental) are in many respects directed by the skandhas accompanying them at incarnation. Like the triad the skandhas can be included in the so-called subconscious. These skandhas contain, among other things, what the individual has once incorporated with his brain and envelope consciousnesses by working up experiences and theories.
3The long sequence of reincarnations is necessary for the monad to become fully subjectively and objectively self-conscious in its causal envelope. During its consciousness development in the three lowest natural kingdoms, the individual has acquired the ability to be conscious in the physical, emotional, and mental worlds. In the human kingdom he is to gain consciousness in the causal world (the world of Platonic ideas), in which process he becomes a causal self. The human monad is not conscious in its causal envelope but must reincarnate in order to be conscious at all. In the time between incarnations, after its envelopes of incarnation have dissolved, the monad sleeps in its triad in the causal envelope pending a new incarnation.
4Man reincarnates on account of factors belonging under the law of development, the law of destiny, and the law of reaping, and given physical conditions. There are no fixed times. Rebirth is rather a group than an individual phenomenon.
5The authorities of the laws of reaping and destiny make no absurd demands when judging the individual’s past with a view to his new incarnation. But there are relations between circumstances, levels (understanding and ability) reached, and realization.
6The only definite thing about our separation from the organism with its etheric envelope is the “month” (actually, sun sign) of some year. The continuity between incarnations implies that we are reborn with the sun and the ascendant in the same zodiacal sign (“the same month and the same hour”) as where we left the physical envelopes the last time. We continue precisely where our physical life was interrupted from its causal context, and our new life is connected where our old life ceased. Rebirth is no random occurrence but our incarnations make up a connected chain of the life energies.
7Like the foetus runs through the entire biological evolution, so the monad in each incarnation, in its new envelopes, has to work through the whole of mankind’s consciousness development up to the level of development it once attained. Only after that can the monad continue its interrupted consciousness development. The condition of the monad’s attaining its latent level is that it has opportunities in its new incarnation to reacquire still latent qualities and abilities.
8The individual is born into a race, nation, religion, and during the years of his childhood and adolescence he absorbs automatically the pertaining idiologies, idiosyncrasies, prejudice, superstition, world and life views. On the whole they remain ineradicable. If they do not correspond to the individual’s level of development, then he perhaps has opportunity to assimilate the views of other nations, religions, philosophies.
1In most incarnations you are being prepared for work to be done in some future incarnation. Therefore you are wise if you in every incarnation try to obtain knowledge of reality and to work at developing your talents further. There is always some beginning of a certain talent that you can cultivate. You can always serve. Not in every incarnation you make a manifest contribution. Often in a certain incarnation you acquire insight and qualities that you have opportunities to use efficiently only in subsequent incarnations.
2You cannot be grateful enough for the fact that it is by reincarnating that you have an increasingly more rational conception of reality; that you are liberated from your envelopes of incarnation with their wrong attitude to life in all respects. In our next life there is not much left of whatever in this life we take to be truth and reality. It is a real blessing that we may learn ever more rational ideas and thereby become ever less disoriented in reality. That, at least, we should be able to learn from history with all its madness. It is quite another thing that the great majority at lower stages still fall victims to any mad ideas whatever. But there has always existed a cultural elite who have been able to preserve that insight and understanding which gradually has been acquired through the collected experience of mankind.
3Most incarnations that man lives through are on the whole without importance to his development. So it remains until he awakens and sees through the illusoriness of emotionality and fictitiousness of mentality, until his eyes are opened to reality, the meaning and goal of life. If then he makes the decision to work for consciousness development, his own and that of other people, then all his future incarnations will be important. Anyone who, put before the choice of several ways to serve consciousness development, always chooses the way that benefits most all mankind also will make the quickest progress himself. To give men knowledge of reality, of the meaning and goal of life, is to liberate them from more than ninety per cent of the insoluble problems they wrestle with and suffer under. When you see the anguish of seekers in their struggle to free themselves from the darkness of ignorance (illusions and fictions), then you must do everything you can to bring them into reality. Give people knowledge of reality, and they solve their problems themselves! They are erring about not knowing what is real, what is right, what is true; and that is the ground of the misery of mankind. Then they can largely make nothing but mistakes.
4It should be simple enough to explain to them that existence is made up of a series of material worlds of different degrees of density, worlds that occupy the same space as the physical universe we see, that all matter consists of primordial atoms (monads), that the meaning of life is the consciousness development of these monads and that this is a process going on in a series of ever higher natural kingdoms. That is all we need to know to be liberated from most of the speculations of ignorance.
5We incarnate in order to get to know physical reality and in this life, the most difficult of them all, to acquire those fundamental qualities and abilities that make further evolution in higher worlds possible. Thus we are here in order to acquire insight into life through experience. Physical life is so hard to live right (in accord with the laws of life that make consciousness development possible) that we miss the meaning of life if we do not see that we must help each other in all the ways we can. Hitherto men have largely made life more difficult for each other. We concentrate on the individual’s faults, which are inescapable on his level, and so make it more difficult for him to “improve”. We hate each other (practise repulsion) instead of loving each other (practising attraction). The basic expressions of hatred are fear, anger, and contempt; those of love are admiration, affection, and sympathy. Anyone who tries to help his fellow wanderers in the desert of physical life tries to discover their good qualities, not their bad ones. There is always something to admire in everybody. We know that the bad qualities are there. They are the most manifest at the present stage of mankind’s development. We need not discover, bring forward, and strengthen them. The great cultural figures of mankind have tried to help men to lead rational lives. Have they not yet understood that?
