The Rudolf Steiner Archive

If it was our last esoteric lesson * the great laws of spiritual life revealed in the course of human development, they were the great spiritual powers that guide everything that happens on the physical plan. And which replace each other in their effectiveness, today we want to speak in a somewhat more intimate way of the laws of spiritual life, as it takes place within man himself.

The one in an occult training course is, in a sense, a waiter, a seeker. He is waiting for a new world to uncover him one day except for the one he has otherwise perceived. He is waiting for one day to say to himself, "I see a new world;" I will be able to say to himself; "I will be able to do so." Between all the things I have been able to perceive in the room so far, I see a fullness of spiritual beings that were previously hidden from me. -To make this quite clear to you, you must call the seven states of consciousness that man goes through in the course of his development before the soul. The first state of consciousness that man underwent was a dull, dawny degree of consciousness in which man felt one with the cosmos; We call Saturndasein this state. In the soldon, the level of consciousness decreased, but it became all the brighter for it. When man lived through the man's being, his consciousness was similar to what we experience as the last remnant in our dreams, it was a dull image consciousness. Here on earth we have the bright awareness of the day, which will remain when man rises again to the consciousness of images on Jupiter, so that we then have a bright consciousness of images there. Be. Even two higher states, the inspired and intuitive state of consciousness, will continue to rise to two higher states, the person. So our bright awareness of the day stands in the middle of the dull image consciousness of the moon and the bright image consciousness of Jupiter. And what the esoteric is waiting for to reveal itself to him one day is Jupiter consciousness. It will reach each of you once, at one earlier, at the other later, that depends on your abilities, on the degree of inner maturity.

Now, however, the consciousness of Jupiter in its first germs is already present in every human being. In a very delicate way, the future consciousness is already indicated, man is only unable to interpret it. This is precisely the esoteric life to a large extent that the disciple learns the subtle processes in himself and in his surroundings.

One still the old moon consciousness, in the other the new consciousness of Jupiter is already there, are the feeling of shame and the feeling of fear. In the feeling of shame, where the blood is pushed towards the periphery of the body, there is still one last remnant of the moon consciousness, and in the Feeling of fear, where the blood flows after the heart to find a fixed center, is annoedly announced by Jupiter consciousness. So normal daytime consciousness strikes out after two sides.

Shame---------Standard----------Feeling of anxiety

When we talk about Anything Feeling shame and the pubic blush rising in our faces, we experience something reminiscent of being a moon. Imagine a Modem Man. He could not yet «I» to say to himself, but lived in a dull, dawning image consciousness, embedded in astric forces and Beings with which he felt one and in harmony. Think of it, my sisters and brothers, one day with such a Modem Man the feeling suddenly dawns: I am a «I». I am different from the others, I am an independent being, and all the other beings in my environment look at me. -The whole lunar man would have glowed through from top to bottom a very enormous feeling of shame, he would have disappeared, trying to go down with shame, when he could have felt such a premature feeling of self. So we, my sisters and brothers, too, when a sense of shame arrives, would like to disappear, sink under the ground, dissolve our self-iness, as it were. Imagine how the ancient Modem man was embedded in harmony with the forces and Beings of his surroundings. When an enemy being approached him, he did not think, but he knew instinctively how to avoid it. He acted in a feeling that, if he had been conscious, he could have expressed as follows: I know that the legality of the world is not set up in such a way that this wild beast will now tear me apart, but the harmony of the world is such that it means it. Who must protect me from my enemy.

So directly in harmony with the forces of space felt the old moonman. And if a feeling of self had awakened in him, it would have immediately disturbed this harmony. And the feeling of me actually, as it began to penetrate man on earth, has brought him more and more into disharmony with his surroundings. The Helllistener hears the universe ring out in a mighty harmony, and when he compares the sounds that penetrate from the individual people to him, so Today this gives a discord to all people, more to one, to the other, less so, but it is a discord. And your task is to resolve this discord more and more in harmony in the course of your development. Through the insoence this discord has arisen, but wisely it was set up by the spiritual powers that dominate and guide space. If people had always remained in harmony, they would never have come to self-employment. The discord was used so that man could achieve harmony freely, on his own strength. The self-confident feeling of self had to develop first at the expense of inner harmony. When the time comes when the consciousness of Jupiter lights up, and man again comes back in harmony connection with the forces of the cosmos, then he will save his self-conscious feeling with his self-confidence into the new state of consciousness, so that man then Independent self and yet will be in harmony with space.

We have now seen that the new consciousness of Jupiter is already being announced in the feeling of fear. But whenever a future state begins to occur before time, it is premature and not quite in place. This will be clear to you by an example. If a flower, which by its very nature should bloom in August, is brought to heap in a greenhouse as early as May, it will no longer be able to unfold in August, when its actual flowering period has come; Her powers will be exhausted and she will no longer fit into the conditions she should then get into. And in May, too, as soon as you remove it from the greenhouse, it will have to go to the bottom, because it does not fit into the natural conditions of this time of year. Straadeso it is with the sense of anxiety. It is still out of place today and much less so in the future. What happens when you feel an anxiety? The blood is pressed into the center of man, into the heart, in order to form a fixed center, in order to make man strong against the outside world. It is the innermost power of the I that causes this. This power of the I, which acts on the blood, which must become more and more conscious and on Jupiter, man will then be able to consciously direct his blood after the center and become strong. The unnatural and harmful thing about it, however, today is the feeling of fear associated with this blood flow. This must not be allowed to happen in the future, only the forces of the I, without fear, must work there.

