The Rudolf Steiner Archive

As always, we'll ask the Spirit of the Day for help in our work. (Saturday)

Great embracing Spirit,
You who filled endless space when none of my body's members existed yet;
You were.
I raise my soul to you.
I was in you.
I was part of your force.
You sent out your forces, and the first, original picture of my body's form was reflected in the earth's first beginnings.
I was in the forces that you sent out.
You were.
My archetype looked at you.
It looked at me, myself, I who was a part of you.
You were.

Great embracing Spirit
May my I raise itself from below upward,
May it get an inkling of you in the all-embracing.
May the spirit of my being be illumined
By the light of your messengers.
May the soul of my being be enkindled by the fire flames of your servants.
May the will of my I grasp
Your creatorword's force.
You are.
May your being permeate my will
That my I be grasped by an understanding of your light's shining,
Your life's love-warmth
And your being's creator words.
You are.

Yesterday we said that a pupil hears a spiritual sound from the east. But if a pupil would now want to say that he knew what the spiritual sounds like, that he had now heard his first spiritual sound, he would be making a big mistake. For this sound is, as it were, the last word out of the physical realm.

The spiritual world is for the time being completely colorless, lightless, soundless and so on. Any colors that we might see are nothing spiritual—they come from our own inner life, and, namely, they indicate qualities that we don't have but must acquire. For instance, if we see a red color it means that we don't have love in us, that we must develop it in ourselves. If we see violet, it's telling us that we must acquire devotional piety.

If we hear noises, it's nothing spiritual, but something that comes out of us. If someone becomes a vegetarian but his body still has a longing for meat, even if he's unaware of it, then this craving resounds in misleading sounds. All of these noises and sounds are only raven croaks.

If a figure from past ages appears to a pupil it's quite wrong for him to want to interpret it right away. He must be able to wait with his interpretation until later. If such an image appears before our soul, it dissipates as soon as we approach it with our thoughts. But if it's a genuine image, it'll rise before us later and remain there in its true form, and we'll know what it means. We must be able to wait and be silent. We should speak about such experiences much less than we think about them. We should look upon and treat our whole spiritual life as something sacred. We must tell ourselves that experiences of sounds, colors, etc. don't come from the spiritual realm but from our own ego that's surged through be a sea of passions an desires, just as Noah's ark had the sea surging around it. As we tell ourselves clearly and relentlessly that these experiences and phenomena are nothing spiritual, we must let our ego go and as it were, let it fly away, just as the dove was released from Noah's ark and didn't return.

A pupil then has another occult experience. After we've seen that the spiritual world is empty for us, we then see that these experiences are nevertheless important for us. Colors become warners and advisors. They tell us what we still have to acquire. We realize that sounds reflect our bodily cravings. And when the images that we've let work quietly tell us their significance, our soul becomes enriched by such experiences. That's like the dove that was released the second time and came back with an olive leaf, the emblem of peace.

But an esoteric's soul isn't left entirely to its own devices on this difficult path; there's things it can hang on to. The rose cross, for instance. We should let it work on us; we should realize that the wood's black is our corporeality that's hardened and withered, that we must let our lower ego that identifies itself with the body become just as dark and dead as the cross's wood. Then the higher, spiritual ego will work in us in the way that the black of the cross is changed into bright, radiant lines of light. Likewise, the red of the roses will change from the color of love working inwardly, to green, the color of life working outwardly.

When we experience symbols it's the ones that make us suffer that are genuine and from the spiritual world, and not the ones that give us joy. We must carry them around with us until we've grasped their meaning. The spiritual from them must be born in us while we suffer.

Another thing we must realize is that we can't be unegoistical. We are never ever unegoistical. And even if we imagine that we've done something that's entirely selfless, we're mistaken. We can't act selflessly. It's world karma that lets us act egoistically World karma is God.