1Everything we have experienced in previous incarnations is found in the subconscious of the first triad; there we have our past in latency. But in our new brain we do not know more than what we are able to acquire as new. This acquisition of new things is possible much thanks to the understanding which we have gained in previous lives and which has later become latent. It also depends on the etheric envelope to what extent previously acquired qualities and abilities may assert themselves. Latent understanding always finds some expression, whereas the corresponding ability (even a latent ingenious ability) may fail to manifest itself.
2How small latent understanding usually is appears most clearly in the fact that the majority of the mental elite have become skeptics. They have seen that neither the dogmas of theology, nor the constructions of philosophy, nor the hypotheses of science can provide a rational explanation of the nature of existence or the meaning of life. But their latent understanding has not been sufficient for them to see that esoterics is right.
3“Knowledge is remembrance.” (Platon) That is not to say that remembrance is knowledge. The subconscious has during all incarnations assimilated everything we have experienced, all false idiologies. Most of our latency are illusion and fiction systems we have worked into our subconscious. Such things become innate, firm certainty in a new incarnation if we are born into an environment where these fictions predominate. Thus latent learning does not, as such, equate correct knowledge. It can be correct only in the case of those who have been initiated and have experienced reality. Knowledge was in Platon’s times and still is after 2400 years the same as esoteric knowledge, inaccessible to all who have not studied the knowledge of the planetary hierarchy, who have not mastered hylozoics so that they are subsequently able to think in accordance with reality.
4It is generally an unfailing indication of a former accepted disciple that he has developed his “esoteric instinct” at least so far that he will not be mistaken about the quality of “occult” teachings, that he is able to tell genuine from spurious, and in the latter case realizes that “this cannot be true”.
1All mankind is ignorant of the fact that the individual continues to exist after he has left his organism with its etheric envelope. Every religion has some ideas about the hereafter, and they are all wrong. The Christian teaching of hell is the worst of all false teachings and has caused unnecessary suffering in the emotional world to countless people. The only hell there is exists in the physical world, and it is the work of human beings. In the emotional world, nobody needs to suffer who quite simply refuses to suffer, refuses to heed the desires which he cultivated in physical existence, which are in the emotional envelope but cannot be satisfied, since this is possible only in the organism. Those who have had only physical interests find nothing in the emotional corresponding to these and so they either lead a life of half-dreamy consciousness or are disoriented emotionally as well as mentally.
2The esoterician is still in contact with those he left behind in the physical world and associates with them when they are asleep, as with the friends who have gone before and wish to continue the relationship. He considers that he is still responsible for them to the extent that he can in some way help, advise, console them just as, when in physical existence, he is responsible for all people he meets to the extent that he can help them in some way. This is no heavy duty but a spontaneous expression of the understanding that all are one.
3Life in the emotional world seldom exceeds one hundred years. It can be prolonged to last several hundred years, if the individuals use the emotional energies to strengthen their emotional consciousness and thereby counteract the normal dissolution of the different molecular kinds in the emotional envelope. If the individuals are emotionally active, emotional matter becomes vitalized, particularly the matter of the molecular kinds that correspond to their level of development. Since most people are and remain disoriented and thus see no reason to activate their consciousness, their normal emotional life-time is about 25 years. There are examples of individuals, however, whose emotional life-time has reached five hundred years. Also in this respect exceptions confirm the rule.
4The difference between life in the emotional world and life in the mental world is that the emotional experiences are objective, material phenomena (caused by the imagination, of course), whereas mental life is solely subjective.
5It cannot be too strongly emphasized that man incarnates in order to live in the physical world and that life between incarnations in the emotional and mental worlds is intended as a period of rest. This is best proved by the fact that neither knowledge nor abilities nor qualities can be acquired in those worlds and that the individual, in case he expects something different, unfailingly falls victim to the illusoriness and fictitiousness of those worlds.
6It is only in the physical world that man really lives. In the emotional and mental worlds life is a life of imagination which man lives without really understanding and without being able to do anything for his own and other people’s development.
1It is true that Buddhists and Hindus have a knowledge of reincarnation (though in most cases distorted into metempsychosis), but they regard it as an automatic phenomenon happening in accord with the law of development, which indeed it is. From this fact many people in the East draw the erroneous conclusion that they need not care about their development. Actually, only yogis strive consciously to accelerate their development.
2However, that man is in error who takes the great number of incarnations as a pretext for not working to develop his consciousness. The failure to use the offers of life implies a bad sowing. It is true that we are all life-ignorant, but there are differences in degree, and all are surely not incurable. Everybody can do something for development, his own and that of others.
3It is hard to bear the knowledge that in each incarnation you must, when passing through the years of childhood and adolescence, suffer the stages of development you have already covered all the way from the stage of barbarism. It is even worse to know that your environment will inoculate you with its views divorced from reality, and that only in mature years will you have acquired sufficiently independent judgement to be able to liberate yourself from those views and obtain a rational view of reality and life. Then it is another matter whether anyone is interested in the problem of the meaning of life and seeks a rational explanation; whether those starting to seek have the staying power to work their way through the whole labyrinth of idiologies and teachings of salvation. Many people, out of sheer desperation, grab hold of some scientific, or philosophical, or even religious system.
1Happiness is not what men believe, not what the learned eloquently proclaim from pulpits and desks. Happiness is a faculty that must be acquired. Without that faculty the first self cannot become a second self. This is the reason for the esoteric saying, “It is man’s duty to be happy”; for the life-ignorant an absurd saying.
2The state of emotional happiness as well as that of mental joy presupposes selfforgetfulness, the ability to forget the thought of one’s self and to live for others, for ideas, for ideals, etc. It is a state that man can attain by making himself independent of outer conditions and indifferent to the moods of his emotional being. It is totally abortive to demand of others that they make us happy. That demand is the ground of most unsuccessful marriages. Happiness comes to us when we live to make others happy. Joy belongs to mental consciousness and presupposes mental interests. Bliss is the nature of essential consciousness and is experienced with the energies of the essential world.
