The Earthly Consciousness of Man

THE WAY OF THE GRAIL – SUPPLEMENTARY TEXTS – March 25, 2024

Czech original: Pozemské Vědomí Člověka · cesta-gralu.cz

If someone utters the phrase “human consciousness”, or also “the consciousness of man”, it is generally held that in this concept there is contained absolutely everything which is bound up with the personality of man here on earth

In other words, most men suppose that as they perceive themselves with their consciousness here in the earthly body, so it is they themselves with all that belongs to their personality down to the last particle

They suppose that there can be nothing further which would reach beyond the bounds of their present comprehension

This, however, is erroneous

It is indeed so very erroneous that in the whole understanding of earthly man there can be no greater delusion in regard to his spiritual nature than this very generally accepted view of human consciousness

The brain consciousness of man here is an immeasurably narrowed state of consciousness beside the true breadth of comprehension of the spiritual nature, which is nevertheless the foundation of every man

By the consciousness of man here on earth not even a tenth of the whole breadth of the human spirit's own knowing is made use of

All understanding of everything that truly belongs to the spiritual foundation of man is here in the material body exceedingly bounded, just as a consequence of how strongly the instrument of the brain is used in the moments of so-called full day-consciousness

The brain by its activity shapes only a deceptive semblance of full consciousness

This day-consciousness used by us is only a small partial degree of that which in reality expresses and fills the entire nature of the human spirit

Every man is therefore a many times more fully valid personality than he is aware of here in his daily understanding in gross matter

Therefore men, and even the scientific public, often speak also of something such as the human subconscious

The subconscious of man became the concern of scientists already long ago

Yet not even the most earnest research of science can ever cross the bounds set therein, and therefore it will never rightly understand the inner spiritual vibration in man

Science can bring nothing essentially new to light in this which would make possible the understanding of the spiritual in man, and so that subconscious will permanently elude its grasp

The subconscious has also become the aim of many charlatans occupied with hypnosis, who do not hesitate to enter these places by force in the endeavour to uncover something more, not seldom, however, also in order to gain mastery over other men in their finer kind of being

Here too it is not the right way, but only a straying in the shallow waters of knowledge

Around the human subconscious, which in the intuition of many is linked with something especially precious in man, there has thus in the course of centuries gathered at last a very great deal of confusion

Therefore the concept of the subconscious too, in the obscurity thus created, embraces fragments of all manner of things, in contrast to the otherwise clear and distinct path of spiritual radiation which from the beginning distinctly prevails therein

The reason for all the above-mentioned confusions surviving in it, but also for the certain despair of many who in many moments do not understand themselves, is the over-cultivated intellectual habit in the thinking and the understanding of all life

For the spiritual consciousness spoken of, the intellect is a place which forms a narrowing in the passage of the precious vibrating radiation of the volition of the spirit

The narrowing caused by the intellectual work of the brain in the day-consciousness then forms in most men an obstacle so strong that this finer radiation cannot in its wholeness rise into a more conscious experiencing during the daily manner of perceiving and understanding by man

The intellect, but also the lukewarmness of the spiritual spark itself, are the greatest causes of the baleful state of mankind today, in which the greatest part of the spiritual nature of man can no longer pass in full value into his earthly self-awareness

From this it follows that earthly man is here on earth more or less permanently a stranger to himself

He does not recognise more clearly what in reality unfolds within him, even though here and there in flashes he may sense something

Many a one indeed strives, but the result, for all the knowledge about these things learned by thinking, does not suffice for him to become such as he would wish, that is, to be at every moment himself in the full awareness of the knowledge of connections and armed also with a certain kind of knowing

Yet his day-consciousness does not permit him fully to unite with himself, that is, with the spiritual nature within him

There are but very few men who can say that, although they are in their material body, they are able lastingly and fully to perceive also all that comes to pass at every moment in their spiritual inner being, so that it may lead them with certainty in the needful moments of life

Every such man ought moreover to be prized in like manner as rare kinds of flowers are prized

Alas there are truly few such men who live wholly in accord with their spirit in all the moments of their day-consciousness

