The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The content of what's given in an esoteric class isn't much different from what's given in an exoteric one—it's the way that it's given that's different. An esoteric shouldn't just imbibe information. Every class should be an experience of his soul. At the end of a class we should be different from what we were before it.

In esoteric schools they used to say: If you don't know whether you should do something or not, don't do it. But one can't say this to an exoteric, because he'd get lazy and wouldn't get experiences. One finds the following exchange in a Rosicrucian book: The pupil's heart asks the teacher: How do I find the path to higher development? The teacher answers: When you find the place that's free from all personal things. The pupil's heart asks: Where do I find this place? The teacher: In your I that wills without self, and that thinks without sense perception. Question: How can I will without a self, how can I think without senses? Answer: Will without I, think outside of your self.

People often ask whether it wouldn't be better to use the time that one uses for development for doing good deeds in the world. But occultists must reply that time that's spent on development isn't wasted. For a man can only work well and rightly for mankind by making himself more perfect. Outer deeds that seem to be ever so good can be harmful; one just doesn't know it. There's chaos in our soul now; we must develop it into an organism, just as our body was made into a well structured organism through the wisdom of higher beings. We attain this by bringing certain lines and figures before our souls and finding out what they mean. (See the previous lesson.) The three upper dots have come together voluntarily; reflected over into the soul element they make themselves into a triangle with sides.

a=devotion, leading up to the Gods; i=a particular direction that's supposed to lead to the divine; o= the all embracing God-head; the embracing of revealed form; u=resting in the Godhead and feeling protected in divine peace; e=a streaming in from far distant spaces (overcoming of difficulties); ei=divine revelation into men before which one retreats shyly with reverence; oe=same as ei but more so. A man feels that he's enclosed in his body with the active Gods outside.

Ambition and vanity become noticeable in the astral body as thorns or pointed streams inwards that then turn around and lose themselves outside. When one has temptations like this, one should immediately direct one's thoughts to great, beautiful things that were done by outstanding geniuses. In envy there's an attack on the etheric body that can also hinder blood circulation. A kind of fog arises in the astral body, so that one can't see people and circumstances clearly. When an esoteric feels envious he should think of beautiful works of art or of revereable beings. Vanity and envy are also combated by repeated ideas about earth evolution and man's seven members in inner calm. The astral body's content is a zero for the spiritual world and we must change this nothing into a something. Rage, anger and aggravation produce nodular hardenings and fine roots in the astral body. Blood surges and artery swelling are protective measures that dissolve them. In curiosity folds arise in the astral body that make it slack and passive. This slackness can continue into the physical body. In gossipiness tensions and pressure relations arrive in the astral body.

The way to confront these phenomena and to gradually overcome them is to acquire inner calm. One must learn how to shut oneself off completely from the outer world at certain times. If a pupil finds this difficult to do he should imagine a caduceus. One will gradually be able to make oneself unaware of the disquiet that big cities bring with them. It wouldn't help to eliminate the world's noise, for the harmful inner effects would remain.

Much worry dries out and withers the physical brain. Worried thoughts make furrows in it and thereby make one think such thoughts repeatedly. Here the physical body becomes a hindrance to a man's progress. Facial wrinkles reflect these groove[s]. Worries live in a certain astral substance; soters [sic] are highly developed individualities who take this sorrow substance upon themselves. The greatest man of sorrow was Christ.

If an esoteric still has aggravation of rage, curiosity or gossipiness in him they cause great harm to his bodies. Curiosity has a dessicating effect on the physical body, and it puts folds into the astral body. Talkativeness shows us as cracks. When spiritual organs are built up at night through the exercises, the cracks bring it about that they're torn apart again.

An esoteric pupil should create 15 minutes of absolute spiritual quiet through his will, even in the greatest noise. He can attain this spiritual quiet better in a noisy city than in great seclusion in the country, since it depends on the effort of will. He should create this inner calm by withdrawing into himself so that the noises recede into the distance.