And if we get to the point where we act in a good and noble way, then it's God in us who's good. As we get more selfless, we'll for instance, notice that we don't get scared or terrified anymore. If there's a sudden loud noise nearby, we won't jump as much as before. The God who lets us act in a good and noble way is our model. Our archetypal model made us into what we are now. And we must become a copy of our archetype again.

Once we've understood this rightly, we'll also understand the esoteric Rosicrucian saying: Ex Deo nascimur, in … morimur, Per spiritum Sanctum revivscimus.

An esoteric doesn't say what's left out here. When we begin to say this line our feeling must go to what's unutterable. And only when one's feeling comes back can one go on speaking. Anyone who experiences this inwardly with the right feeling will also rightly understand the other esoteric verse:

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.

The physical and etheric bodies are closely connected in an ordinary man. Whether he raises a hand or thinks, when he uses his physical body he also sets the corresponding part of the etheric body in motion. This connection should become looser in an esoteric.

A man has a backbone that's connected with the brain and sense organs. When he meditates, he creates a kind of a “forebone” in his etheric body; that's the row of lotus flowers that lies behind the breastbone.

The loosening of the physical and etheric bodies enables a man to heal wounds faster. Diseases of the physical body that remained concealed while the close connection was there, can then appear. One shouldn't pay much attention to small pains and ailments, because they're all transitory. But one can feel very uncomfortable when this loosening begins. Theosophical study already brings about this loosening, whereas scientific training makes the connection between the physical and etheric bodies even tighter.

So through meditation the etheric body gets the tendency to become separated from the physical body. One can intensify this through a suitable diet. Diets give the physical body the tendency to push out the etheric body. This is an aid that however brings about the wrong thing if esoteric exercises aren't added. Then the physical body ejects the etheric body without developed sense organs Then it's like a blind man, and it only sees its own daydreams.

While a man's sheaths undergo a change in this way, his connection with the macrocosm also changes. This connection must be cultivated in the right way, otherwise disasters occur in the whole world, and not just in man. For instance, someone who would utter the sacred, unspeakable name in an unsuitable group would conjure up something worse than earthquakes and volcanic eruptions over the region. Therefore, it makes a big difference how the Rosicrucian verse is spoken, namely with or without the name that's just pseudonym for the highest spiritual being. Only the latter way of speaking the verse is an esoteric one.

The techniques of esoteric life is, as it were, given in our meditation. Here one lets thoughts work upon one that awaken feelings and sensations that aren't derived from the physical plane. There are two kinds of thoughts: the ones that are awakened in us through the perception of the physical world, and thoughts such as theosophy gives us. Everything in that physical world is maya, including our physical body. Through what, is this really there? Through what do the animals, plants and stones around us exist? Through the fact that higher beings took a thought many millions of years ago and thought it over and over again. In these things it's as the proverb says; steady dripping hollows the stone. The same thoughts cover each other and eventually form physical objects. The harder a stone is, the longer beings thought it. Our physical body is nothing else than the thought of many higher beings.

If we only think the ordinary thoughts of the physical plane, then this is really no thought, but the mirror image, the illusion of a thought. For everything that's from the physical world was already thought a long time ago, and all we do is to repeat these thoughts, but in the wrong way. For instance, if someone hears a bell ringing, then the sounds is nothing real, but it's like this: millions of years ago what became the bell and also what became our brain was thought, and the knocking together of these two gives the sound that we hear. All physical thoughts are unproductive and eventually have a destructive effect. They bring our astral body into a certain oscillation, but this was already put into it by higher beings. So one who never thinks supersensibly never brings new formations into the astral body. What happens in the astral body works back upon the etheric body, but the etheric body is inclined to take new forms and thoughts into itself. Old forms have a destructive effect on it and from there into the physical strands of our nervous system. All of this must be restored again in sleep. The astral body is inserted into the higher hierarchies for awhile and thereby gets forces; the etheric body is separated from the astral body and becomes regenerated thereby. One couldn't live long without sleep.

However, nonsensorial thoughts have a productive and upbuilding effect They enable a man to fit himself into the hierarchies. New forms, the lotus flowers, are created in his astral body. That's why it's necessary to repeat a meditation hundreds of time.