It is a great pity, for in this union lies the way to the change of the individual and of the whole of society

The greater part are far severed from their own spiritual, intuitive perceiving, which leads to great misconceptions of the true path

Men then lack the connection with inspirations, the ability rightly to feel with others,

and not least also the ability to perceive wise warnings before the carrying out of this or that decision in life

Many men have not even an inkling of what this perceiving of their own inner being should truly be like

They therefore submit to outward precepts and opinions which they regard as their own, and this even though they perceive more or less clearly that these are solely and only the experiences of others, shaped out of the circumstances of other men, and that quite different threads determine the fates of their lives

Precepts and counsels, however well meant, can never replace one's own experiencing and one's own experience

To this, however, children and young people are today led but very little

Since all that comes into the day-consciousness from without, and conversely also from within outward, is always of necessity pressed through the brain, man receives a wholly different picture of the world around him and of himself than it truly is

What follows from this for man, of that men today have as yet no inkling at all

In the first place it holds that man in his nature is by no means only what he takes himself to be here on earth

Between spirit, soul and body there prevails moreover an immense difference, which has till now escaped the greatest part of men

That alone should suffice as a reason for earnest reflection

It should also be an impulse to occupy oneself with how to become free from these conditions unsuited to the spirit

The greatest part of men remain in this state of narrowed perceiving just because they are not in the least aware of this desperate state of their own

The narrowed consciousness which prevails for the human spirit here on earth has in the course of several thousand years become a state that is taken as an inseparable part of life here, and this although in reality it was never meant to be so

The narrowed understanding in the intellectual manner, without one's own intuitive understanding, has become the uniform norm for the whole worldwide kind of thinking

Small deviations, comprising national or religious differences, play no part in this, for the foundation of all the misery of the human world is the original setting of the intellectual use of the brain

In the human understanding of all connections there has come about so immensely great a shift to the detriment of the spiritual inner being that it may be called a most tragic state

Therefore there are here also so many blunders bound up with the endeavours of men to comprehend all that is beyond matter, that is, all that is to be found in another degree of livingness and freedom prevailing but a little higher in the planes above the density of this universe

The intellect always remains standing before anything finer which rests upon the inner perceiving of man, for in its grasping it is wholly incapable of crossing upward the bounds of materiality within which it is given it to work

And because the day-consciousness of men is formed of more than nine parts out of ten by earthly intellectual perceiving and thinking, it holds that men are not able with their day-consciousness to know even themselves

The essence of the knowledge about themselves escapes them

All comprehension for anything finer, which would give room to the receptivity of the soul and still more to the echo of the inward spiritual volition, is pushed into the background

It may be said that the earthly human consciousness is by its setting the weakest link in the self-awareness of the human spirit upon his paths of development in Subsequent Creation

Alas, however, this has become an entirely accustomed matter of course, and save for wholly isolated exceptions no man perceives it as anything wrong

That the state of earthly human perceiving is for the spirit like life in a material cage of intellectual consciousness disquiets no one

It is not a free, unfettered experiencing through intuitive perception, but is for the most part only the fettering of the real values lying in the inner being of most men by so-called sobriety, or otherwise by the cold calculation of the intellect

Men do not wish to become aware of it, and thus neither to admit that it needs to be changed if they are to be truly free

Alas, they do not become aware of it even under circumstances in which it today brings quite fearful consequences upon the single man and upon the whole of mankind

Let us take as an example only one of the many consequences of this state, the fact that many men on earth deny the existence of God as the Creator

It is solely and only because their brain cannot comprehend all the connections bound up with it, for by their nature these lie beyond the bounds of material space and time

It is therefore neither the human spirit nor the soul that resists the thought that everything which surrounds us, and we ourselves, have our beginning dependent upon God, but it is only the material brain pressing into the day-consciousness of man its outward findings from material life here, in which many happenings appear to contradict the Justice and the Love of the Creator

Such a state is taken for an opinion subject to the generally accepted human view of the world

And this even though in any finer part of the work of Creation such a thing is out of the question and would be held for an incomprehensible defect