3Self-reliance is a necessary quality in the first self. Fortunately, it is reacquired in childhood already as understanding and capacity increase. Also self-determination is necessary and is obtained as more and more domains of knowledge are studied and mastered. Since we cannot possibly master them all, we are forced to rely on the fund of experience that civilization and culture, science and technology afford.
4Regrettably, the portion of cosmic material reality that is “visible” to the normal individual makes up only one per cent of the whole. It will take some time, however, before science accepts the esoteric axioms that the first self cannot explore reality and that this inability is an insuperable limitation for the first self. As a perfected first self the monad can acquire objective consciousness in 16 molecular kinds out of the 42 that make up the solar system. The first self cannot by itself transcend the boundary between the mental and causal consciousness. That is possible only through contact with the second self and help from those who have become second selves. Of course mystics, occultists, clairvoyants, and yogis contest this fact. But then they are the victims of their own ignorance or trust that of others.
5The mistake of mankind in all ages has been that it has not been able to see the limit to the self-determination of the first self. But the toil of philosophers, mystics, occultists, clairvoyants has brought some good, namely, that the work done has resulted in self-initiated consciousness activity, the condition to acquire ever higher kinds of subjective and objective consciousness in ever higher molecular kinds.
6The first self’s conception is correct when it agrees with the second selves’ common conception. Otherwise it is determined by the first self’s experience, knowledge, and understanding, but seldom as correct as the individual believes. A good share of skepticism as to his own infallibility should enter into the first self’s intellectual equipment. Anyone who always knows things better than others demonstrates that he overestimates himself and so reduces other people’s confidence in his authority.
7The Sokratean realization, the true humility, is no complex of inferiority but is based on self-knowledge, the insight that the first self cannot by itself acquire the knowledge of reality and life. That knowledge is a gift from the planetary hierarchy. What has not come or does not come from there is no true knowledge. That is a thing which philosophers, mystics, occultists, clairvoyants, and yogis have to learn.
8It is not the task of Augoeides to help the first self to form a world view. He may help man to acquire higher kinds of emotional and mental consciousness and the qualities that man must acquire if he is to be accepted as a disciple of the planetary hierarchy. He may help man to come into contact with the second self but cannot communicate anything of the second self’s knowledge or ability. Also that contact is valuable, since it affords man a firm certainty that (in theological parlance) “god exists”. This is not the same as the “belief in god” by ignorance, an assumption that is subject to doubt, or the speculative certainty which remains mental, subjective certainty.
1Of course it is necessary to explore physical material reality. But it is more important to know how we should live right. The importance of world view has been overrated and that of life view has been underrated. Life view has been neglected to the extent that in our so-called concepts of right there still remain elements belonging to the stage of barbarism.
2The various religions were attempts at helping men to live right. Those who formulated the theological concepts were forced to adapt to the possibilities of understanding that were in the spirit of their times. As the knowledge of reality increases also the concepts of life view must change. Nothing of this has been understood, but mankind’s big mistake has been that it has made the theological auxiliary concepts absolute. As the knowledge of material reality unceasingly increases our world view changes continually. As the knowledge of life increases also our life view must change.
3Also those who study esoteric literature most often judge people from their theoretical knowledge, their understanding of the world view. That is wrong. Man’s level of development manifests itself essentially in his understanding of the life view, his qualities of attraction, and his striving to unity. Theoretical learning is easily acquired, but the “qualities of the heart” are the results of the striving of many incarnations.
4University education is tremendously overrated as are all examination systems. The esoterician has the dubious pleasure of throwing almost everything he has learnt out of the window, of relearning and rethinking in all respects. Most of it is unfit for life, unless one’s aim is to make a career in society. Certainly, nothing human should he count foreign to him. The necessary learning, however, the independent thinker can acquire incomparably more easily by himself than by cramming lots of unnecessary data. The university graduate, too, must study on his own to get a general education beyond his specialized studies. If he does not, he will remain a narrow specialist, a deplorable phenomenon. In the future, surveys made of the history of ideas will quickly orient the seeking man.
1The meaning of life is consciousness development. Technically, this development is a result of self-initiated consciousness activation. The goal of the first self is the second self. The second self is a self of unity, to which all are one, one single collective consciousness, one common collective being, in which everyone who has acquired the collective consciousness has a share that can never be lost. Man reaches this goal by serving mankind, evolution, and unity, thus by realizing unity to the extent that this is possible for man. Anyone who has done his utmost in this respect may be certain that he will be accepted as a disciple of the planetary hierarchy and rapidly become a second self.
2It is a totally wrong idea of life that we incarnate in order to be happy and that the meaning of life is amusement and enjoyment. Happiness is the result of the right attitude to life and is something that man must acquire himself by service and striving to unity. Most people have so much bad sowing to reap that happiness appears out of their reach and most often may be compared to the oasis in the desert to be wandered.
3It is only when man understands the meaning of life, consciousness development as the one essential value that he sees the perverseness of all this he thinks is worth striving for when in actual fact it is a burden. It is infinitely much that man does not need and the esoterician is grateful to be spared.
4There is only one single cosmic consciousness, in which everybody has his unlosable share, determined by the level of development he has self-acquired. Anyone who has understood this also sees that all life is a unity, that consciousness is the essential value. He also understands why “service” is the necessary way to develop, for it is by sharing in the consciousness life of others that we acquire ever increasing understanding of the consciousness aspect of existence.