What's elaborated in meditation doesn't just benefit the meditator—it goes back into the cosmos and is of use to the whole world.

Nothing is given to a pupil as something finished, but the teacher leaves it up to him to do something with it. Everything is like a seed that's placed into the pupil's soul so that it can unfold its activity there. Development is placed in the pupil's own hand The impulse is given into the I, and the I must develop it out of its own power that should be kindled inwardly. There are facts about the spiritual world. Let the pupil kindle feelings about them himself; and may his soul blossom thereby, just as a flower comes forth from a seed. Let this pupil hold this thought fast in his soul: May the I's freedom and independence always be preserved. And looking up to Christ, let there always stand in our soul: Christ is the archetype of the I, let my I strive to become a copy of this archetype. And “I am” is the only right name for this archetype; we can never speak of “He.”

A man is a very complicated entity. When a man begins to eat vegetarian food there are a few things that he should consider. For instance, if we eat beef the forces that produced a small brain and a projecting go into our astral body and work there in a hardening way. The astral body takes on these forms after death, as can be observed on the astral plane. This fact led to the idea of soul transmigration.

If men hadn't eaten animals they would have remained soft and would have taken on grotesque forms. If someone is a vegetarian today and loses this hardening element, this inner firmness, and if he's not a robust man he easily loses his inner hold on himself and can even become insane. An esoteric who takes his development into his own hands and must overcome influences that affect his progress from outside must achieve the firmness that's produced in him by hardening forces by acquiring clear thinking. An esoteric creates firm lines in himself and avoids the danger of becoming shaky by imagining old Saturn, Sun, Moon, etc. so that he's immersed in purely impersonal thoughts. We shouldn't be influenced by biased habits that are connected with race, time, etc. in our thinking; the latter should be entirely free.

We must develop our intelligence. Some people have the intelligence of an eight year old who can only do their jobs if everything is dictated from above. Otherwise they collapse. Another danger is that if an esoteric has had some special experiences he may think that he's very devoted and selfless, when in fact there's a fine egotism behind this that's hard to detect. This also has to go if one really wants the Christ to be born in one. And one can only overcome it through pure thinking. If one has seen something astral or the like, one should be clear about what it is, and not imagine that it's of great importance or that it proves that one is already far advanced. One should confront everything clearly and impersonally and purify one's thinking, feeling and willing in order to let the spirit work through one.

We form an idea of a rose when we see it, we feel that it's beautiful and so we pick it. We stimulate our physical and etheric bodies through this thinking, feeling and willing. We make an impression on the physical body through every ideation and feeling whether we perceive it or not.

But things are different in a meditation. The masters of wisdom and of the harmonies of feeling made meditations that stimulate the etheric body and not the physical body; the etheric brain oscillates while the physical one is quiet. Thereby the etheric body can imprint its meditative experiences on the astral body and thus develop the organs it needs in it. And this has a salutary effect on the physical body.