Thus on earth too it was still quite otherwise millennia ago, for at that time the spirit was more present in the daily perceiving of men

Therefore the understanding of supra-earthly things was more natural, indeed it was a matter of course for every man of those days

Through everything there vibrated a greater simple receptivity, which at every moment made it possible for the men of that time to feel themselves, even in their day-consciousness, to be inhabitants of the work of Creation and not merely dwellers on the earth

Although the knowledge of material science did not prevail in such measure as it does today, all the fundamental knowledge about the universe, about its origin and also about the other parts of the work of Creation was known as something which in simple stories was already comprehensible to small children

This was possible because the spirit could then be lastingly more present in all the daily happening, for the intellect was not so great an obstacle to him, and thanks to this the comprehension of all things in their fundamental principle was penetrated by men with a higher translucence, which always belongs to the working of a free spirit

Men felt themselves to be guests on earth, and the transitoriness of being in the body bore within it the natural understanding that the possibility of incarnation on earth is an opportunity for the gaining of experiences from this plane of dense matter with all that belongs to it, whether it were the joys or the sorrows bound up with it

Birth and death caused no one so much hardship, nor were they a cause of fear of the approaching end

The spirit dwelling in the body often beheld beforehand whither he would go in his soul garment in the ethereal planes, which were called the beyond, or also the plains or the gardens of the further shore

No man wondered at it, because all this was a natural part of the great comprehension of a spiritually open generation

And the spirit too, through his mastery of the body, penetrated more easily and more fully into all activities on earth, and thus made them his own with ease, together with the understanding that all these are for him the gifts of God, prepared upon his paths of coming to know the work of Creation

The relation to nature was formed not by derivation from the outward form of plants and animals, but through the knowledge shown to the human spirit by the animistic servants whom he had all around him

In everything a certain childlikeness could be found, which necessarily belongs to the simple naturalness of the spiritual spark in man

The spark does not dwell directly in the material body, but is joined with it through a living band of radiation, out of which several streams are formed that in the end animate the earthly body

The body is also not conscious of itself, as is generally supposed, but only spiritually animated, and without the connection with the spiritual radiation it would almost at once of necessity lose all conscious life

But neither is the spirit joined with the body in the way it is set forth by those men who suppose themselves knowing in this matter, that is, that he is immersed directly in the body as a finer substance swallowed up, in a certain sense, by a denser covering of matter

Nothing of the kind is needed at all for the spirit to perceive the earthly body wholly as his own

Everything in Creation is radiation

And out of this radiation there is always woven that which is denser still and thus in itself less radiant

The radiation from the spirit to the soul and further from the soul through the finer intermediate layers is at last, through the nerve fibres, brought to its close in the connection with the body

The nervous system in the body may be called the most densified kind of radiation, which joins the gross material with the finer degrees of conscious being

At the summit of this nervous system of the body stands the brain as a central station joining the many radiations of the nerves, so that through the senses the earthly world may be perceived as a fully valid present

It was always meant to be so, that nowhere upon this path of perceiving in both directions should a delay arise, or even a halt

Yet it came about that the brain as the central instrument took upon itself the authority originally belonging to the spiritual alone, the authority to decide what is and what is not right

Thereby everything narrowed down only to the perceiving of what is right for this earthly world, and all that held and holds as of the highest importance for the spiritual inner being itself became severed

The honouring of higher values, the perceiving of one's conscience, clarity in the understanding of the higher connections in life, all this became, for the earthly time in which the instrument of the earthly body is given to the spirit, pushed into the background and more or less severed

This led, among other things, to the loss of the spiritual power of imagery, of intuition, and of the true connection with all the helpers who are to be found around every man

There arose a state of paralysis of the clearer connection with all the finer planes of the worlds in the work of Creation, a connection which was to have been preserved for ever as a helping rope for mankind

This rope was cut through by the intellectual activity of the brain, and the spirit had to remain silenced for earthly life, however much it is he who holds the authority for every decision

Mankind became a straying mass without any clearer direction and goal

In their limited comprehension men cannot even imagine that things could be otherwise than as they have hitherto been understood