In the course of human development, the outside world around us is becoming more and more hostile. More and more you must learn to confront your inner power with the encroaching outside world. But fear must disappear. And especially for those who undergo esoteric training, it is necessary, unavoidably, to free himself from all feelings of fear and fear. Only here does fear have a certain justification, where it alerts us to stand strong, but all the unnatural feelings of fear that torment people must disappear altogether. What should happen if man still has feelings of fear and fear, and Jupiter consciousness comes to an end? There, the outside world will face man much, much more hostile and terrible than it is today. A person who does not get used to fear here will fall there from a terrible horror to the other.

In order for man to fully grow up in the face of the evil forces of the future, he must have the innermost power of his self in his hands, he must be able to regulate the blood consciously in such a way. That it makes him strong against evil, but without fear of any kind. He must then have the power that drives the blood inward in his power. But even that other ability to pour the blood from the heart to the periphery must not be lost on it. Because the state of Jupiter will in some way also mean a return to the old moon consciousness. Man will come back into harmony with the great world laws and feel at one with them. He will regain the ability to flow together with the spiritual world powers, but not unconsciously and dawnfully as on the moon, but on Jupiter he will always maintain his bright awareness of the day and self-confident I-feeling and yet live in harmony. With the forces and laws of the world. The discord will then dissolve in harmony. And in order to be able to let oneness flow into the harmony of space, he must consciously learn to let the innermost power of his self radiate from the heart. He must therefore be able to consciously centralize the inner forces of his blood when an enemy confronts him, and he must also be able to radiate them consciously. Then only he will be up to future circumstances.

The one who is striving for an inner development must begin today to gradually get these forces more and more into his power. He does it by consciously learning his breath and moving in. When man draws his breath, the forces of the I enter into activity, which bring him into connection with the forces of the cosmos, those forces that radiate from the heart to the outside. And when man spends his breath and when he abstains from the breath, those forces of the I enter into activity, which push for the center points, after the heart, and there create a fixed center there. Thus, even today, when the disciple consciously does his breathing exercises in this sense, he learns to gradually master the powers of his self. No one can believe, however, that they independently carry out such exercises if they have not yet received instructions on them. Everyone will get them at right time. But even for those who do no such exercises, it is never too early to familidate themselves with the meaning of these exercises and to gain understanding of them. They will then become all the more fruitful for him later. So you, my sisters and brothers, are also to gain more and more understanding for the subtle processes within you and in the world as a whole and gradually grow into the future periods of human development.

* See therefore december 5 1907

It's the task of the 5th post-Atlantean epoch to develop spirit self. This occurs in the Indian age through the spirit self sinking into the sentient body. In the next Persian sub-race manas permeate the sentient soul and thereby enters a new element, the soul element. The result of this is that certain demons who previously had no power over men were liberated and became hostile. Demonology arises in this race; no demons had been mentioned in previous sagas and myths. In the third sub-race manas sinks into the intellectual soul of Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians and Semites. Nothing much changes, for manas remains in the same soul element. In the 4th, the Greco-Roman sub-race spirit self develops in the consciousness soul and also remains in the soul element. Christ Jesus comes down to earth. He has the power to overcome hostile demons. The Bible says that he bound Satan for a thousand years. Our fifth sub-race follows, and now manas steps into a new element again. It begins to live in its own element: spirit self in spirit self. Thereby new hostile powers are liberated that mankind didn't know before. And namely these enemies come out of man's own breast. Men hinder each other by influencing each other more than they ever had before. A case that was investigated occultly can serve as an example.

Four people lived together. The first one was a little feeble-minded and crazy. The second one was considered to be a very talented man, he was productive and worked outwardly. The third was a so-called average man and the fourth was a really highly developed man, although he couldn't express himself. What does this look like from an occult perspective? The first one has a very weak will but is otherwise normally disposed. The apparently average number three is inwardly deranged and streams this into the first one. What's with the second talented, productive man? He really only has the talent of being able to express something. The valuable content in everything he produced was a transfer of the knowledge and forces of wisdom of the 4th one, who however didn't have the ability to express himself. But when he stammered a sentence there was much more real force in there than in the brilliant words that streamed out from number two, impressing men so much.

It's a man's task today to free himself ever more from the restrictive influences in his environment, and also not to let any such influences go out from him. A man is supposed to become increasingly free. A man is supposed to recognize and realize the eternal laws of the good out of his own free will. The spiritual world only discloses itself to an inwardly free human being. When some esoteric pupils say that they're hearing voices who are telling them what to do in their daily affairs, they're deceiving themselves. The masters are silent about everyday matters. They only speak if a man rises above his existence to the great world laws concerning human and world evolutions. A man must learn to become quite free and independent in his small circle, so that he can enter the spiritual world as a free, self-conscious being, for only thereby can he become a usable member in human evolution.