The ideas we form about theosophical teachings—for our thinking about them is also meditation—will at first not be entirely sense-free. For instance, if one says that Saturn is a warmth sphere, and that the harmony of the spheres resounds in Devachan, one will imagine this in sensory pictures at first—as the heat in our blood, a beautiful symphony, and the like. But if the thought is repeated, the sensory element that is still attached to it falls away by itself and the super-sensible part remains.

Out in the world mathematical thoughts are the most sense-free ones; but when a modern thinks a triangle, he thinks it with color and a certain thickness, that is, not abstractly enough. But one gets closer to super-sensible thoughts when one notes relations. Remembering a sound is a memory of a sensory things, but remembering a melody is something that consists in relations of sounds that don't as such belong to the sense world. And imagine two scoundrels or two good people, where in the first instance one is worse than the other, or one man does more good deeds than the other—then there's something in this relation that's not from the physical sense world, something that leads us up into the spiritual world. If a man thinks of a scoundrel or sees one, it'll give him an unpleasant feeling; but if he sees two scoundrels next to each other in a play, the worst scoundrel will always please him more than the lesser one, because greatness is always attractive. For instance, this is what the effect of various Shakespeare plays is based on. So it's important to see and to study relations in the outer world, for this leads us away from sensory things.

Another way to develop sense-free thinking is to let processes run in the reverse direction, for instance, by saying the Lord's Prayer backwards or by looking backwards through our meditation. That's the only way that a man can improve his memory. Man's memory has gotten much worse in the last four to five centuries, and this will be the case even more if they don't avail themselves of the opportunities that are now being offered. The time for these opportunities is particularly favorable now, and later on they'll simply not be there anymore. Memory will no longer be a mere waiting to see whether things want to emerge from a dark ground. It'll be like a groping towards the past or like a sending out of feelers that'll grasp for the past like towards some thing that's real. Our time is particularly favorable for this development and for esoteric development in general.

Thus, we see that our body is an illusion; it's thoughts of beings who are also thoughts. Thought thinks thoughts—that's a meditational statement that's very important. It's not our brain or etheric body or astral body that thinks—thoughts think thoughts. That's something that also emerges clearly from our verse:

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.

Our meditation should stand in the sign: Steady dripping hollows the tone. A study of theosophical works is an effective preparation for exercises. It's better to have read a book 25 times than to read five books five times each, and one who has read a book two or three times shouldn't imagine that he's read it at all. If on a particular day of the year, we have experienced this or that in our meditation, then if we've really studied hard in between, we'll be able to experience much more on the same day a year later. It's good to keep on doing the same exercise for long periods; that's much better than continual changes.

We should develop certain feelings and not just get more thoughts through study. One can find starting points for something much deeper in simple sensations. For instance, we should begin to pay attention to the feeling of grasping an object or of being grasped by the hand.

We can feel a distinct difference if we imagine the sensation that's aroused in us when we grasp a snail or when a snail unexpectedly crosses our hand. If we develop the two feelings well, we can form a concept of the difference between the subsensible and the super-sensible worlds.

The whole physical world and our feelings about it is an illusion or maya. We can picture it as a field or plane with the super-sensible world above and the subsensible world below it. The super-sensible world is one that can be connected with the feeling of being grasped and the subsensible one with the feeling of grasping.

In Rosicrucian teachings the subsensible region was always called the elemental world, the world of the elements fire, air, water and earth.

One presses through to the element of earth if one meditates on triangles, rectangles, pentagons, and geometrical figures in general. One should do this by writing these figures on the palm of one's hand with a finger. Then eliminate all thoughts about the hand and writing and only think about feeling the writing on the palm as if were floating freely in space, and immerse yourself in this feeling. That's how one gradually grasps the earth element.

One grasps the water element by thinking a fixed, material point and another mobile point that moves in a circle around the first one. Then one should write this in one's hand and proceed as with the first figure. One should think of the second point as one that rotates continuously.

