Terra, our Planet of Sorrow
The Way of Man
(1.38) Man
(1.38.15) Out of the total number of 60 billion individuals, who go to form our mankind, about 40 per cent passed from the animal to the human kingdom about 21 million years ago. They still make up that part of mankind who do not think for themselves and can at best just parrot what they have been taught to say. (Parrotry is not individual thinking.) The other portion has been transferred to the planet at different turns with successively more developed clans; the last ones arrived (about 600 000 years ago) thus being the most developed. This is the explanation why there are different stages of development in mankind. These stages are actually due to the age of causal envelopes, the time of the monads’ transition from the animal kingdom. Human beings thus are no equals in developmental respect, and there is no “injustice of nature” in this fact. There should be no need for saying that all are brothers since they all share in the cosmic total consciousness as well as in the human kingdom of nature. Differences of causal age abolish no brotherhood.
(1.39) The Envelopes and Worlds of Man
(1.39.4) Only on our planet do the individuals of the fourth natural kingdom develop through organisms and reincarnation. On other planets development is done through aggregate envelopes, which subsist until the individual has acquired the consciousness of higher molecular kinds and the envelopes corresponding to that consciousness.
(5.10) The Emotional Eon of the Planet
(5.10.1) We are in our planet’s emotional eon, which according to the normal plan for consciousness development is devoted to emotional consciousness. In the emotional eon, emotionality is the dynamics proper. In the mental eon, mental consciousness will supply the dynamics. The mental selves, who have attained the developmental stage that will become general in the mental eon, are also able to use the mental energy. They constitute a scarce minority, being disciples of the planetary hierarchy. However, it has not been possible to follow out the normal plan with the monads that have been transferred to our planet.
(5.10.2) The emotional world is the particular world of the animal kingdom, and emotional consciousness is the particular animal consciousness. The emotional eon is that developmental cycle during which animals should normally causalize, acquire their own causal envelopes and in so doing transmigrate to the human kingdom.
(5.10.3) Our mankind can largely be divided into two categories: about 40 per cent of the total number (60 billion) causalized on our planet 22-18 million years ago, and 60 per cent have been transferred here from other planets. Normally, those 60 per cent should have reached the mental stage (have their monad centred in the triad mental molecule) already at their transition to Earth.
(5.10.4) Instead, the majority are still at the lower emotional stage (the stage of repulsion) and only a small portion at the higher emotional stage (the stage of attraction, of the mystic) and fewer still at the mental stage.
(5.10.5) Knowing this one is amazed to see men act in their sense of self-importance. They think they are very clever if they can do something more than others, know something more than others, grasp something more than others, understand something more than others. One has a vision of the cock on top of the dunghill that thinks he is important because he can crow.
(5.50) The Mentalization of Emotional Consciousness
(5.50.2) So much about mankind at the stages of barbarism and civilization. The individuals who have been transferred to our planet and who thus causalized earlier, generally have managed to reach the stages of culture and humanity. This explains the existence of that élite the individuals of which have been able to centre their monads in the mental molecule of the triad and to acquire perspective consciousness.
(5.50.3) That élite can be divided into two categories: those who have been initiated into esoteric knowledge orders and have been informed of the true knowledge and those who without that knowledge have constructed fictionalism in theology and philosophy. The scientific fictional systems are of later date. On account of the intolerance and persecution of dissenters by those in power, the initiates have been forced to keep their knowledge to themselves. The contribution they have been able to make has consisted in cautiously proclaiming humanizing ideals.
(5.50.4) It is to be hoped that the esoteric élite, who regrettably have largely ended up in disorienting occult sects, will be able to retrieve the correct system and become that band of guides of mankind they were intended to be.
(5.50.5) During the fully 20 million years mankind’s consciousness development has lasted, energies from the planetary hierarchy have eventually been able to vitalize the mental atoms in the emotional molecular kinds of the emotional world and thereby also the mental atoms there are in man’s emotional envelope. Emotionality has been gradually mentalized, and the clans that have been transferred to our planet in several turns (laggards on other planets, although ahead of mankind in their consciousness development) have contributed to this mentalization.
(7.11) The Age of the Causal Envelope
(7.11.1) People are found at different stages of development, which is due to the age of their causal envelopes, the time when the monads passed from the animal to the human kingdom.
(7.11.2) Since the cosmos is a gigantic process of development, all kingdoms in nature are also age classes determined by the different times of the monads’ introduction from chaos to the cosmos, which from the beginning is of small dimensions but grows unceasingly in extent through this very supply of monads. The higher kingdom the monad has attained, the older it is in the cosmos.