Impatience slows development of the organs one needs to see into higher worlds. For many pupils already have spiritual organs developed before they know about them or know how to use them. It's like a sleeper who hears nothing because the ego and astral body have left his ears.

When we look at a rose its red color, form, etc. has a destructive effect on our retina. The rose sensation runs along our nerves and has a destructive effect on them. The astral body throws what the retina receives into the etheric body that thereby gets many impressions from outside daily.

What tears down the physical body builds things up in the etheric body. The latter builds itself up through impressions and experiences from outside. The astral body is also destroyed by outer impressions and then the I is supposed to build things up again. The astral body is harmoniously organized when it comes to a new incarnation and is then made disharmonious. That's the occult explanation for the fact that most children cry after they're born. Their astral body feels that entry into life destroys its harmony and it feels this as pain. This harmony can only be restored by the I, through the creation of thought pictures that the I throws into the etheric body via the astral body, and that are viable. Most of the impressions that we send to our etheric body in ordinary life are worthless as far as their vitality is concerned. We should create mental images that are clear and rightly structured and therefore are able to live. For instance, what the eyes receive from outside they throw onto the etheric body, on which the picture arises. The I then works on the etheric body from the other side via the astral body by forming a thought in this that it throws on the etheric body as an impression; and the main thing is that they should be the right, viable thoughts. These viable thoughts form our spiritual organs that'll make us clairvoyant. Just as Gods created our physical body harmoniously so that each organ and limb is at the right place, so we must form our astral and etheric bodies harmoniously and make our thoughts viable. This doesn't have to take long. An experienced esoteric often only needs a minute to harmonize his impressions again. One creates such organ-forming, vital impressions in one's etheric body through meditation, by immersing oneself in certain concepts, in eternal thoughts.

For instance, it's important for every pupil to meditate on the wisdom concept. This doesn't mean that he should form a firmly outlined, intellectual definition of wisdom. He should have mobile views about it that are easy to change. Wisdom and cleverness or erudition are very different things. Some beings don't think and yet are very wise. They execute plans very wisely, although they were created by other beings. There are also men who aren't clever or erudite but are wise. Now if one meditates on the wisdom concept in the right way some wisdom will flow into us, enlightenment from higher worlds will come to us.

A second concept that one should meditate on is love. What the average person calls love is often nothing but crass egotism. True love is always productive, as when an artist devotes himself creatively to his work. The Gods created our earth out of love as they devoted themselves entirely to the creation that they sweat out of themselves, as it were. What can unite love and wisdom is that I that always works at itself, that must always be egofied anew, as Fichte puts it. One only understands Fichte's philosophy rightly if one sees that the I must always create itself anew, must know itself anew. That's also what Meister Eckhart means when he says: What good is it to be a king if one isn't aware that one is one.

All things on higher planes throw shadows onto lower ones, and so I, wisdom and love work as thinking, feeling and willing on the next, lower plane. One who thinks intentively about it will realize that the I is changed into thinking, wisdom passes over into feeling, and productive love becomes will, that is the impulse to creativity, to devotion. To complement these three points and the triangle it's good to meditate on four other points and a square. Choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic and melancholic beings create an etheric body for a man when he presses towards a new incarnation. Each man gets something from each of these beings, although one or the other usually predominates. This dominant temperament becomes manifest in a man's whole behavior, especially when he is young. For instance, phlegmatic beings are enemies of the philistine, petty things that a man would get into if he got too much from the melancholic beings. Choleric beings also become manifest in fire, sanguine ones in air, phlegmatics in water and melancholic beings in earth. Our earth is the outer expression for melancholy that has become physical. If one meditates on all of this one will someday lose consciousness of the outer world and will then know what eternity is and that birth and death are only changes. The etheric body will light up from the other side through the I and we'll see the effects of the eternal, live thoughts that we imprinted on it, namely, the clairvoyant organs that we can now use. If we're impatient and try to speed up this process the I illumines the etheric body, but we only see the outer impressions that were put into it, distorted pictures that are often horrible, or else beautiful, deceptive pictures. Therefore it's advisable to use the greatest care and patience in creating well formed, proper spiritual organs, for we're creating our future, our new earth with them. The Gods meditated our present planet, and what we create should be just as full of wisdom.

Every perusal of art also strengthens clairvoyant organs. For instance, when we look at a statue it's good to feel the forms and lines in one's thoughts. This strengthens our creative capacities.

Esoteric and exoteric lectures don't have to be very different as far as content goes, but one should keep in mind that the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings speak to us in an esoteric class. The important thing is in how an esoteric class is given and that we should let its effects live in our soul. Classes are given to us so that in life we like to think back to them and let them form a central core in our soul. They're complements to the exercises that an esoteric has to do.

We know that these exercises bring about colossal changes in the astral body that had previously been disordered and unstructured, although it was a harmonious whole, so that islands and pockets are created through which we begin to form organs. These astral organs are the canals through which the masters let communications from higher worlds flow into evolution to promote it. We intervene in the Gods' world order through this independent formation of astral organs, we challenge it by using forces that it had previously used for other things, and namely to protect the astral body from the effects of negative qualities.