Looking at a shiny object can also loosen one's etheric body. But since no meditational material streams into it, it's exposed to all high and low, good and bad spiritual influences around it. This is something that's very low, whereas the exclusion of the physical body through meditation is something high. Things were different in ancient times when an initiator pulled the etheric body out of the pupil's body to imprint experiences from spiritual worlds into it. From trances to three and one-half day temple sleeps, it was always the hierophant who mediated everything into the pupil's consciousness, whereas today the pupil tears out and elevates the etheric body himself and lets the master's teachings stream into him. Why is this so? The being whom we call the archangel Gabriel started directing things around 1525. Through the right control of births he brought it about that the organ that's in the sinus above the root of man's nose gradually developed. It's not directly perceptible physically, but if one could compare a recent corpse with one from the 13^th century, one would find differences in structure and in the windings of the brain at the place mentioned. Archangel Gabriel gradually prepared this organ in man, so that he was able to take in the message of archangel Michael, who was next in line in 1879. Through this new organ Michael will print theosophy's message into men, although not directly but by letting his wisdom stream into men's etheric bodies through the great white lodge, and from there a man must consciously let them flow into the organ for them and then let them work in his etheric body. Those who make messages receptive for the message are ready to work on human and Earth evolution in the right way, and an esoteric should place this high, ideal goal before his soul modestly but also decisively and to become ever more aware of his high, responsible task. The others who don't use the organ allow it to degenerate and dry out, and so they don't do the work they should be doing. Archangel Michael will see to it that the work gets done—but in a different way than it would have been done by men. Whenever men shirk their duty the spiritual world is obliged to do their work. When the earth passes over to the Jupiter condition the task that was assigned to it in this evolutionary period must be done. We want to unroll the great future panorama that will be seen when the earth matures for the Jupiter condition. It will be completely spiritualized by the men who worked in the right way, and these men will live in a wonderful paradise. But another part of the earth will harden and shrink into a small kernel, as it were, through the men who let their organ dry out, and the men who live on it won't perceive the others; they won't exist for them. They aren't mature enough to go into the Jupiter condition by themselves and will therefore be carried over in the lap of spiritual beings; and they'll show one how hard it is not to have gone along with evolution. A man only has this earth period to develop to freedom and through it to love and we should get strength for this work in our meditations. Sooner or later we'll get to know spiritual worlds that surround us, and namely through our meditation, but we should always remember to do it with the right attitude, not out of curiosity—that we like to call thirst for knowledge—but to help mankind to progress towards freedom and love.

Before Christ came to earth and became a man so much darkening had taken place that even masters in physical life no longer had the clear knowledge of super-sensible things that they had previously. After Christ became flesh things brightened up slowly. That's why some initiates didn't have a clear idea of the importance of the Mystery of Golgotha, and this was true of a great initiate who had known practically all the spiritual things that a man could know in his Egyptian initiation.

First higher beings reveal something to mankind's great initiates, and then the latter must pass this on as teachings. And no one can arrive at knowledge unless what was already revealed is first given to him as a teaching. That's quite impossible. That's why in esoteric schools they always taught things that can let a pupil come to knowledge. That's why teachings that can be given publicly are given in theosophy to give those who long for it a chance to arrive at a knowledge of truth, to get to Christ.

The childhood of great initiates differs little from that of other men, although a few points might indicate what kind of spirit lives in the child. They have to learn and enrich their knowledge like others an thereby reacquire what they had been in earlier incarnations. This was also the case with Christian Rosenkreutz. Some men may have been surprised that he didn't see the importance of the Event of Golgotha right away. This was because the ego of Christ Jesus had been placed in him, just as the etheric body in Francis of Assisi. But since it was the ego it first had to work through to knowledge to then become fully effective. Therewith he had a high and important mission.

The true and only name of Christ is “I am”; anyone who doesn't know and understand this and calls him something else doesn't know anything about him at all. I am is his only name.

An esoteric who meditates and is approached by things from outside could ask: Would this have happened to me if I hadn't become an esoteric? An esoteric should make it his duty to observe life and himself very intimately. The fact that he has set out on this path should stand at the center of his life, for him, for he is a small center of spiritual life, and this radiates out into his environment—more of less unconsciously for him—and brings about the things that approach him. Through his higher development, a pupil leaves his lower self that connects him with the outer world alone—at least for a short time. During meditation he leaves it to itself and qualities that we thought we had overcome already crawl out from all corners of our nature and can make us worse if we don't keep ourselves under firm control. Certain exercises have been given us to support us here, in addition to our meditations.

As you know, everything runs cyclically, and this is also true of development. If we begin an esoteric training now, then after seven years all kinds of qualities that were slumbering in us can emerge strongly and set one back. But this can't happen if a man pays enough attention to himself, his life and his surroundings.