For the air element, one thinks of two fixed points that want to fly away from each other after they first describe a kind of a semicircle round each other and then fly apart into endless distances. If we work with this figure exactly as with the preceding ones, we then grasp the air element—we don't just feel air caressing us, we really grasp it.

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For the fire element, one thinks of a closed figure such as a loop or a figure 8. One should especially feel that there's an intersecting point where the curve touches itself.

One should keep on doing these exercises for some time. They're not easy; one must acquire a certain skill in the feeling of sensations in space, without using one's hands, and also in holding on to the figure. But then this exercise leads to a grasping of the elemental world; one learns how to grasp it.

However it's a rule without exceptions that these exercises also make one egotistical. That's why one must never do them without also developing a great sympathy for everything that gives men joy and sorrow.

When we go up into the super-sensible world, we're actually taken hold of by higher beings who use us as their instruments, just as we use our eyes, ears, etc. The danger with this experience is that one loses oneself ever more, in the bad sense of the word. Therefore, it's also necessary to develop courage and fearlessness. Then we can calmly let ourselves be grasped by beings in the spiritual world, so that we feel: now we're being inspired by an angelic being, now by an archangelic beings, and so on. Imaginations lead into the super-sensible world. One sees that these two directions towards above and below are combined on the Rosicrucian path. As a clairvoyant, one must learn to strictly distinguish between the elemental world and the super-sensible beings—between two things that appear to be united in the physical world. Someone who saw a being and its elemental expression in one picture would be making a big mistake and would be mixing everything up. It isn't easy to separate the two regions at first because they can be seen by both astral and Devachanic vision, but when one ascends and sees a being, one gradually learns to descend immediately to find the elemental part of this being below the physical world, just as when one sees an object one can immediately look down and see its reflection in the water.

One couldn't describe the Saturn condition if one couldn't raise oneself up to beings such as the spirits of Will and Spirits of Personality, and also press through to the fire element. Likewise for the Sun condition, one must know Spirits of Wisdom, archangels, and also the air element. Both of these are described together in Occult Science—how the thrones let Saturn warmth stream out, etc. but in observing it, it's necessary to feel it as a duality.

One must be prepared to see and hear things in the spiritual world that one has never seen or heard here below. One who just expects to find things he's familiar with over there will never be able to press into the spiritual world. That's what's expressed in the second line of our Rosicrucian verse: In … morimur. It's only when a dying in Christo takes place in us that we can be reawakened by the Holy Spirit. In a way, this is a commentary on the two-part verse that's given to us by the masters:

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.

My dear sisters and brothers! We should realize that there's a big difference between outer, exoteric knowledge and the knowledge that theosophy gives us. When we let an outer perception work on us, ideas and concepts form in us; we get to know the thing we're looking at; thereby, we know something about it. Are things the same with theosophical knowledge? We also form concepts and ideas about man's four members, the earth's planetary conditions or the Akashic rcord when we're told about them, but there's something else connected with this. Whereas exoteric knowledge doesn't enrich us or leave anything behind after death, the same cannot be said about esoteric knowledge. It flows into our astral body and forms certain new members there; new threads become woven into the astral body and remain connected with our being.

We know that a man's astral body surrounds him in an egg form. Since an ego is working in it, it radiates. New threads and knowledge are woven in there, so that we can call it the “cognition body.” This knowledge body will become ever denser and stronger and will eventually be spirit self. Another planetary evolution of the earth is only possible through the fact that we develop it. On Jupiter this cognition body will be as dense as our astral body, on Venus as our etheric body, and on Vulcan it'll have become about as physical as our blood.

Now through what can this theosophical knowledge become so fruitful that the cognition body develops in the astral body? Let's clarify this through an example.