An esoteric must try to be objective about his neighbor's qualities and be able to notice and tolerate their negative qualities without judging them. For instance, he should say: I see that this man is vain and ambitions, but at the present stage of his development these qualities are just as necessary as other, positive ones. We can compare things with a tree here. Even though the bark is the dying part of a tree-organism, it is necessary to protect the interior in which vital juices and forces circulate. Some of the forces must be used for bark formation, but not all, otherwise the tree would lignify, wither and die. But nature sees to it that the tree's inner life forces counteract this and regulate the process. That's the way things are with respect to a man's negative qualities such as ambition and vanity and their effect on the astral body, that make it look as if it had light rays in the form of needles coming out of it that become fainter and further out.

The divine world order sees to it that these needles don't go deeper into an ordinary person's astral body by sending forces out from within to the astral body's skin, like a tree towards its bark, and thereby makes these needles into an outer protective wall. Although an esoteric must be objective and lenient about these qualities in other men, he must be strict with himself and get rid of ambition and vanity. For he uses his protective forces for other things, so that his astral body wouldn't be able to prevent the needles from permeating it and eventually sickening the physical body.

Another negative quality that lazy people often have is envy. It arises in the soul because one compares one's achievements with those of other people and painfully feels their superiority This makes the astral body's substance cloudy and opaque. Divine forces counteract this in an ordinary person. Anger is another negative quality. It becomes manifest in the astral body as condensations with thorns. Since an esoteric no longer has the protective forces that other people have, he must develop others. Some people say that one should combat vanity, envy, etc. by fighting them directly. This would definitely not be the right thing for an esoteric. Fighting ambition and vanity would get him too involved with himself, and that would just worsen these errors. Instead, he should think about man's seven-fold nature and his various bodies intensively. If one does this every time that one especially feels these qualities, one will notice that they eventually disappear The cure for envy is to meditate on beauty in art and nature in some particular form that shouldn't have any thing to do with the envied person. If we occupy ourselves with something beautiful whenever we feel envy, it will gradually disappear. Some people get angry at city noise, but the really harmful thing there is the demons that the noise keeps in check. One must be able to live in noise without getting angry. An esoteric attains this by meditating intensively on the four sentences in Light of the Path or on other verses that were given to us. Then one will see that the noise and anger gradually disappear. Anger also has a very bad effect on an esoteric's physical body. When we transform our errors in this meditative way, we build a temple in us into which we can withdraw from noise, in which we gather forces, from which we can get strength, calm and enthusiasm. Thereby we'll feel ever more intensely that we're a big family gathered round the shining central point of the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings from which light and life flow down to us. Our goal will then float before us ever more as a shining star that nothing can darken anymore.

Every meditation has been handed down by great initiates for millennia; it's the path into super-sensible worlds. Each one gives us a picture of initiation, if only as a weak reflection. It's a picture of what we'll someday have, albeit a very faint picture.

So that the meditation can work into and upon us in the right way we should imagine the meditational material as pictorially as possible in a spiritual picture that we create for ourselves. For instance, when we receive the meditation:

we should try to strip off everything that fetters us to the sense world at these moments and devote ourselves as much as possible to these pictures and live in them.

Meditation should be the most important and sacred event of the day for us. If we immerse ourselves in these pictures as much as possible and let them live in us, then depending on how intensive and serious we are in this and on our karma we'll sooner or later experience a moment in which we notice that these pictures and ideas are realities, that they are a world in which we suddenly find ourselves and that's quite different from the outer world. We find that we're on the other side of things, as it were. Meditators who haven't advanced to vision yet will find that as soon as they begin to meditate they are attacked by thoughts about their surroundings and everyday life. All noises seem to become more disturbing and all stray images and thoughts become more insistent. It wouldn't do any good to fight them, because powers stand behind them. It would be as if one wanted to defend oneself against a swarm of bees by punching them: they would just attack one even more.

There's an occult way of silencing these unwanted thoughts, and that is to clearly imagine a shining Mercury staff with a black snake winding around it and then a white snake winding against the other one. The black snake symbolizes the materialistic thoughts of the lower self that disturb one, and the bright one the divine thoughts of the higher self. And when we place this symbol with its whole significance before our soul—where the bright snake coils against the black one—then all disturbances will disappear and we can immerse ourselves in our meditation. Those who have attained clairvoyance are disturbed by wild animal visions that are very ugly or sometimes seductively beautiful and that comes from passions and desires. Here too the mental image of the Mercury staff is the only antidote.