Anyone who has a hidden opposition to his teacher will find that this feeling soon breaks through and adversely influences the effect of meditation. In an esoteric's daily meditations he should keep it in mind that he's mainly trying to get through to his higher self, and he should reflect on what this higher self is. He shouldn't think that he's supposed to bring something to this higher self—he should have an expectant attitude towards him and expect everything from him. Usually there are three ways in which it approaches a pupil on his path. The first way is a rather flitting one and it requires the attentiveness that an esoteric should have for all things. Namely, this is in a dream, and what happens there is what one calls a doubling of the I. For instance, one has a problem or wants to do something. Then someone appears to one in a dream who tells one what to do or who solves the problem, one who is better and cleverer than oneself. One should pay attention to such dreams. Then in the course of development it may happen in helpless moments or at times when one has made a decision that one hears a quiet voice that, for instance, advises one not to do what one has decided on. It's often a decision that one has made with the best knowledge and conscience, and if one follows the voice that nevertheless advises against it, it may seem as if one has done the wrong thing, but in by far the most cases, one will immediately notice that one did the right thing in following the voice. Now, if one practices paying attention to this, one will notice that one has something in one that's higher than one's own reason, that's cleverer than one is oneself. And the third time that one confronts one's higher self is a very important and sacred one. This is during meditation. One will only unite with him for short moments there. But to attain this, one must silence one's whole lower nature. We must eliminate everything that fills us with antipathy or petty feelings for the world and life. In observing himself, a pupil must always keep the polarity law in mind, that is, if he has a bad quality and wants to get rid of it, he must also look for the opposite quality in himself. It's certainly there. The presence of one quality definitely conditions the existence of the opposite one, whether one believes it or not, and this must be eradicated—then the other one also disappears. For instance, if one feels then there's also the polar hate in one, be it ever so hidden, and one has to drive this out. Then the fear disappears by itself. The higher self will only unite with us if such qualities are eradicated in meditational moments.

This union with the higher self is beautifully depicted in the saga of Lohengrin and Elsa. Lohengrin comes to save Elsa, to unite himself with her. Distrust, a negative quality is sown in her soul, and the higher self, Lohengrin, must withdraw to higher worlds, can't unite with her.

When we begin an esoteric life through our meditation, we must resolve to move something new into the center of our life, something that wasn't there till now but that will now become the main thing. The success that our exercises will have will depend on the intensity of this resolve. One can take the exercises that one gets as something that's added to everyday life, so that one does them like some other ordinary work. But one will then notice that the progress one makes isn't especially great. The resolve that an esoteric should make is to connect everything he runs into in ordinary life with his esoteric life, to really feel that this is the center from which he directs all of his other life, from which something is constantly flowing into this life.

For what are we supposed to accomplish with our meditations? If we do them in the right way we're supposed to develop a strong force, a force that uses the words of the meditation as an instrument with which we gradually create spiritual organs in our astral body with which we'll perceive the surrounding spiritual world. The impressions that we make in the mass of our astral body only gradually become permanent, for we can compare our astral body with an elastic mass that becomes imprinted but then returns to its previous shape after awhile. We make these impressions during sleep when our ego and astral body have left the etheric and physical bodies. The stronger and more intensively we do our meditations, the more intensive the impressions in the astral body become, until they remain and the organs we call lotus flowers develop from them. This process is described in the verse that comes to us from the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings:

But we can only really use these organs when they've become so strong that they can be imprinted from the astral into the etheric body. It's only when the etheric body has received a copy that the portals before which the Cherub with the flame of the whirling sword, stands open for us.

We've heard that our physical and etheric bodies couldn't live for a second without an ego and an astral body and that therefore when these two leave the physical and etheric bodies during sleep, higher kinds of beings enter them, beings who are of the same nature as our I and astral body, but who stand much higher. An archangel replaces our astral body, and a spirit of personality, our I. We meet these high spiritual beings when we've developed our astral organs, and esotericism calls this tremendous event that's so sacred to us the “meeting with the higher self.”