We're surrounded by physical, material air. We inhale it. That's how we live. In the bible we hear: God blew living breath into man, and he became a living soul. But the carbonic acid we exhale can't maintain life, it's lethal air. Death began because we were released from the lap of the Gods. Man ate from the tree of knowledge, that is, he had acquired his freedom and independence with Lucifer's help. That's why he was driven from paradise, that is, he's become a water man and then an earth man, and he's not an air man anymore as in the Lemurian epoch. Lucifer will have power over him as long as he's on earth. But the tragic thing about this being is that Lucifer's power doesn't extend beyond the earth. All pain and suffering arise through Lucifer and are connected with this tragedy.

There'll be no exoteric knowledge on Jupiter anymore. If man had remained in paradise, he would also have eaten of the tree of life. The latter was kept away from him through Lucifer's influence, and thereby the possibility of sinking much lower than he did by eating from the tree of knowledge. But now the tree of life becomes transformed into the symbol that initially means earth but that conceals a life that's all the greater and that a man can attain if he acquires the cross with the red roses.

Just as the earth is enveloped by the air that men breathe, so there's a special substance in the this air that wants to flow into men. It depends on us whether we exhale this spiritual substance again as lethal air or whether we connect it with our theosophical knowledge and weave the product into our astral body. This is important for the whole cosmos and not just for us. If we inhale this spiritual substance without making it productive in us, we take something from the cosmos but give it nothing in return and thereby prevent evolution. Whether the Jupiter condition can follow the earth condition depends on whether we increase these spiritual forces around the earth.

If we look at old Saturn we know that the first germ of our physical body arose there. It arose from Gods' thoughts, which condensed to what we are today. But on Saturn it was already counted upon that men would continue the work of the Gods, and we do this when we let the spiritual substance around us flow into us, to build up our cognition body from it.

It was the purpose of the Mystery of Golgotha to give men this opportunity. What is it that we take in with this spiritual substance? It's the Christ himself. This wasn't the case before the Mystery of Golgotha. Then men could say, Ex Deo nascimur. At that time candidates for initiation were prepared in such a way that they went back to what was handed down by the old Gods. But we know that with the Mystery of Golgotha the aura of our earth has changed, because Christ has become the spirit of our earth. He has poured himself substantially into this earth aura and is contained in it since then. Now is the point in time when this poured out Christ substance has become condensed, so that it can be taken in by men. Therefore: In Christo morimur means nothing else than to immerse oneself in this spiritual substance and to take in Christ completely with it, so that one can say: Not I, But Christ in me.

But one shouldn't forget that a light is always surrounded by a lot of shadows. Many errors will also creep in with the new wise things that have been given to our age, and so it's our holy duty to check every thing we hear with our healthy human intellect. This has always been emphasized in all Rosicrucian esotericism. But we should be tolerant towards people who make mistakes here, and we should always tell ourselves: if what we have is really the truth, it'll remain true by itself. If it's an error, I'll be sure to find the truth in my next incarnation through my fervent search for it.

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.

Great seriousness should reign in esoteric life. An esoteric lesson should be something sacred, something that we're entrusted with, and we should never take it to be something ordinary. Probably none of us were aware of the necessary seriousness when we asked to be taken into this esoteric circle. We should place this seriousness before our soul ever more now and try with all of our might to make a connection with the spiritual world, that we can do through an esoteric training, so that we don't fall back into everyday life. One should look upon all exercises that are given to us as ones that come from the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings. In esoteric life one should pay particular attention to egoism. We often tell ourselves that we're doing something selflessly, or we're unaware that we hate or envy someone, and as an esoteric we think that we should tell him the truth or should not have to take this or that from him. When such feelings arise we should realize that we're living in great delusions that are always caused by egoism. Such feelings always become manifest with a feeling of warmth that goes through the warmth ether part of our life body and also works on the physical body through the blood.

We must realize that such feelings have a harmful effect on world evolution. The hierarchies who have the task of regulating karmic connections then get Luciferic beings to destroy these effects by working harmfully right down into the physical body.

An icy cold feeing goes through us when we see our wickedness, whereas we get a warm feeling from satisfied passions when we don't have self-knowledge. A clairvoyant can see them in mostly human shapes.