(7.11.3) The majority of those who causalized on our planet some 21 million years ago are still at the stage of barbarism. Those who are found at higher stages have mostly causalized earlier on another planet or in another solar system, where they certainly were laggards but nevertheless had reached a higher stage of development.
(8.16) How Augoeides Looks Upon Us
(8.16.6) It is not to be wondered at that the Augoeides flee to the essential world and leave men at the mercy of their robots, when they see that they can achieve nothing with men at their present stage of development. The Augoeides belong to the deva evolution and develop through the law of self, which in their case allows them to be occupied with their own selves. In contrast, men develop by forgetting their own selves and everything belonging to them, by living for others. The human monads on this planet have pursued the path of self-assertion, have lived as parasites in the vegetable and animal kingdom and have to relearn in the human kingdom, a task that seems impossible when studying their attitude to life in the five root-races during millions of years.
(8.25) The Planet of Sorrow
(8.25.1) Anyone who has some knowledge of the cosmic organization, the organizations of the solar systems and the planets, sees clearly that all beings in higher worlds have their own special problems and that individual supervision and treatment of human beings (such as religions teach) is an absurdity, that god cannot watch over each particular individual, knowing his desires and needs. Needs (but seldom desires) are satisfied by the Augoeides, who have undertaken that thankless task on this planet of sorrow. If evolution proceeds without friction as on other planets, then there is no suffering (no organisms, only aggregate envelopes for the monads), but all is joy and work is a play. There evolution follows its even course without frictions and so no Augoeides are needed to help men reach the fifth natural kingdom, but it is all more like an automatic procedure.
(8.25.2) On certain other planets, the individuals of the vegetable and animal kingdoms appear similar to those on our planet, but those plants and animals are of other kinds, and higher forms of life have only etheric envelopes. Human beings, however, have aggregate envelopes also of the lowest physical molecular kinds so as to be able to have experiences in that matter.
(9.73) Development and Reincarnation
(9.73.2) The incarnations deposit layers, as it were, in the subconscious of the triad. The study of the entire series of incarnations shows that very few of them have been of any significance to consciousness development. If incarnations have amounted to progress, this has been due to the fact that the vivid interest has worked up the experience had (self-initiated consciousness activity).
(9.72.3) Generally speaking, the last incarnation amounting to progress influences the choice of life view in the new incarnation the most powerfully.
(9.73.4) Still the majority of mankind are at such stages of development that separate incarnations are by no means of any great significance to consciousness development. As a rule people gain from having the opportunity of a new incarnation. The higher stage of development the individual has reached, the more significant is his incarnation, since the authorities of destiny have planned it with particular regard to the acquisition of qualities and abilities as well as to the possibility of serving life.
(9.73.5) Only our sweet mankind needs to develop through reincarnation. On other planets there are no human organisms, and all the other paths of evolution consist in the automatic acquisition of higher envelopes through the consciousness of higher molecular kinds. There individuals learn that development is a result of serving life and not of egoistic demands. There, too, the individuals’ lower aggregate envelopes are renewed for an unlimited length of time. They are formed anew until higher ones are acquired and are put off only then.
(9.103) The Unique Position of Our Planet
(9.103.1) The seven departments of our planet, corresponding to seven atomic worlds (43–49), are subdivisions of the second department (department of love and wisdom) of the solar system. This means that unity is the strongest material energy. But what is the use of it to men, if they do not want to receive and assimilate that energy, if they go on hating each other and all living beings? Opposition to a force of nature sooner or later brings disaster, a fact that mankind has experienced twice and does its best to face a third time. Surely it can be said that it is a strange, incorrigible collection of monads that makes up the mankind of our planet.
(9.103.2) Of the twelve planets existing in our solar system only seven are called “sacred planets”, it is true, but none of the other five evinces such an incorrigible tendency as does the planet Terra. This is a phenomenon which is studied by visitors not only from other planets but from other solar systems as well.
(9.103.3) It was this esoteric fact, duly (as always) misunderstood and distorted, which the fathers of the church (quasi-gnosticians) used when constructing their imaginative notion that our planet has a unique position in the universe and so needs a son of god as its saviour. That fiction fitted well with many others: our planet as the centre of the universe, sin as a crime against an infinite being, our incurable original sin, etc. The fathers of the church were on the same intellectual level as the sophists of their times, and the result was, to be sure, balderdash of a similar kind.