We should look towards this moment with feelings of highest devotion, with a being intensively permeated by its sacredness. If we don't do our meditation with this attitude of really genuine humility, then the spiritual world won't reveal itself to us in its true form, but all kinds of fantastic formations will appear to us, and the moral result will be a ruinous price. It's a good deed that the world into which we would like to press prepared by a school that rightfully exists, is closed by the Cherub with the fiery sword as long as we're insufficiently prepared. The guardian of Paradise stands exactly at the place where we slide over into deep sleep, where we lose consciousness. If we didn't lose it here we would see him. But a glance into the world of archangels would destroy us, since we're not up to it.

Now, why is this archangel who enters our etheric body called our higher self? Why do we try to become united with him? Here we must touch upon a secret that concerns the human being. The man that we see walking around on earth today is really a maya, he is incomplete. There was a time in the ancient Lemurian epoch when only a single pair of human beings remained on earth, that was strong enough to ensoul animal-like formations. The other men had gone to various planets, and so present men originate from this primal pair. The Bible' story about Adam and Eve is right, even though it's presented in the form of an allegorical tale. Now Lucifer overpowered these first human beings and permeated their astral bodies with his influences. This made the later Ahrimanic influences possible and everything that helped men to live in the physical sense world. Thereby the spirit behind matter disappeared for him ever more, and the latter became an unpenetrable cover for him. If man had only remained under the influence of the divine spiritual beings who created him, he wouldn't have become free, but he always would have recognized spiritual things behind matter. Now, these guiding creators didn't want the whole etheric body to be permeated by Luciferic influences. So they held one part of Adam's etheric body back in spiritual worlds. And this part of the etheric body is the higher self with which we should reunite ourself and with which we're a whole human being. An esoteric should tell himself: This higher being that really belongs to me is waiting over there to become reunited with me, and in my meditation I should strive to go to him with all fervor, should form myself into a chalice that takes in this higher element. Paul, who was an initiate in these things, uses exactly the right expressions when he speaks of the old and the new Adam. This union of the etheric body that remained behind with a human being happened for the first time when the Luke Jesus was born. This Jesus boy received Adam's etheric body. The high, guiding creator beings had held back the capacity of individual thinking and speech for men with this part of the etheric body. It's true that a man thinks, but it's no thinking that he produces himself individually—instead he takes some of the divine thinking substance that streams through the world. Man has no individual language either, for high spiritual beings gave groups of men a common language. Men are supposed to acquire their own thinking and language through a reunion with their higher etheric body. Since the ability to speak lies in the etheric body, one can understand the legend that tells us that the Jesus boy didn't have to learn to speak, but that after his birth he spoke to his mother in a language that she understood. Through the connection of Adam's etheric body with a physical human body again, it became subject to the law of number and multiplication that applies to every spiritual thing that descends into matter. Just as a seed that's laid in the earth produces an ear with many kernels, so Jesus' body was the soil for Adam's etheric body, the through-station for multiplication, and it's these multiplied etheric bodies that are waiting for us. When we're immersed in our meditation so that the whole outer world disappears for us, we'll then get the feeling that we're dying, and then united with our higher self we're resurrected. That's why for the more recent esoteric schools that exist rightfully, the cross is the symbol for resurrection to this new life. It's not a birth that's taken to be the starting point of this life, but a death, the death of Christ on the cross of Golgotha, and the symbol for this life is the holy blood that flowed forth. That's why we have the dead plant, the dried wood with the live, red roses sprouting from it united in the rose cross. And in our meditation we should feel that we're born from God, as it says in our main guiding-verse, that's supposed to be the guiding verse of our esoteric life, and that we die in Christ as we let the force of our meditation become a light in us that radiates into higher world; and our higher self comes to meet this warmth, these rays—thereby it unites with us as the Holy spirit in which we come back to life again:

Those of you who've been to esoteric classes before know that what is said here isn't said by me only; we'll ask the help of the Spirit of the Day for this—(the Friday verse followed.)