Depending on karma we'll sooner or later have the feeling that our I is being torn to pieces when we devote ourselves completely to our meditation. This feeling must arise and it's quite right up to a point. We ordinarily feel like a unit in an enclosed physical body, but we must consider that we are very composite and complicated, and that the spiritual world to which we mostly belong isn't anything simple. Thrones, Kyriotetes, Dynamis and Exusiai worked on our physical, etheric, astral bodies and I on Saturn, Sun, Moon and earth, respectively. All kinds of high spiritual beings worked on our physical body on old Sun and Moon. Some built our larynx, others the heart or the liver; reproductive organs were created by some beings and the digestive apparatus by others, and so on. At a certain stage a meditator gets the feeing that he divides and gets into the hands of all of these powers and loses himself in them. One who hasn't attained vision yet will then have a nothing feeling, as if the meditation was not bearing any fruit. This is depressing, but there's no great danger here either for the meditator or the meditation. A clairvoyant will hear the voice of a figure and then also see it, and this will whisper to him that the world that he sees is an illusion that he's creating himself. This is the temptation that approaches him from the other side and doesn't want him to ascend into spiritual worlds but tries to hold him back in the sense world forcibly. And this temptation is a great danger. The occult way to combat this is to imagine the rose cross. The rose cross is the symbol for the Mystery of Golgotha. The cross, the symbol of death, out of which with the blood that flowed out of the five wound-roses sprout as a symbol of life. If we bring this symbol and its whole significance before our soul we'll have an unbeatable weapon against the power that leads us into temptation. And why? Because Christ through his death, at the moment when his blood flowed, united himself with the earth's astral body and brought it new life and light. He lives in this astral body as the astral light that shines in darkness. When we've attained vision we see in this astral light. Thus the rose cross is the symbol for the light that conquers the powers of darkness.

We see objects with our physical eyes because they're dark and they reflect light. But when we attain vision through our meditation, the dark sheath that covers objects will get thinner and thinner. We'll see the astral light in them shine, the light in the darkness, and they'll thereby disclose their interior to us. We'll know the forces that are at work in them and we'll live with them. We'll not only see a red, cubic crystal from outside, but we'll feel the forces that build it up and spread red light over its surface through green light. If someone wanted to get inside by breaking it apart he would only create more outer surfaces. One only presses inside if one sees in astral light. To be able to stand this astral light neophytes had to prepare themselves in a kind of a sleep in a grave. After seeing the astral light, Paul was without sight for three days.

If our meditation is done correctly, it should leave us spiritually strengthened. We often have no feeling that this occurred, but every meditation has an effect sooner or later and we often harvest the fruits unexpectedly years later. One who doesn't greedily and impatiently demand growth but is satisfied with little, will always receive a spiritual strengthening.

The more the beings we see during meditation that look like sphinxes, Seraphim and Cherubim, the surer one can be that one is seeing good, sublime beings and that one is on the right path with one's meditation. The rats and mice that one eliminates through a caduceus come from a sub-physical world.

Everything that has a life of its own is enclosed in a skin. Our astral body also has a skin. A dependent, weak man has a very thin, cracked and easily breakable skin, and that's why such people often wish that they could merge with the universe. An independent, strong-willed man has a thick astral skin. But all astral skins get used up during the day, that is, they get holes, become tattered and hang limply when the man gets tired. On going to sleep we should tell ourselves reverently that we're returning to the Gods who created us. The astral body draws new forces from the Gods to form a new skin for the astral body. The reforming of this astral skin is symbolized for us by the snakes on the caduceus. We can use the Mercury staff before evening and morning meditations and also during them to ward off bad influences.

Red roses on a cross are the symbol for new life springing from death. The red roses are in the deepest sense the symbol for the holy blood of Christ. Evil powers must withdraw from anyone who places this black wood cross with its seven blooming dark red roses before his soul That's why one should let it come to life within one after every meditation. It's a symbol from which we can draw endless strength.

Let's imagine a quiet sea and then the same sea with towering waves, and that we're on a sinking ship in this wildly surging water so that death is inevitable. Anyone who can feel no fear of death but only the wonderful beauty of the unfettered elements and the grandness of creation at such a moment knows what soul peace is.

We should let such images, such thoughts, live in us in their whole richness and greatness as often as possible. Then we'll feel that fear and terror about the elements and eruptions disappear, and we'll draw strength from all hindrances that life puts in our path.

Today we want to occupy ourselves with occult symbols that a pupil gets to know during his development and through which the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings give us wisdom that was brought over to us from Atlantean times.

After Atlantis sank, great initiates led two main streams of people from west to east, on through Africa, the other through Europe. Those who came to Asia through Africa produced the individuality that could take in the Christ light in the course of incarnations and developments. In the northern stream a strong, sturdy stock arose among initiates that not only knew how to defy outer enemies but was also a match for psychic, demonic influences. There were mystery centers in Europe, whose existence is reported in old sagas. For instance, the report of such an esoteric school is concealed behind the legend of King Arthur and his round table. King Arthur was a high initiate who proclaimed the mystery wisdom to his pupils.

Now, it's an occult law that some initiates withdraw to spiritual worlds when an especially high one unfolds his activity on the physical plane. Thus, while the Christ light shone in the Orient, another high initiate withdrew for whom north European people had been prepared as a later sphere of activity. He later incarnated to let the Christ event in its whole importance flow into mankind. We're told about this incarnation of the high initiate in the legend of the Holy Grail that angels carried from east to west and kept floating above the earth there. King Titurel was the guardian of the Grail and the reincarnation of the high initiate who was supposed to prepare things for a certain historical period. An old French legend, Floire et Blanchflor, was inspired by Titurel. Charlemagne was the reincarnation of a high, East Indian adept and an instrument of the spiritual individuality that's symbolized by the name Titurel. Floris and Blancheflur are called Charlemagne's spiritual parents. They inspired people who were connected with the mystery center.