A man is often more untruthful than he realizes. Many say: I don't really have any dishonesty in me, I have discarded that entirely. But this dishonesty is often so slight that we're usually not aware of it. Say that we read that there's going to be a theosophical lecture in some city and we decide to go there We don't stop to think that a dear friend lives in that city whom we would like to see again, or that there'll be a party there that we want to go to. We think that we only want to go there because of the lecture, whereas there are other reasons.

Our education may have gotten us to the point where we don't tell any big lies, but we may still have the desire to appear better than we are or to conceal the truth if it would make us look bad. All of this has a harmful effect on all world events. Such dishonesties work on our astral body, then on the life body's light ether and then on our physical nerves.

Azazel makes us aware of all such dishonesties. He and the beings he leads mostly have human heads with raven's wings. With egoism, envy, and hate when we wake up we have a feeling of disgust that must be ascribed to our doppelganger's action, whereas one who tends towards dishonesty wakes up with a choking, scratchy feeling in his throat. He'll feel as if he was being pinched by pincers and tortured by a thousand arms. Azazel and his hosts do that. And if we sense his action in the way indicated, it should make us realize how deeply entangled in lies and dissimulations we still are.

A third thing is indifference and dullness with respect to spiritual worlds. Many pupils listen to an esoteric lesson, but what's given doesn't find an echo in them. They can't get away from ordinary, daily life. They can't raise themselves spiritually or occupy themselves with spiritual thoughts. Others are curious and would like to see or experience something in the spiritual world, and they mediate without studying regularly because they're too lazy to do so. This works directly on the ego, from there on the astral body, then on the life body's chemical ether and then on the body's glands and fluids. Azael is at work in this. Azael and his hosts only want to bring about good effects in nonesoterics by working on them in a supplementary way, and not so that he makes them sick. The effects go deeper in an esoteric, and he's always supposed to be aware of his complete feeling of responsibility towards himself and the world.

On awakening, a dull esoteric will feel like he's drowning in a flood, which feeling will be all the stronger the more he gives himself up to everyday sensory life.

An esoteric should always be watching himself. It doesn't hurt if he sometimes broods about himself. That's the only way he'll understand what's suggested to us at the end of every esoteric lesson by the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings:

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.

If we dive down within us, we'll find a lot of beings there. This may seem strange to us at first, but the more we learn to look into spiritual worlds, the more we'll see that a number of spiritual beings are working in us—often to undo the destruction that we men bring about through foolishness. Let's ask ourselves where disease comes from. We know that every disease has a physical cause and also a spiritual one that must be looked for in immorality, passions or other mistakes in this existence but mostly in the previous one. The overcoming of every disease releases force, but this doesn't mean that one should drag out an illness as long as possible to make rapid progress. Everyone should do his best to get well fast. But if he's been sick for three weeks or six months, he should look at this as karma and bear it patiently and calmly.

But there's another reason why disease is something beneficial. Since the Lemurian epoch and on through Atlantis until the Mystery of Golgotha, mankind sank ever more deeply into matter. Through the fact that we follow our drives and passions, we were brought ever further away from the goals that the Gods set for us. Disease is what bends this downward impulse and gives us an upward direction again.

Modern science condemns theosophical teachings and calls them dreams, but just read John's Gospel or any theosophical book and one will see the enlivening, refreshing effect it has, whereas a materialistic or monistic book desiccates one's soul. And since purely materialistic thinking only uses up forces the consequence in the next existence is that such people will be feeble-minded. Their brain will be a spongy watery mass; they'll want to think, but won't be able to. This feeble-mindedness is a good thing that keeps these people from sinking irrevocably. For through the fact that the brain is kept from materialistic thinking, the eternal can work on the core of the man's being after two successive incarnations, and influence it so that it strives upward again.