For example, men cannot imagine how the development on earth could proceed without the presence of evil

Many of them assert that in order for the movement of development to be upheld on earth, good and evil need to walk side by side

Neither can they imagine what the task of Lucifer might be, if it did not lie in the tempting of man

Yet for a living spirit it is easy to grasp that good forms the possibility of an influx of ever greater powers from the Light

This influx will then always bring inspirations which will always set before man new prospects of creating, such as have not and never will have limits even here on earth

It offers a space in which man can advance forward only with the exertion of the highest powers

In contrast to the case where good clashes with evil, the result of a good attunement of men is not harm and suffering, but only an overall strengthening and joy in the progress attained

From this there then flows a many times more precious spiritual knowledge of the work of Creation

Those, therefore, who speak of the need for a clash of the forces of good and evil as a necessary impulse to the development of mankind have never grasped the nature of the Wisdom of God

Neither have they grasped that Lucifer was never meant to be a tempter, as he is today known and also understood by most of those who admit that some such being of archangelic origin truly exists

They have not grasped that his original task, arising out of his divinely animistic origin, lay in the office of a helper to the human spirit in his development

He was to bring knowledge of the work of Creation, he was to bring ways for the co-operation of men with the High animistic servants of Valhalla, who at the beginning of his task came trustingly to meet him and faithfully fulfilled all his directions in the shaping of the earthly world of men

Lucifer was to be the one who, on recognising the weakness of the human spirit in his falling asleep and his voluntary growing lukewarm in the far reaches of the materialities, would shape ways for strengthening and refreshment upon his path of development

For this he had also above him the great blessing of God, until the time when there awoke in him pride in the work accomplished, which he regarded as his own

The fault of Lucifer was that he began to suppose himself more precious for Creation than Parzival, who dwelt in the primordially created castle of the Grail as the lawful administrator and upholder of the whole work of Creation appointed by God the Father, in whom for this service there rests for ever an immersed part of the Divine unsubstantiate radiation

In the first flicker of this awareness of Lucifer there lies hidden his whole ensuing tragedy, which had to come upon him and upon mankind and upon the whole part of Subsequent Creation

Therefore he had at last to be cast down by the Archangels called to it, headed by Michael

The whole beginning of the happening, which we also know from many records of mankind, lies in the wavering and the fall of Lucifer, who never had a calling from God to pass over to the exercising of his principle of temptation towards the human spirits in the materialities

All this came about only after his fall, which had to come with his severing himself from the connection with the Will of God

Had this not come about, the development of all life in Subsequent Creation could have unfolded quite otherwise, and there need never have entered among human spirits such a thing as the knowledge of suffering and pain, just as there need not have unfolded for many so long a chain of deeds which in the laws of Creation they will always be compelled to lay aside only through experiencing in return

In order that the human spirit may ripen towards his inner radiance, he needs to come to know the Life of the work of Creation in its wholeness, he needs above all through experiencing to have part in the Harmony which vibrates through the whole Work of God

That makes him mature, and at the same time he need not burden himself in this with the necessity of atoning for his grave errors and lapses

If the men who spread their philosophical opinions about God and his work, which they link with the need for a so-called duality, that is, of good and evil going side by side as a necessity of development, would only think a little more earnestly, they would have to come to the conclusion that the whole spiritual and primordially created part of the inhabitants of the work of Creation would then of necessity be the poorer, for in those regions evil was never to be found as it is among men on earth

Thereby all that took form at once in the spiritual would surely have to appear inferior beside the experiences of the human spirits exposed to the principle of temptation

But that would also mean that the whole Work of God is built upon arbitrariness and not upon permanently unchangeable Laws containing within them the Will of God

Such a thing is out of the question, and this is proved by that very self-acting working of the Laws which hold from the beginning to the end of all parts of Creation

No creature has need of temptation in order to ripen in the Work which arose out of perfect Harmony