Titurel attracted pupils who were all called Parzival. A Parzival had to free himself from all worldly influences that drag one down, through appropriate exercises He had to be a Cathar. When Parzival, who at this stage would call himself a “pious one” or purified one, stepped before his master Titurel, the latter let him use the forces that he'd developed through catharsis for an intensive concentration The earth and everything on it disappeared before his eyes and gradually changed into the image of a tree that grew and from which a wonderful lily sprouted And while Parzival was immersed in this perception he heard the voice of Blancheflur behind him—who, as it were, symbolized herself in the lily, saying “You are that.” The lily emitted a strong odor that Parzival found repulsive and he realized that this aroma symbolized all the things that he had set outside himself through catharsis, and that this still surrounded him like an atmosphere. Then the tree withered before him and it was replaced by a black cross with red roses sprouting out of it. He heard the voice of Floris—whose symbol was the red rose that's strengthened in itself—behind him: “You should become that.” Parzival was then led into mountain solitude by Titurel to meditate on the mighty pictures that had been conjured up before him. And on a secluded peak he directed his gaze to the endless heavens above him, lowered it to the endless depths beneath him, looked to the front and rear, right and left into endless distances, and an indescribable feeling of reverence and devotion for the Godhead that revealed itself to him in every thing overcame him. And he directed a prayer to it: “You great Enveloper, you whom I feel above and below and beside me, who is everywhere whether I look forward or backward—I would like to devote myself to you and merge with you.” At the same time he felt another divine power who did not overpower him as much, who seemed to lead him into himself and seemed to give him a center there. And he felt a third force like a messenger of the great Enveloper who seemed to lead him in a circle around his center. He felt that his left hand was grasped by a force that pressed like warmth through the arm, that announced itself through a feeling of cold. If we want to draw these forces then we must draw the first three (as at the bottom of the diagram below), and the two others that pressed through him like a feeling that gave him knowledge of his connection with all mankind, as wings.

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Then the sky became dark for him and lost its outer light, and suddenly space lit up for him from within. He had the feeling as if his head opened up like a chalice to divine light and in this light he saw the messengers of the Panenveloper who came towards him from above, and through the radiant light that stood above him like a star and sent its shine deep into him he heard their voice that said to him: “This is the light of the Father, out of which you were born.”

And he realized that to become worthy of this birth he would have to transform the green lily tree into the dry wood of the cross in himself, just as the Christ had gone through death on the same, and that only thereby the hope could blossom in him to be resurrected in the Holy Spirit:

Notes from B-F: 1 is a force that projects into us, that also fills us when we concentrate on an object (white lily) 2 is another force that urges us to be ourself in initiative actions (rose cross). 3 is really a circle, a force that induces us to see life's joyful and sad experiences around us and not in us—with equanimity. It's the karmic law of necessity that turns in a circle. If we devote ourselves to these three, we then get 4/5 as supports, a warm wing of enthusiasm (love) and a cold one (shame and fear) that harmonizes this. Then in arrows 6/7 there are streams from the geniuses of light who bring us wisdom; thereby we feel as if we were growing two small wings in the larynx region. Then we hear the harmony of the spheres 8/9 from the geniuses of will that clarifies the goal of man and world evolution.

The whole picture is the tree of life or man in the form of a pentagram.

After Parzival stood before Titurel and had the experiences of which we spoke, an intimate and deep feeling of shame arose in him. This feeling of shame permeated him completely. He had gone through catharsis and had thought that he was now so good and pure that he could become one of the followers of the Master of all masters, the Christ. In this feeling of shame he was reminded of Christ's words: “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God.” He now knew how very imperfect he was still and how much he still had to take into his striving for the good, how much he was still lacking in order to be good.

And a second feeling, a feeling of fear overcame him. He thought that he had gotten rid of that a long time ago. But it was a different kind of fear from the ones he'd known previously. It was a feeling of his own smallness and weakness as a man compared with the sublime Godly being when he let a second word of Christ live in his soul: “Become perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” These two words should live in the soul of every esoteric.

An esoteric should kindle full devotion for divine beings in his soul. Thereby the consciousness develops that what one does isn't so good, but that one should always try to become more perfect. We should look at what's developing in one's soul. God lives in developing things. If we get to the point where we're acting in a good and noble way, then it's God in us who's good. The God who lets us act in a good and noble way is our archetype itself, that created us. We must become a complete copy of this archetype.

Be it ever so hidden, there's a selfish motive in everything we do. We must realize that we can't be selfless. It's a world karma that lets us act egoistically. But world karma is God. Everything that God is and does in the way of good is better than we could do it. An esoteric should tell himself: Let me do something that I have made it my duty to do, let me do it as hard as I can and in such a way that I tell myself that the divine element that's at work in me is doing this and I'm only the instrument of this godly element—then the higher self in its striving towards perfection is revealed to him.

There are three revelations of the higher self: Through a dream, an inkling, and through meditation. If an esoteric has lived in his meditations, if he has tried to repeatedly live in his thoughts, words and deeds in accordance with the perfection principle, if he has repeatedly tried to be good—then at some point he'll realize: If I would place all the joy and suffering that I previously thought was in me outside me, then it would be as if it surrounded me like a soul-spiritual thing; I no longer live in what I have placed outside, I'm no longer touched by the waves of pain and joy. Then a pupil must learn to stand fast in the center of his existence by living entirely in the power of the mantra: Ex Deo nascimur. Thereby the pupil inserts the higher self into his humanness; this second I isn't in us and can't be found by brooding into oneself but only by growing out beyond oneself.