Something you'll all experience sooner or later in meditation is that one feels entirely loosened, the etheric body expands, one feels carried out to distant world boundaries, and then suddenly, one feels as if one were riveted to this world again, that one can't get away from it; it's as if one were sitting in a vise. That's good. It's our karma from previous incarnations that holds us fast like this. If our exercise would immediately take us up into the spiritual world before we took care of our karma, the result would be a long fall. Mehazel is the leader of these hosts who fix us to the earth. Like Samael, Azazel, and Azael, we get to know him when we descend into our interior. Then we'll really see that our interior is a field of action for demons, and as it says in the Bible: My name is Legion. We're supposed to become acquainted with these beings on our esoteric path so that we become sensible and gradually outgrow them. Azael works in such a way that he harmonizes what arises through dullness with respect to the spiritual world. We take over Azael's work when we acquire equanimity. Equanimity doesn't mean to jubilate or to complain about pain, but to recognize the reality of karmic action in everything. We shouldn't just believe in the karma idea theoretically, but should sense that karma is active in everything that hits us. This is the scourging stage in Christian initiation, that is, one should calmly confront all the pains of life that hit us like the blows of a whip and know that they're conditioned karmically. That's true equanimity.

We know that the physical world is only an inverted mirror image of the astral world. A very important meditation to make the words “The world is only maya” effective is the following. Everything around is really there in reverse. What we see from above downwards is really there from below upwards. A plant's root is above and the flower down below. The starry heavens we have before us is the result of spiritual beings who are really active behind us. Any sound that's received by the left ear comes from the right. We must become familiar with these facts and also with complementary colors. If someone has a lot of red spots imagine that they're green, or imagine that projecting limbs are cavities. One imagines the green in a plant as reddish purple and a brown root as dark blue. One should permeate all of these exercises with reverence and devotion. That's the feeling with which we can hope to approach the world's Godhead; whereas God remains an abstraction to mere thinking. If we glow through our thinking with reverence, devotion and humility, we may hope to penetrate the spiritual world.

In our meditations we'll soon notice that something like an inhibiting force is opposing us. We must get to know it and see that it's related to the earth's destructive power. The earth is involved in a destructive process. Outer science knows that certain new formations on the earth's surface are produced by destructive forces. The latter were on the increase since the middle of the Atlantean epoch through the karma that men created. Karma that has not been made good intensifies the earth's destructive forces, and the earth had already become a physical corpse that would have had to fall out completely from the plan of evolution if a strong power hadn't intervened. Everything that's connected with earth evolution is permeated by these destructive powers or Luciferic beings who remained behind on old Moon. A wise being saw this and remained behind even earlier on old Moon and old Sun in order to be able to mix a virginal element into earth evolution that's not taken hold of by destructive forces. Upbuilding forces worked until the middle of the Atlantean epoch. Men saw them behind the maya. Men increased the weight of destructive forces ever more through their unadjusted karma so that by the Mystery of Golgotha on April 3, 33, the scale's crossbeam was level, and then Christ's deed was placed on the other pan. He connected himself with the earth, so that now every man can find the Christ deep within his soul. A man would have had to drown in the maya that surrounds him, but the Christ connected himself with earth evolution, so that a man can find him again behind maya.

We know why this maya was woven by the Gods. It was so that a man did not live in the world of real things and have to be fettered by its glory, but could relate to it freely. We know what our states of waking and sleeping are. In ancient times, a man still saw divine beings through the veil of maya at the moment of waking, but at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, he only saw demonic ones. Then the portal closed completely and man had to drown in maya. In ancient times the mantle or power of Elijah had to be given to Elisha so that he could divide the Jordan and walk through it safely; whereas Christ's forerunner dipped men into the Jordan. A man had to go through water; but a material is given out of which he can himself make a bridge to cross it instead of drowning in it. Christ offers himself as this material.