5A life of service not only develops man automatically but also entails, for all on all levels, making good the evil one has done in previous incarnations. Service is not only a good sowing for the future but also the best way to blot out “karma”. If men could see this, they would be able to make life a paradise. If everybody lived for all, nobody would need to think of himself. And anyone who lives as all should live may count on higher authorities to see to it that he receives the help he needs according to what they consider best. For such is the Law of life which men do not care for.
6To the esoterician all reality is spiritual reality, for all worlds have the same purpose: to make consciousness development possible. All activity is spiritual activity if it is done in the right spirit: to serve mankind and life. The least work that is needed for the functioning of life is necessary and, therefore, divine. The fact that services are different and in the eyes of men of different value is of no consequence here. Sweeping floors is as necessary as ruling the kingdom. The king who does not see this may be forced to learn how to sweep floors.
1The ability to assimilate the knowledge is a special capacity; another as important faculty is to utilize the knowledge, to apply it in a purposive, expedient, and efficient manner. Many are content with their theoretical learning. It affords them clarity and thereby all they think they need. That is the mistake of most people.
2To develop does not only mean to acquire ever higher kinds of consciousness with the material energies that go with them, but also to utilize that consciousness and energy purposively. To live means to handle forces. Ideas are forces; and if they are not used by the self, they are used by the envelopes according to their “innate” tendencies, and that is seldom to the advantage of the monad.
3Energy requires some outlet, and if the energy will not be used rightly, mistakes are unavoidable. Life is an experiment that gives experience. We can spare ourselves much unnecessary experience by applying the knowledge of the laws of life that exists. Thereby we can save ourselves many incarnations. The unlimited number of incarnations was what the initiates meant by “punishment in eternal hell”, misinterpreted as all the other esoteric symbolism. But how would ignorance be able to interpret correctly?
4Often man’s desire to understand the meaning of life and clarify how to lead a rational life causes him to take an interest in the esoteric knowledge. After he has succeeded in finding the answers to these questions he is fully content to cultivate the first self’s egoistic interests. But if he thought a wee bit further, cared about his future incarnations, he would be wise in taking life more seriously. For anyone who wills for development needs to be awakened, and that can mean a rather unpleasant re-education, and a life that makes him look about for something different. Anyone who thinks that physical life is something worth striving for obviously has not had his eyes opened to what life really is. Else he could have learnt that by looking around in the world and ask himself, when seeing how most people live, whether he would like to be in their place. For it is quite possible for him to experience what he would give everything to be spared. There is no other hell than physical life. But anyone who has experienced that side of life certainly agrees with that 45-self who called the physical world “a real cold hell”. Others say, “a hot hell”.
1Man’s incarnations consist of as many first selves, all different (even though tendencies acquired by the different first selves are hanging on). Analysis of the triad subconsciousness is analysis of the different first selves and not of the monad in the triad but of the monad under the most varying conditions (envelope departments, inheritance from parents, environment, cultural standard, ability to master different kinds of energy, effect of good and bad sowing, etc.). Only a 45-self can justly judge the monad’s level, latent qualities, etc. Psychoanalysts can never be rightly judged and often harm more than help.
2In their life ignorance men are all too prone to believe they have acquired a great capacity when they feel superior to their environment. They believe they have reached far when they have reached up to a higher level, acquired a somewhat more correct conception than before. They are too easily satisfied with themselves. If they could understand how many higher levels remain before they have reached up to the stage of ideality and become causal selves, they would see their unimportance rather than feel important.
3Self-knowledge is above all the knowledge of one’s own developmental level and one’s own limitation. This requires the insight of how much remains before you are finished as a man, how many incarnations it takes. They are many more than most people think. Too many people count themselves among the fifteen per cent who have reached the stage of culture. Their level is best revealed by their attitude to their fellow men. What do men know of all the good qualities they have to acquire at the higher emotional stage, of all the abilities that remain for the higher mental stage?
4The first self’s most important self-knowledge says that this self cannot acquire knowledge of reality and life and that its highest possible mission is to be an instrument for the second self. Anyone who has gained that self-knowledge has acquired also directness and simplicity and is thereby free from all manner of megalomania.
5We need not know how many eons have passed ever since evolution in a solar system of the first degree succeeded in achieving the type of man and it became possible to clothe those monads in causal envelopes for the acquisition of causal consciousness. One thing should awaken us to reflect, however difficult that seems to be, namely this: that the individual ever since the first stage of his development always has believed himself able to understand everything better than all the others. What immense space of time must have passed before the power of judgement developed into the Sokratean realization, “I know that I know nothing,” which implies more than the realization of one’s own life-ignorance. It can be formulated even more drastically, “I know that I am an idiot,” which was the intended meaning of the familiar phrase although it could not be so worded.
6Only when you have seen this, you have acquired so much experience and true humility that you are ripe to receive the true knowledge. As long as you believe the human reason able to judge everything, you will be unable to perceive the causal vibrations, energies, ideas (the same thing). And without them you have no chance.
1Probably it is only at the stage of reason that the demand of exact conception of reality is imperative for action. Then, in order to be able to act at all, you must understand why you should act in a certain manner.
2The mystic does not need such clarity, since the dynamic energy of attraction is sufficient driving force for him. But experience will teach him, by the consequences of unwise loving actions, that wisdom and knowledge are necessary as well. It constantly appears that human wisdom is not very wise. And so begins the pursuit of true wisdom, and that goes on during incarnations until the individual, through the higher mental development, reaches up to the “world of knowledge” and finds that the prerequisite of wisdom is the understanding that all life is one. Only he is wise who has entered into unity, the world of unity. The causal knowledge of reality is not sufficient for man always to “live right”, to act wisely.