Through the exercises we stimulate a force in us that otherwise works more as a memory force in us and reawakens the ideas, feelings and sensations that were aroused by past things and happenings in the outer world. The pupil gets to know this as a force only; he learns how to organize it up into the brain, so that it eventually grows toward the higher self that floats above us. The pupil now lives in this newly acquired force. All outer pains and joys now seem to be outside of his center. He stands there firmly enclosed in himself against all outer influences; he feels free in himself and free of all external things.

And the pupil feels something else. Previously he had learned the teachings about karma. Now he knows that he stands under the necessity of the effects of karma. He experiences the higher self that places him into existence through birth in this newly attained force, and he sees how what develops in his destiny in the outer world must be brought about through the active necessity of karmic force. This gives him a certain joy with respect to pain and suffering. He confronts everything with equanimity.

If a pupil has progressed this far, he then gets to contemplation and thereby to consomatio of the higher self. And now spiritual eyes and ears are organized into him and begin to function when he devotes himself to the exercises with patience, persistence and concentration. He learns to see the light world of spiritual beings and the spiritual will being who resounds towards him, audible to his opened spiritual ears. And he knows that he can't have these spiritual experiences by means of his physical organism. In his experience of the pentagram (8–27) he feels that he's placed into the whole etheric and spiritual world This drawing and occult script has a soul-awakening and a spirit-liberating effect. The pupil should repeatedly place it before his soul and he'll experience that every new forces grow in his soul thereby. We saw that Parzival who stood before Titurel in solitude had the experiences that come to expression in this occult script. The whole Christian wisdom and mystery that winds around the Grail is expressed in it. The mystery wisdom is like a greenhouse plant that was only revealed to a few mature people; what the rest of mankind received was the faith content of the various religions. The Christian wisdom of the Grail is a mystery that was revealed to all as knowledge but to no one as a content to be taken on faith. All pupils of western esotericism are Parzivals.

Lohengrin is a son of Parzival. He's a personality that doesn't come fully to expression in a body. The swan is the expression of the higher individuality that radiates above him. Lohengrin unites himself with Elsa, the human soul. She doesn't ask him where he comes from, she doesn't ponder about his nature—she takes him the way he is with thanks and humility for his gifts. But when someone maliciously suggests that he's not of noble birth, she asks him about this. Thereupon, Lohengrin has to withdraw from her. He disappears up into the spiritual world. A pupil should mainly have a feeling of thankfulness for what is given to him from higher worlds in this incarnation. He should not investigate and search or interpret these talents with his ordinary intellect. For this induces the higher self to withdraw from his soul. There's a big warning for us in Elsa's fate. We shouldn't let any outer thoughts, no feelings and sensations from the outer world into the sanctuary of our mediation and concentration, otherwise that source of strength through which we attain the growing out and up of our human forces to the higher self isn't stimulated, we can't find the higher self, it repeatedly retreats before us. We should observe the projection of the spiritual world's effects into us in contemplation, closed off from all outer impressions, alone in the deepest quiet and immersion; resting in the deepest solitude we should let them work in us quietly and chastely in order to eventually become knowers of truth, to become an instrument for the work of spiritual beings.

In esotericism we must note something that we call the Spirit of the Day. The masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings have given us meditation through which we can approach one of these divine creating beings each day. We will begin with the guiding verse which the masters gave for today.

Great embracing Spirit,
Many archetypes
Sprouted out of your life
At a time when my life forces
Didn't yet exist.
You were.
I lift up my soul to you.
I was in you.
I was part of your forces.
You connected yourself
With the earth's first beginnings
To a sun of life
And gave me the force of life.
I was in your radiant life forces.
You were.
My life force radiated into yours in space.
My body began its becoming in time.
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.

Today we'll speak about how easily an esoteric tends to forget even the simplest exoteric sayings of theosophy, such as: Everything sensory is maya or illusion. Every esoteric should meditate on this regularly. Many will think that they already understand this statement long ago. But few reflect how little of it they really bring into their life and feeling and how much they would have to include thereby. For instance, someone can say: I do the Lord's Prayer every morning and draw strengthening forces for the whole day from the spiritual content of this wonderful prayer. Now, one of the masters of wisdom said that he only prays the Our Father once a month, and otherwise he prepares himself to pray it worthily that one time. Now the first one could say that he'll pray it once a month too, because one should follow a master's example. But what would that be? That would be pronounced haughtiness. It would be saying that we can do as much as a master can, that what he can draw from the spiritual content of the Lord's Prayer is also accessible to us. We often think that we have already eradicated a quality like pride, but have just pushed it into another corner of our nature. For all of these qualities are also maya, and so are the concepts that we make for ourselves on the physical plane about good and evil, right and wrong. When we spoke of the influences of lucifereic beings in exoteric classes we formed the view that these influences were bad ones which we have to resist, whereas on the other hand we know that Lucifer brought us freedom. But we should definitely not take our acquired concepts of good and evil, right and wrong with us into the high regions in which something takes place between Lucifer and the good Gods that looks like a battle and namely one that mostly takes place in the human soul. It's an occult secret that certain qualities of a man develop too fast during earth evolution, and Lucifer is at work here. How does this come about?