Now a man might look upon the fact that he's supposed to join this victorious Christ force as an incursion upon his freedom. But the Christ leaves us so free with respect to the acceptance of his being, that he can't be found with anything earthly, not even with the intellect or reason, because they're something compulsive for men. Intellect and reason are permeated by Luciferic forces. Before they intervened, Christ remained behind and so men find him in the mystical sub-depth of their being. Previous religions were an expression of the respective state of science, and it's considered to be a shortcoming of Christianity that it's not at all connected with external science. In the future, it'll go beyond everything that is outwardly findable and knowable, and even today it can only be found in one's inner experience. How the revelation of Christ will take place in the near future has often been indicated.

Surrounded by maya wherever we look, something real sounds forth from us—a strong longing that lives in every human soul; for we are born from God. And we won't drown in more maya, for we die in Christ; deadly separatedness submerges in divine egoity. And we'll rise again, whole, strong and free; we'll be resurrected out of the Holy Spirit. So much has been stimulated by these words that you should open up for yourself in mediation that you have far more decades of work with them than are in the rest of your incarnation. Place these facts in your souls, shut out the surging of maya, and they'll become living forces in you.

Appeal to the spirit of Saturday.

When one gets further on the occult path through meditation and concentration, one gets to know one's doppelganger to whom one is chained. One experiences a feeling of loneliness with respect to the world and even with respect to one's loved ones. This feeling makes one strong and one should cultivate it. Another feeling that one should practice is one of thankfulness towards spiritual beings in the meditation: In pure rays of light gleams the Godhead of the world …

Another thing is not to talk to others about the exercise that was given to one or about esoteric things in general. Silence awakens forces; chatter weaken the etheric body.

Appeal to the spirit of Saturday.

Yesterday we said that a man is connected with a doppelganger, that the Luciferic spirit Samael places him outside us and makes us aware of this. Through desires and passions that we previously avoided but that are now clinging to our double, it sometimes happens that he wants us to get carried away by anger or other things. This doesn't make much difference in the average person, but it shouldn't happen to an esoteric; he must watch himself more; an esoteric's life of feelings and drives becomes quite different.

One shouldn't think that a man becomes loveless and indifferent. His love is deepened and raised to a higher level; it becomes more selfless and ready for sacrifice.

An esoteric training that teaches the eradication of love and sympathy is on the wrong track entirely. For by changing our feeling life we get a better feeling for art and the world's beauty.

Also we shouldn't lament about psychic losses, or say: I can't do anything about myself—but in such despairing moments one should repeatedly say: Patience. Be strong.

The same applies when one thinks that one hasn't made any progress because one hasn't had any experiences in higher worlds.

What should be attained in esoteric training is soul loneliness. This must remain the soul's basic mood and shouldn't be shaken by anything, even when we meet the most beloved people. The spiritual world's portals open through solitude. This is the only thing that conditions pure spiritual life. But this doesn't' mean that one should deliberately look for solitude or avoid one's duties in the world; we should let this lonely feeling awaken in our soul, and not silence it through foolish thoughts, etc.

It's also very helpful if one does not want to change one's exercises frequently. It's best to do an exercise for a whole lifetime, but to do it right, and namely in such a way that ever new impulses are awakened in us when we increasingly immerse ourselves in the exercise. For instance:

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

Here one shouldn't just imagine radiating light rays that symbolize the divine—one should imagine the Gods' forces that take possession of our interior, and then feel great thankfulness that should be carried into the cosmos—swim in the feeling of thanks and feel united with the Godhead. One can often only hang onto this feeling for seconds, but after continued practice one will be able to have it much longer.

One is often called back to reality by a ringing sound, but this exercise leaves one with a feeling of being one with God and mankind—quite different from a feeling of loneliness.

Chatter is a common sin. Whatever one discloses about the results of one's exercises is lost for the pupil. One should make this clear to oneself. It always signifies a weakening of the etheric body; people with a weak etheric body are always talkative. That's why it's helpful for us to close off our inner life as a secret. One could at most enrich one's esoteric life by discussing esoteric communications and truths with friends at the same spiritual level, but it's important that the right mood be present here. The forces and strength that permit us to advance grow through silence.

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.