3The first self can acquire knowledge, but wisdom is a faculty of the second self. Wisdom requires essential consciousness (intuition in the original and proper sense), consciousness of unity, collective consciousness, common consciousness. But you are well on the road to wisdom if you make efforts to apply in practice the esoteric knowledge we have received and are not content to use it for theoretical study only. Knowledge without application is the direct opposite of wisdom. Our failure to apply the knowledge is the ground of our faults and failings. Along with knowledge goes responsibility, something that most people would heed more if they could study their incarnations.
4Civilizational man may conceive of hylozoics as a working hypothesis at the most, albeit the most probable one. Anyone who cannot see that it agrees with reality, however, has never really understood it. For it gives the first self a sovereign view of thousands of otherwise inexplicable phenomena and facts, understanding of the mind and its problems and clarity about the right attitude to life and action. But if its remains just a theory without being realized and in its realization affording ever increasing understanding of its correctness, then it does not entail the development intended. And that should be what most seekers desire: to reach beyond the level they are on, comprehend and understand ever more by themselves. Without work according to the law of self-realization there is no development. Theories that are never turned into something better, that are not applied in real life, only increase that responsibility in life which goes along with greater knowledge and with esoteric knowledge in particular. If we do not realize what we have understood we cause ourselves increasing difficulties in subsequent incarnations, we lessen our prospects even of understanding and remembrance anew; in any case we do not receive any new offers and opportunities of life to develop further. The planetary hierarchy has not given us the book of knowledge in order that we put it under the pillow to sleep better.
5It is important to learn to tell the difference between the knowledge of the first self and the wisdom of the second self. Thereby you also learn to distinguish between the energies of the first and those of the second self. Anyone who has done this has solved the basic problem of life, a problem the individual must solve himself. Nobody else can do that for him, nobody else can teach him how to do it. That is no mysticism, but surely the secret of the true art of living, which you discover by telling the essential from the unessential, by living with a purpose and an aim. In so doing you transform knowledge into wisdom; the problem of the first self.
6Esoteric knowledge is by no means necessary to find the way into the planetary hierarchy. It is sufficient if you acquire the necessary qualities through service and self-forgetfulness. The greatest importance of esoterics lies in the fact that it liberates from all the idiologies of ignorance and affords a theoretical world view and life view to those who must have such a basis to build on. Anyone who mentally sees that all idiologies are untenable, that the hypothesis method of science is insufficient, is filled with compassion for all life and wants only to help whenever, however, wherever he can, he is already on the way. That was the deep symbolic meaning of the saying, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (served unity, baby talk to the uninitiated).
7A loving heart is an invaluable asset and is necessary to pass from the first to the second self. Emotion is not always wise, however. We do not exist to always take up the burdens of other people. You have no right to free others from the problems that life has given them to solve for their own development, free them from having necessary experiences. Our fellow man is the man who is dependent on our very help, who has no other prospect. We cannot suffice for all who are in need. We do not help by hindering ourselves. Where we have not taken duties on us we are not obliged to yield to the demands of others. Wisdom is needed to always be able to help in the right way. Besides, there is very old experience at the bottom of the familiar paradox, “The right way of getting enemies is to lend people money”. If the debtor repays his debt at all, he senses that as a sacrifice for which the creditor should be eternally grateful.
8Mankind has yet a long way to go before it can see the limitation of man. That is not possible without the Sokratean realization, the summit of the first self’s wisdom.
1What lies beyond the individual’s level of development he can often comprehend without understanding it. His level is determined by the experiences he has gathered and worked up during his previous incarnations. He will have no understanding of what he has not experienced, worked up, and so incorporated into his understanding. Where that limit goes shows in his “general” understanding of life. It need not have any points of contact with the logical elaboration of facts within the domains of theoretical subjects. You can be very learned without being even intelligent, let alone wise. Memory learning is enormously overrated.
2It is a common trait in men that they believe they understand things they cannot possibly understand. Esotericians, in particular, have plenty of opportunity to experience that. Bacon pointed out the same thing by his “in the schools of philosophers the adepts learn to believe”. They believe they understand. They learn how to comprehend a logical system. But in order to understand you must be able to decide whether “thought agrees with reality”. And you can do that only when you have ascertained that whatever is thought is confirmed in all relations.
1The collective consciousness of the first triad is the sum of the consciousness of the four envelopes of incarnation (the organism, etheric, emotional, and mental envelopes). This collective consciousness should not be confused with the triad envelope causal consciousness, which is still mainly inactivated. The illusions and fictions of this collective consciousness are the greatest obstacles to the monad in its acquisition of causal and essential consciousness. It is these emotional and mental delusions that keep the individual, the monad, imprisoned in the human worlds until the monad finally decides to acquire the second self consciousness (the consciousness of unity).
2The first self’s greatest illusion is its belief to be a new individual in each reincarnation. To constantly relearn the same things, to be caught in illusions and fictions again and again, is the real Sisyphean labour.
3The speculations of theologians, philosophers, and occultists are typical of such first self fictions as become downright obstacles when the individual attempts to acquire the consciousness of the second self (so-called intuition, of three main kinds). The monad in the first triad makes serious hindrances to itself if it believes it can solve the problems of world view and life view on its own, like Nietzsche imagining to become a superman or like Rosicrucian order AMORC and Martinus fantasizes about acquiring cosmic consciousness. Only the man who thinks in accord with reality can reach the consciousness of higher worlds.