Lucifer comes over from Moon evolution and brings the Moon tempo into everything that comes under his influence. Now since he mainly influences our intellect and reason they have developed far in advance. We'll go through many more incarnations and have a variety of experiences, but our intellect and reason will be the same as they are now. And what's the consequence of this advanced development? We can't harmonize our intellect with the wisdom that we find in the world, thereby giving rise to one error after another.

I can give you a trivial example. After the first terrible eruptions of Mt. Pelee were over, the experts at the scene calculated that there would be a long dormant period. But the eruptions came again, worse than before, and the lava and rubble buried the experts and their proclamations. This is an example of how our combining intellect storms ahead and gets on the wrong track instead of slowly working its way into the wisdom of nature's forces.

Lucifer's influences are at work all over the earth. But we would be mistaken if we would want to look for an expression of the same in earthquakes, storm and hail. On the contrary, we must look for his influence in everything that becomes mature quickly, and this acceleration must be hindered by the good Gods. Weather catastrophes are often the expression of the good Gods; they're the hindrance that they have to oppose Lucifer with to avoid overly rapid development. And namely they're hindrances that also correspond to old Moon evolution, in order to offset Lucifer's Moon tempo; what was right on the Moon now has harmful effects.

The good Gods must also intervene to retard an esoteric's development. For what does Lucifer do in our esoteric life? It's due to him that we take the maya of our concepts from material life with us into our meditations. So that we don't enter spiritual worlds unprepared in this wrong way the good Gods throw hindrances on the path, such as all of our bad qualities. They are the bad will, rage, pride, vanity, and envy that break out when we approach the Gods with our earthly views and feelings. The spiritual worlds remain closed to us until we've eliminated these hindrances, for they must be kept free of everything that's maya.

If we reflect about this relation of the good Gods, of Christ, to the Luciferic beings, to Lucifer, then the meditation verse: Everything around us is maya or illusion, will appear to us in a quite different light. We'll become aware of how often we forget in everyday life that things and qualities that we think are very important are just maya.

We'll begin today's esoteric lesson by reading the prayer to the Spirit of the Day. The exoteric church directs its prayers to the Gods in general, but a theosophist who knows that every time period has its own regent, modestly turns to the spiritual being who rules the present day under the name of Mars.

Great embracing Spirit,
Knowledge lived in your sensations when no knowledge was given to me yet.
You were.
I lift my soul to you.
I moved into my body.
In my sensations I lived for myself.
You were in the life-sun.
Your being lived in my sensation as my being.
My soul's life was outside of your life.
You were.
My soul felt its own being in itself.
A longing arose in it,
The longing for you
Out of whom it arose.
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.

Anyone who has begun an esoteric training should make it clear to himself that he's undertaken something that's very serious, that he must work on himself very seriously so that eventually he'll be able to participate in esoteric work. So how must an esoteric work on himself? We know that man's etheric body is born at age seven, and until then, it surrounds the physical body like a maternal sheath. The etheric body should then be prepared rightly for its development up to age 14, when the astral body is born. But all kinds of unelaborated parts are attached to it, partly from previous incarnations and partly from the present one. All of the habits that live in us are unfolded in our etheric body from age 7 to 14, and depending on how we consolidate our views to prejudices—educators can have a big influence here—we, for instance, become more or less receptive for theosophy later on. One who creates sharply outlined views for himself will find it harder to accept its teaching than someone who keeps himself open for all new things The etheric body becomes completely developed between the ages of 7 to 14. If a child doesn't take in great model pictures, if he doesn't look up reverently to an authority, then his etheric body isn't soft and flexible at this age. It's hard for such people to find their way into life's affairs. Their etheric body is hardened and it takes a great effort to dissolve these hardenings. Luciferic Moon powers take advantage of this and flow into them. It's not for nothing that Christ says: Watch and pray.

The astral body unfolds from age 14, 15, to 21, 22. The things that are attached to this aren't nearly as much of a hindrance for the acceptance of theosophical teachings as the etheric hindrances, since the etheric body is a much denser mass than the astral body.

The ego develops from age 21-28. The masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings adapted theosophical teachings to present conditions so that they mainly work on the ego and are grasped by the ego. This wasn't the case before. Then an occult teacher had to work on both the astral body and the ego. This wouldn't be possible today for men have much more individualistic tendencies. If a teacher wanted to intervene in the astral body and he tried to direct the passions, drives and desires he would thereby immediately produce an uproar in this astral body, for a modern should develop freely and only through the ego. He must use the knowledge that he's acquired in the ego through theosophical teachings to ennoble his older but lower body.

Why can a man understand all of theosophy's teachings through thinking, through his ego? We received a physical body on Saturn. The etheric body was added on Sun. There the physical body was in the Sun condition whereas the etheric body was in the Saturn condition. On old Moon, the newly added astral body was in the Saturn condition, the etheric body in the Sun condition, and only the physical body in the Moon condition. On earth the physical body is in the earth condition whereas the newest and youngest part, the ego, is in the Saturn condition. The ego is the Saturn in us, and that's why it understands everything that happened since Saturn times.