The one thing that in the whole Work is perceived as a reason for a certain watchfulness and for the militancy arising therefrom, even in the very highest heights, is the knowledge that Creation was at its beginning brought forth by the Will of God into the void, in which there is nothing but rigidity and a certain cold emptiness without the concept of space

This awareness leads to the conscious cleaving of all to the Light, in which alone there is for them life and continuance

Therein prevails that vigilance lest, through an insufficiency of movement of the inhabitants of the work of Creation, the Love of God should have to close itself and draw back, which would mean the necessary passing away of the work of Creation

Yet for this watchfulness and vigilance in keeping everything in movement and in prosperous development there always comes to all a mighty influx of new power from God out of the Grail, which in itself is the promise of the eternity of the duration of the whole Work

Not even Lucifer ever came out against this watchfulness, he who built his own defence before God upon this, that the human spirit by his lukewarmness, which he shows in stumbling over the obstacles deliberately set by him, is a certain danger to a part of the work of Creation

He asserted that mankind, as the weakest spiritual, does not deserve to have the possibility of such Love of God as to be permitted to develop, for it is too weak for it

As an instrument for the carrying out of his proof he needed no long list of single temptations either, but it sufficed him to transfer the centre of decision in man from his spirit to the material intellect

To show this, he shifted the principle of his service, which lay in helping all that was weaker, to the sharp severing of this weaker from help, and instead laid as the greatest obstacle in the path of the human spirits the coldly earthbound material thinking, which contains all else as subordinate forms of temptation, whereby he wished to prove their weakness in the work of Creation

He wished to show that the human spirit cannot of himself glow through this obstacle again with his radiation and overcome it, and that thereby all the Love of God towards him shows itself as vainly squandered without result

Thereby, however, he set himself wholly against the Loving-Kindness of God and against the Creator himself

Its consequences last to this day, when the strongest threads of human fates are being lived out as the result of his working, so that at the same time there may set in a new building up, vibrating already wholly in the right and blessed streaming of all powers

And the present comprehension of us men on earth is by all this shifted to a level which may be called the desperate result of all the happening that has hitherto unfolded in the materialities of the universe

One may speak of an intellectual stunting of the degree of consciousness, which with a right development could today stand at a wholly different degree, one that would bring every man only lasting refreshment in the knowledge of so many things which today are not known to men at all

Yet in every human spirit who is inwardly truly living and aflame in his all-embracing volition for good there lies the power to overcome the hitherto baleful influence of the intellectual paralysis

This power waits only to be used for the deed, in defiance of the opposition of the doubting intellect, which continually urges to a cold sobriety in the approach to life

It is not hard, if the spirit truly wills in his fervent longing to be himself here on earth also

In everything his share of enthusiasm for the doing of small and of great good is to burn as a testimony that the tempter, hiding himself in intellectual doubts and in the mocking of all that is supra-earthly which sounds within man, is overcome

Here at the same time one condition also holds

No one can make this victorious advance for another

The cold and calculating intellect needs to be overcome by man himself alone, by means of the inwardly surging power towards the Good and the Light

It may appear as something impossible, but it is more than easy at the moment when there comes alive in man a purely joyful childlikeness out of the knowledge of the work of Creation and of God, out of whose Will Creation arose

All the knowledge which comes to the human spirit is to be used for joyful creating

Where criticism and the judging of others still prevail, there the knowledge of the Truth is not used in the right manner, and there the spirit does not rule over the intellect

Where the spirit rules, however, there one hastens forward with giant strides to the creating and building of the new in the seeking of all pure ways of life

And only for such a use will the new power that draws near for the coming months be added to men here on earth as well

Through the whole universe there sounds the call of the Light as the bearer of the will of the Ray of Parzival, that the earthly consciousness of men may at last become a fully spiritual consciousness

It was never meant to be otherwise than that men should be fully intuitively perceiving inhabitants of the work of Creation

The earthly is not to be severed from the spiritual, but on the contrary is to become wholly led in all moments by the spirit of man, that is, by the ripe intuitive volition for all-embracing good

That alone may at the same time be regarded as service to God

And to the service of God, to true divine worship, every man is now to hasten who truly longs for peace and harmony within himself and around him