4Nor do scientists usually strive to know reality. They keep to the small part of it that is possible to ascertain in the physical world. Also the great power of scientists over public opinion is due to this. They think that there is nothing “superphysical”, and that is a view which the masses comprehend and accept after they have freed themselves from theological fictionalism. Science demonstrates what it can do, wield power over nature; that, too, gives it an authoritative position. Small wonder then that people at lower stages who have not acquired higher emotional (48:3) and higher mental (47:5) consciousness become physicalists. Those who have reached the stages of culture and humanity as a rule have been initiates of esoteric knowledge orders and so have the knowledge latently in their subconscious. They have remained seekers.
5Also a scientist can of course have the knowledge latently. Then he has no difficulty in accepting Pythagorean hylozoics as being the true knowledge or at least as a working hypothesis.
1Man’s envelopes of incarnation imply as many different main kinds of consciousness (physical, emotional, mental), which all claim the attention of self-consciousness. The self is thrown between these different kinds of consciousness. Average man, having no all-absorbing permanent interest to cultivate, lives in a state of divided consciousness. Attention is drawn now here, now there and is content with a fleeting and superficial perception of things observed, whether they are physical objective or emotional-mental subjective.
2As long as the monad is still incapable of directing mental energies down into the emotional envelope and from there further, via the etheric envelope, to the brain, so long it is helplessly at the mercy of its various envelope consciousnesses and remains what it is in the envelopes. As long as the monad has not acquired continuity of consciousness between its envelopes, it is totally identified with consciousness in that envelope where it is for the moment; it therefore forgets what it knows in the other envelopes and remains a split being.
1The first self cannot acquire knowledge of reality and life, the meaning and goal of existence, higher kingdoms, the beings that people those worlds, etc. The first self cannot by itself know anything beyond what it has been able to ascertain in the physical world and what clairvoyants can see in the emotional world. No self-tutored seer ever acquired even mental objective consciousness.
2The first self cannot solve problems concerning that reality which lies above the human worlds (47-49), and this is true of the problems of world view as well as life view. A first self cannot solve even superphysical problems (problems that reach beyond world 49) without help from his Augoeides or the planetary hierarchy. It is true that a first self can contact the causal as well as the essential world. That self has no guarantee, however, that this contact supplies the correct solution. At all events, its knowledge suffices only for problems of the physical world.
3People in the emotional world do not know more than those in the physical world. Generally, they are rather more disoriented, which does not hinder them from believing they are omniscient, and of course they manage to convince clairvoyants that they speak nothing but wisdom.
4Every theologian, philosopher, mystic, occultist, clairvoyant forms his own conception of reality, using the resources that perhaps are available to him, and then believes he possesses a correct conception of reality. But they are all wrong for no first self is able to form a world view and life view that accords with reality. This may be a “hard saying” and painful for those who have trusted the constructions of first selves. It is perhaps unavoidable, too, that all convinced people will dispute this fact. Very few would realize that they deal with hypotheses; very few would willingly acknowledge this; and it will take quite a time before mankind is able to see this.
5The first self’s literary works develop emotional consciousness; and his philosophical works, inference and principle thinking. But without any influence from the ideas of the causal world, which accord with reality, these works have a disorienting effect in men’s view of reality and life. Their true importance lies in their activation of emotional and mental consciousness as a preparatory schooling (propedeutics), a preparation for the apprehension of the reality ideas. Without the acquisition of causal ideas man can never become conscious in his causal envelope, never become what he is destined to be some time: a causal self.
6The learned have always led mankind astray. In all ages the learned have taught what they have not known and fallen victims to their own speculation. In a new incarnation they come across their own brainwaves in ancient literature, and they take their recognition of them as a proof of knowledge. But there is no knowledge in ancient literature. The knowledge that was extant was never given out to the uninitiated.
7This knowledge of reality and life we have always received as a gift from the planetary hierarchy, and we still receive it from there. The opinions and conceptions of first selves are correct to the extent that they accord with this knowledge; they are incorrect to the extent that they differ from it.
8It follows from the above that those first selves who have a knowledge of reality are disciples of the planetary hierarchy and those who are not disciples cannot by themselves know anything beyond the physical world.
9In order to know and to be able to do, man must first become a disciple of the planetary hierarchy; that is the only way. The theoretical knowledge we have received from the hierarchy is the necessary basis for a correct world view and life view. In order to realize it practically, however, immensely more is required: to acquire the consciousness of the second self, to become a second self. The method of the definitive activation of the second self’s consciousness is always worked out individually by the esoteric teacher. The teacher, proceeding as assigned by the planetary hierarchy, supplies both the method and the energies that are necessary to the ascension. Thus without the help of the planetary hierarchy, no man can become a second self.
10As long as the monad can be fascinated by, dependent on phenomena in the worlds of man, so long it will remain a first self. So long, too, the monad will be a victim of the first self’s kinds of consciousness, a victim of the speculations of human reason (the dogmas of theology, the theories of philosophy, and the ephemeral hypotheses of science), a victim of the emotional and mental vibrations that telepathically pour through its emotional and mental envelopes and are able to penetrate into its brain.
11It is only through the contact with its Augoeides and through the faculties of unity (the aspiration to unity in all conceivable ways) it has acquired that the monad can assimilate the energies from the second triad and finds the right way.
12The first self is the self of ignorance, for without that “spark of reason”, which the monad unconsciously acquires in the triad envelope, man would not reach much higher than the highest animal species, and the higher mental (47:5) would lie beyond his reach.
13It is possible for us to acquire perspective consciousness because we have gradually, during millennia, received reality ideas from mental geniuses who have been in contact with the causal world. Without them we would have remained at the stage of barbarism. That, too, is a fact which the learned cannot see, since they cannot grasp the essence of genius. Their attempts at explanation evince the usual helplessness and fictitiousness.