When we look at the course of our life between birth and death, then from an esoteric viewpoint we see that it's there so that we can learn something for our esoteric path. If we survey our physical life, we see that we bring the organs and pre-requisites for everything that we can do in life with us—except for three things that we must learn here in physical life. We can see color very soon after birth, we do not have to learn it, the ability, for it is simply there; the same is true of hearing, etc. The only three things we have to learn are walking, speaking and thinking or the making of concepts.

The main thing in walking is that we have to learn how to stand. We simply fall down before we can do that; we don't have a feeling of balance yet. We must first learn to feel our way into space's three dimensions And we must also learn to speak and think.

If we've learned to walk in the first year of life, we can go on our way. If we've learned how to make concepts we can give life to truth and do living things through the word. We learn to walk, speak and make concepts in the first three years of our life. We find these three years again, symbolically, in the three years that Christ lived on earth.

Everything that an esoteric pupil needs for his esoteric life is given to him in esoteric classes. He gets answers to all of his questions from what is given to him in mediation exercises; he only has to listen properly. What's given to us as a meditation must acquire life in us. Such as the verse: In pure rays of light …

We shouldn't just let these words pass before us; they should come to life in us. We should devote ourselves entirely to the meditation's content, forget everything that's around us in physical life, personal interests and so on. As a reward for the fact that we've, as it were, given up physical life, have sacrificed it for the duration of the meditation, a tone will resound in us after the first two lines:

In pure rays of light
Gleams the Godhead of the world …

That will be maintained for as long as our karma prescribes. It's not a tone that resounds from within, but one that sounds towards us from outside. No more will be said here, everyone must experience and grasp it himself. And while this sound, sacred word and unspeakable name resounds, the pupil should make a vow that he could also make before, but at this moment he must do so. The vow is that the pupil tells himself: I will consider every sound besides this sacred word, if it's not physically caused, to be a work of Ahriman.

This is a withdrawal, a turning away from what's around him, which creates a feeling of coldness in the pupil; a feeling of indifference takes hold of the man; he feels isolated and surrounded by a great frost. The pupil must bring love towards this frosty feeling that's created by pure thought.

When he's heard this sound he thereby gets the direction towards the east; the sound comes from the east. The pupil can orient himself in the spiritual, he no longer falls over like a child who hasn't learned how to stand and walk. He can now stand and walk in the spiritual.

And when the pupil lets the third and fourth lines live in him:

In pure love for all beings
Radiates the godliness of my soul

He will then feel warmth, radiant living warmth. Only experiences that he has during this feeling of warmth have real truth value; everything else is Lucifer's work. And if he has really enlivened the last three lines:

I rest in the Godhead of the world
I will find myself
In the Godhead of the world

he will then grasp the truth.

So in the first two lines the pupil has attained the way, the truth in the last three, and then life, spiritual life flows from the lines in between.

A pupil must develop something that's often talked about in outer life but is not put into practice, and people don't have an inkling of its depth. Many talk about love for men, and yet what people in outer life consider it to be doesn't correspond to this feeling. An esoteric pupil should begin by telling himself in all humility: I know nothing about human love. We love men for various reasons but all of this is not the right thing. We should love a man because he's a human being. Christ set a good example for this.

In the spirit lay the germ of my body.
And the spirit has imprinted in my body
The eyes of sense,
That through them I may see
The lights of bodies.
And the spirit has imprinted in my body
Reason and sensation
And feeling and will,
That through them I may perceive bodies
And act upon them.
In the spirit lay the germ of my body.
In my body lies the germ of the spirit.
And I will incorporate into my spirit
The super-sensible eyes
That through them I may behold the light of spirits.
And I will imprint in my spirit
Wisdom and power and love,
So that through me the spirits may act
And I become a self-conscious organ
Of their deeds.
In my body lies the germ of the spirit.