14The first self starts from the tangible matter aspect, not knowing about the consciousness and energy aspects. To acquire knowledge of reality and life, the monad must move to the second triad. Laurency has started from the matter aspect in order to present a survey of the entire process that the uninitiated will find easier to grasp. As a disciple of the planetary hierarchy you have to rethink it all, starting from the consciousness aspect. But this esoteric subjectivism has nothing in common with the philosophical subjectivism, for the esoteric one is based on understanding of the three aspects.
15When you have once understood that dynamis acts through consciousness, that it is consciousness that attracts the energies, then consciousness gains another significance. The problem is how this is to be done. The first self does not know and cannot do it. “Other stuff” is needed for that.
16The first self is life-ignorant and will remain so, even though, thanks to esoterics, he need not be disoriented. The first self will always make mistakes and blunders. For true insight into the real things of life, men will always be dependent on those in the fifth natural kingdom. Causal objective consciousness is not sufficient, since it remains unable to understand the energies of the higher worlds. Malice and evil only prove that the individual is found on some lower level of development. Children are cruel, since they run through the human consciousness development anew from the stage of barbarism. According to esoterics, life ignorance is the cause of evil, and so it is possible for man to improve only by increasing his understanding of life.
1Whenever the individual (the monad, the self) identifies himself with his first self (which most people constantly do), he makes a basic mistake in life. That mistake is at the stage of ignorance inevitable. It is the ground and cause of the troubles of mankind. Men cannot possibly realize this without knowledge of life, since, at the present stage of mankind’s development, the monad can be conscious only in its envelopes of incarnation and therefore it identifies itself with its envelopes. It is inevitable that the monad believes it is where its selfconsciousness is active. Precisely this is what the initiates meant by the “great illusion”.
2The method of liberation from dependence on the first triad comprises right arrangement of life, right use of time, elimination of everything unessential, consistent application of selfmade norms, gradual refinement of the envelopes, etc.
3The self is a monad in a triad in a causal envelope, which is the “soul”. Even if the self has not acquired consciousness in that envelope, the self is potentially the soul, man’s superconsciousness. It may be said that every thought directed towards the soul in one way or other reaches the causal envelope, affecting it, and that in that moment the self is the soul, even if the self does not know it or perceive anything of it. There is in the unconscious so much that we do not even know exists. All envelopes are active; the emotional and mental envelopes are never at rest, being affected from without or by the self; the etheric envelope, by some one of the five vital energies. Thus, the self is the soul whenever it wants to be it and as long as self-consciousness has its attention directed towards the soul. It is an unconscious identification, which Augoeides always can use in some way.
1The individual must learn to see that the first self, consisting of the envelopes of incarnation, is just a tool of the monad in the causal envelope; an instrument that the monad must learn to use in the right way in all respects. He must learn to see that he is not his envelopes, but that they are tools that he shall use to acquire ever higher kinds of consciousness by acquiring requisite qualities and doing that in the physical world. The expression “forget oneself” refers precisely to this, the facts that he is not his envelopes and that they have to be automatized so that the monad need not devote any attention to them. As long as the monad is interested in its envelopes and is fascinated by some consciousness content of them, so long the individual remains a first self. By living for others, for mankind, for evolution, for unity, the monad acquires automatically the qualities that are requisite to become a second self. When the monad has acquired these qualities, it will as a disciple be taught the method that enables it to move from the first to the second triad. By having served unity the monad has demonstrated that it is prepared for the collective life.
2The purpose of the first self (so-called personality) is to become an instrument of his Augoeides and, later, of the monad as a second self (the monad in the second triad). “Esoteric life” is possible when consciousness development has become the primary business and things of the matter aspect have been placed second.
3In seekers, aspirants to discipleship, the first self is a very imperfect tool of the second self. The greatest merit of aspirants, however, is their will to make the first self a tool. At the highest emotional stage, the first self can become a so-called saint, and thereby the monad has taken the greatest step on its way to the second self. Later, as a mental self, the individual can acquire causal consciousness.
4The first self finally becomes a perfect instrument of the second self and a tool also of still higher energies than those of the second self. Then the first self will be able to help those who have not yet become disciples of the planetary hierarchy and also ? and this is his great future task ? in its turn become a hierarchy for monads in the three lowest natural kingdoms and supervise their consciousness development.
1The first self is imperfect, full of faults and failings. Else he would be a second self. It is no use concentrating on our faults and grieving over blunders we have made. We can learn from them instead.
2Man is not incurably evil. But he appears to be since he has cultivated hatred, has judged and condemned, seen nothing but faults and failings and thereby strengthened those tendencies. If he had sought to discover all the potentials for good, then it would have looked different. Man shares in the cosmic total consciousness and thus has the prerequisites of sharing in the cosmic divinity. But he must do something to achieve this. Evolution means work done to become better.
3To seek what is common to all individual conceptions is a good rule for those who do not have access to the knowledge of the second selves. The history of human learning demonstrates, however, that all first selves together too often are wrong. And the belief of even billions of people is no sufficient groundwork to build upon. Also the scientific thinking of one generation is superseded by that of the subsequent generation, if not earlier. These remarks are nothing but truisms, and yet they seem always to be forgotten.
4Is man so tortured by his uncertainty that he rather prefers plausible certainty? He needs to feel certainty, which is an illusion, since in fact we live in uncertainty (and most people in fear), as we cannot look into the future. Also the skeptic is certain in his skepticism. Many people have had to pay with their lives for trying (in vain, of course) to deprive other people of their certainty, and it is certain that this can never be popular. The pioneer should take it “as a test”.
5Esotericians have received more than they need in order not to fall victims to the speculations of life ignorance as to world view and life view. They have received a knowledge of the essential laws of life so that they should be able to solve their own problems of life. It is not the intention to give us rules of conduct for all conceivable situations of life. That would make us robots. We develop by solving the problems of life that are among the tasks of mankind to solve. Consciousness development is no process of thoughtlessness. We are to develop our reason and our power of judgement by applying the knowledge of reality we have received. Everybody has to solve his problems himself as best he can. This does not exclude our analysing our individual problems with a person who is more experienced in life. The crucial decision, however, is our responsibility, whether we like it or not. We have no right to blame others, a fact that too many people, too dependent on others, apparently have not grasped.
6We have received sufficient esoteric facts to get a correct vision of existence, of the meaning of life, to form a rational and purposive world view; more facts than we have any use for, shall ever be able to apply. The mania for speculation is abortive, hinders us from leading rational lives of service. Our recurrent question when faced with all manner of speculation should be “do I need this for living?” This question of course does not apply for scientific research, which can never decide whether it is of any use. It is largely reduced to random research, and for it also negative results may be significant.
7There are two tendencies in men’s thinking, both equally ruinous: the tendency to credulity and the tendency to dogmatization. Credulity brings about the acceptance of almost any kind of folly. Dogmatization is the greatest obstacle to consciousness development. The dogmas of theology are based on so-called historical facts, which are false facts. The dogmas of philosophy are mental misconstructions, and still philosophers have not succeeded in solving any of the basic problems of reality. The dogmas of science are ephemeral hypotheses, which are taught at schools and universities as valid knowledge and all too often determine the thinking of a whole generation.
8We are all children of our times, and the emotional and mental life of the normal individual (the majority) is unconsciously expressive of the general ignorance of life prevalent, with its tendency to physicalism also in such things as could be classed among “higher interests”. A dawning understanding of this and a sense of dissatisfaction with such a way of life lead in many people to neurotic troubles but also rouse the longing for something that could free them from the anxiety of the times and afford harmony and joy of life. Increasingly more truly perceptive psychosynthesists understand that it is necessary to make their patients see the need of a total change of ingrained emotional and mental reactions, a purge of consciousness expressions acquired since childhood and then automatized, a reschooling of the whole man. This presupposes a totally new view on life and people. The ruling normal view has sufficiently shown up its unfitness for life, its total lack of a sense of reality.
9The first self has three goals: to discover unity, to acquire knowledge of reality, to win the will to realize. Having these insights and powers we can become fit tools of the planetary hierarchy (and become disciples).
1The “first self” is the most suitable designation of the five envelopes of incarnation which theosophists call the “personality”. The “second self” is the best term of what they call the “Ego”. Sometimes they mean by the “Ego” only the causal envelope.
2The first self is what the genuine gnosticians (theurgists) called the “Dweller on the Threshold”, which name especially emphasized that the first self is the obstacle to the monad (caught in illusions and fictions) as it strives to reach the second self.
3The first self is symbolically a “child of god”, loved by the father and a part of his life. When sensing this we have the right attitude to life, and it is also the way of reaching our Augoeides in the most simple expression.
4It should be pointed out to those who study esoteric literature in English that the word “consciousness” is used in the sense of first-self consciousness and not second-self or still higher kinds of consciousness. For these higher kinds, English writers must, curiously, have recourse to such words as “awareness”, “apprehension”, “sentiency”, etc.
1In this section much has been included which many readers perhaps think does not belong here, and they are right. Others are perhaps glad that it has been said. There is so much that needs to be said, and the recorder of these esoteric “aphorisms” wants to include as many of them as possible in this, his last work.
2Men are by and large content with the opinions they have acquired and are impervious to new ideas of life and its meaning. It is useless trying to impart views to people they are not interested in, lack the ability to understand, feel no need for. Nor is it enough merely to have opinions. Since they have not been thoroughly worked into the experience derived from life, so that they have turned into real understanding, they are not really important. Also for that reason it is meaningless to criticize the views of other individuals. If there is to be peace in the world, everybody must be left alone with his opinions. It is quite another thing that those who seek liberation from their fictions have the right to be informed. For that reason there must be criticism of idiologies. However, such criticism is to be general and impersonal; it must not be aimed at any individual.
3Before lasting peace is possible mankind will go on with its experiments and become the victim of them. The human individual exploits or is exploited. He is to experience the consequences of forcing others to obedience and recklessly exploiting them. Man is in all countries the victim of powerful personalities or allows himself to be led by traditional and habitual thinking.
4However much we know it is infinitely little. Infinitely much we need not know, only increases the mass of unnecessary learning. Incredible much of what we know we shall never have any use of. Incredibly much of what we think we know is erroneous. What we need is an orienting survey of the principles of the various sciences and to be liberated from the detail knowledge of specialist subjects. Detail learning becomes a hindrance to all who lack the ability to tell essential from unessential knowledge.
5“One thing is necessary”: the knowledge that enables us to develop our consciousness and can help us to accelerate this development. Mankind is drowning in an ocean of banal, trivial things and pursuits, not to mention the mania for collecting all such things as are useless in true life, such things as only the collecting illusion affords an illusory value, as long as people are interested in keeping such illusoriness alive.
6When making a choice you could ask yourself: “Does this choice of mine promote my insight, understanding, knowledge, ability?” Anyone who thus asks himself at every choice has no time for meaningless pastimes, uses his incarnation in a rational way.
Endnotes by the translator into English
3.34.4 …“nothing human should he count foreign to him”; adaptation of Terence’s “homo sum, humani nil a me alienum puto”.
3.38.6 …“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” The Bible, Matth. 25:40.
The above text constitutes the essay The First Self by Henry T. Laurency. The essay is part of the book The Way of Man by Henry T. Laurency. Copyright © 1999 by the Henry T. Laurency Publishing Foundation.